Life: Equal and Opposite

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Anyone who has ever taken a physical science class knows this to be true (theoretically, at least). Based on my own empirical evidence, I would say it's true about life, too.

I have come to learn that for every positive emotion and experience we are lucky enough to uncover, we too, must deal with heartbreak and sorrow in some form. And vice versa. The Buddhists call it Samsara, as I remember learning about in high school so long ago. It essentially means that in life, we will all experience ups and downs as we go along. And that's unfortunate, but also... fortunate. It is paradoxical by its very nature, as is life itself. Nothing can be done to change it. It can only be accepted.

We cannot live and fully experience life without undergoing profound grief and loss, precisely as we cannot live and fully experience life without feeling extreme joy and euphoria. The good and the bad must go together in equal and opposite amounts, in order for the Universe to achieve natural balance. Nothing exists without its opposite, and everything in the whole of the Universe is interconnected. Therefore, when something is tugged, another thing must give. When one thing gives, it is because another has been tugged. This means that when something is lost, something else stands to be gained.

Or at least that's what I have chosen to believe, so that I may articulate and explain to myself the human condition and all that it contains. We may not experience so much of one while never being touched equally by the other. Otherwise we would cease to understand the spectrum of humanity as we do.

Logically, then, that is why we must feel such pain in our hearts at times in our lives. We must experience loss and heartbreak, in order that we may better understand and appreciate presence and love. We must become attached so that we may eventually suffer, and so that our eyes may learn how to see beauty in strife. All of our experiences culminate in our becoming exactly who and what we were destined to be, contributing to the Universe in precisely the way we were intended to do. This must include the good with the bad.

No person is complete and fully formed -- ever. We all continue to learn and grow and change and teach those around us in every moment of our lives. But it would be amiss to assume that we could ever get near such completeness without a scar of pain running through us, constantly reminding us of the immense clarity it brought to our lives. Our pain makes us human, equally as much as does our love. One cannot exist without the other.

The more open we are to receiving kindness and love, the more vulnerable we become to being caused distress and pain -- each to precisely the same degree as the other. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, to love greatly means to lose greatly. And both mean to be transformed by experience. If love has the potential to cleanse our souls and show us beauty, then pain has equally as much ability to break our hearts and bend our spirits; the both of them working together in unison to deliver us understanding which catapults us to twice the level of being as we were before.

But how grossly negligent it would be to live a life void of pain, and therefore, void of love, in order to feel very little at all. What an insult to the opportunity the Universe has handed us -- us, the very mass of cells which combined in precisely the way it did, to make us exactly the way we are -- on this planet, in this world, with these people, at this moment in time.

The Universe has lent us a window of time, and we may choose to do with it what we please, be it playing it safe and guarding our hearts, or risking it all and feeling as much as we possibly can -- positive and not. To feel means to feel it all. Do not smite the Universe or squander the privilege it has granted you. Once the Universe has closed our window, our chance of feeling anything will be permanently gone.

Even after such pain has stricken our hearts, and so many tears have left our eyes, we remain with memories in the back of our minds and at the bottom of our hearts, which we may choose to recall at any moment for the rest of our lives. Our experiences have left us with unique scars which did not exist before, and which will accompany us forevermore. And sure, all that it would take in order to feel the pain, is to remember the scar and how we earned it. But that's true for gazing fondly upon the happiness it taught us, too.

It is imperative that we understand one cannot exist without the other. Life seeks balance. Attachment will always mean suffering, but it will also always mean the purest of joy up until the very moment when suffering arrives. And the beautiful combination of the two is what makes our experience in this Universe meaningful and unique. It would be wise to cherish them both, and to see the love which came along with the pain, while we can. After all, we, like all things, are only ever intended to exist like this, for a moment in all of the vastness of time. Eventually, we too, will change and be gone, transformed into some other capacity, equal in energy, but opposite in form, in order to give back to the Universe everything that we have been given during our time in this life.

What's In An Accent?

http://www.noisejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Speaking-with-an-Accent.jpg

A story

A journey

A struggle

A triumph

Ambition

Perserverence

Discipline

Bravery

Hard work

Relentlessness

Desire

Commitment

Allure

Fascination

Intrigue

Curiosity

Patience

Frustration

Questions

Acceptance

Hard Rs

Soft Hs

Impossible vowels

Inconceivable combinations

An accent is not a failure to speak another language

It is a deeper understanding of your own

A resilient effort to reconfigure your speech pattern

And realign the world view you've always known

It takes guts and courage

And you'll still mess it up

But damn it you're trying

And that's more than enough

Language is understanding

Rules of grammar don't apply

Communication is universal

Just do your best to get by

Every voice comes from

Somewhere else on the map

Every person has a story

From somewhere besides where they're at

Reactions to accents

Beauty or fear

The choices we have

When one lands on our ear

We all speak different

And that's just a plain fact

But our hearts beat the same

No division in that

Hitler, Voldemort, Fear, Love, and Terrorism

You know what I think? I think terrorists like it when countries are so occupied with fighting against themselves that they can’t work together to present a unified front for combating terrorism. I believe that they count on all of us, as individual citizens, feeling isolated, terrified, and angry. Their success depends on our failure to act cohesively against them. How do you take out one of the most powerful threats to your cause? You break them down into their individual, weakest links, and dissolve their hopeful morale so much until the unified hatred you can offer them is the best option for solace they have – from the very fear which you manufactured and instilled in them in the first place. United we stand, divided we fall.

That’s what Hitler did. He showed the German populace that the Nazi regime was a valiant cause to protect German nationalism and the best interests of the people. He told the citizens of a fearful, war-torn country that he would help pull them out of the wreckage left behind from World War I. He gave the hopeless, vulnerable people something they could believe in. Then he twisted their well-meaning faith into brainwashing and persuaded many to support a message which was contrary to his original rhetoric.

He conveniently provided the German people with a scapegoat for their woes; an entire group of people where they could place the blame. He focused his arguments around how these people were different from the Germans – they were “others,” they were inferior, and they were most certainly worthy of hatred. Hitler stripped the Jewish people of their humanity, and he made doing so seem so trendy, that an entire country jumped on the bandwagon. And in case they weren’t so easily convinced, he had a militant regime of weapons-yielding marionettes ready to help enforce his hatred.

Hitler preyed on the Germans’ fear; he hooked them with illusions of a better life, showed them the actions they could take to make it a reality, and then he manipulated masses of people into fighting his cause for him – his cause, of violence and bigotry, convincing the German population to turn against themselves and fight their own brothers and sisters, resulting in the most death the world has ever seen from a single war – a war which dragged nearly every country in the world into violent death and despair. A war, started out of manufactured fear, and after which, FDR eloquently pointed out, "The only thing we've got to fear is fear itself."

Hitler was a real bad guy. He actually existed, he lived and breathed, and walked among places we can still visit today. But since Hitler’s time, fictitious bad guys have been based off of some of his qualities – his authoritative leadership, his implicit coercion and explicit threats, his dependence on fear and isolation among the masses. Take for instance, Voldemort.

Voldemort did much the same thing as Hitler, though Voldemort is a fictional character in Harry Potter. The reason why so many fans love Harry Potter and its characters is because it is so relatable – Voldemort is to the wizarding world what Hitler is to ours.

There is a scene, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, toward the end of the movie, where the always-wise and unconventional Luna Lovegood tells Harry, “If I were You-Know-Who, I'd want you to feel cut off from everyone else. Because if it's just you alone, you're not as much of a threat.” And that’s exactly it. People like Voldemort (referred to as “You-Know-Who because people feared him that much) and Hitler understand this fact better than anyone else, because it worked for them. If a dictator – a terrorist – can successfully isolate the people whom they wish to target, then it is suddenly much easier to manipulate them. How does a terrorist successfully isolate people whom they wish to target, you ask? Well, historically speaking, it seems fear tactics are a pretty good place to start.

Voldemort murdered hundreds of thousands of people needlessly; he enslaved others to do his bidding for him; he held others hostage and tortured them for information. He was a pretty bad guy, in general. But how did he get to such a position of power? Fear.

He spouted rhetoric to the Pureblood witches and wizards of the world that they were superior creatures. He provided this fictional Aryan Race with a scapegoat of their own – the Muggles, and well, anyone with a blood status less than Pureblood. He focused on how people were different, strategically ignoring (and actually not even knowing) the humanity common to all. Voldemort told the masses that these people were “others,” they were inferior, and they were most certainly worthy of hatred. Sound familiar? He also had his very own legion of loyal, militant puppets with weapons (okay, wands) ready to enforce his hatred.

Voldemort showed the Pureblood witches and wizards of the world how Half-Bloods, Muggleborns, Muggles, house elves, centaurs, and pretty much every other living creature on the planet contributed to the bane of their existence. He promised the Purebloods their lives would be better if only they could wipe out these inferior creatures – do his bidding for him – and those most loyal to him (who committed the most war crimes) felt the safest from his own dangerous power. In hurting others, they felt they were protecting themselves from becoming targets. In fact, he invoked so much fear, that people were actually afraid of even saying Voldemort's name. However, as our beloved Hermione Granger points out, "Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself."

Voldemort reduced the wizarding world to fighting against itself. He distracted great, intelligent witches and wizards from fighting the true evil – hatred, fear, and bigotry – by emphasizing differences among themselves and telling one group they were better than the rest. He robbed his scapegoats of their humanity, just as Hitler did with the Jews, and he taught the aggressors that they would finally have the power and respect they deserved, if only they could eradicate the world of its scourge of Muggles.

He did all of this by preying on the fear of Purebloods. He was able to convince one half of the population to murder the other by simply playing into the things that scared them most – losing their lives, their loved ones, their power, their reputation. Whatever the individual feared, Voldemort worked on a personal level to threaten, in order to rise to power. He did so by strategically disintegrating any remaining sense of community among witches and wizards. He made sure everyone felt alone and vulnerable, untrusting of those around them, and concerned only with protecting their own self interests. By fostering a toxic environment rife with uncertainty, fear, and hatred, Voldemort was able to manipulate full-grown adults into waging a war against themselves, against humanity.

Why is any of this relevant? Why am I sitting at my keyboard, passionately typing away in a blaze of fury about Hitler and Voldemort, drawing comparisons between the two and their fear tactics? I’ll tell you: Hitler and Voldemort were dictators, yes. They were also terrorists. They struck fear and hatred into the hearts and minds of millions. They both began wars with their respective worlds, born out of their own prejudices and bigotry. They manufactured fear in large groups of people, fear that did not exist before, and then they conveniently provided a solution to the problem they just created.

They told their audiences: “Look at how miserable you are! Aren’t you miserable? I know why. You are miserable because of this other group of people. They are different from you, and you are better than them. Your life is worth more than theirs. In fact, your life would be better if theirs ceased to exist. They are the cause of all of your problems. Hate them. Kill them. Follow me. I will help you in this cause, and together we will be happier without them.” They preyed on the fear of their audiences and brainwashed them into fighting an imaginary war which had real consequences.

This is what terrorists do. They terrorize. They create fear in others that never would have grown organically. They plant the seed of doubt in the minds of so many; and they water it occasionally, fertilizing it with hatred, bigotry, xenophobia, and transferring blame and responsibility to someone else. They tend to this garden regularly, and eventually, fear has grown to its full size. Then they harvest this fear they’ve created and nurtured from conception, and just like a vegetable, they use it to nourish themselves, to further their cause. Fear provides nutrients to terrorists. It is what they depend on to survive.

If you fear another group of people, who don’t look like you, speak like you, dress like you, or come from the same place as you, then you will likely turn to what is more familiar and comfortable to you. And what is easier and more comfortable for us than blaming someone else, who we already fear, for the problems we think we have?

Don’t let the terrorists win. They’ve already won too many battles before. Don’t let them create a feeling of fear inside of you that doesn’t need to exist. The best way to do this is by reaching out, facing that supposed fear. If you would only take a moment to recognize the humanity which resides in all of us, you would realize that people who are different from us are nothing to be feared. If you do not allow the terrorists to cultivate a shadow of doubt within you, then you will understand that we are all one common, human race; and that in hating our sisters and brothers, we are, in fact, hating ourselves.

The terrorists have planted the seed. They are encouraging it to grow. They’re counting on it for their harvest in order to survive. We can choose to believe their fear tactics and water the seed, or we can remain resilient in our faith in humanity, and resolve to be as hard to crack as the Kansas earth in the planting season.

There’s another scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which comes to mind. Upon realizing the seriousness of the impending war, Harry remarks, “Even though we've got a fight ahead of us, we've got one thing that Voldemort doesn't have… Something worth fighting for.” Harry knows that unity among all is the answer, and he knows that Voldemort literally cannot feel love. That is why he strives so hard to achieve power through hatred and evil. But Harry understands that the solution for winning a war against terrorists like Voldemort is not fighting against a cause or a group of people. It's not fighting among ourselves which will win. The answer is fighting for all the things and people you love, with all of the differences between you which make up a united, differentiated front. Fear of others never had a chance to blossom inside of Harry, because he was too busy nurturing love for all.

Turning our backs on those who need help and lumping entire groups of people together as scapegoats is not only morally irresponsible, but it is playing directly into the hands of the terrorists. Fear in the hearts of the masses is the best tool they have for succeeding, and they know it. They're bloodthirsty for it. Holding love in our hearts, in place of fear, is our best weapon against them.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 26 (Things You'd Say To An Ex)

Day 26: Things you'd say to an ex

First things first, I just want to say that I have never really much fancied the term "ex", because it is so obviously lacking a noun. Ex-what? To me, it sounds harsh and finite and just rough around the edges. Maybe it's because I love words so much that I choose mine so carefully, but to me, "ex" conveys something less-than. It purposely reduces a person with whom you shared something of yourself, to nothing more than a monosyllabic letter of the alphabet; a slashing sound uttered only with disdain in an attempt to distance yourself from pain.

I suppose this is a completely subjective feeling, and it probably stems from the fact that I have never had a relationship end so horribly that I have ever felt such disdain. Or perhaps I simply know that attempting to distance myself from the pain with my linguistics will not actually lead me to any closure or healing in the end. At any rate, I don't like the phrase "ex" because to me, it seems like an attempt to erase the person from the word. "Ex" is only an adjective, after all. By leaving it at that, you're eradicating everything else they ever were to you. Ex-boyfriend, ex-best friend, ex-lover, ex-confidant, ex-support system... And I suppose that thinking about all those nouns is what really does a lot of people in. That's why they stick with simply calling them an "ex". It doesn't do justice to all that the person used to be to them, and that's the point.

Anyway, now that I have said my piece about that, I will get to the point: things I would say to a former boyfriend. The list is quite short, and I am going to include both those people who wore the actual title of "boyfriend" as well as those who didn't quite get there, but who more or less filled the role. While there are certainly some specific things I would say to the boys with whom I've had relationships, there are also some things which are universal to all of them, and that I'd probably say to any future former boyfriends of  mine, too, just as the nature of who I am. So I'm going to stick to those.

1. Thank you. Thank you for the experience you allowed me to have by knowing you, and thank you for helping develop my own personal growth in doing so. I am grateful to you for embarking on this journey together with me, no matter how it turned out. We have given one another precious moments of our lives which we will never get back, and invested hours into a relationship that ultimately failed. But there are tremendous lessons to be learned from failure; more so than there will ever be from success. You trusted me with your heart and we shared things together which nobody else will ever know or understand. You invested in me just as I invested in you, and even though it ended differently than we would've once hoped, we both walked away from it better for the trouble. So thank you for this opportunity and privilege of learning and growing, both together and independently.

2. I'm sorry. I am the farthest thing from perfect, as I am sure you realized this after the honeymoon phase was over. I cry, I storm off angry, I am a master of the silent treatment. I have a temper which rivals that of a grizzly bear. I am sure we fought over some really stupid stuff. I am positive I started at least half of those fights. And I probably made you feel guilty about it afterward, too. I bet when you were busy daydreaming about me during those first few weeks, you had no idea what a nightmare I could be. I'm sorry for the times when I jumped to conclusions or picked a fight over something which really doesn't matter anymore. Now that our time is over, looking back at those fights, I wish I would've been more aware that I was wasting precious time of which we were only allotted so much.

3. I forgive you. This one is most certainly the hardest, and it undoubtedly took me the longest time to get around to doing. As terrible as I can be, you can be too. We are both human and we have both done things to one another which have left permanent scars. A few of those things were intentional, but most of them were not. Most of them were simple casualties of love; or at least, an attempt at loving one another as imperfect people held up against our own stupid standard of perfection. Sometimes you broke my heart in a million little ways, over the course of time. Other times, you broke it a one big hurrah where I questioned everything our relationship ever meant to me. Yet, the beautiful thing, and the most important thing, about love and heartbreak, is forgiveness. I could name all the ways you destroyed me. Or I could focus instead on the time, determination, and energy I put into forgiving you for all of it. You broke my heart. But in doing so, you broke it free of the cage which encased it and allowed it to spread its wings and fly toward its freedom. Once I was able to forgive you for breaking it, I was able to realize all I could do after being broken.

So far in my life, I have been very lucky to have the kind of relationships which have ended in mutual respect, amicability, and a basic understanding that the rights of each of us as individuals come before any obligation to another. In my mere 21 years of life and love, I have begun to understand the adage "if you love something, let it go". To truly want someone who you love so deeply to be happy, means understanding the sacrifice you will be making if their happiness does not include you. That is a lesson which can only be learned through painstaking experience. It is inexplicable to someone who has never felt it.

I'd say many more things to the boys who have been known a temporary residence inside of my heart, but to do so would be disrespectful of the peace which I have attained with each of them. Love hurts us more often than it does not, but part of the journey to our own happiness is following our heart, even when it drags us through some of the worst pain we've ever known. Through this deeply personal pain, we gain a kind of clarity which we didn't have before; which teaches us lessons in all sorts of things, but especially in gratitude, forgiveness, and acceptance. I believe it would be foolish of us to succumb to the desire to avoid our pain, and allow ourselves to forget the very people who offered us the opportunities to learn so much about ourselves in the first place. After all, an important part of knowing where you're going, is understanding where it is you're coming from.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 11 (Your Current Relationship)

Day 11: Your current relationship; if single, discuss that too

I am single. God, I am so single; and I am basking in all of its do-what-I-want-and-talk-to-whom-I-please glory. I can go out with many different people, drinking and dancing until after midnight, and I can come home, take off my makeup, and sleep diagonally in my giant bed until 2:00 the following afternoon. I can text and talk to whomever I please (or whomever I don't) and spend my money on nothing but new clothes for myself. I don't have to plan my weekends around anyone else and if someone flirts with me, I do not feel the least bit bad.

I am single, and I can make solo plans for myself months in advance (just like I did for Boston). When I eat out at a restaurant, I only ever have to worry about paying for myself. I don't shave my legs unless I really want to, and  I can wear the same ratty old clothes to bed for a week (not that this differs much from how I ever was in a relationship).

I am single, and if someone approaches me in a romantic way and I don't reciprocate at all, I don't feel bad for kindly telling them so. I don't need to use the patriarchy-appeasing excuse of "I have a boyfriend" to ward off the weirdos, because I can confidently say to them, "hey, I'm just doing my own thing right now, thanks." And strangely enough, that simple fact brings me much joy.

I am single, and I have learned so much more about myself during my singledom than I ever have while I have been one-half of a relationship. I have learned a lot about other people, too. All in all, being single has been a greater learning experience for me at this stage of my life, than anything else I've ever experienced. The way people (mis)treat a single woman, the confidence it takes to teach yourself to walk into a room and sit at a table by yourself, and the patience it requires to see others around you engrossed in their relationships, all come with time and experience in growing into being single. The single most defining, pivotal moment in singledom comes when you realize the significant difference between being lonely and being alone. You don't have to be single to be lonely. And you don't have to be lonely to be alone. I have seen some of the most lonely people, invested in marriage for decades, without even the smallest amount of love. I've seen people living their lives quite happily alone, with more friends and close confidants than the most social of relationship-prone butterflies.

I am single, and I am grateful. Grateful, for this time of great learning about myself, as well as others. Grateful, for this time of great learning about love; both the kind involving others, and the deeper kind involving only myself.

I am single, and there is not a doubt in my mind that my life is meant to be this way at this time for many reasons. I don't have regrets, and I don't pity myself or lament my being single. I have no "better half," because I am already one whole person. A fact many non-single people quickly forget.

I am single, and for the first time in my life, I have a crystal clear vision of what it really means to be happy, without the influence of anyone else.

How I Learned To Remember What I Already Knew About The Opinions Of Others

I learned in my Consumer Behavior class last semester that the average consumer is hit with over 3,000 advertisements every single day, from television, radio, Internet, print, and even billboards. And only about 8% of each one of those ads registers on the conscious level of our brains. The other 92% access the subconscious recesses of our minds and stick with us much longer, without us even realizing it.

Sure, these messages influence our purchasing behaviors, but more than that, they reflect whatever values the advertisers imply are important to our society. Marketing starts to mold who we are as consumers, and it also begins to affect how we perceive the world, as well as ourselves. We can say we don't pay attention to commercials, and we can mute them during breaks from our favorite television shows; but they get to us, whether we like it or not.

So think about the power these ads have over the populous. Marketing is the fastest and most effective way to communicate a message to the masses. Many of these messages are good; they're positive, uplifting jingles for BBQ restaurants and serious PSAs for suicide prevention hotlines. However, can you imagine the potential damage a single advertisement with negative implications can have? Even if the negative message is only implied, can you fathom how bad a person could feel if they identified with any of the qualities perceived as negative by the ad? An ad, which is rerun several times, since repetition is key in marketing? What about if negative messages were implied from more than just one ad? Two, or twenty, or five hundred, or a thousand ads? What if the negativity surrounding certain qualities became so pervasive in our advertising, because the advertising is simply reflecting how pervasive the negativity surrounding those qualities is throughout our culture?

I'm talking about the omnipresent, pervasive, and normalized message from society, and in turn, advertisers, that women should be thin. Or at the very least, not to be fat.

Women, especially young women, are targeted by advertisers for products like shampoo, makeup, nail polish, and tampons. But they're also targeted for things like weight loss pills, plastic surgery, and even clothing products that are designed to make a person appear thinner. Young women are the market segment targeted by advertisers because advertisers mimic society. Society provides a cultural script that says young women need to be thin and beautiful, so advertisers come along and offer young women products to help them adhere to society's demands. How kind of them, hmm?

I am a twenty-one-year-old woman living in the Western hemisphere, in perhaps the most commercialized nation on the planet. I've never really had a problem with not caring about what anyone else thinks of me, least of all some advertising executives who don't even know me. But they do know me. They classify me together with other Caucasian heterosexual cisgender female people who make less than $20,000 annually and live in Wichita, Kansas and attend university and drive a car and wash their hair and drink alcohol and eat pizza and listen to Taylor Swift.

These marketers may not know me personally, but they've got a pretty good idea of how I'll behave based upon what society tells me to do. They can guess my hopes and fears and a multitude of other things, because it's feasible to believe that I'll behave in generally the same way as others in my demographic. The power of marketers derives from how closely I follow the cultural script I've been taught. If they can predict my behavior, they can sell me a product.





Now, I must say, that from a young age, I have always considered myself to be very accepting of my body, regardless of whatever flaws society may have perceived it as having. It is my body, after all. I've never really paid any attention to the demand that women be thin, because like most fads and trends, I couldn't be bothered to play along. I've never even really considered myself to be "fat" as society would like it, because, well, I just don't have time for it. It wasn't until this year that I really started thinking more about my body, and I became much more aware of its appearance. Though I certainly didn't intend for it to be, this became a problem.

It all began a little over ten months ago when I returned from studying abroad. I spent four weeks in France, going to school most days from 9 to 4, with little exercise beyond just walking through the streets and across campus. And I mean, I was in France. What do you do when you're in France? You eat bread and you drink wine! So basically, I spent four weeks doing nothing besides conjugating verbs and consuming complex carbohydrates. Don't get me wrong; I had the time of my life! In fact, I was so busy loving life that I didn't think very much about anything else.

I came home at the end of July. It's important to know a few things here in order to understand where my mind was at:
1. I was terribly heartbroken to leave France and my host family, and I went through some rough reverse culture shock.
2. I had missed my biological family while I was gone, but that didn't mean I necessarily wanted to be staying with my mother until school started.
3. Being home reminded me of the breakup I had just experienced prior to going to France, and I was no longer on the other side of the world from this reality.

So, I was generally irritable and unhappy to be back in Ark City. Furthermore, I realized upon stepping on my mother's bathroom scale, that all that wine and bread had caught up to me. So, one day, near the beginning of August, I decided I'd go for a run.

This wasn't unusual for me, as I'd gone for runs off and on many times at Mom's house. I knew my preferred running route well, and it didn't present itself as very dangerous. It was only about a mile and a half total, but I ran it so inconsistently that it always seemed to be a challenge.

I came home, stretched, did some abs, and that was it. Until two days later when I decided I'd do it again. And after that, I kept up with an every-other-day schedule pretty well, running in the evening as the sun set so as not to die from heat exhaustion. School started a few weeks later, and I kept my routine pretty consistently by running on campus in the evenings. I was proud of my diligence and commitment to something that was better for me than Netflix. Then I started to notice my weight loss.

I hadn't begun running back in July with any particular motivation or goal in mind. I guess I just felt like I'd gained a little weight in France, I wanted out of the house and away from my mother, and I felt like exercising regularly was a healthy outlet for dealing with my residual emotions from the breakup. I wasn't doing it because I had a man "to keep happy" or because I thought I was grossly overweight. Overall, running seemed like a healthy thing to do just for me. And that's why I liked it.

I've never felt like I'm very good at running, and in high school some of my rude track teammates made fun of me because I stomped when my feet hit the ground. I was not highly involved in sports, and to this day, I don't consider myself to be very athletic. So it was never about that, for me. It was always much more about having my own personal time to let my brain flat-line and forget my worries. Running was an escape. But when I started to see visible changes in my body, which were confirmed by the scale, I got excited. I was proud to see that something I'd chosen to do by myself, for myself had benefited me in this way. But "benefited"? Who says?

My pants started to get looser and looser. I had to go buy new jeans, this time in a size 5 instead of a 9. My legs were no longer sore from running like they were when I started, but the mornings after doing an ab workout, I'd feel the burn while trying to sit up in my bed. I noticed my shirts and dresses were now laying more flatly around my body, and this made me happy.

But as the over-analyzing feminist that I am, I began to wonder if perhaps my happiness as a result of a change in my physical appearance was actually a good thing. I've always been a firm believer that happiness comes from within, and if something as vain and external as physical appearance was making me happy, that couldn't be a good thing. Right?

I kept running, though my every-other-day schedule started to waver as the semester progressed and I became busier. The cold weather moved in and I started making visits to the Heskett Center to run on the treadmill, instead. I didn't really allow myself the time to mull over my thoughts about my weight loss, because I was busy with work and school, and finals were approaching. But all the while, doubt started to creep into my mind about whether or not I actually wanted to lose the weight in the first place.

Part of me wanted to keep eating salad before every meal and doing crunches after I ran. Part of me wanted to go to the nearest grocery store and buy all the candy with high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified junk food as I could afford, and eat it all in an hour as I binged on Netflix. The cantankerous feminist devil on my left shoulder was arguing with the self-loving feminist angel on my right. And I was caught in the middle.

Had I actually, perhaps subconsciously, wanted to lose the weight when I started? Did that mean admitting to myself and others that there were parts of my body with which I was dissatisfied? That, in fact, I wasn't this portrait of an all-accepting, self-loving überfeminist? And did all of this mean that I valued my twenty-pound-lighter body more than I did the body I had in August? Did any of this have any bearing on the way I thought, and had I become convinced by my experience with weight loss to value skinny people the most and fat-shame others? My brain extrapolated possible conclusions well past the point of rationality.

Of course my thinking hadn't changed. My values and convictions run deep. If intersectional feminism were a color, it would be the same pigment as the blood that pours out of my leg when I nick myself shaving. I know this, in the very fiber of my being. So why was my brain running amuck with extreme ideas about what a change in my weight meant? Were people really treating me differently because of a few less pounds, or was my feminist brain just imagining things, as it sometimes does? There was just so much to reconcile.

I began to think I liked it better when I was "fat and happy" because then at least I could dish out the "your opinion of my body doesn't matter" attitude and people accepted it. When a "fat girl" says that, she's just that: a fat girl, automatically silenced by her appearance, and invalidated by her nonconformity to societal demands. When a "skinny girl" says that, she's a stuck-up bitch who can't take a compliment. Before, I was familiar with defending my appearance to those who criticized it, and funnily enough, I never found myself being one of the critics. But accepting compliments based on my physical appearance -- some kind of "accomplishment" at making myself more attractive to society -- has never really sat well with me. It's a strange, convoluted, messy entanglement between my brain, my heart, feminism, and patriarchy; but, I know I'm pretty because I think I'm pretty, not because someone else does. I guess the problem came when I started to wonder if people were treating me nicely because of who I am and they genuinely wanted to treat me nicely, or if it was just because I had recently dropped the weight of a very small child.





It wasn't until very recently, like within the last two weeks, that I came to an epiphany about this mess of emotion and flawed logic that was brewing in my head. I wasn't unhappy because I had lost weight. That was never the change that caused any of these problems. I was unhappy because I started to worry about what other people thought about the weight I lost. Before I lost the weight, I had already accepted myself and my body the way it was. I already knew what I looked like and how to expect people to treat me based on it. (Not that it was ever nearly as bad as many millions of other people in the world, by any means.) But it was familiar. Then I lost the weight, and as a result, I expected people would treat me differently, because I know a woman's physical appearance is her most important quality in our world, for some godforsaken reason. Then I became so acutely aware of and militantly defensive to everyone's interactions with me, that I was thinking so much more about their opinions of me, than I was about my own opinions of me. And that's just it!

I realized that because I've been indoctrinated by society, via television ads and magazine covers for twenty-one years to believe "thin is in", that I was the one who actually internalized the message. Me, with the impenetrable wall of feminism specifically designed to detect and repel patriarchal garbage in every form! I had somehow unwittingly allowed the messages from advertisers to creep into my brain, and then I let the opinions of others overpower the importance of my own self-acceptance. I had handed my power right over to the patriarchy. Then I sat and wondered where it was I had gone so wrong and why I was in such a state of emotional unrest. It was because I started subconsciously comparing the state of myself to the unattainable standard which the advertisers set for me. Then I constantly wondered how closely I measured up, instead of simply not caring, as I'd always done before.

I never realized that I had actually changed two variables, not just one. Instead of blaming the real culprit, which was ever giving a damn about what others think, I blamed the most visible change I could think of, which was a change in my physical appearance. Because, once again, we've all been taught that a woman's physical appearance is what matters the most. It just goes to show that even the most passionate of know-it-all feminists can be taught to play right into the hands of a patriarchal society if they are exposed to its harmful values enough.

I never should've worried for a second what anyone else thought about my body. It is my body, after all. I never gave the opinions of others a second thought before I lost the weight. Because I already accepted myself as I was, and I was happy with that. Then my body changed, and as I had to begin accepting myself as I changed, I began to worry if perhaps the rate at which others were or were not accepting me had anything to do with it. Happiness does come from within. It comes from accepting yourself and loving yourself right now, today, right where you are. Consciously or not, no advertisement can ever sell you that.

So I look in the mirror today, and I see a woman whose body has indeed changed. I see a woman who knows she can run farther and longer than she ever even tried in high school. I see a woman who really, honestly did accept her body before she lost the weight, and who wouldn't hesitate to give a middle finger to anyone who disagreed. I also see a woman who worried herself entirely too much over the thoughts and opinions of others about her body for a time. I see a woman who got caught between two opposing sides in a false dichotomy of options for women in our world: unmotivated, lazy, fat girl, or healthy, vegetable-eating, athlete. I see a woman who is somedays both, lazy and healthy. I see a woman who painted herself into a corner with internalized patriarchy without even realizing it, because the message was ingrained so deeply into the subconscious of her brain. I see a woman, whom for a time, played right into the cultural script that society has laid out for women to always be concerned about the perception of their physical appearance. I see a woman who felt more pressure to remain skinny after she'd lost the weight, than she ever did to lose it in the first place. I see a woman who knows her happiness, along with her self-worth come from within herself, and nowhere else. And I see a woman who realized all of this, just now, as she wrote this, and who became very relieved as soon as she understood, once again, that the opinions of others -- advertisers, a patriarchal society, or anyone else -- have never actually mattered in the past, nor will they at any point in the future.