“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.”
this may be fake deep but i’m constantly thinking of andrea gibson’s piece where they say “I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.” and that really puts my trauma, pain, and hopelessness into perspective
Write down a sad memory. Put it in a box. Burn the box and sprinkle the ashes in the field. You may give some ashes to a friend who shared the sadness.
CLEANING PIECE II
Make a numbered list of sadness in your life. Pile up stones corresponding to those numbers. Add a stone, each time there is sadness. Burn the list, and appreciate the mount of stones for its beauty.
Make a numbered list of happiness in your life. Pile up stones corresponding to those numbers. Add a stone, each time there is happiness. Compare the mount of stones to the one of sadness.
CLEANING PIECE III
Try to say nothing negative about anybody. a) For three days b) For forty-five days c) For three months
See what happens to your life.
CLEANING PIECE IV
Write down everything you fear in life. Burn it. Pour herbal oil with a sweet scent on the ashes.
CLEANING PIECE V
Let a list of arbitrary names come into your mind as you go to sleep. Say “bless you” after each name. Do this with speed, by keeping a constant rhythm, so, in no way, you would hesitate to bless them.
when kristin chang said godhood is just like girlhood: a begging to be believed or when laurie penny said it’s no surprise that so many women and girls have control issues around their bodies or when fiona apple said there’s no hope for women or when elana dykewomon said almost every woman i have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness or when carolyn gage said you can terrorize her with her own body and then she will torture herself or when angela carter said i often felt like a female impersonator or when leslie feinberg said i don’t feel like a man trapped in a woman’s body i just feel trapped
Once I said something to the effect of “he’s more impressed with himself when he calls you beautiful than he is with you” as some sort of statement towards the self-serving nature of compliments from men. This is especially true when you are not conventionally beautiful, in whatever way that means to you. The exchange then becomes “I can see beauty in you” carrying the implication that other men cannot, and you are supposed to thank him for completing such a strenuous task.
A recently published study by John Pachankis and Mark Hatzenbuehler has substantiated what’s called the “Best Little Girl in the World” hypothesis, first put forward in 1973 in a book by Andrew Tobias, then writing under a pseudonym. It’s the idea that young, closeted women deflect attention from their sexuality by investing in recognized markers of success: good grades, athletic achievement, elite employment and so on. Overcompensating in competitive arenas affords these women a sense of self-worth that their concealment diminishes.
…Deriving self-worth from achievement-related domains, like Ivy League admissions, is a common strategy among closeted women seeking to maintain self-esteem while hiding their stigma. The strategy is an effort to compensate for romantic isolation and countless suppressed enthusiasms. And it requires time-consuming study and practice, which conveniently provide an excuse for not dating.
Best of all, it distracts: “What love life? Look at my report card!”
…But the study does show that the longer a young woman conceals her sexual orientation, the more heavily she invests in external measures of success, potentially leading to undue stress and social isolation
Another of the study’s findings is that girls who grow up in more stigmatizing environments are more likely to seek self-worth through competition. I spent my first 18 years in a rural, religious town in North Carolina, a state that recently passed a constitutional amendment barring same-sex unions by a wide margin. Now here I am, a metal detector scanning for golden prizes. That’s no coincidence, the research suggests.
take time to figure it out 