Identity

I think I'm having an identiy crisis.

Or, I was. Maybe I still am? It's hard to tell. I'm certainly more than usually interested in certain questions that are often thought to be beastly and/or immature to expend mental energy on.

But here's what I've learned in the last four days:

I don't have to live up to anyone's expectations or ideas of good.

I mean, that should be self-evident, right? And when I say I've learned this, I don't really mean I'm ready to implement it. I will certainly still be chasing external validation for years to come.

But... when I don't get that support, that pat on the head, that "Well done!" murmured into my hair while someone wraps arms around me and holds me close, maybe I'll remember this, right now, and remember also that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. If I'm satisfied, then it's enough. Maybe I'll remember. Probably it'll take "learning" this several more times before that happens.

Which brings me to the question that I'm now wrestling with.

Am I satisfied?

No.

Why not?

I don't know. I can't separate my dissatisfaction with the ways in which I am perceived and receieved and judged and held to account from any internal dissatisfaction that may (or may not) be festering. Part of me wants to lay whatever nagging sense of "not doing good enough" I have lurking in my breast right at the feet of other people. But, that would be too easy.

We are each of us responsible for ourselves. We're responsible, ultimately, for finding our own happiness, for living our own lives, for coming to our own fulfillment. To push that task onto someone else is the height of selfishness. So, laying any dissatisfaction with my life and the things I do on someone else's shoulders, anyone else's shoulder's, is not a thing I am comfortable doing. I don't want to be that person that is selfishly putting their burdens on another.

Some part of me feels that people who love you should willingly shoulder some of that burden for you, though. Some part of me feels that loving someone is the act of attempting to ease burdens, without being asked. Pay attention, recognize need, help. That's how love behaves. Isn't it? That's how love should behave. That's how we who love should behave. But by that measure, there are strangers out there that love me more than the people I say "I love you" too, and strangers that I love more than those, since there are strangers I am more capable (and sometimes more willing) to help than my loved ones.

Perhaps it's true that familiarity breeds contempt. We can't help but start to take for granted that which we feel entitled to by virtue of some concept of love. And once we start to take actions of love for granted, they no longer seem like acts of love; they become merely what we are due, and we demand ever-greater feats of validation, of proof, of love and sacrifice to continue believing that we are loved.

It's a neverending spiral, moving up or down as you see it, positive or negative, up to the blissful heights of heavenly perfection in which we have obliterated a self for another and they have done the same and we have essentially swapped care of ourselves, or down to the depths of hellish despair where nothing is ever good enough, where nothing we give nor nothing we ever receive manages to prove that we still love.

But if familiarity breeds contempt and there's no way around it, then there's no hope for any long-term relationship. We should all wander the earth as half-strangers, helping when we think we are needed, being helped by those that think we need it, and allowing the connection to fizzle out as soon as whatever it is has passed. We should never try to develop or deepen our relationships. We should be forever generous, loving strangers to each other.

How depressing.

I don't want to live in a world of strangers! Even generous, loving ones.

So how do we continually prove that we love, and continually accept that we are loved, without starting to trod that spiralling path that leads to utter disaffection or complete loss of self? How do we tread water and still get where we want to go?

I don't know.

I would like to know, though. I would like to know how to be happy for praise, hungry for it even, without trying to curry it. I would like to know how to not feel guilty when I can't help someone that something in me whispers I ought to know how to help. I would like to not be contemptuous of the familiar comforts that were once new and fresh and perfectly capable of lifting me up.

Perhaps I haven't resolved the identity crisis yet. Perhaps if there's a solid enough sense of self, of purpose, of skill and craft and art and love, of ideas, these aren't questions that need to be asked or pondered.

So. Am I satisfied? No. And it is my responsibility to change that. But it would be good to be loved, anyway. While I do that.

Creative Dilettante

I've been toying with  the idea of buying a camera for, oh, I don't know, something like three years now. A real camera, I mean. Not an iPhone or an adorable little point-and-shoot I find refurbished on Amazon for about a third the original price.

No, I've been toying with the idea of a camera. I like pictures, after all. I like images, I like playing with and manipulating them, making the scenes in my head appear in two dimensions. And since I am terrible with a pencil or a charcoal stick or pastels or even watercolors, my options for making those images appear are limited to words and cameras.

So, I've been playfully batting the idea of a camera around in my brain. I came pretty close last year. On Black Friday I was out at American, scoring a fantastic upright freezer for my parents, and they had some sort of super-bundle deal on a Canon T1 (or maybe it was a T2? I don't really remember) with two lenses and a memory card and a transport case and I very nearly pulled my credit card out and plunked it down. Good thing my credit limit at the time was $500.

A friend loaned me her 60D for about six months last year, and I was pretty well in love. I took that camera to every protest in Madison and Milwaukee last spring, and also to the Dominican Republic. I took the best pictures ever! (Ok, the best pictures I've ever taken, which is nothing in the grand scheme of the world. I know this.)

Here I am, again contemplating buying a camera of my very own, to have and to hold. I've been poking through the dark corners of the internet, found a few scams, solicited advice from trusted sources about what to get. And every time I think about that box with a shiny new 60D in it, I get chills up my spine. Or, that box with the T3 and a collection of lenses. That's also on offer, also percolating through my gray matter like the warm, rich scent of good coffee being brewed by 15 bars of steam pressure. I want these things. I want them like I want coffee at 6:30 in the morning. There's a line between want and need that I can't quite parse rationally when it comes to coffee at 6:30 in the morning, and I'm having similar trouble with my desire for a camera.

What am I going to do with $1300 worth of camera? Nothing great. I'm going to run around with it like a small child runs around with a cardboard box. I'm going to take pictures, and most of them will be ok and none of them will be very good, and I will put some of them on the internet and I will keep some of them on my computer for posterity and some of them I will discard entirely. None of them will ever likely be seen outside the small circle of people that like me, and will look at the things I do just because they like me personally.

I am, essentially, a dilettante in everything I do. I don't have the discipline to take anything seriously, I don't have the focus to perfect anything. I blog, but I don't write. I take pictures with an iPhone and run them through editing software to make them pleasing. I have a closet full of dresses and the shoes and hats earrings and bags to go with them, and today I sit here in ripped jeans and an oversized t-shirt. I bake good french bread, but have failed miserably at brioche more than once, and my pizza dough is still hit-and-miss. Also, I fucked up a roulade the other day like you wouldn't believe. Never has an uglier roast been served in my house. Sheesh. I was embarrassed, for real.

And I can justify being a writerly dilettante because it doesn't cost anything to put words on a blog, and I can justify being a cooking dilettante because even when I mess up, what I cook in my kitchen is healthier than what comes out of a box, and I can justify being a clothing dilettante becasuse I do wear my pretty dresses and my sky high heels, I just need a break from them now and again and that's ok. If I really was arm-candy at all times I'd probably hate myself a whole lot more.

But I'm having a hard time justfiying to myself spending an obscene amount of money on a camera just so I can be a better-equipped photographic dilettante. I'm not a photographer, and I never will be. Just like I'm not a writer or a chef or a model. And it's a lot of money.

But still, but still, but still. I want that camera, with the same sort of fuzzy-headed need that I want a cup of coffee when I wake up in the morning.

Bad Mommy

Today's inescapable and cringe-inducing conclusion:

I'm a bad parent.

No, really. If you'd seen the tantrums I've had to deal with in the last three days, you'd know. Good parents don't have to deal with those kinds of tantrums, because good parents know how to head them off at the pass, one way or another. Good parents don't end up in screaming matches with their kids because they can neither continue to speak calmly nor simply walk away.

Good parents don't have to fight to do nice things with their kids.

So there it is. The reason mommy drinks is that she has a toddler and there's really just no way to get through the day with a toddler that doesn't involve liquor. Not when you're a bad mommy, anyway.

Honestly, though: How do you deal with a kid that won't pick out bedtime stories for you to read, won't let you pick them out, and screams bloody murder when you try to sit and wait it out? Then screams louder when you leave the room, then even louder when you come back in and tell her that unless she picks out books to read, you can't read her any stories?

Every choice simply leads to more screaming.

Oo, oo! How about breakfast? Simple, right?

"Would you like Cheerios or Raisin Bran?"

"NO!"

"Ok, well, if you get hungry and want something, let me know what you want and I'll get you something then."

"I AM HUNGRY!"

Then do you want *Cheerios* or *Raisin Bran*?

"CHEERIOS. NO RAISIN BRAN."

"Which is it? You have to PICK one or I can't get it for you."

"NO! I DON'T WANT TO PICK ONE. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME."

"Should I put some of each in your bowl?"

"NO! I WANT BREAKFAST. YOU'RE NOT GIVING ME BREAKFAST."

"Well, I can't GIVE you breakfast if you don't tell me what you want, so please PICK SOMETHING so I can give it to you."

"NO! I WANT BREAKFAST NOW!"

(ad nauseum, ad infinitum)

This is my life. I can't fucking deal with it. I am going to lose my shit. Bad mommy.

Time Swings in A Wheel

Very few things stir my soul like the changing of the seasons. The first cloud-smothered autumn twilight, the first snowfall, the first May morning on which you can smell new grass warmed by the sun, that day in August when the sky is deep cerulean, cloudless, and high enough to seem like forever: all of them have their places in my heart. I am enamored of all of them, and of all of them equally.

There is nothing that so viscerally reminds me that nothing lasts forever as the changing of a season. There is nothing else in the world that so beautifully, tenderly, and forcefully reminds me that this, too, shall pass with time. The bone-cracking cold of February will pass away; so, too, will the humidity of late summer when the air is so thick you can feel it slipping over your skin like a warm silk sheet. This perfect day under the sun on the sand will end, and that perfect afternoon watching the snow fall with tea will end.

Everything changes. Everything passes away.

But time swings in a wheel, and everything returns. The cycle of the seasons reminds me of that, too. Happiness will come again. Love will grow anew. Death will occur, over and over.

Nothing lasts forever, but everything comes back again. I am reminded of this with every change of season, and I am grateful beyond words for the assurance. Every time.

The Gender Politics of Internet Trolling

I can be pretty obnoxiously political. As a general rule, I've kept most of it off this particular venue of expression of mine and focused here on my personal experiences of things, but really. I can be pretty obnoxiously bleeding-heart, far-left political.

Mostly this comes through on Twitter, where it was the protests against Governor Scott Walker and his union-busting that made me truly appreciate the medium. I was looking at a picture of the court order re-opening our state Capitol an hour and twenty minutes before it hit any local news site. (And yeah, I timed it.) I have made some really wonderful friends while tweeting about politics. And had some fascinating discussions.

So when I tell you that I've never been trolled, not seriously, you should understand that I do go through pretty long jags of political commentary. It's not that I've never been trolled because I stay away from that sort of thing. But, back in March when I starting getting the first inklings, I definitely did circle my wagons and clam up for a few days. And that's a strategy that's worked very well for me ever since. I am obnoxiously political for (at maximum) five days, and then I go back to tweeting about my love life or clothes or food or something safely domestic for a period of time that is at least three days longer than however long I spent tweeting exclusively about politics and current events.

This has had the interesting (and hilarious) effect of getting me on some really interesting public lists. Like "Almost Worth Following." I laughed pretty hard at that one. There was another one that was simply titled Liberal/Retard/Spam/Troll, which I thought was an interesting grouping of things to be. I didn't laugh so much at that as I did wince.

But my strategy of just never going for too long without backing off and becoming nonthreateningly girly again seemed to work. Aside from the most glancing, easy to identify, and non-personal trolling that exists, I've never had to deal with vitriol from strangers.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine (one of those wonderful Twitter pals I met through politics and #wiunion) dropped a comment along the lines of "Remember when I didn't have my real name here and people thought I was a guy? That was fun."

And it made me think: I'm pretty obviously female, even on a gender-neutral platform like Twitter. My handle is "TheGirlOne" for crying out loud, and for a long while I had a picture of my actual face up there as an avatar, and I'm clearly female. What if the reason I never get trolled is less to do with my careful curated strategy, and more to do with my gender? A woman in politics isn't "worth" trolling?

I don't think that's seriously the case; I think it might be some combination of gender roles and my strategy, but after having read this piece, and this one, and this one, I am pretty convinced that my being a woman hasn't been the driving force in not being trolled, either on Twitter or here. Because there are, apparently, a lot of men out there, and a lot of people out there in general, that are willing to aim a lot of pent-up rage at women on the Internet.

And I think that the quote at the end of the Time article is intensely relevant to anyone that's about to tell me that it's *just* the Internet:

"This is 2011. It’s not “just” the Internet. It’s our culture. At this moment in time, you can work, socialize, date, learn, communicate and debate online. There is no longer a divide. What is happening online is happening in real life. This type of abuse reflects real-life attitudes, real-life misogyny and it’s prolific. It’s about time we started discussing it."

The Internet is, for better or worse, a part of the way we live these days. It is our culture. It's no longer a subculture, or an underground culture, or any other negating adjective you want to throw on it. The Internet is pop culture. We inhabit these spaces as surely as we do our bedrooms, apartments, cubicles, cars. And what happens here is real.

I've been lucky. Startling, beautifully, terrifyingly lucky. I have blogged about gender relations, and gender bending, and patriarchal political pundits, and my own sexual history. I have been, at times, uncomfortably personal. I have been, always, lucky that all of you that read this or have stumbled upon it have been kind and supportive.

I worked for a political office in Milwaukee for a year when I was in college. When the then-governor of our state, Jim Doyle, vetoed concealed carry legislation, a lot of people were understandably upset. Several of them called into the Mayor's office to express their disapproval. (Don't ask me why people upset with the governor were calling the mayor of a city. I don't know. People are dumb.)

One of the interns answering phones during that period was a lovely young woman, a friend of mine, and she took a call in which the man on the other end of the phone told her, after she tried to explain to him that the Mayor had no control over what the governor did and it wasn't under our purview, that he "hoped she got raped on her way home tonight, so [she'd] understand that carrying a gun is a good thing."

I cried when it was directed at her, and I certainly looked over my shoulder the entire walk from City Hall to my busstop, the whole bus ride home, the whole walk from that busstop to my apartment.

I have been (for me, anyway) remarkably open here, and I have been lucky. And I have been consistently supported in that. I hope that never changes. But I would be lying if I didn't tell you that putting this piece out there is taking slightly more courage than I probably have.

We should all be more compassionate. Telling that to a mysogynistic, scared little man in his basement spewing hate at all the women he can find on the Internet is probably a bit like spitting in the storm's eye, but I'll do it anyway. We should all be more compassionate. We should all be working to understand the ways in which we're all vulnerable and scared, and we should all be working to change those conditions. Life doesn't have to be nasty, poor, solitary, brutish, and short. We can be better than that. So, let's be better than that.

And let's start by all being as civil to everyone as you've all been to me.

Slut-Shaming

Author's note: This whole thing is probably a classic case of too much information. Because it's a classic case of blogging-as-therapy (because I'm too poor to afford an actual therapist). So, SPOILER ALERT: I'm being pretty frank about my sexual history, and if you don't want to know for whatever reason, just stop reading, ok? This really is an exercise in purging for me, but I do need to make it public in order for that purging to be complete.

I'm sure my intimacy issues have many causes, but at least one of them is the general culture of fear and shame around sex. I say this as someone that didn't grow up in one of those crazy fundamentalist, abstinence, purity-pledges to your father kind of homes, either. No, I think we were pretty average on the topic of sexuality, which is to say that we just didn't talk about it. There wasn't any active effort to shame or instill fear, but there wasn't any discouragement of that, either. The broader culture was allowed to shape my opinion on sex without interference.

Yeah, explains a lot, doesn't it?

Because the culture we live in is downright bipolar about sex.

Do it, don't do it. Do it a LOT, do it with anyone you like, only do it with people you love, don't do it all. Masturbate! Don't masturbate. Experiment! Don't get yourself in situations you'll regret. Take responsibility for your own pleasure! It's all your responsibility! Even violence is your responsibility. It's your fault if you get raped, it's a man's fault for not being controlled enough. Everything about sex and the way we deal with it is dual: for every person proclaiming something from the rooftops, there is another person standing on the rooftop across the street yelling the exact opposite thing.

Seriously, guys? INFORMATION OVERLOAD. I can't handle it. Shut UP already.

The constant that my mind and soul and heart have always siezed on is the word "slut." The battle for the meaning of the word is apparently being waged in my flesh, because I'm fed up with both sides.

I probably am a slut. But unlike all those women out there working to reclaim the label, I cringe. I know it's meant to be hurtful. I know it's meant to be a cut on my moral character, and I know it's meant to characterize me as less than worthy. There's no reclaiming that. I don't know why anyone would bother trying. One side of our culture, despite its rampant sexualization, still cleaves to narrow strictures of acceptable behavior, and a girl or even a woman that has a lot of sex with a lot of people is a slut, and that is BAD. There is no way around the fact that word is meant to shame and demean and alter behavior back towards socially acceptable norms.

So let's just lay this out. Cold hard facts, cold comfort numbers. I've had intercourse with something like 30 men in my life. No, I don't remember the exact number. No, I don't remember all their names. No, I wasn't always as careful as I should have been, although I escaped STDs, and I do know that.

I've had sexual contact short of intercourse with an additional 15 or so men.

I have had four mutually committed, serious relationships in my life. So the greatest part of my sexual experience has had happened outside the bounds of a close or loving relationship.

I have had incredibly lopsided relationships, in which one person cares far more than the other, three times. I've been on both sides of that inequality.

So the majority of my sexual experience has been outside of any sort of relationship at all.

I have been pregnant twice, and I have one child.

I'm a slut.
Honestly, my experience has taught me that sleeping around and lots of random one-night stands are not very satisfying. I don't recommend it as a course of action or a lifestyle. But I don't know if I would have ever gotten to the point I'm at right now, of not merely desiring real intimacy, but of understanding what real intimacy actually is because I've experience the contrast. Some people can't learn from the mistakes of others; they have to make the mistakes themselves. I am very much one of those people. So, despite 10+ years of heartache and yearning, I'm glad to have had the experiences I've had.

On the other hand, the sex-positive messaging can become overbearing and oppressive. The attempt to reclaim "slut" has led to a bizarro world of opposite sexual pressures: to do as much as possible, and be proud of it, to experiment and try everything, and to enjoy it all. And I haven't done that.

For example, I don't really get masturbation. My fuzzy-headed spiritualist view of the world and relationships idealizes sex as an energy exchange between people, and the fulfillment (the orgasm) comes from that exchange. This is why all those one-night stands were so bad. I can't get off without another person, and another person that's open. So I don't masturbate. But I spent a lot of time, at one point in my life, being pretty ashamed and wondering what was wrong with me because the "sex-positive" message of self-love was so relentless.

I wasn't slutty enough for that side of the culture, because I didn't have a lot of orgasms to go along with all that sex I was having. In fact, I pretty much never really enjoyed myself at all. And it was my fault, completely, that I was failing to understand the physical needs of my body so much that I couldn't or wouldn't comunicate them. Because in the sex-positive world, orgasm is a purely physical event that should be able to be brought about by purely physical means. That's why masturbation is so important, because it shows you what you respond to physically. And that message, as powerful as it may indeed be to a lot of people, was intensely damaging to my own ideas about pleasure and intimacy and what I needed. I doubted myself, terribly doubted myself, for years. And I still do.

I'm ashamed of having been a slut. I'm ashamed for having not been slutty enough to bring myself to orgasm. Right now, I'm ashamed that I've written all this and I'm going to share it with the world, because it's so confused.

But I'm going to hit that publish button anyway, because the only way to stop being ashamed is to just deal with the reality. So here we go. REALITY.