Let’s Clarify

So, I got my domain back – this will stay up so links don’t go dead, but the new address is, again, http://girlgonemad.net

And, for clarification’s sake, this is my blog. I tell the truth as I’ve experienced and witnessed it. I don’t lie. You choose to visit this blog. You choose to spend (or waste) your time reading about my life. If you’re unhappy with me, I hope you can approach me in a mature manner and not get into the middle of business that you have nothing to do with.

I wish you had heard the things he said about you.

– The Girl

Put it to a vote

Here’s your chance… and I know how you’ve always wanted it… to decide my future for me. Or at least to weigh in and give me your opinion, or weigh in by giving me your opinion…whatever, I’m not finished with my coffee yet and I’m reading about the Comparative Method in Political Science, so that should tell you where my brain is.

Here is the question.

What should I aim for after graduating college?

1. Law school
2. Graduate school
(sub question, in a) Political Science, b) Public Policy, c) International Studies, d) Sociology, e) Women’s Studies)
3. Apply to the Peace Corps
4. Apply to Teach for America
5. Attempt to find some other kind of job in the “real world.”
6. Other, please specify.

I’d like to be under the sea…

Not to gloss over last night’s post (and yes, I firmly agree that he needs to be punched – the problem is, I can’t find anyone to do it), but I’m trying to do this thing where I actually blog regularly, as opposed to sporadically, and… twice a month at maximum.

This weekend Sparkle Pants and I set out to photograph Duke University. We’d driven through the campus on Friday and were all set with batteries charged Saturday morning (okay, afternoon) when we woke up.

And then we got there… and discovered that the entire Raleigh/Durham area (or “the Triangle” for all y’all keepin’ it real) was at one of the seventeen events we hadn’t noticed were planned for that very day. Overnight an entire circus had sprung up, a run in support of animals, a run for children, a grandmother’s knitting convention, the annual tearing down and rebuilding of the school just because Duke students are spoiled rotten and they could do that if they wanted to… We decided we’d try the Gardens, which I’ve never been to but have heard from everyone are amazing… but there was a wedding on and no parking whatever to be found.

Vowing to come back next weekend, we drove around aimlessly for awhile, until we were forced to choose between “Downtown Durham” and I-85. I chose Downtown, because D comes before E which is the letter 8 starts with. It was an alphabetical adventure.

We ended up in the Tobacco District, where they were setting up for a battle of the bands on the lawn that night. We wandered up and down, past the offices of WUNC, our local NPR affiliate… and then I saw it. Extended until June or July something… a display of paintings, photographs and handwritten letters documenting Nelson Mandela’s time in prison in South Africa. Now, this is exactly up Sparkle’s alley, and very much up mine as well, so we crossed the fake river and went inside.

Y’all, it was heart breaking. Reading Mandela’s own words about his attempts to grow a garden, about the death of a beloved tomato plant which he uprooted and tenderly buried like anyone would a pet or loved one, about his realization of the importance of family and friendship, of touch and love and hands holding hands, shoulders supporting shoulders. He spoke of thinking he’d be imprisoned behind guard towers and barbed wire until he died, that he never dreamed that outside the walls of the prison, the tide was turning in their favor, apartheid was being overthrown… Nelson Mandela has always been one of my very few real heroes, but to hear his voice speaking on the small monitor inside the exhibit, to read his words in his own handwriting, to see the pictures he had drawn and filled in with such bright, bright colors – I couldn’t help but internalize that moment when he stepped into freedom. When he saw the faces of people he loved, people he never thought he’d see again. When he walked out of the prison not to another day’s work at the quarry, but into a new South Africa, one that has made strides toward equality and overthrowing racism that we in the United States only dream about even today…

There was no photography allowed in the building, so you’ll have to see the exhibit itself if it comes anywhere near you. I just photographed the Lucky Strike tower and the waterfalls gushing over No Smoking signs. But the eye is the best camera, and memory the best film, and I have those images in an album in my heart. And I know if it can happen there, if hatred can be overthrown and lives rebuilt, it can happen anywhere.

Even here in the United States.

Fuck me or it’s over.

From now on I should only listen to those people who offer me both honesty and acceptance, or so says my horoscope for today, Tuesday the 22nd of May 2007. Sometimes it feels like I am overwhelmed with people like this, surrounded by true friends… other times it feels like I can count those honest and accepting people on one hand… or one finger, or even none at all.

As anyone who knows me or reads this blog with any regularity (and all of you who read this blog period know me, so really there’s no difference in those two groups) knows, I tend to be exuberantly, excessively passionate about the people that I choose to care about. I let people in very easily… for some reason, I still have the ability to trust, and to be sometimes painfully honest and open about my life and my feelings. In the past few months, I feel like that quality (and after much thought I have decided it’s a quality, damnit a VICTORY that I’m able to be that way), has been used, abused and torn to shreds, stomped on, shat on, pissed on and set on fire.

And yet, I continue to hope for the good in people, and the good in God, and the idea that it’ll all work out in the end if I just keep on going.

A few weeks ago, I lost someone I considered to be a friend… She sent me emails full of vitriol and anger, but I knew I’d lost her the second I started dating a boy, and right in front of her (how dare I) about a month before. She stopped talking to me, stopped confiding in me, started talking about me behind my back…and ultimately disappeared from my life completely, leaving something of a shambles behind her. I don’t care if “something of a shambles” doesn’t make grammatical sense – I rather like the sound of it.

The funny thing is, I also lost the boy I was dating who “caused” all of it. That is the one thing, however, that I don’t blame him for. Her heterophobia is not his fault (although it was his fault when he used her as an excuse to pick a fight with me because my friends didn’t like him (1 of them) when his friends hated and insulted me). The reason I ultimately lost the boy? … After dating for less than a month, I still refused to have sex with him. He needed, he said, a physical relationship (I don’t know what else you would call much of our relationship, though… basically what he wanted was the ability to stick his penis into my vagina, and I said no, I wasn’t ready.)

So, he pretended that things were okay, and told me he had no problem waiting. And then slowly stopped talking to me. He’d call me late at night only after everything else in his life had been attended to. He stopped text messaging me or returning my messages, and then got angry when I asked him why I hadn’t heard from him in days. Ultimately, after my asking him multiple times to just tell me what was going on, with no response from him, he blatantly ignored me for a week and then said he was “cutting his losses”… he was getting out because I wasn’t putting out.

That was the last I heard from him.

We were all taken in. My friends and I… people who don’t normally trust that boys are capable of being real human beings. We believed what he said, *I* believed him when he said he was crazy about me and he’d wait until I was ready. And it turned out to be an act – it turned out to be an ultimatum… either have heteronormative sex with me right now or I’m walking away.

Well of course I chose the walking away.

Call me crazy, but I think that sexual contact should mean something, and so I am wrecked over the fact that I kissed him, that I wasted kisses on him, that I believed he was who he claimed to be… and that no one warned me, not a single person. I ultimately blame myself for being taken in, and being screwed over. And knowing that no one is going to stop him from moving on to the next girl and pressuring her into sleeping with him – and in this town, it’s not hard to find a lot of girls who will. His behavior was absolutely disgusting, and I’m still in shock over it. I’m angry about it. I’m not angry at him for what he did to *me*, I’m angry that he thought he had the right to treat any human being the way he treated me. I’m angry that I met him when he assistant directed my performance of The Vagina Monologues, and so I assumed certain things, things he claimed to be true… that ultimately weren’t. He wasn’t feminist friendly. He was not an ally.

He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and he’s going to do it again. It is all I can do not to resort to egging his car, or slashing his tires, or starting a website devoted to making sure no girl ever falls victim to his bullshit again.

Because you can’t just say you’re crazy about someone, that however and whatever they want this relationship to be, they’re in… and then utterly and completely vanish from their lives because they won’t open their legs. And you can’t do that and call yourself anything but a misogynist. You can’t do that and work in the feminist community. You can’t do that, you can’t sit in my living room and mock The Monologues or bitch about how much you hate your friends and then turn around and put them ahead of your girlfriend every single time and wonder why it is that they want to know what the hell happened to change you so drastically in such a small amount of time.

The truth was, he hadn’t changed. I’d just bought the lie, and then the mask came off. And I hadn’t been wearing one. And he’d been wearing several.

I’m able to write about this now because I’m over the “us” of it all. I’m over *him*… in fact, I wasn’t even sure I liked him enough to keep the relationship going much longer. I was still testing the waters. I was still figuring out if I could trust him. But to a certain extent, as I do with all of my friends, all of the people I spend time with, I had let him in to some small extent.

Pissed and shat all over, that was me. Twice in as many weeks. Actually twice in less than two weeks. First him, then her.

So when my horoscope says to listen only to those people who are honest and accepting, I have to wonder if my radar isn’t off. If maybe I have no clue who the people are that I know that are honest and accepting, and safe. If maybe I’ve got this whole friendship thing wrong somehow. If maybe I should just shut down. Although that means they win.

If you’re one of those honest and accepting people, feel free to say so now. If you’re not, feel free to say so as well. I’d just like to know into which baskets I should put my eggs.

Was it Just Me?

Was anyone else out there COMPLETELY pissed off at the way both Grey’s Anatomy AND Ugly Betty ended their seasons? I mean first I have to watch the very last episode of my Gilmore Girls two nights ago, then tonight I find out Veronica Mars has been CANCELLED, and then… then THIS?

This is almost as bad as when Irina turned out to really be evil and Jack died in the end. Or when Jordan Catalano slept with Rayanne. Or when Firefly, Wonderfalls, Life as We Know It, Sports Night, Joan of Arcadia and Freaks and Geeks all got cancelled waaaaay before their time.

I’m going to go cry now. And also make up stories in my head about how things really ended for the season. And think about Matt Czurchareaazyzzzyyzzyy and Rory getting back together. Because yes, television does have this much power over me.

Falling Apart A Little Bit

I have decided to take as my life’s motto a quote from Emily at Tiny Bug Blog:

When you think about yuck and rot that is what you get and so on. I’ve decided hereafter to channel my five-year-old self. I am going to take on projects for the fun of it. I am going to think about birds and why the sky is colored just so. I am going to pick out nice friends to play with and skip skip away from the bad ones. (If there aren’t any nice ones about I will spin some out of imaginings, pink spun-sugar friends that will melt on my tongue.) I will read big books and think of big questions and then draw little pictures that aren’t very good. I will laugh and play and listen closely for the sounds that only the very small can hear. Most importantly, I will love the people that take care of me and take very good care of the people I love.

I am going to be good. For floppy ears’ sake I will.

The trouble here appears to be the panic that comes with having too much to do and therefore not being able to start on any of it. Also some of my hair fell out. That makes me contemplate shaving the lot of it off and dying what’s left over SFX’s Atomic Pink.

I ramble, ramble, ramble, but at least it’s a way to make sure everyone knows I’m still alive, rather than leave the page blank or hanging at that last entry about search engine terms that I posted about three months ago.

My party was delicious. I could taste it for three days afterward. So could my bathroom floor. I got chocolate and Kill Bill was on and we recited Vagina Monologues and sang karaoke and danced until I fell down. I had a huge bruise on my left big toe for a few days, but it’s feeling better now.

We dyed Sparkle Pants’ hair a radiant shade of red. Very very red, which we at first planned to tone down (before finding out her scalp is allergic to developer) but is now growing on us. My hair is toned pink in parts and grey in parts and is very yellow on the sides and in the back. The place where I lost hair is where I tried to bleach my roots in the front. None of the other roots really got bleached, but none of them had hair fall out in chunks, either.

Today I would rather be at the ocean with ocean smells and hamburgers than at home in my apartment doing homework. Today I would rather be at Great America in the early morning when they’re still testing the rides and you get to be the first person on the Vortex and ride it six times in the very front on the right, and you flip upside down standing straight up; or on Top Gun where gravity pulls your shoes off into the lake when you go over it. I would like to be A.B.H. Anywhere but here.

If you could be anywhere, where would you be?

As a Random Aside

I love two of the search engine terms that brought people to my site today:

“Raising self esteem because your gay” – See, this makes me not even want to be a grammar-freak. Everyone say it with me: there is nothing wrong with being gay. It is just another way to be. I long for the day when people only have to raise their self-esteem because they’re human, and everyone suffers from poor self-esteem, not because of their sexual orientation. In fact, I long for the day when there is more than enough self-esteem to go around. Raising Self-Esteem person? You are good enough, you are smart enough and gosh darnit, people like you.

“Boy trying to make me mad”
No kidding, sugar. Aren’t they all? Here’s what you do. You see that leg you have? Actually you have two, but you’ll need one to maintain balance while you do the following exercise. Go up to the boy. Now, take that leg and kick it out as hard as you can. Make sure that you aim it for the spot right where his legs start, in the middle. Did you make contact? You’ll know if he’s on the ground crying. Good. Now stomp on his face. I guarantee this will make you feel better.

Also, may I say I love that whenever people search for “peniz” they get me. I am afraid that some of you don’t know how to spell that word, and that seems a little dangerous to me. Please do not do anything with it unless you know how to spell it, all right ladies? Self-respect and good grammar/spelling, that’s all A Girl Gone Mad is asking of you.

A Girl Gone Mad Turns 10,000

Days that is.

The official date is Sunday, so I’m looking for a huge, swingin’ all my girls kind of party (all my boys are invited, as well)…

Who wants to get me all liquored up and do really bad karaoke on Saturday night? Comment for directions.

Being Alive

Life has been stopped up with massive amounts of adult-type things lately. Communicating, and then snarking, and now full-out screaming at my bank. Submitting applications for a new apartment. Trying to find free furniture. Making sure I never spend any money at all. Throwing away Credit Card applications. Not being able to afford to go to the doctor due to said Bank mistakes, calling the pharmacy, having things faxed… How adult is it to have something faxed? Faxing was something that was very big right between my being a child and an adult. By the time I grew up it was something people did in the past…it was passé, and yet, here I am faxing things. I never even learned to use a fax machine for Exclamatory Tone of Voice: [RELIGION RELATED NOUN]’s sake…Drinking excessively…Yes, drinking. Vodka, wine, beer, I don’t care, hand it over. Make this end of the semester thing a little easier to bear.

And school things: bombing a final in a class I cared a lot about, but doing well in a course that was amazingly difficult and mind-blowing. Signing up for summer courses, trying to get research approval so that I can get my fellowship money, communicating with the Financial Aid office. No, you can’t sign up for classes until you pay for them; no, we can’t give you the money to pay for your courses until you’re signed up for them…You can’t take this class, even though it’s listed as open. No, you can’t have that one either. Here, have a donut. Ah! Kidding! No donuts for you! Buy your own donuts!

I hear Andrew Bird’s new album is simply fabulous, and am tracking it down to try it out myself… stomping and slurping my way through the IRB approval process for my thesis research, although the amount of money they’re giving me and the manner in which they’re dispensing it is going to make it impossible for me to do the project the way I had previously planned… re-thinking. GTD GTD GTD.

Meanwhile, I’m just drinking lots of water. I know that’s good for me! It’s something, right?!

P.S. In 5 days, I will have been alive for 10,000 days. I think this calls for a celebration, no? How about drinking and donuts?

I Take Crappy Pictures

Here is a set of almost entirely un-edited photos for “24 Hours of Flickr” which occured on the 5th of May.

You should go look at them even though they are horrible and badly framed and un-Photoshopped (except where obvious).