Author: Whitney

"The world is full of clocks and mirrors."

To Be vs. Not To Be

It’s interesting how people’s morals differ or rather, the things that cause one person to experience guilt while another doesn’t bat an eye.  Of course, this is far from something new, you’d have to be a total idiot not to recognize that people are different, but it’s truly amazing how morals one person can value so deeply can quickly be discarded by another.
As most of you well know by now, I take the bus to and from work and tote my bicycle along.  It’s a glorious life, I know.  Each bus has a total of 3 racks for bicycles (on rare occasions, two) and if all of the racks are in use, you’re shit out of luck.
I find that people in Arizona are generally rude and a lot of them seem to lack basic manners, so it’s up to my non-existent assertiveness to get my bike on the rack when there is one available spot and another person with a bike is also waiting.  I guess part of me still expects more from people, but I’m so incredibly cynical that I experience miserable anxiety when I see another person approaching my bus stop with a bicycle because a lot of people are total assholes and quite honestly, the majority of bus patrons have displayed more low societal standards than even the most pessimistic person could imagine.

Just as recent as last Friday, I literally had knots in my stomach after watching bus passengers crawl over each other to glimpse a motorcycle accident.  I swear on everything I love that I was the only one who remained in my seat out of about 8 people on the bus.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all denying the presence of my own curiosity but even in my general dislike for most people, I still feel that even the slightest form of respect is necessary when it comes to situations such as that.
Imagine, the whole of 5’oclock traffic stretching their necks so far that their mouths gaped open, all hoping to catch a glimpse of some gory accident and possibly a handful of those people had enough respect to place their manners before their urges.  I felt so nauseous and sick afterwards, that it wasn’t until after getting home and taking a shower before I felt any relief.

However, I’m a little of track here.  The whole point of even bringing up contrasting morals was to sort-of confess my own wrong-doings.  You see, in order to avoid the miserable plight of anxiety and the fear of full bike racks, when someone with a bike is headed for my bus stop, I hop on mine and ride to the stop ahead of whichever one I’m at.
This act alone makes me question more about the changes I’ve made in my life than a lot of the things I’ve experienced the past couple of years.   It’s awful and I feel damn guilty doing it, but I have lived my entire life putting everyone else before myself and you know where it’s gotten me?  Nowhere.  I’ve taken shit from just about everyone and the second someone realizes that I’m kind and considerate, they take advantage of me quicker than a starving lion approaching an injured animal.

This has been the very thing that has made me as cynical as I am because it is so much harder to be a nice person than it is to be an asshole and the pressure has finally broken me.  Some people would just say I’ve grown up, but no, that’s far from the truth.  I know because of the guilt I feel when I do something unkind.  It’s miserable and it haunts me.  I’ve dug out a pit the size of a landfill to hide all of my emotions in and I don’t know what’s more terrifying:  turning in to the cold-hearted bitch I try to pretend I am or the breaking point.
I’ll always be cynical, I’ve given up that battle because it grew out of necessity from being extremely naive and vulnerable.   However, I refuse to become some bitter, old lady like Vera Donovan from Deloris Claiborne.

My life has changed so drastically in this 27th year that I fear some of the changes are irreversible.  Yet, I still feel a loving warmth that is ever present in my life.   I’ve simply grown a thicker coat in order to survive and the need to survive (both emotionally and physically) seems to outweigh all moral obligations at this point in life.  You can call it cruel or weak, but I will fight the argument until I can no longer breathe.

What amazes me about myself, that I have mentioned countless times, is that despite what I have experienced, I still believe in all the things that have disappointed me.  Despite everything horrible, I believe enough in myself and  my dreams, that nothing can break that confidence.
I truly do believe in the inherent good in people, regardless of what I’ve seen.  I don’t know why or how, but I know that it’s there.
I still believe in love and romance, even though the past couple of years have shattered my hopes and dreams of both.
I still believe I am a good person even though I do things that stretch the boundaries of the morals I was raised to uphold.

In all of the miserable and wonderful things I have experienced even in the past year alone; I’ve realized that while actions speak much louder than words, sometimes the circumstances are greater than the person.
As long as the cruel realization of reality doesn’t burn out the light inside of you – there is always hope that you can overcome even the worst of yourself.

Random Fact #3
Misophonia

When I learned about Misophonia, I was so relieved;I thought I was just a total bitch.  Misophonia is defined as the hatred of sound, but it’s that irritating prickle under your skin that you feel when certain noises make you restless.
For instance: people eating, particular noises (my friend’s is triggered by her refrigerator door opening and closing), someone’s laugh, someone’s cough, etc…
It differs from person to person, but if you feel a strange physical irritation to a noise and you have to get up and leave to avoid hearing it; you have Misophonia.  Isn’t it nice to know it’s not just you?Source: One of my best friends.

Any Advice?

I’m in a bit of a quandary.
I was recently moved to a different position at work and have been forced to get to know other people, something I’m not very fond of.   One co-worker, in particular, I cannot stand.  No matter how hard I try to understand him or how hard I try to lay my judgments down and just tolerate his incessant rambling, I cannot stand this guy.
We will call him Tim because I don’t like that name either (no offense to any Tims).
Tim is English.
Tim lived in England for the first 10 years of his life.
Tim is now 28 and still miraculously has an accent.  He even uses English terminology regardless of the fact that he has lived in America for the majority of his life.  Why?  Because his accent is the only interesting thing about him.
Our immediate supervisor is currently in Chicago which means more chit-chat taking place in the cubicle we all inhabit.
Tim spent the better part of yesterday echoing his thoughts across a sea of people who didn’t give a shit because he is the anti-Christ.  For whatever degree he is studying towards in college, I guess a basic psychology class is required.  Basic psychology apparently makes this guy an expert in the field which makes it very difficult to talk people on a normal level because of his excellent education.  No, I’m not exaggerating.
He disappeared for half an hour yesterday to talk to the CEO of the company and burst back in to the cubicle with air of superiority.

Tim (looking around to make sure an audience was present): Wow, I can’t believe I was gone a half hour… that guy knows A LOT.

Other co-worker: Oh?

Tim:  Yeah, he knows A LOT of theories, he’s really smart.  We just bounced thoughts [not his own, obviously] off of one another and he knew all about that one theory I was telling you guys about earlier [not going to bore you with psych 101 bullshit]… it was just really nice to be able to talk to someone on the same academic level as myself.

The rest doesn’t matter, I swear on everything I love and fantasize about, that this piece of shit had the nerve to say that.  They offer the same psychology class he’s taking in High Schools!  What kind of sad person needs that sort of glorification?  What sort of psychology expert needs the approval of people he deems inferior?  What sort of person thinks condescending to people earns them interested listeners, much less any sort of respect?

My quandary is this: Why is it bothering me so much?  Why can’t I just let it go?  The guy actually knows what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t hold any firm belief in any of it, he just wants to talk and make everyone else “look stupid”.
I wanted to scream at him that I’ve been reading philosophy, psychology and sociology books since I was 14 while he was discovering the miracle of masturbation.
I wanted to disprove his theories based on my actual experience and observation and tell him that it’s called a theory for a reason.  But I couldn’t.  I just sat and acted stupid and felt useless because even when I know I’m right, I don’t know how to open my mouth.

What’s more is that it made me consider why I, myself, need to prove to him that I’m not stupid.  I’m at this incredible point in my life where everything is unfolding beautifully and I’m growing in to the person I’ve always wanted to be and yet, I still can’t speak up.
In all of the confidence I’ve gained in myself as an individual, I still can’t open my mouth and tell people to shut the fuck up when I know I’m right because it makes me feel arrogant and condescending and that’s worse than looking stupid.
However, then I’m facing this situation again and I’m filled with actual anger.  Not just at my co-worker, but at myself for allowing this.
At what point do these two worlds collide and let me take the weight of inner-thought off of my shoulders? I’m so tired of listening to people talk to me like I’m an idiot and I’m so ashamed of myself for letting them make me feel this way.

sorry about this

I’m not one to write about celebrity crap, but I’ve been spending more time than usual on Tumblr and my dashboard is filled with photoshopped wrecking balls and a topless Miley Cyrus.  I have seen endless text posts of women and girls bitching about Miley’s turbulent lifestyle, how she’s being exploited, how she’s become a slut or whatever else they find offensive about someone who has no direct impact on their lives.
All I have to say regarding that is BRAVO to whoever is marketing this girl because I struggle to name a single pop song of that last decade, but I know more about her than I do about our president.
My opinion (as if it really matters) on the controversy over Miley Cyrus is that this and this are totally different:
aaa
They may be in the same ballpark, but Spears fell into a dark, black hole from which she will never return, while Cyrus just turned in to white trash.
I think the most entertaining aspect of the entire pop star worship thing is that people feel so personally offended by her actions (and her haircut) that when they write or talk about her (or anyone of equal celebrity status), they are filled with (an awkward, questionable) passion.
Our culture has become so incredibly mesmerized by the lives of beautiful people and it’s no wonder, they’re absolutely EVERYWHERE!
They’re right in front of us every day in every form of publicity possible and social networking is like a church of fellow worshipers.  Can you really blame young girls (and boys) for feeling personally attached to these people?
These people have become part of their everyday lives.  It’s truly mind blowing if you thinking about it.

To be fair, in black and white, it’s really no different than getting angry at politicians or feeling your heart melt when you read about something Pope Francis has said or done  (I really do like that man), however, these people have societal impacts whether you pay attention to them or not.

I won’t lie though, I’m a sucker for looking at the magazines they line the grocery store impulse shelves while I wait in line, however that fascination does not extend past my transaction and Amanda Bynes throwing a bong out the window does not make a single difference in my life.

I guess my point is this: who gives a shit?

milestone

There are no words for the emotional maturity that has blossomed inside of me.  For as long as my mind stretches into the past, I have struggled to balance my emotions, thoughts and reality.   Like the moon pulls the tides, I have struggled to resist the pull of my emotions, but I have finally learned how to maintain my balance in the trough of the waves.
I have, of course, been assisted by many great minds through the years; Nietzsche, Whitman, Rilke, Dickinson, Harper Lee and most recently — Dickens.  All of these great writers and thinkers (and so many more) have comforted me when I was held captive by my emotional turmoil and held a flame for both warmth and light in the velvet darkness.
Of course, music and friends/family have served as a lifeboat as well, but there is something about books — how you can wrap yourself in the world of someone else and escape your own while somehow pressing the two worlds together.  I’m not really sure I’m capable of fully expressing the love and appreciation I have for reading and the gracious impact the words have had on me, but I will never stop trying.
It is only within the past couple of months that I have noticed the deep, solid change that has taken place inside of me.  Not like the spurts of positivity that I have been showered with and then disappointed by.  This is a deep rooted change that has put me in control of how I let circumstances affect me.   I have not grown cold, but focused.  I have stopped trying to change what I do not like and simply accepted that it is alright to be recognizably flawed.  In fact, I enjoy my flaws, I no longer feel ashamed about my desire to be introverted, but I enjoy it almost to the point of overzealousness.  I no longer feel guilty or wounded by sudden changes in behavior of someone I considered myself to be on good-terms with (obviously an isolated incident).  In fact, I quit caring about so many small things because I started accepting myself ENTIRELY, not piece by piece, and I started believing more in the good-natured part of myself and believed that no matter what, the good in me would prevail.
I still consider myself in the threshold of this change, but this is concrete.  This is the milestone I’ve been struggling to reach for the past 5 years and it has greeted my life with incredible warmth and sincerity.
Normally this is where I would say something along the lines of, “I hope this feeling lasts forever” but for the first time in as long as I can remember, I know this is one of the building blocks to the person I’m growing up to be and I really, really love and respect her.

Pep Talk

There is a curse in being intuitive when it comes to other people.   It’s amazing to be able to pick up on a personality within minutes of meeting someone, but it’s a horribly lopsided ability.  It’s mentally awkward when a person you have no qualms with subtly stops being polite to you and/or doesn’t acknowledging your presence unless you say something.  Granted I’m no stranger to this behavior, but I’ve never suddenly “turned” on someone I considered an acquaintance without a good reason.
This sort of thing has been happening to me my entire life; I will form a friendship with someone when suddenly I’m being shunned with no explanation.  I’m generally pretty good at pinpointing the problem, but nothing has happened and yet, here I am in the arctic breezes of the cold-shoulder again.

Although I’ve formed a pretty thick shell and buried any physical signs of hurt feelings, it still stings like hell and it still makes me feel kind of shitty.  It doesn’t do any deep, internal damage anymore because I’ve grown to the point where I actually respect the person I’m growing in to and in light of that, I quit blaming myself for other people being total assholes.  For the past five or so years, I’ve been working really hard on my unpleasant qualities and molding myself in to what I believe is a good, stable person.  And as far as I’m concerned, I have nothing to prove to anyone but myself and those who have always supported me.
Every time this happens though, I dig deep through the pain of it and work to better myself.  The ability to do that is an actual gift – to take something from a bad situation and create something beautiful from it’s debris without letting the negativity affect you negatively.

Even my best friend, who is mad at me and hardly speaks to me (completely my fault) will always be my best friend because despite my major fuck-up during my 10th tour of best-friend duty, she still knows I’m a good person beneath my mistakes – no matter how big or small.  Even if she doesn’t know how much she doesn’t hate me right now, I know she opens every message I send her even if she doesn’t respond.
In fact, I don’t even know why I felt the need to write this, I’m irritated at a co-worker whom I actually liked among a sea of co-workers I don’t like, but fuck it; I have dinosaurs on my desk next to pictures of my mother.  I have my iPod with me filled with over 100 GB of music from the past 4 years (lots of emotional healing there) and even though my best friend won’t talk to me (which I really hate), I still annoy the hell out of her with text messages and pictures because I’m annoying and that’s okay because it comes from a good place and she knows I mean it.

I suppose I wrote this because I needed to remind myself that I’m a decent person capable of becoming a really good person.  And even though I’m far behind where I want to be in life, I truly do not worry about not becoming the person I want to or not doing the things I want to in life.  I have no idea how I know, but I know that I will be fine in every aspect of my future, and even though these little emotional mosquito bites itch like crazy, they’re only small happenings that help sharpen the image of the bigger picture.
It’s not even a lemonade thing, it’s just realizing that you’re in complete control of how you let life change you.

What the Hell is Happening?

At what point in social evolution did men get the idea that women actually gave a fuck what they thought about them?  It’s no secret that we lather ourselves in cosmetics, and pull, tease and dye our hair in hopes to become, somehow, more attractive, but if you for one second think this is all for you, it’s not.   Women desire to be just as attractive to other women.  If we spend $30 on a dress and don’t receive a compliment from another woman we deem even semi-fashionable, that $30 suddenly feels like $300 and we’re devastated.  Women live their life on a stage whether they admit it to themselves or not.   And most of the time, we’re out to make other women jealous of our makeup, hair or fashion abilities because it makes us feel better or somehow accomplished in some simple aspect of our lives.

There is an ad on the talk radio station I listen to and the host, of whatever advertized program, plays an audio clip from some author who says “We see a woman and when we first meet her, we immediately think ‘I would do her’ or ‘I would not do her’ and if you fall in to the ‘I would do her’ category, the only way you can get out of that zone is if you are such a horrible person or gain a lot of weight to the point where you become, somehow, physically unattractive to him.”
I have no problem accepting this, it’s not news that men think this way and that’s fine, but why do we need actual books about this shit?  The only people who would read garbage like that are other men, and they wouldn’t waste the money because they already know how men think.   In American society, women already suffer severe self-esteem issues, so there’s no market there.
So basically, the only reason for a man to write a book of this nature would be to brag about how shallow men are capable of being or just to see his thoughts printed between book binds and marked for sale in the clearance section at Barnes and Noble.
I am so tired of hearing men’s thoughts on what they think is some sort of  ground-breaking streak of brutal honesty when they talk about the physical aspect of women as if we’re just dying to take our self-esteem down a notch.  We know you’re emotionally callow and we know you don’t like cellulite or fat chicks.  So what?  Who cares?  The same goes to women who talk about small dicks and thinning hairlines – shut the fuck up about it.  It’s sad that that’s how we “fight” back.
Any woman with a half a brain whether she’s beautiful, fat, skinny, ugly or whatever superficial label fits her – would ever, ever date or sleep with a man who brags about the negative aspects of his interior being.  Unless, of course, she was drunk , high or at rock bottom and needed the self-esteem boost.

Cutting through all of the bullshit though, out of stupid people come stupid children who create stupider children and as each generation is slowly deteriorating, the smart people are beginning to feel somewhat hopeless because they are smart enough to recognize the decline in morale and common sense and everyone else is so god damn stupid that unless there is an emotional sting to a statement, it can’t be fully processed.
At what point did manners become some obscure part of the past?  I am pro-honesty, I have always appreciated brutally honest friends and constructive criticism, but honesty should have positive benefits, never damaging ones.
This generation is shit and it terrifies me that the yolo generation will run this country one day.
I’d just like to end this with saying that there is a reason we are capable of having private thoughts and I urge the majority of the population to exploit that ability to no end.