We'll die with our options open

Sometimes things sneak up on you and all the faith in the world doesn’t prepare you. I came across this article today. It’s about a subject close to my heart: women’s reproductive health. It details a recent phenomenon whereby women who live close to the boarder will go to Mexico to get a drug called Misoprostol in the hopes of inducing a miscarriage rather than having to go into a clinic for an abortion. You see, even though abortion is legal it can be difficult to get one for a number of reasons (family, religion, politics, etc) and it can be expensive (unless you live in a state that covers it under Medicaid, but I doubt Texas is such a state) so for many women it’s easier to try to induce a miscarriage.

The article details one case of a woman who was successful at inducing a miscarriage and reading the details was like taking the Tardis back to 1995 for me.

My miscarriage was natural (not self induced). I was 17 at the time so I can’t say that I was looking to have a baby. So, yes, I did think of it as a good thing, but even so it was painful, and bloody, and disturbing. I went to the ER at the insistence of my best friend and the ER doctor ran a pregnancy test and told me that it was negative which meant what I’d experienced couldn’t have been a miscarriage. My primary care doctor refuted that when I followed up with her but all this time I’ve been telling myself that there was a chance that I wasn’t really pregnant at all and hadn’t had a miscarriage even though deep down I know I did.

It wasn’t until I read this article that I really let go of that illusion. The deatails about the pain and the blood and passing it and flushing it down the drain were so real to me it was like it was happening all over again. Well…in my case it happened way earlier on (at about 4 weeks) and it went down the shower drain so there was no flushing involved, but everything else was identical.

I don’t know if I would have kept it or had an abortion if I’d had to make the choice myself and all this time I’ve been thankfull (to a degree) that I didn’t have to but…the fact that people inflict that on themselves because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they don’t have any other option, well, it fills me with all sorts of negative emotions that I usually try to avoid, including fear (which I believe to be the root of all negative emotions anyway).

It makes me afraid especially for teenagers. When I was 17 I was a mess. I was lonely and angry and desperate for any kind of connection. Not to mention the hormones. Add all that up and it leads to unwanted pregnancy. I know the situation is not unique to me and sometimes I just don’t see a way out. Education about reproductive rights helps (education that includes more than pushing abstinence on those least likely to employ it), but I fear that there will always be a social (read: religious) and political divide. I’ve not yet found the argument that will convince anyone who believes that abortion is murder to come over to my side and I’m pretty good at arguing.

People often equate live music to a religious experience. My father even calls his magazine the house organ of the church of rock and roll. I’ve always been passionate about music so the comparison, of course, isn’t lost on me.

When I was sixteen listening to U2 was my version of prayer. You know that scene in What the #$*! Do We Know where they have various types of clergy members bless water and then they look at it under a microscope and find that the molecules are arranged in different patterns in each sample. Well, at twenty-two I saw the Who in concert and it changed me on in that same way, on a molecular level. There’s nothing in the world like the energy at Who concert when they start into Baba O’Riley. Lately John Darnielle, of the Mountain Goats, has been my personal deity and the energy at one of his shows is something special as well.

So, if music is akin to religion then what is the church of rock and roll? For me, it is the Showbox, in Seattle (the original one, not SoDo). Normally I like to show up early so I can get a place to sit because I like to absorb the music rather than participate (usually). This past week though I went there to see the Hold Steady and was convinced to venture down into the crowd. I hadn’t stood on the main floor there in years and this time I stood right in the middle, directly under the mirror ball and it was a perfect live music experience…transcendent…like being in church.

When I was young I had what can best be described as a coffee habit. I drank on average 5-10 cups of coffee per day and I loved it. It had a sort of delayed effect on me. It would put me to sleep and then kick in a a few hours later. It was actually (ironically) the only thing that helped take the edge off the insomnia I had at the time. If I drank as much coffee as humanly possible right before going to bed I could usually sleep 3-5 hours, if I didn’t drink any coffee I pretty much couldn’t sleep at all.

About 4 months after I turned 18 coffee started having the usual effect on me and I couldn’t keep drinking it because it was keeping me up at night and I had 8:00AM class that quarter. When I quit drinking coffee I also quit smoking because the two activities had become inexorably linked in my mind. Also, coffee masked the taste of cigarettes and without it I didn’t much care for smoking. The coffee had served a purpose (to alleviate my insomnia) but the cigarettes never really did anyway. I’d started smoking because I had heard it calmed the nerves which turned out to be a lie.

Why are coffee and cigarettes on my mind right now. Well, I’ve been having trouble sleeping again lately, I’ve been antsy and nervous…I haven’t felt this way since I was 17 but I think I’ve finally figured out what the cause is. You know the saying, “old enough to know better, but still too young to care”? That’s it, that’s the cause. At 17 I was old enough to know better about a lot of things but still too young to care about any of them. Now there’s pretty much just one thing. One rule, one thing that I promised myself (when I was 17) that I’d never do again. I know better, but I’m finding it really, really hard to care and it’s making me nervous. It’s making me want coffee and cigarettes.

My brother’s girlfriend said to me today that she believes there is someone out there for everyone and I agreed.

There’s an episode of Sports Night (of course) in which Dana is going on and on about how she’s going to get over her fear of fish. Casey says, to Natalie, that fish are not what Dana is afraid of and (when Natalie asks what Dana is afraid of), Casey says that she is afraid of holding out for what she deserves. You see Dana’s 32 and she, like many women her age, thinks she should be married already so she’s settling for a man who treats her badly and makes her feel bad for (basically) being herself.

I’ve been single for a while now and I think I can honestly say I’m not afraid of holding out for what I deserve. I have faith that what I deserve is out there, that there’s someone out there for everyone.

Also, I like being single. I like living alone and having my freedom. I like being able to watch what I want on television when I want to. I like not having to share my bathroom. I like that I can be kind of a slob if I want to or go on a cleaning binge if I feel like it. I enjoy having no one to answer to but myself. I like that I can take vacations when I want and go where I want. I like it all.

The problem is, my default setting is taking care of people, caring more about their needs than my own. Probably the real reason that I like being single so much is because I know that when the time comes that I’m not single anymore I might forget about myself (maybe not completely, but largely).

So, maybe I’m a little picky, maybe I’m holding out for something, for someone, special. The question I currently have on my mind though is whether or not I’m picky or afraid. You see I do have faith that there is someone out there for everyone. I have no problem believing that the something special I’m holding out for is out there, and I can’t even call that faith really because I’ve seen it several times. However, often times, when I’ve seen it out there, it has been unavailable. In fact it’s been unavailable enough times that I’m starting to wonder: am I so afraid of losing myself in a relationship that I only notice that something special in guys that are already taken by someone else. Is finding what I deserve my fear of fish? What would I do if I found everything I’m looking for and he was both interested in me and available? Would I have the courage to go for it?

It’s baseball season, and cycling season, and I feel like I should write about those things because certainly they would provide a more relevant window into faith and fear than the things I have been writing about (when I write at all)….but…well I haven’t even watched any of the TDF. I have it recording on my DVR every day but I haven’t watched it (yet). I have been watching a fair amount of baseball, but I’ve been enjoying it so much that I haven’t stopped to think about it or to write about it (though there are plenty of interesting things being written about it by other people).

What I am going to write about is this article from Huffington Post about how Twilight (and Justin Bieber) have ruined women for age appropriate men.

I can’t really claim that my own taste in men runs towards the age appropriate. Although I suppose my age inappropriateness is equal opportunity (it’s not all younger guys, sometimes they’re older). So, okay, I have no credibility on this subject. Added to that I am somewhat of a Twilight fan (more the books than the movies), not enough to have an opinion about the whole Team Edward vs Team Jacob issue, but enough to know where the argument comes from.

Having said all of that I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this article is ridiculous. First of all Edward (the character) is not a child, he’s over 100 years old. He (the actor) doesn’t even look like one really (and isn’t, he’s 24 years old). Jacob…well, okay, he’s a child (the character and the actor) and grown women who are attracted to him are kind of creepy. Justin Bieber I’m not even going to address because it’s so creepy on every level that I’d rather not think about it.

Instead what I’ll do is use my rhetorical skills to try and reason my fellow women towards the opposite end of the age inappropriate celebrity crush spectrum. Lets define the median age as 30, if you are around 30 years old (give or take) and a woman, this is directed at you.

For starters I’m going to assume that there are many women out there like myself who don’t find George Clooney or Daniel Craig remotely attractive and yet, unlike the author of the article, are also not interested in Justin Bieber or Taylor Lautner. Just because you don’t think those “classically masculine” guys are the be all end all of masculinity doesn’t mean the only options left to you were born after 1990. Here’s just a few (all over 40) guys to make you feel a little less like a pedophile.

Jeremy Piven. He’s extremely talented. He’s funny. He loves his mom. But more importantly, he’s totally hot. Also, he gets plenty of media coverage so you’ll have lots of fuel for your obsession.

Matthew Perry. He’s been out of the public eye for a little while, but I hear he has a recently finished pilot that is very funny (Mr. Sunshine). There’s got to be a reson that he’s the one that Hollywood looks to when they need someone to say and do over the top romantic things (like, “you’re everything I never knew I always wanted”). Even if that reason is amazing acting skill rather than an abundance of actual romantic sincerity, this is fantasy we’re talking about so it doesn’t matter.

Josh Malina. Follow his twitter feed, it will make you a believer that sense of humor is the most attractive trait. And if it doesn’t just watch some of his appearences on In Plain Sight. I swear, he’s only gotten cuter with age (and no post would be complete with out a Sports Night reference so, he’s “so cute it freaks me out”).

Speaking of funny being hot, take a good look at Conan O’Brien and Stephen Colbert. While we’re on funny lets also revisit getting hotter with age: Denis Leary.

If you are interested in a fantasy that’s age appropriate (thirty-somethings), you should help me lobby people magazine to make either John Cho, Niel Patrick Harris, or Zachary Quinto the next sexiest man alive. And lets start a letter writing campaign to get ZQ a cameo in the next Harold and Kumar movie. Can you imagine the three of them together on the same screen?

I came across an article on Huffington Post the other day about relationship secrets for highly empathic people and it got me thinking about empathy.

A couple years ago I made the virtual acquaintance of someone who’s built his career on the study of empathy, Roman Krznaric. I e-mailed him after reading about the classes he teaches at The School of Life. It was kind of a fan letter actually because I thought the classes he teaches are so awesome. In any event he wrote back and we had a brief e-mail exchange about empathy and acting. Recently he started a blog called Outrospection, which is also pretty brilliant.

I’ve talked a little bit here about acting and empathy. You see, sometimes I am mildly adrift about what to do with my life, more so since graduating from college, and part of my conflict comes from the fact that I feel my two main skills (empathy and logic) are at odds. Baring getting cast as the bastard love child of Deanna Troy and time travelling Spock…I just don’t see any potential overlap.

So I hadn’t really thought about empathy as a road block to relationships. In fact I didn’t think about empathy as it relates to relationships at all. It seems pretty obvious there would be a connection, and maybe that’s why I never really thought about it before.

I actually had a kind of opposite experience to what the article on Hiffington Post talks about. I suppose I’ve carefully cultivated a stoicism in defense against emotional overload, but it applied mostly to my own emotions and I was still kind of ridiculously open to other peoples emotions. I never thought I kept people at arms length before. Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t, but regardless I did meet someone and it was, like I said, kind of the opposite of what the article talks about. He gave me back my faith, he cured my insomnia, I quit chewing my fingernails…all of my nervous energy was gone. In terms of emotional energy I had absolute peace for 8 years.

Since that though…I now realize that I have kept people at arms length. I’ve been on first dates and some second dates but never a third. I have my close friends, most of whom I knew before. The one really good friend I’ve made since is someone I rarely ever see. In fact he has lived in other cities most of the time I’ve known him so almost all our conversation takes place online. Plus he’s the last person that would tax my empathy…he’s kind of been like a mirror reflecting it all back at me causing me to learn so much more about myself rather than focusing on other people so much. So, yeah, the long and short is that I have been keeping people at arms length, but I wonder if that is really necessary.

Valentine’s Day is coming up. I know it’s a little bit off topic…well lets be honest I may have some themes but I don’t really have a topic exactly, so this is fine.

You know I love Valentine’s Day, but I do have some problems with it. I like Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love in all forms whether I’m single or not. When I’m not single (though I’ve been single for many VDays now) I even like the celebration of romance. What I don’t like is the mass bastardization of what romance means. I don’t want to be that person that rails against the commercialization, but in this instance I do think commercialization is the problem.

They’re trying to sell something and the only way you can sell something to a large number of people is to make it so generic that it doesn’t appeal to anyone specifically but to everyone generally.

What do I mean by that? Well, what would you expect would be really bad Valentine’s Day gifts for a woman? Kitchen appliances? Tickets to sporting events? Home improvement products? And what would you think would be great Valentine’s Day gifts for a woman? Jewelry perhaps? Maybe flowers? Well, I’m a woman and I would far prefer any of the former to the latter. I don’t really wear jewelry and one of my cats likes to eat flowers even though they make her sick so I can’t have them in my house.

I’m not going to make a case against consumerism really. I’m all for putting as much money as you can into the economy just spend it on the right things. Real romance is paying attention, knowing someone so well that you know the specific things that appeal to them and don’t need to fall back on the generalizations that are being sold on every corner. I’m sure lots of women like jewelry and flowers but I’m also sure that many of them would prefer something else (if you’re observant enough to figure out what it is).

Men, of course, are a mystery to me, but I would imagine that the same holds true for them.

I’ve discovered recently that if you mention Zachary Quinto on your blog many people will read it. The Sarmy is a force to be reckoned with. I’ve blogged about sports and entertainment both here and at my other blogs and never gotten the kind of traffic that I got when I wrote fan mail to Zachary Quinto.

I never really thought people would read my blogs. What I mean is not that I assumed I had any sort of privacy when I wrote about my personal life in intimate detail and posted it on the internet…it’s just that I never really thought about it much. I have a meter and I look at it but it does count things like the google bot and doesn’t count things like google reader so I never really paid much attention to the counts until the counter on one of my other blogs had a sudden jump (right after my fan letter to Zachary Quinto).