Category: Uncategorized

A Playlist for You

For You

  1. Never be what you want by We Are the In Crowd
  2. Summer is Over by Jon McLaughlin feat. Sara Bareilles
  3. White Houses by Vanessa Carlton
  4. 9 Crimes by Damien Rice
  5. Begin Again by Taylor Swift
  6. The Silence by Mayday Parade
  7. Tell me I’m a Wreck by Every Avenue
  8. I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers
  9. 12 Through 15 by Mayday Parade
  10. The Scientist by Coldplay

 

Quick post for tonight!

Hi loves ❤

I have been woefully absent this month and I am sorry about that.  I’ve been working both my jobs totaling at about 50 hours a week, which isn’t too much for two jobs, but it’s really been wearing on me.  It’s been a lot of late nights back to back with early mornings and a lot of arguing with my girlfriend about how we don’t spend any time together anymore.

We’ve been going through something lately and we aren’t super sure how to fix it.  There’s a gentleness and a sweetness missing from our relationship that we’re trying to get back.

I’m sure I’ll be properly back with posts soon.  I have a few depression diaries started (but not finished of course as is the nature of the thing) and also a kink identities and BDSM post half done as well so I’ll try to be back to at least one a week for the next few weeks until life slows down a little bit.

In other news I think I’m applying for both a promotion at work and also grad school! Exciting things hopefully so we’ll see where all that goes.

Love you all, see you soon

Katie ❤

To the Ones I’ve Loved before (P 4.5)

This post begins me finally beginning to get a liiiiiiitle nsfw! Now I feel like I’ve broken the seal on it and can start writing more about what I really want to!

All I knew at the beginning was that he took a hard stance against his girlfriend hooking up with anybody else. She definitely wasn’t allowed, no way, no how. Don’t look at any other girls, don’t think about any other girls, don’t think about looking at any other girls.

Until, he began to bend his rules on that. Let’s call them Anna and Luke. Anna was (still is) one of my best friends and had been since we were 12 years old. I would spend every day over those middle school summers at her house, both in her basement watching movies and in her pool getting burnt. We would fling ourselves from the pool and lay on the deck to dry off as to not face the wrath of her mother, lest we drip any water in her pristine dining room.

Luke’s upbringing was a stark contrast. His mother is loving and kind and wants only what’s best for everybody who comes into that house. She greets everybody who enters with the same love and joy and acceptance and invites you to make yourself at home. When Anna started dating Luke she spent so much time there and I admit I grew jealous. I knew that Anna and I could never have the fun, no strings attached, relationship we had shared in high school but I was so starved for acceptance and intimacy I spent all my days hoping for it anyway.

Until Easter 2013, I had resigned myself to this. But that day something happened that it turns out would change everything. Anna had invited me over to Luke’s, where she would be spending the night, to drink and watch Netflix and just engage in general debauchery. The three of us piled onto Luke’s bed in a tangle and legs and clinked bottle after bottle of Smirnoff Ice together and wasted several hours drinking and getting progressively closer and closer.

Then Luke started talking. He started asking Anna if she thought I looked pretty, and if she ever thought about kissing me. I was so drunk at this point that I hardly even realized that he was talking about me, even though my head was in Anna’s lap and Luke’s hands were running up and down my legs. I had just finally escaped from a three month long manipulative and abusive pseudo-relationship and the gentle affection was intoxicating. I hardly remember how the rest happened. Anna’s face was so close to mine and Luke had one hand wrapped in my hair and the other hand in hers. Anna whispered at the last second, “Is this okay? You can say no if you want to.” I shook my head and Luke pushed her down to meet my lips. He made a low guttural “hmm” noise as he watched us.

The rest is a real and true blur. My shirt was pulled down, and then it was pulled off. Lips were on my neck, then they weren’t, then they were different lips. Anna and I were lying on the bed, and then Luke and I were lying on the bed. Even though we were all moving together every time Luke kissed me or focused on me I felt wrong. I felt like I was betraying Anna by lying there with her boyfriend. Then Anna undid the button on my jeans and I froze. I don’t know if what happened I consider a flashback, but suddenly I had the feeling that something was going to go horribly wrong. I had fresh cuts on my legs that hadn’t quite healed yet and the trauma of the last few months flooding my vision. So I started crying, and everything stopped.

Intoxicated consent issues aside, everything stopped when I said the word. Luke jumped up and put his clothes on to get me a glass of water and Anna rubbed my back until my breathing returned to normal. Luke came back and took his spot back on the bed where his hand joined Anna’s on my back. After a bit Anna got up to get dressed and Luke pulled me into his lap like a child. He rocked me and shushed me and kept repeating over and over again “This is a safe place for you Katie, you’re safe here.” He had no idea how badly I needed to hear that.

Indulge my vanity won’t you?

Do you ever think of where you were before Snapchat existed?  Imagine there was once a time, in the not so distant past, where I could NOT distort my face for shits and giggles.  There was once a time where a selfie taken would simply be #nofilter, and would not be improved up on by a puppy nose or kitty ears.  Here my loyal loves I share with you some of my favorite, or at least most recent Snapchat selfies.  Some will say that Snapchat is just the latest proof that millennials are self-absorbed and selfie obsessed.  And I will say with pride that that’s probably true.  So be it.

Taken while my girlfriend was trying on clothes in a dressing room, trying to make the best of the lighting

I truly just love pigs, this was made for me

This is my personal favorite flower crown and made me feel like the littlest most perfect princess in all the land, pink lips just a plus

❤ Katie

Why I won’t be just like him

My girlfriend and I have very open communication. We’ve grown a lot together in the past year and a half (or so) and with that what we’re able to talk about has grown too. A few months back we had a conversation about our exes. I like talking about past major relationships and why they didn’t work it because it gives me a kind of reassurance that because of those relationships and those mistakes, we’re working out and won’t make those same mistakes. I hadn’t thought too much about why my last major relationship ended, other than that I just didn’t love him anymore (and that I had cheated on him). But then in talking about this and that and why I didn’t love him anymore I finally realized this, “I didn’t want my kids growing up with a man like my father.”

That’s been sitting with me for years probably but that conversation was the first time I had ever said it out loud. It was true that I didn’t want my kids to grow up with a man who probably didn’t really want to have them in the first place, or a man who was withholding with his affection or easily angered. But I think also I didn’t want kids growing up with me?

I grew up describing myself as the same person as my father, but my mother’s twin. As I’ve grown up I’ve switched this up almost entirely but I still remember those ways that I remain like him, and all the ways I vow to change.

My dad is an angry angry guy. He’s angry and sad and doesn’t know how to take that anger and the sadness and make it constructive or useful. He went to therapy for a few months on and off but eventually stopped returning the appointment reminder calls and we never spoke of it again. Over the years we’ve shared a lot of surly, bile filled car rides by being angry at each other and not having the common language to turn that anger into understanding. Instead we would sit in the awkward silence, I would eventually put my headphones in as loud as they could go and stare out the window all the way home. He used to use this anger in his classroom. He used to say that his students were more afraid of him because his anger and disapproval was so quiet. I knew that disapproval well.

Apart from the silent, biting anger was the occasional explosions. These were few and far in between, but I’ve never forgotten. I’ve never forgotten the slammed doors because I left a dish in the sink, or the curses hurled at me because of a forgotten towel on the clothesline. I won’t forget the day I was afraid for my life in the truck, or the bruises across my baby brother’s chest because he wouldn’t get into his car seat fast enough.

I vowed in that moment to never let my anger get the best of me. I vowed to never let it scare my loved ones, like I was scared of him.

My dad doesn’t communicate. Not only that but he doesn’t ever really talk either, about anything. That isn’t us, it isn’t our style. He’s tried, maybe, to come close to connecting with me emotionally about anything but it’s so uncomfortable I shut it down. I hate to think I have real and true “daddy” issues, but I have found it incredibly difficult to connect emotionally with any cis-man since then. It was no wonder to me that my parents got divorced. I admired my mother for sticking it out 20 years with a man who definitely never talked to her about anything real, a man she probably didn’t even know. I applauded her for being the only one to try and communicate to fix things with them, every day for 20 years.

I am not one to be confused with a good communicator. I don’t like giving voice to my feelings or admitting when I’m upset or angry. I like to think of myself as independent, even solitary. I don’t really need anything or anybody, I am myself to give to whoever needs me, but I don’t need anyone to do the same for me. Because of this people-pleaser kind of attitude I’ve become also, a terrible communicator.

My dad and I are, for all intents and purposes, no longer speaking. For the foreseeable future I have cut communication and have no intention on rebuilding any bridges with him. I struggle with the simple fact that he was never truly abusive. He never hit me, although I was sure he would eventually. He never belittled me, or called me names, or did anything that we’re taught equal abuse. But there’s damage done. There’s damage to my ability to have relationships, or to trust people, or to see any cis-man as a safe place for me. If he should ever pop up on my phone again I’ll have to make the decision whether or not to answer. I won’t be like him in this relationship, I won’t be like him and lean on my crutches, I won’t be like him and give into my anger. I want my kids to be proud of their role models. I want them to want to be like me someday.

Me vs. My Mom

Some days I really feel sorry for my mom. Since I can remember she’s been dieting and restricting and telling herself she “can’t have this” or “can’t have that”. She has also been cultivating an incredibly successful relationship with family sized bags of peanut m&ms and diet coke.

There is no rhyme or reason to how my mother diets or how she feels about her body. She’ll make up rules for herself but never actually follow them and then feel guilty because she broke her made up rules.

September 2014 my mother got remarried. The photographer at this wedding happened to be two close friends, a husband and wife team, my mother had known for many years. I didn’t hear the story until much later but apparently my mom was absolutely astounded by how amazing this woman looked after losing over 50 pounds and just absolutely HAD to know her secret!

The secret was apparently one of those weight loss programs that combined a restrictive “cleanse” period combined with supplements that were supposed to deliver results like no other. They were supposed to be sustainable and permanent.  This plan also gave people who followed it a chance to be “distributors”. Meaning they have the option to make money by selling the products to other people, and signing up other distributors.

These programs are fairly common and I absolutely hate them, genuinely. I tend to not believe in the power of “cleanses” and supplements to change my whole life. A lifestyle change needs to come from a place of positivity and not a place of hating yourself. I have a complicated and often problematic relationship with my own ideas of “body positivity” but I know for sure that changes borne from negativity are not sustainable.

I have never once heard my mother say a confident or positive thing about her body. I have never seen her marvel at her body’s ability to grow not only one human but two.

I am constantly in awe of myself and how the human body is able to do literally anything and everything it wants to, it’s so insane to me. The fact that my mother would dare to use some kind of ridiculous pyramid scheme weight loss plan in an attempt to feel better about herself is baffling and hurtful to me in so many ways.

She tried so hard to rope me into it too. She made me a distributor under her umbrella, she put me through several cleanses, and she gave me all the meal plans and all the supplements. I would lose a little weight (> 10 pounds or so) and be so so happy, but then the three week “challenge” would be over and it would all come back because I hadn’t actually learned anything new. I had just deprived myself of everything I loved for nearly a month. It fed perfectly into my restrictive behaviors and I let it take over. I let myself feel all the guilt when I had the “bad” foods, and all the joy when I went all day only eating the “good” foods.

My mother since losing over 30 pounds on this plan has since gained it all back and the terrible self dialogue has restarted and continued. I’m heartbroken and upset that she continues to not understand her worth. Where do I go from here? How can I help her?

Top 5 Books that Changed my Life

The Red Tent

The fall of my sophomore year of high school I sat in Period 2 English lit hating my damn life. I was flicking my mechanical pencil against the side of my glasses and hating my damn life. I hated this stupid summer reading book, The Red Tent, and the last thing I wanted to do was write a whole essay on it.

Now eight years (!!!!) later it’s always my go to answer when people ask my favorite book. After the ridiculous essay I wrote about it, where I believe I used four full block quotes, I picked it up again. I had apparently put it in the basket of magazines and little books we had in our bathroom. You know the one, the basket of magazines everyone seemed to have in their bathrooms for when you needed a little extra entertainment in there (pre-smartphones and such). That was where I read it for the second time, over a few weeks. Then I read it again, and again….and yet again. I’ve never stopped reading it since. The language is beautiful and chilling and I find the story incredibly gripping. It’s both very traditionally feminine and, I believe, quite feminist in its message. I’ll love it forever.

 

The Lorax

This book encapsulates most of the good memories I have regarding growing up with my father. That may be dramatic, but then again maybe not.

This will be another book I get a tattoo for because I am absolute Dr. Seuss trash and this one was 100% the most important to me. This book taught me to speak for the trees and I will be forever grateful.

 

Harry Potter (All)

I’m totally cheating by putting a seven book series as one but it deserves it. I mean Harry fucking Potter. Need I really say more?

I have a tattoo commemorating my love for this series and plan on getting another inspired by my house (Hufflepuff, tell me yours!). This series made me feel okay about being plain and bookish, it was the first real “fandom” I was a part of and therefore the first real community experience I ever had. Because of this I have a very complicated relationship with any criticism given to this series. I am both very understanding and very bitter towards people who haven’t read the series (but like seriously though why).

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

This fucking book. This fuuuuuucking book ruined my whole life in the best possible way. This was the first book I ever listened to on audio and that entirely made the experience. This book made me fall in love with both audiobooks and Lin Manuel-Miranda, for his wonderful performance. There isn’t much of a plot to this book it is much more a snapshot in time kind of story, which happen to be the ones I like best. It’s a fairly typical coming of age story but there was nothing typical about my reaction to it. I clutched my heart and wept openly in the car all while on a road trip to my new home (long story). I immediately called my girlfriend while weeping to explain why I was weeping and she just laughed at me. But I’m not insane it’s really a wonderful book.

Pride and Prejudice

This truly is a cliché classic for the ages. I hopped on this bandwagon right at the beginning of high school and never looked back. Darcy was potentially my first literary crush and he holds to this day. I’m a little obsessed with the aesthetic of all Jane Austen novels and all of the wonderful movies of her works scratch that itch for me.