#changing perspective

I wrote this for a prompt on The Poets’ Porch and myself :) @picklemafia

I think to my loneliness and wonder

Is this my forever?

Lingering, longing

Torn asunder.

Then I think maybe the world is being merciful,

Saving me from broken bones and organs,

Giving me a chance to sleep

No disturbance, isn’t it wonderful?

Of course I’m young, I crave to be held

But there’s more grace in the journey by yourself

To be more honest, more fair to what’s inside

There are less words to hide, less lies

And of course I watch with wonder when

People describe love and it’s finite nature

Loving, yet knowing you’ve made your bed

With grief for the sake of a love that lasts till death.

So in my loneliness, I will be serendipitous

Because the only way I can lose now

Is to give up on myself.

Holding up the ceiling

I tend to turn towards being grateful for even being alive as a way to counteract the fear. I am grateful for music, for food, for video games, for cats – I have a lot to be grateful for, each day, and reflecting on it is good for the soul, even though it brings about that double-edged sword of thinking about all the things I’m going to lose.

The humility aspect is an interesting one I haven’t focused on much.

Humility, in general, is being able to accept both praise, and criticisms, because you are aware you are imperfect. It is a state of being wherein you can acknowledge both flaws and good qualities and take both without overstating one or the other. You don’t get too focused on the flaws, or the good things, and blow it out of proportion, in other words.

By practicing humility, you’re better able to acknowledge mortality because you recognize the imperfections of yourself. Of your health. Of changes. You also recognize the good things of it, too – don’t mistake me – but we don’t tend to see our back hurting in the morning because we slept wrong as a good thing. It’s probably easier to joke about it and take it in stride, while working to improve sleeping conditions.

Recognizing that it is a change and that you have to change with it.

That is humility to me – an attitude of change, and accepting change. I know that’s not really what it is, but without humility, you’re not going to change.

I had to accept my humility when caffeine started to impact me negatively. I didn’t want to. Oh, I didn’t want to! I was the person who could drink an entire pot of coffee and take a nap! My whole family is like that! But, it was making my heart race insanely, and I wasn’t falling asleep anymore.

I’ve taken it in stride since switching to decaf, and I can joke about that, and admit the way caffeine affects me. Some people do give me shit for it. It’s frustrating, the way anyone giving shit over someone for not eating gluten is, I imagine, but I’m learning to navigate it.

That’s a bit of an aside, but that’s how I see practicing humility. I also see it in my martial arts practices, and the willingness to keep trying, to keep getting better, and go when and as I can, as long as they’ll keep accepting me.

These two things, in theory, help with death anxiety. How? Part of it is, they lessen our defensive reaction to mortality reminders. When we see roadkill, when someone close to us dies, or death is brought up in another form that threatens to remind us we, too, are mortal, these things help us to cope with that and not react defensively, in a ‘threatened’ way, so to speak.

It’s part of an overall attitude shift, that I’ve been a proponent of, though in a way that’s not focused on exposure. This way, you work on being more grateful and humble, in general, not necessarily in relation to death. This can work you towards exposure.

So, how do you practice this?

You can make gratitude lists. That’s one way to start thinking of things you’re grateful for. On this list, make sure you include parts of you and your body. I’m grateful for how my fingers move so fast over a keyboard! I’m grateful for my eyes seeing the words! There’s something your body does, that you can find that’s good.

You don’t have to accomplish everything in your 20s for it to be worthwhile

Stop looking at influencers as the standard

Growing up so rich you can travel the world when you’re 20 with no responsibilities is NOT impressive

You are worth something even when you’re not being useful or making money

Capitalism prevents people from contributing to society by forcing them to take jobs outside their field just so they can buy the privilege of continuing to live

story cover for Howling At the Dog Star, the lives of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin

1971: they meet on the Hogwarts Express. Remus thought that Sirius was a funny name, but it matched his funny gray eyes. 1972: Remus's secret had been revealed by then, but not one of his friends thought any less of him. 1973: Sirius decides that "Moony" is an excellent nickname for his friend. Remus may also be blushing a bit more often than normal when around Sirius, but Remus decides it's nothing at all and ignores it. 1975: One fateful day in Potions, Professor Slughorn has them brewing Amortentia. Sirius is Remus's partner, and when they're finished, Remus is struck by the fact that the potion smells like Sirius. 1976: They kiss.

read it on ao3 or fanfiction.net. each chapter is a short but feels-packed ride, varying from tooth-rotting fluff to heart-wrenching sadness.

Yesterday I reblogged this post about feminism and makeup culture. I agreed with pretty much everything said on it - that makeup itself is an artistic tool in Western culture but that the culture around it is steeped in misogyny and internalized sexism as well as homophobia. I felt like i had a lot to say about makeup culture but halfway through writing my comment i realized i had a lot to say about beauty culture. So I’m making my own post. 

Full disclosure: I use makeup on a fairly regular basis but it is my view that it is a form of artistic expression. I’ve always been around makeup - my mother sells it, but despite this my sister and I never wore it until we were 18. Actually, that is a lie, I wore it in theater. This had directly influenced my relationship and language used with makeup. 

To me, makeup is part of a costume. It is no different than drawing cat whiskers on your face for Halloween. It’s just another accessory, another element of your costume along with your hair and clothes. Everything you put on your body is a type of expression or communication to others.This is why you dont just dress for yourself. You dress to put a certain message in peoples minds.

This is why makeup is so powerful in glamour magic (even though it is not necessary). It is not nothing, it holds power. 

The problem arises when our beauty obsessed culture tries to convince us to exhaust our time and resources and use it as a tool of altering our appearance and expectations. It is this very culture that I want to talk about, specifically the dichotomy of beauty and non-beauty (or ugliness as I phrase it). 

Now let’s not get into defining the terms beautiful and ugly because they are both entirely subjective concepts. What’s important to my whole argument is that our society gives positive connotations to beauty and negative connotations to ugliness. I am trying to break down those social constructs in my own mind and here is what I’ve come up with so far. 

Beauty is performative. It is not a trait but is a temporary state of being. It can be in a glimpse, a minute, and hour, etc. but it is not constant or permanent in any way. People are not beautiful people, they are people in a beautiful moment and that could change with a slight shift of light. More importantly, a lot of the time, that beauty is worked for. Whether it’s surgery, a good hair cut, Snapchat filters, Photoshop, a proper diet, a wicked skin care routine, or maybe its Mayballine - some amount of outside effort contributed. This isn’t to say people can’t be naturally attractive. For my purposes here you need to separate the words beauty and attractive because attractiveness is even more subjective than beauty. What I’m saying is that most of the people we see, online and in media, are purposefully fulfilling the societal expectations of beauty to some extent.

I think it is important to recognized that most of the beauty we see is a result of much effort and performance. I think it is important to understand this is temporary. Because understanding this mean that there are many moments of attractiveness in everyone’s lives. That beauty is affordable to some and not others. In a way, this is why the phrase “everyone is beautiful in their own way” caught on. More on that later, though. I want to talk about why the concepts that “everyone is beautiful, every body is perfect” doesn’t actually solve our problems. 

Hint: my point is you shouldn’t have to be beautiful and that beauty is an overrated concept of worth. 

But first a story. 

In college I was the president of a body positivity club that was coincidentally also a performance club. Very quickly I realized my former presidents’ method of telling everyone that they were all gorgeous and perfect just didn’t work on people’s overall self esteem. 

I developed my own method which began with giving people compliments based off their personality rather than their appearance. They responded more positively to this so the club focused more on recognizing negative feelings and establishing new values to judge ourselves on that weren’t centered around physical appearance. The club became about learning new skills and pushing our talents and creativity.

 The members looked more positively at themselves because of their ability and their positive self-image came after. Plus, as I said we were also a performance group, we all learned that beauty is achievable for all of us, but that we can choose when to perform it. 

I don’t think telling everyone they are always beautiful and not allowing them to have negative feelings about themselves, or voicing them, really helps us in the long run.

I think changing our perspective of the value of beauty is what frees us from social expectations, especially for women. This isn’t to say that attractive people are vain and that you should be bitter and judgmental towards people performing beauty. I just wish we allowed ourselves to fully recognize both our beauty and ugliness simultaneously. We are, after all, complex human beings of many facets.

Allow yourself to feel ugly. Remove the negative connotations. 

This was my missing link for so long. When I’m sick I tell myself that I’ll feel better if I look better. This was my way of hiding my illness and stage myself as a healthy human. It only made me feel better because nobody asked me if I was okay and didn’t draw any attention to myself. I would never let myself leave my room if I felt I looked gross - in sickness or in health.

Very recently I became hyper-conscious of myself when I was pumping gas on my way to see many people and realized I was wearing shorts and a crop top without having shaved my legs, armpits, or stomach in quite some time. All that was on my face was sweat and chap stick and half my eyebrows with my hair laying flat. I could feel my teenage self cringing at just the idea of such things. But I just smiled because I was actually really comfortable, the most comfortable with myself I felt probably all my life. And I felt good because there was a breeze hitting me just right on that hot day. And that’s all that mattered in that moment. 

I allowed myself to recognize the ugliness about me, but didn’t feel any worse about myself. I had removed the negativity with being unattractive in that moment. I know I can be beautiful if I put the right amount of effort in - but now I don’t feel like I have to. I’m not going to think I’m beautiful all the time because I know I’m not, and pretending otherwise is counterproductive. I harbor 0 negativity toward being found unattractive (well hey, I try to). In fact, I feel more comfortable when I can relax and step off stage. 

I still like makeup, but I rarely wear it at all now. Even if I do, I’m not afraid to incorporate my dark circles into my look and wear the black lipstick everyone tells me they hate. I’m not trying to be attractive anymore, I just want to strike fear in the hearts of men - but I digress.

No amount of makeup is going to get rid of your flaws, only changing your perspective can. And remember, you don’t have to be beautiful but you do really need to be conscious of how much self worth you put into the concept of beauty. 

Beauty culture is really just a part of sexism and capitalism (and racism and if you really want to get into it). So I know a big part of feminism is like reclaiming femininity or whatever, but that doesn’t mean you need to feed into the same social constructs that push us down.