Feelings Don't Expire

It was one of those late nights where I couldn’t go to sleep last night, so I decided that I would go onto Tumblr and see what all there was on my dashboard. In case you aren’t familiar with Tumblr, it’s a blogging site where you can reblog photos, text posts, audio posts, etc. Basically, it’s the same thing as sharing a picture on Facebook, and the scrolling goes on forever because it’s one of those never-ending scroll websites. It can make it pretty difficult to find a stopping point. Anyway, I was reblogging posts and happened upon a text post with a picture, and it said something like, “I’m sitting at a restaurant and just witnessed a break-up between two 13-year-olds. This was the aftermath.” Following that text post was a picture of the boy with his head buried in his arms on the table.

Underneath was another text someone had added saying “Poor little fuck,” and it just struck a chord with me. You know how as young adults, we’re always putting younger kids down? “Oh, they aren’t really in love. They’re too young to know what love is,” or, “They’re too young to be dating.” Well… I’m not so sure we’re entirely right about that.

I read a response from John Green on his The Fault in Our Stars Q&A page to a question about love, and he said, “I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.” At first, I used to be one of those people who said teenagers don’t know what love is, and that they were too young to know. But I read his answer and really thought about it for a while because I didn’t know what to think of it, as open-minded as I am. And then I saw that picture on Tumblr and felt this pang of sorrow for such a young boy, and I realized that it was because I could completely relate to him. When I was thirteen, I had one of my classmates constantly asking me out over AIM. And even though I was very young and didn’t have my feelings figured out yet, I still felt horrible every time I told him no. I always thought it was a joke, because that’s what the guys did back when we were in grade school. God forbid you fall victim to the awful rules of ZAP, or worse, to a dare. I felt like half the time, I was usually the punch line of those ask-out jokes, and I had gotten so used to saying no that it became an automatic response. Although I had not become romantically involved with anyone, I still feel like I have some say in how miserable of a time it was.

When you’re that young, you don’t really understand why you feel the ways you do. With my AIM experience and being around him at school, I felt more scared than anything. Scared and confused, because I didn’t understand. My emotions were mixed up. I don’t think I had ever really acknowledged how I personally felt until he caused me to face them. And it didn’t help that my depression had started up that year. It was a roller coaster for me, and the one time I did say yes to him, I chickened out and changed my response to no. To this day, I still feel bad for the younger him and the younger me, him because he might have really actually liked me and had to hear me say no a hundred times. For me, I had to worry about my self-esteem and my confidence in myself. When I was that young, being rejected gave me enough of an emotional meltdown. If I would have let him crush me for the sake of fulfilling yet another joke, I don’t know how I would have handled the humiliation of thinking someone actually cared for me when they didn't. 

So in a lot of ways, seeing the picture of that young boy with his head buried in his arms reminded me of how frustrating it was to try and make sense of this concept we call love. But at such a young age, confusion of emotion is probably the best confusion there is. You don’t have to worry about distance or social status or looks or money or any of that stuff. You’re at an age where your relationship is based solely upon feeling, and feeling alone. It’s wonderful to experience it, because you’re taking in so many different emotions at once. It gives you a rush, and you’re blushing and stuttering and feeling anxious and you just can’t understand why you’re such a mess over something that adults make look so simple. I know this young boy is going to figure it all out one day. Being rejected by a girl you really like has to be the worst, and I’m sorry to the boy who I was too scared to say yes to. I still don’t know if it was a joke or not, but it’s something that I don’t think I’ll ever get an answer to, and I’ll just have to trust that the feelings were real, no matter how doubtful things may have been.

I hope that one day, I have the courage to say yes to someone that I really care about and who I would like to try and be with. There are still a lot of commitment issues that I need to sort out and rationalize with, but the emotions were and are still existent, and they are real. Like John Green said, “I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.” Feelings don’t really go away, and they don’t change or become fictional. We still have the same emotions that we did when we were young teenagers who thought we could take on the world. Our priorities just changed. We grew up and became wiser, more grounded by humility, braver through fear, and more confident in ourselves and in our paths through our own mistakes and/or limitations. But love, fear, confusion, the thirst to live, those things all still exist. I feel them every day. I face them every day, and that boy who sat at that table faced them that day. It won’t change for him. It won’t change for any of us. These feelings are real, and I think that young teenagers have a better understanding of what love is than any of us adults ever will.

So, to the young boy who looks absolutely devastated, keep fighting through it, but never doubt your understanding of what love feels like, because I think you’re feeling it. You just don’t understand it yet. 

The Bieber Trend

I really don’t think there is anything I can say at this point that hasn’t already been said, but I still feel the compulsion to say something. And for those who take self-harm as a touchy subject and find it difficult to discuss or read about, I advise you to close the browser page right now, because I don’t want to make things worse for anyone who is recovering or who is still struggling. Alright, here goes.

For those who don’t know, there was a troll started on 4Chan called “cut for Bieber” in which young girls (and possibly boys, to avoid any exclusion) started cutting themselves to protest Bieber smoking marijuana (which no one has proved to be 100% true yet). It became a trending topic on Twitter entitled #cut4bieber in which people posted the pictures of their cutting jobs for the world to see. I visited the trend page and a lot of it is now composed of fellow Twitter users begging other Twitter users to not follow this trend. There are also a lot of pictures going around that are making fun of the trend, such as people cutting their hair, marijuana leaves, and cake since Justin probably has “the munchies.” I was relieved to see more people “against” the trend on the trend page than people “for” the trend, but the fact of the matter is that there are still Bieber fans out there doing this to themselves.

I don’t think I have to convince anyone of how stupid or serious this matter is, because most of the people I know are decent about these kinds of things, and we’re usually on the same page. But I do want to speak out for the few people who may not be taking this seriously and who may not completely understand it. As a sufferer of depression, it makes me absolutely sick to know that there are people cutting for some celebrity who is now an adult and who, just like anyone else in this country, can make his own decisions. There are people out there who cut because they cannot deal with the emotional pain, and I don’t expect everyone to understand what it is like to hurt that much.

There are those who would argue that there is nothing that hurts more than physical pain, but you’d be wrong if it were up to me to decide. With physical pain, yes, the outside hurts. But you could run into a pole or trip over your own foot and hurt yourself, and you could still laugh about it because you’re a klutz. You could be completely fine emotionally. But for people like me, it is possible to feel so emotionally miserable and depressed that it actually causes physical pain. There are days where I become so lost in my own sorrow that I can feel my chest throbbing, and it isn’t a good feeling. That is when you are truly hurting; when you hurt both ways at the same time. And I don’t know how to explain why cutting is so comforting (although I have not done it before, but have been tempted on several occasions), but I have been told that it releases endorphins. It is also used as a distraction method so that the emotional pain isn’t so prominent.

The thing that really upsets me about the trend is that it was started as a joke. Then someone took it seriously, and all of a sudden, everyone began doing it (and when I say everyone, I mean the people stupid enough to do it). Cutting is not a joke. It is an actual problem for people who suffer from mental illnesses, and the pictures, not to mention the topic itself, has made it difficult to deal with for the people who are recovering from self-harm and who are still suffering from it. It would be like putting an alcoholic in a room full of alcohol. It is just as tempting and triggering for cutters to see these pictures. Not only that, but cutting could actually kill you. There is the risk of losing too much blood and getting hospitalized, and there is also the risk of cutting the right vein in the right direction. The fact that anyone sees physical harm as a joke ought to be shot, because it isn’t something to take lightly, especially for a stupid reason like protesting against a marijuana-smoking celebrity. It would be far more effective to protest by not purchasing music and/or not supporting that artist if you feel that strongly about what he or she has done. But don’t fucking harm yourself for someone else’s choice. You didn’t see anyone cutting themselves when Britney Spears shaved her head or when Miley Cyrus was caught smoking from a bong. So why are you doing this for Justin? What is it about Justin that made this trend so fucking important? He’s a person just like everyone else and has the right to do to his own body what you have the right to do to yours. But the choices he makes for himself should not determine the choices you make for yourself.

Also, parents, please please PLEASE take responsibility for your own children. You control the things that they are exposed to and the people that they find to be role models, but you should not let their role models become their parents, and you should not be outraged by Justin making a (the way I see it, by personal opinion) bad choice. Everyone makes choices, good and bad. We’re all people, no matter how famous some of us may be or may become. But it does not become a celebrity’s responsibility to give up his or her free will and humanity to make a great impression on the people that happen to like their music. It is your job as parents to bring your children up well and to steer them in the right directions, and to actually sit down and talk to them about this kind of stuff. Not only that, but how are you not aware that they could be doing this to themselves? If you’re going to be that disconnected from your child’s emotional and physical struggles, I find that to be very disappointing. No one as young as ten years old should be doing that (although, really, no one should be doing it anyway). But that young? For some stupid celebrity? And damn, watch what they do on the internet! If it weren’t for the internet, none of this would have even happened!

I am not a parent yet, but I for sure wouldn’t want my child to be doing this to him or herself, and I’d like to think that I would have a little more control over what they’re exposed to. So please, sit down and talk to your kids. This kind of stuff is important, and it’s no joking matter.

I find it very difficult to emotionally express my frustration and disappointment. I am disgusted at the trend and at the person who started the troll, and I am even more disgusted that people disrespectfully followed it for no fucking reason. Yes, I said disrespectfully, because it is disrespectful to me, to my friends who struggle with this problem, and to all the other people who have fallen victim to it and cannot find the will to quit.

The trend has disappeared from the top ten trend list on Twitter, which I am relieved about. So thank you, Twitter, for removing it.

I’m done here. I hope my words carried weight. 

Some Old Formspring Questions Re-Answered

I was looking on my old Formspring account and found a number of questions that I really wanted to go back and re-answer. Some of them are the same answers, but typed out in a more thoughtful manner, and a lot of them are questions that I have changed the answer to over the past four years. Hope you enjoy them! If you would like to comment on anything I said on here or if you have more questions you’d like answers to, you can leave them in the comment box at the end of this post.

If you had to pick a single moment in your life which affected you most profoundly, what would it be?

-I think that this question is going to have a different answer every few years I go back to it, which is why I’d like to answer it again. My last answer was the time I was bitten by a Pit Bull and spent two weeks in the hospital because it “changed me” as a person. It did, in fact, change me, but it changed me in a way that caused me to be fearful. Since then, I have really become the opposite. The single moment that affected me most profoundly would now have to be the moment I found out I was an empath. Because I figured out where my emotional problem was coming from, I was able to get some control over it, and now I am a pretty stable person. I have learned how to handle my abilities and how to make myself feel better, and because I have a renewed confidence in myself, I have become a much happier, successful person.

Do you have a DeviantArt page?

-Yes I do, but it just has the same stuff on there that I post on Facebook, so adding me on there would be redundant. If you don’t have me on Facebook but would like to see my pictures, my DeviantArt page is stephropabst.deviantart.com

16, never been kissed nor have had a boyfriend? There must be something wrong. There are some gross fat chicks that are total bitches, and they get boyfriends? Have guys lost their way..?

-The only thing that has changed about the above is that I’m 20 now. Haha. But I will tell you this. Yes, there are “bitches” who treat their boyfriends like crap. Yes, some of them might be overweight. But there are a lot of girls out there who think they’re hot, skinny, sexy shit, and because of that, they let looks control the way they feel about a person, not to mention the size of their egos. But just because a guy decides to date an overweight person does not mean that I deserve a guy any more than that girl or any other girl on this planet. I’ve been patient with myself and have decided to figure out who I am instead of depending on someone else to shower me with affection. If I can’t love myself, then I don’t see how anyone else can. Not only that, but if the attraction isn’t there, then I am not going to date someone who I don’t have feelings for. That would make me a bitch, and I don’t believe in false hope or in using people. Also, guys are just as human as girls are. They’re going to make dating mistakes just like us. When I find someone who I really like and who really likes me back, things will be different. I’m willing to wait for that.

What do you like about winter?

-When I answered this question before, I mentioned the hustle and bustle, fresh cookies, snow days, and I don’t remember what else. But I never mentioned actually being outside at night when it’s frigid. Most people would probably find this odd, but I love going outside on cold nights because the sky is usually clear, so there’ a great view of the stars. It’s also extremely quiet, so when I feel like there’s too much noise, it’s a place I can escape to for a little bit. Then there’s the feeling of nothing: being numb. I love when I can’t feel my skin, because when I close my eyes, I don’t feel like a person who is sitting out in the cold and freezing. I feel like I’m in another world where I can escape being and feeling human. I am a free soul wandering about in a place of nothingness and feeling at peace. No pain. No runny nose. No emotional feelings or bothersome thoughts. It’s just the state of being.

Are you a social person?

-I never used to be social. Sure, every now and then I’d find people to talk to. But for the most part, I was really closed off and actually pretty fearful about talking to strangers. But that part of me has really changed since then. I’ve come to love and understand people, and I take every opportune moment I have to make a new friend (if it can happen without me being creepy). I think I was scared about it before because I was bullied emotionally as a kid, and I used to be afraid that more people would do that if they really got to know me (I had always thought myself to be weird). But now I realized that no matter who you are, you’re still a person. You’re as much of a person as I am, and if I’m going to be fearful of someone who I don’t know and who may not even be a threat, then I might be missing out on someone pretty spectacular.

Do you prefer shoes, socks, or bare feet?

-Last time I answered this, I said you rarely see me in bare feet. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Haha. I love being barefoot and wearing socks. I usually kick off my shoes the second I walk through the door because they annoy me. My feet get cold easily, so sometimes I argue with myself about slipping my shoes off when I know it’s going to cause my toes an instant freeze, but if I don’t have to wear shoes, I don’t.

What non-banking related card in your wallet is the most valuable to you?

-My license!! I kind of need it to drive. Haha.

Do you ever wish that for one moment you were someone different than who you grew up to be?

-Definitely not. Sure, maybe being in another child’s shoes might have been easier, but I find it more fulfilling to know that I survived some pretty rough moments in my past. I made it through bullying, my dog bite, private school, losing friends, losing my grandma, and many more struggles. And it makes me realize how many sweet moments I’ve had and how much I’ve accomplished by just being myself. I like who I am, and I wouldn’t want to ever change that.

what happens if the glass is half empty to you but full to me?

-I don’t think the glass half full/ half empty concept is constant. As humans, our spectrum of emotions is pretty colorful. We’re going to have days where the glass is half full just as equally as the days where we’ll see it half empty because our attitude towards life fluctuates all the time. However, if there is ever a time where I see the glass half empty while you see it half full, I hope you’re there to help me through my rough patch.

Do you drive?

-Yes yes yes! It feels so good to say yes! Take that, 16 year old self!!

Do you ever miss people from your grade school?

-I do occasionally. I mean, I know that a lot of the time I kept to myself and didn’t really reach out to make friends with my classmates, and I know that I felt as though some of them were really mean to me and said things about me, but I’ve come to the understanding that it wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t mine either. We were kids who didn’t know any better, and as much as I would love to blame them for the bullying contribution, I can’t, because I had depression and had no idea that it was an illness at the time. So I still have moments where I do miss seeing my old classmates, because although I felt messed up at the time, I think that they did contribute to helping me believe in myself as a person and making me realize that we’re not so bad once we grow up a little.

why do you like thunderstorms so much?

-I wondered about this for a long time and had no direct answer. But after figuring out I was an empath, I started studying it more and came up with a conclusion. Thunderstorms recharge us. We have seven chakras, which are energy points in the body. And since empaths are more aware of this energy, they feel when they are being worn down or when they are losing that energy. Like batteries, thunderstorms recharge us because they carry energy of their own; energy that helps rejuvenate ours. That is also why we can usually feel the weather change before the rain actually reaches where we are. Plus, thunderstorms are gorgeous and they keep plants alive, which make oxygen that keeps us alive, so why not love thunderstorms? (:

what makes you go in life?

-Knowing that I’ve been through rough patches before, and knowing that I can overcome them because I am still here. My friends and family also keep me going. Oh, and books. Books are good.

would you rather spend your life never knowing how that one person truly felt about you or know your whole life that they didnt care?

-Last time I answered this, I said never knowing how someone truly felt. But I feel differently now because I actually went through both sides of this. And it is much easier to know how someone feels about you and to find out that they don’t care. Why? Because I don’t need people in my life who don’t care about me. It’s unhealthy to be in a relationship where you are just being tolerated or being used, because if there ever comes a day where you really need that person and you find out that they don’t want to be there for you, you’re going to fall on your ass and be an emotional wreck. But if you know that they don’t care, at least you can get that person out of your life and find someone better; someone who does care. Not to mention, it hurts a lot less when you know vs. not knowing.

what do you do when life doesnt go as planned?

-Well, it’s hard to move on when life throws mountains in the way of where you are trying to get to. And when life does that to me, sometimes I sit down and think, “Well, this is pointless.” But a lot of the time, what follows that feeling of defeat is the stubborn ass of a person that I am telling me that there has to be another way. And I think that there is always another way to get past an unexpected difficulty. Yes, it may require some sacrifice and harder work, but I never just sit there and give up. I might cry a little. But in the end, the words “don’t give up” stay with me, and I get up and try to find the alternative that will get me out of my funk.

out of all of your years of HSchool so far what is one thing you have learned?

-After two years of college and coming back to this question, I think the biggest thing I have learned is to accept change and change with it. I started off as a scared freshman, and I graduated being a much stronger, more beautiful person. That wouldn’t have happened to me had I not accepted change. Everything in life is constantly changing, whether it is relationships, grades, talents, ambitions, etc. You have to learn to let go and to embrace who you are and who you can be. The world doesn’t slow down and time doesn’t stop. Choosing to hold on instead of letting go and refusing to become instead of becoming is just going to hold you back. Life is hard, but change can be good if you just decide to make some smarter choices and to keep people around you who matter and who love you and care about you. I accepted change, and I couldn’t be more proud of the person who I have become.

hardest thing you have ever had to do?

-The hardest thing that I have ever had to do would be to let go. I’ve been through a lot of crap caused by a lot of people, and it was hard for me to see them as the people they had become vs. the people they used to be. Although I wanted to hold onto the idea that they were still good friends, I knew that they weren’t, and it was hurting me. It hurts me whenever I have to let go of someone and move on, because how could I just let go of someone who mattered to me so much and who played such an important role in my life? But, change is inevitably going to happen, and sometimes it causes us to grow apart from each other. It doesn’t mean they are bad people. It just means they are no longer who we need to be around. It’s hard for me to let go of friends, but I never forget what they teach me or what they do for me, and that is where the true root of our relationship lies: forever in my heart.

                                                                                                                                                                                       

Last book you read and hated?

-The last book I read all the way through and hated was The Glass Castle. It wasn’t a bad book, so I don’t hate it because of that. I just hate it because it is truly a frustrating book. I wanted to throw it at the wall each time I turned the page. I have never felt that angry reading before.

Ever been in love?

-They say that if you are crushing on someone for longer than four months, then you are technically in love. In this regard, yes, I have been in love twice, even though I have never gone out with said people. But the second guy I fell in love with was more worthy of my time and devotion than the first, because although the first guy was the one I fell really hard for, he didn’t make me feel happy and loved and appreciated like the second did. The second guy loved me as a friend despite my flaws or shyness. He cared about me as much as I cared about him, and he was deathly afraid of losing me as a friend and didn’t (and still doesn’t) want that. And that meant a lot more to me than what I felt for the first guy. I had two very different “being in love” experiences, and there is a truth in saying that if you fall in love twice, choose the second, because if it was love with the first, you wouldn’t have fallen for the second. I am currently not in love with anyone, and there are to be more crushes and possibly loves in the future, but for now, I am content and happy.

Have you ever loved someone so much it hurt?

-Yes. Yes yes yes. Being an empath probably doesn’t help much, but hey, not much I can do about that. Lol. People think that it’s bad to hurt over loving someone. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Yes, with the first guy I fell in love with, it was a bad thing to hurt from it because I was hurting myself emotionally over someone who didn’t care that I was even alive. And being in love should make you happy, not depressed and upset. But with the second, loving him hurt because I knew how important he was to me and how important our friendship was. And it was so easy to love him, but it hurt when I couldn’t help him with some of the struggles he had to face. And it hurts to see someone you love be in so much pain, and to know that no matter how much you care about him or her, sometimes there isn’t anything you can do other than be there. It hurt because I wanted him to be happy. It hurt because I cared. It hurt because he mattered to me. And I think that hurting in that aspect is completely different than hurting because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to. Loving the second made me selfless and hopeful and happy to wake up in the morning, and loving him meant being able to hug him and laugh with him and be myself without feeling shameful or feeling like I needed to change who I was.

What is your favorite nursery rhyme?

-I don’t really have a favorite currently, but whatever one I choose in the future, I’m sure it’ll be a pretty messed up one. I like the really creepy nursery rhymes when I can stumble across them. If you have any suggestions, that would be great!

Oblivion

I just finished reading John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and I can't help but sit back and feel like I've experienced a mindgasm. I mean, I know that I can be pretty deep and insightful at times (don't mind me, just stroking my ego a little bit), but after reading that book, John Green made me sound just about as deep as a kiddie pool. And you have to realize that, yes, it is the author who is deep. We often get so absorbed in the characters that we forget those characters only came to be because of the mind of a great writer. I feel like if I were to sit down with Green and have a cup of coffee at some hole in the wall cafe or a Starbucks, I would walk out of there 20x smarter than when I walked in. Yeah. It was that insightful.

The main characters in the book are diagnosed with cancer or have been diagnosed with cancer in the past, but what I loved about it was that it wasn't a book that gravitated around the disease. There were plenty of other small pieces to it that questioned and explored life, death, love, and how to deal with the whole spectrum of emotion, and throughout the entire thing, I could feel my mind exploding with in-depth thinking that kept peeling away layers and layers of thoughts about life that I had not even taken the time to really notice even existed. I can remember certain points in the book where I just stopped reading and pondered what Green was trying to get at or what he knew was there that needed to be revealed. Never before had I ever been introduced to such complex, insightful thoughts that seemed to dive into an ocean of their own, going deeper and deeper still until I found myself lost in thought.

What is death, anyway? And what is love? It has occurred to me that the more you love someone, the more apt you are to losing yourself once that person is gone. So when they're gone, where do you go? Where does that much of you just disappear to? I know that if I lost Shane, I wouldn't know how to deal with the pain. I could imagine myself lying on the couch in my basement in the dark, completely numb, ignoring the necessities of survival. And it makes me wonder just how much of ourselves we invest in other people. So many of us say we are living life for ourselves and that we can be happy by being ourselves. I've said before that I don't depend on other people because I can be happy all on my own. But that is also a lie. What are we without our relationships with other human beings? Sure, man himself could sit out in nature and enjoy all its beauties and riches, but if his happiness could survive on that, and that alone, then why did God create woman (so to speak in biblical terms)? If no one existed except me, myself, and I, sure, the pressures of meeting society's standards (or even a culture's standards, for that matter) wouldn't exist, which would make things a whole lot easier on my part. But how happy can we feel before our thoughts inevitably start to tangle and have no one there to help untangle them? We'd completely lose it. We simply cannot exist if we cannot find love and companionship in at least one other person.

John Green said in this book that pain demands to be felt, and I can't find any truer words than these. Pain demands to be felt. It carried weight when I read it, because so often, we try to mask pain. We cover it up and tuck it away so that we can save some face in front of people who care about us, because we love them, and we don't want them to feel pain. We create these facades so that we can go along in life not inflicting scars upon other people. But if we are not inflicting them on the people around us, we are only inflicting them on ourselves. Reading this book made me really question why we're so afraid to hurt. Love is hurt. We hurt because we love, and we love because we hurt. If we did not have anyone to love or to care for, we'd hurt from the pain of isolation and loneliness. But by loving others, we are risking the chance to hurt them for whatever reasons life decides to give us; things that we, ourselves, can't always control. There is no way to save face, in the long run, because if you hide it, you end up hurting. If you don't hide it, you end up hurting. But I think that love can overcome the pain just as much as it can cause it. If it hurts, it means it matters. And if it matters, then that means it's real. We question what love is all the time. We've been questioning it for God knows how long. We hear adults say we have no idea what it is, while we so deeply believe that we do.  And I think that to determine if it is real or not, you must know what it feels like for it to be taken away from you.

I understand that these thoughts of mine are most likely disorganized, because it is 4:50 a.m. and I have not chosen to go to bed yet. But I feel like these layers of thoughts are important ones, because not all of us take the time to recognize they are there, and we certainly don't take enough time to question them because we are afraid to feel them affect us in ways we do not wish to be affected. But the way I see it, if they make you feel something, whether it be happiness, sadness, anger, etc., then they must be thoughts that need to be addressed, correct? We are human beings that were created to feel. Again, speaking in biblical terms (although I find the bible to be a long history of telephone and hardly believe in half the shit it contains, no offense to any religious people), if our feelings didn't matter, then God never would have created woman. We need to feel in order to survive, which means that, yes, pain has to be felt and dealt with, just like any other emotion.

Hazel and Augustus (the main characters in The Fault in Our Stars) were well aware of life's cruelties, and knowing that they may end up hurting each other, they jumped into oblivion anyway, all for the chance that they may both end up happy so long as they were with each other. Life is about the risk, and about not knowing what will become of us, but being more than willing to sacrifice it all anyway for the sake of maybe coming across the kind of love and happiness that, even if experienced for just a second, is something real and extremely rare.

So many of us decide to walk on the sidewalk, but everyone knows there's more room for company in the street.

In My Eyes

Oh, how it saddens me to hear anyone say that they are unimportant; that they are ugly and worthless and boring. It saddens me to hear them say that they don't care about anything anymore, and that they've given up. It hurts to watch them point out the most beautiful mistakes on their bodies, and to call those things ugly and unimportant; to wish that they could change it so that they are flawless and perfect. Who has ever wanted perfect? What good is perfect for anyone? If one of us is perfect, the rest of us stand in the background and brood in our own jealousy, anger, and resentment of ourselves and our imperfections. We are inferior to perfect, and therefore, must achieve perfect to feel like we are no longer inferior to those around us who seem to have found a happy medium, who really aren't happy because they keep finding things to hate about themselves, and therefore, are not perfect.

I will tell each and every one of you right now that perfect isn't possible, and if it were possible, then life would be utterly boring and terribly dreadful. What is there to challenge if we are good at everything? If  we have nothing to work with or have fun with? And why in the hell are you feeling terrible about the shape of your nose or the color of your eyes, or even the thickness or thinness of your lips? Why are you beating yourself up over having a stomach when a stomach is supposed to be a part of the body? Why do we obsess over our hair and how it's too frizzy or poofy or flat or whatever your hair is? Why are we picking on ourselves and hating ourselves, and if we cannot love ourselves, how can we possibly love anyone else? If we're always living in someone else's shadow of perfection, than how can we, as humans, possibly be happy? To constantly be picking on ourselves is to constantly discourage others because we cannot be happy with the way we are. And if we aren't happy with the way we are, who is going to want to love us if they must live in fear of us seeing them as we see ourselves, picking at things that are different, odd, weird, but overall, wonderful about ourselves?

I grew up wondering what was wrong with me, and why I couldn't be happy. I constantly asked myself if I had the right looks and if I acted the right way. Then, one day, I woke up, and it occurred to me that I had been going about things all wrong. It did not matter if I had a thousand friends, or one. And it did not matter whether I had a boyfriend or not. It didn't matter if I had the power to capture a whole audience, or just one person's attention. The important thing was that I needed to accept who I was, and to do that, I had to explore who I was. Exploring my interior and my exterior made me realize that I loved my big feet. They were big, but they were healthy and beautiful. I had gigantic hands, but wonderful words came from the way I wrote with them. I gave birth to drawings and baked goods, and my hands were big enough to hold someone else's hands when they needed to find the comforting touch of someone they loved and cared about. I used to not like my eyes, and then one day I fell in love with the color variation and how I could manipulate it with eye makeup. My poofy, wavy hair was thick and full, and I could do so much with it concerning new hair styles. I hated my body and my stomach until I was able to find ways to show my curves without being embarrassed by them, and once I found the right fit, I loved my body just the way it was. And all of these aspects are things that I still love about myself very dearly. I realized my mistakes were things that someone else could easily love about me because they were a part of my individuality and who I was.

At one point, I believed that I led a boring life, and that there was nothing to contribute. I was a waste of space that no one really even cared about. But I decided that I was boring because I wasn't living, and without living, I couldn't develop my own thoughts and opinions and personal views about life. So I stopped being boring and took interest in things that I found curious or out of the ordinary. I began to educate myself by visiting internet sources and reading books and surrounding myself with people who loved to talk about life and love and academics. I began to watch the world in a different way, and I realized that I hadn't been thinking or seeing clearly. My happiness was solely dependent upon me. With that in mind, I sought out good friends and learned from bad ones. I learned lessons through disappointment and a long history of always losing and never winning. And if there was ever an instance where I did win at something, even if it was small, I took notes in my mind on what I did right and went from there. Eventually I got to a place of self-satisfaction, and now that I am happy with myself and my accomplishments, body image, thoughts, and effort to make this world, these people, and myself better, I strive to keep loving everything I used to hate. I strive to love myself internally and externally, and ultimately, it has only become an advantage that I never used to have. People can love me for who I am because I love myself, and if I can love who I am, mistakes and all, then I can love you for all that you are too.

So child, friend, acquaintance, stranger... please don't hate yourself for who you are. Please don't pick on the things that you think are wrong with you, because I find the things that you think are mistakes, and I fall in love with those things because they make up the uniqueness of who you are. Do not beat yourself up over the things you have done wrong, or the failures you have experienced. Don't tell yourself that you are ugly, unimportant, and worthless. Don't question how anyone could possibly love you because you're not happy with the way you see yourself. Look at your imperfections. Look at all of them. Make note of them, and focus on them, because even though you may not like these things, you have them for reasons no one else does, and that's kind of cool. Those imperfections are important. Don't hate them. Love your mistakes and cradle them in your arms, because great things are going to become of them. They have the power to change, to influence, and to make your life worth more than you could ever imagine it to be. Not only that, but once you love yourself, other people will love you too, because they'll know that if you can love your flaws, then you can love theirs, too. If we aren't focusing on perfection, and instead, on loving what is naturally given to us, then we can all achieve what we're striving to be: accepted.

Darling, when you beat yourself up over the things that make you beautiful, it makes me very sad inside, because you are so much more than you give yourself credit for, and I wish you could see just how amazing you are in my eyes.

The Coleture Concept

Awhile back, I heard from Tumblr* users via Tumblr posts that Cole Sprouse had joined the blogging site. Everyone was making such a big deal out of it, but I didn't really pay much attention to it, nor did I seek his page out just to follow him. I knew better than to think I would actually have a chance at communicating with him. After all, he's a famous guy, so I knew there would be plenty of people filling up his ask box and trying to get at him. So I went about not really caring about it.

I just heard a few days ago that Cole Sprouse deleted his account on Tumblr, and saw in several blog posts that he "betrayed" the Tumblr users. Of course, my curiosity got the best of me, and I began to Google the situation to see exactly what had happened. I found a link explaining a good deal of what had happened (click here for the webpage) and the webpage also linked me to his very last blog post.

The text shown above reads as:

So my goal for this website was accomplished.  I got all the information that I needed and now I’m deleting this account. Thanks to all who watched, read, and listened, I hope that in some small way my words carried weight. The next time you see or hear from me I will, most definitely, be a changed man. Before I go I’ll answer a question that people keep asking about my ring.  My ring is the skull of a chameleon. The chameleon can see everything that happens around it. Constantly aware of its environment, the small reptile changes color depending on the situation it enters.  Its very special form of adaptation is one I try to mimic, every time I enter a space I try to become aware of what I step into and change my color accordingly. The way I move, feel, argue, and all the discourse of my life, changes in order to succeed within that space. This adaptation to environmental and social pressure will allow me to succeed, much like Darwin had so brilliantly noted. You take a role and embrace it, but know that you are never whole, and those who fall in love with you or otherwise fall for your performance, not you, for you is never constant. My life is lokinous, but there are many levels to deceit, and cheating is only frowned upon when you’re caught.  So goodbye and remember that the next time you see or hear from me I will, most definitely, be a changed man.

Cole Sprouse also tweeted about his sociology project, which is provided in the link above. But the pictures of the tweets are too small to read, so I'll type them out for you here for the sake of your precious eye sight.

Well, the Tumblr results are in! I suppose I've given this enough time to fester.

1) The goal was to see how a group of people reacted to a suggestion of being observed. Some of you guessed this, good job :) 

2) I never actually stated you guys were part of an experiment or project (go back and read the final post).

3) You guys forgot about everything I said in my previous posts, jumped to conclusions, and changed your disposition to me. Interesting.

4) Even if I did conduct a report on this, which I'm not, you think I would do it without your permission? ILU too much (not really)

5) You guys reacted exactly how I thought you would, gathering nothing from what I said and acting like I betrayed you. (SUCCESS and shame)

6) I don't know you, you don't know me. People have the capability of being nice and mean. Don't blindly follow someone.

7) I had fun :) I hope you did too. We laughed, we even cried tears of a baby angel. So remember the good, not the bad. 

P.S. I will not be making another Tumblr. All people who say they're me are lying. Endless rage- Cole M.W. Sprouse

And then I realized I might actually be evil

After reading all of this, I came to the conclusion that Cole Sprouse is a pretty intelligent guy, and that he's studying something worthwhile. Now for some thoughts of my own.

I really don't see how these Tumblr users can feel betrayed by him. Like Cole said, they don't know him, and he doesn't know them. Did they really think that by him joining Tumblr, they could all gather around a virtual campfire and get to know each other intimately? It's the internet. You can follow anyone and they have the ability to be both kind and ruthless. Therefore, Cole was insanely kind while talking to these people who were sending countless messages to him through his ask box. His answers were answers that online bloggers were expecting to hear, and he portrayed kindness that was expected of him as a famous figure. And I think that people are upset over this whole thing because they're the ones who got involved with it and "fell for it." I was one of the Tumblr users who could care less if Cole Sprouse was on Tumblr or not, and even if I had followed him, I would have been smarter than to actually try to message him. I already knew that chances of communicating with him were slim to none, and he was just another celebrity finding ways to reach out to his fans.

Another thing I dislike about Tumblr is that most of the people who I follow on it complain about how ugly they are and how no one understands them and how they feel so alone. They talk about how no one loves them and that they'll be "forever alone," and they seem to love talking about how they hate everyone. People go on there for the sake of complaining about how horrible their lives are, and every single time I log on, I scroll past at least 50+ posts talking about the above. Then I sit there and shake my head, thinking, "That is no way to live life." So when Cole Sprouse joined the famous pessimistic blogging site, I thought, "These people are going to go crazy over this." It seemed so out of place for him to even be on a site like that. It is simply not a place where celebrities belong.

I find it funny how so many people thought Cole actually gave two shits about them and their lives and how deeply torn and scarred they were on the inside (as if), when no one on Tumblr gives a shit about anyone. It's the truth. People only "care" when someone posts a message saying, "I'm going to commit suicide now. Bye," or, "If I get this many reblogs, I won't kill myself." (a tactic often used to quickly gain more followers). Then people begin to reblog them saying things like, "Help this person! Save a life!" But they don't really care about that person committing suicide. They didn't care when that particular person was posting depressing posts (like every Tumblr user does), so why should that change? Looking at what Cole said, you never know who a person is or what their tendencies are. And people on Tumblr followed him and conversed with him thinking that he understood and that they knew him and that he would know them, Poor, depressed, deeply torn souls.

After reading about all of what happened, I found myself intrigued by Cole Sprouse as a person. The way he thought this through is fascinating to me, not to mention a rather fair experiment. I often thought about conducting a Tumblr experiment myself, where I would make a fake Tumblr account, accumulate a fair amount of followers through depressing posts, and then post a text post about how I was going to kill myself, just to see how many people fell for the "I care about you" card. But I found that to be a rather cruel experiment, considering how suicide is a touchy subject, so I gracefully backed away from the idea. But the whole chameleon concept is true, how we, as humans, adapt to our surroundings in order to survive and blend in with society. Think about it. We all have our private lives at home, but once out in society, we look and act a certain way to blend in, just as chameleons do. We don't want to stick out and show society how different we are because we're afraid we will be looked down upon, rejected, and end up completely alone. And Cole wanted to challenge this subject by means of joining an internet site. He also pointed out that "you is never constant," meaning that as people, we are always changing and adapting, so you can't fall in love with someone for who he or she is, because he or she is always changing as a person.

In conclusion, if you're a Tumblr user who feels betrayed by Cole Sprouse, don't hate him, because he isn't the one who persuaded you to become what you might feel as a "lab rat." Be angry at yourself a little bit for being none the wiser, and be upset with the way society has shaped you, along with natural animal instinct to blend in, adjust, and belong. Had you been a little wiser and a little more realistic about this whole situation (like me), you could have proved his expectations wrong and completely changed the results of this sociology project. But alas, what's done is done, and he's just a human being who as curious about the ways humans behave and respond to a given situation, such as a celebrity joining a networking site.

Maybe some of you will learn from this and be a little wiser next time you think you know someone based on their Tumblr page instead of who they really are and what they aren't telling you.

*Tumblr: A blogging website (usually used by teenagers) where you can reblog photos, conversations, links, text posts, videos, music media, and you can also post these things yourself. You follow certain blogs that you like, and the people who you follow will post things or reblog things that interest them, which will appear on your dashboard (the main blog screen) for you to see, like, and also reblog. The more people who follow you, the more "Tumblr famous" you become.

Some Nights

I just got home from play rehearsal, although, I could have been home around 10:15. But instead of deciding to head out that soon, I decided to hang around and chat with Britney. That "chat" started off just standing in the parking lot, and then it advanced to leaning against her car, and then eventually she said, "Why don't we sit down on the curb if we're going to talk. My feet are killing me." So we sat down and just chatted about girl stuff, like what we thought about guys, who we used to like, who we like now, how guys are confusing, etc. During this conversation, Anthony pulled into the parking lot and decided to sit down and talk to us while he was waiting for Paula. She arrived about five minutes after he did, and we all formed a small circle kind of shape and chatted for awhile. After Anthony and Paula left, Britney walked over and sat in her car while I sat on the ground, and we stalled going home for another fifteen minutes.

I think that tonight, I needed that kind of interaction. I've been feeling so alone lately, although I didn't really notice exactly how alone I was feeling up until now. But sitting here writing all this down is making me realize how good I feel and how relaxed I am. It shouldn't be all that different to tell someone else what you're thinking vs. just keeping it to yourself, because obviously if you think your thoughts are just ramble, then someone else will think the same. But sometimes it just feels good to be listened to. And maybe it feels good to be listened to because you have someone looking at it from a different perspective instead of always looking at it from your own, and that person could say something in response that makes you understand yourself a little better. But even if they don't, it's just the fact that you aren't alone with these thoughts, no matter how unimportant they seem, or whether you understand them or not. There were several times tonight where I ended my statements with, "I don't know," and Britney would say, "Yeah, me either." And it's just that feeling of not knowing together that made it feel so liberating. Because I wasn't alone. Why are we so deathly afraid of being alone?

Britney and I really had a nice bonding night, and I honestly wish people took the time to have more of those moments. We're such a busy society, rushing around, having to get things done, and we often forget to take time to get to know the people around us. We're busy seeing them as our coworkers, classmates, acquaintances, or whatever it is you see them as, and it's a shame when you don't take the opportunity to find out just how wonderful they are. Britney was telling me a story tonight about a conversation she had with her guy friend when she was younger, and somewhere in that story, she said, "You could be missing out on me." For some reason, that just struck a chord. How many wonderful people are we truly missing out on? People who we may see every single day but never take the time to really sit down and talk to? To learn about their hobbies, interests, family life, friends, and to even be included in that "friends" category? How many people am I missing out on because I am simply not taking time to stop and smell the roses? For all I know, the person who I'm hardly talking to could be a perfect fit into my life, and I'm just letting him or her slip right by, unnoticed.

I feel like every encounter is an opportunity, whether it be to make a new friend, to have a love interest, or to simply create a beautiful relationship without even meaning to; a run-in collision that just so happened to work out perfectly. I was watching New Girl earlier today, the episode where Jess goes to Cece's birthday party at the bar while Schmidt makes a big deal about Nick not ever taking the time to think about him, and at the very end of the episode, Jess asks Cece, "Do you think if we met today, we would still be friends?" to which Cece replies, "...I don't know. But we're friends now." And that's really all that matters, when it boils down to it. You just have to jump into things and not question them, and hope that it all turns out okay, and I think that's the beautiful thing about human nature. We're never really sure, but we still take the time to risk it all anyway, and sometimes you just need to quit questioning "I wonder if this person would be good for me" and just find out.

I still have a lot to learn about love and friendship, and I know that bonding doesn't happen overnight. But it can start by just taking a night to not be anywhere but where you are right at that moment, and to feel that moment come alive; to be in it completely instead of thinking about the moments ahead. Take the time to live in the now, because if you're always looking forward, you could be missing out on some pretty great people who are standing right there next to you.