Preposterous Hypotheses

Suburbanite in Denver. Or Denverite suburbian. My favorite activities include long walks on the beach, good wine, and sarcasm.

[omgthatdress]

Half-Mourning Dress

1910-1912

The Victoria & Albert Museum

[yamino]

What’s a “half-mourning” dress?  Mourning in the front, party in the back?

[borta-deactivated20150310]

Half-Mourning was the third stage of mourning for a widow. She would be expected to mourn her husband for at least two years, the stages being Full Mourning, Second Mourning and Half-Mourning. The different stages regulated what they would be wearing, with Full Mourning being all black and with no ornamentation, including the wodow’s veil, and the stages after that introducing some jewellery and modest ornamentation. When in Half-Mourning you would gradually include fabrics in other colors and sort of ease your way out of mourning. 

Wow, I am happy you made that joke so I could interpert it as a serious question and have an excuse to ramble on about clothing customs of the past, I am a historical fashion nerd.

[yamino]

That’s very informative, but I’m going to stick with my original head canon:

[mumblingsage]

I love both the informed fashion history and the hilariously off-the-wall halves of this post.

[prehyped]

If you’ve seen the Rosalind Russell movie Auntie Mame, this happens, and I’m assuming that’s part of the inspiration (this is at her husband’s funeral)

Perhaps related: I ADORED this movie as a child and wanted to be her so bad

[beachdeath]

[prehyped]

Angry men

My father’s a yeller. He’s a man of volatile temper. There was once a hole in a door in our house that was caused by him punching it in anger. My parents tried to tell me there were other reasons behind it as I got older. But I didn’t forget.

I grew up with an angry man, a man who felt stifled by the life he’d chosen, but who had not been born into privilege that would coddle him -- and yet, his ego would not allow him to pursue things that he could fail at. He stayed in the same union-protected job for 28 years, a job he loathed, a job that was beneath his intellect, because he couldn’t fail at it. He was a semester away from getting his degree, but he wouldn’t go back to finish school. He told himself it was for the security of his family. I believed him.

He wouldn’t let my mom work when they were first married. He needed to be the provider. Eventually, my mom did work. Need ultimately trumps ego.

My younger years, into my adolescence, were punctuated by my father’s frustration and outbursts. Yelling about where my mom put something. Yelling about something on the TV. Yelling about the neighbors. Yelling at my mom, yelling at me, my brother, to the project he was working on, to...the world. It still happens when I go back to visit.

When people talk in the abstract about Trump voters, I think they miss a couple of things. My dad doesn’t really care for Trump as a person, but he indulges him in his fantasy of being a man who should own the world. And all these men are so angry, angry when they encounter any resistance to this concept, despite them having really done...nothing to earn it. They feel their self-perceived intelligence/race/self-concept grants them superiority. And those women, the ones behind Kavanaugh, the ones like my mother? They know very very very very well the consequences of running up against an angry man. To keep them placated is to keep their world safe. 

People who say “why do they vote against their own interests?” are barking up the wrong tree. They ARE voting for their interests, and that’s safety. Safety in the status quo, safety in not riling the beast that we’re prodding, safety in being spared another round of male fury. Hell, feeling unsafe and threatened is what finally prodded a bunch of liberal white ladies into action. In that way, we’re all the same.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch today’s proceedings, but it’s not for the reasons that many others had. I’m lucky and spared to have not experienced sexual assault. But the man angry at what he feels is his, that is no longer easily granted to him? I’m all too familiar.

[prehyped]

Scared

Well, I took a little time and read over my posts in the last while, and...man. I think I’ve been going through some shit. And I still am. I’m going to share my thoughts, in this little corner where very few people spend their time anymore, but I think I should.

I’ve met someone; we’ve been talking the last three weeks and out on two pretty great dates. In my mind, this is moving slowly, but the truth is that I haven’t ever moved quickly in the past before out of a deep desire to love fervently, but to squelch that anxiety, because I have no trust. No faith. I always assume they’ll lose interest. I always feel they’ll find a better option. I think up a million scenarios as to why they’re not telling the truth to me, when I have absolutely zero evidence for a lie. I try to anticipate what could go wrong in a misguided effort to protect myself.

Now there are scenarios where I don’t have this train of thought -- and it’s the ones in which I’m not invested. The ones where I barely even care about whether it progresses. But when I care...god, do I care, and it kills me. I turn myself inside out. My heart has felt tight. My brain’s robbed me of the good feelings I have because it’s so desperately seeking reassurance. 

And you just can’t have it, you can’t force it -- and what reassurance am I seeking? This isn’t a scenario where someone’s being evasive or avoidant -- quite the opposite. He texts me every day; he’s really responsive. We both have children and other obligations -- and I haven’t REALLY dated with this as a consideration. 

The way my ex and I met was almost artificial -- we were on long-term business travel in the same place, so we spent months with no obligations other than work, no distraction, just a full immersion that left no room for my anxieties to wander...until I realized how deep in I was, and I had a full-blown panic attack in a hotel room. But I’ve never really dated with my regular life as part of the landscape, and now, at 36, I just don’t know how to do it. I don’t know where the balance lies. 

I spent a good number of the past months a bit hung up on someone who I knew wasn’t right for me. I didn’t really talk about it. It was, in retrospect, a way to keep myself safe -- and this person, well, if it would have worked, it would have been...easier. He knew my history; he knew my reality now. But I decided, rightly, to let it go because it was the best thing and the only thing I could do. I decided to open myself to the world, and the world came to me and scared the hell out of me.

A few months ago, I wished for the kind of love that would leave me fucking terrified. It’s very premature to say love; this is full like, though, and I got my wish. But here’s the thing, the valuable thing I’ve learned: I SHOULD care in this way. I mistook apathy as confidence before -- I loved my ex, I truly did, in the fullest and most real of ways, but there was an element missing that eventually led to our end, and it was the fire, the passion. I don’t just mean sexually -- I mean when you meet someone and your soul’s lit up in a visceral way, not just in the “this feels nice and comfortable” way. Maybe not everyone needs that, but I’m a person of big feelings, and I need to stop feeling like that’s a problem. It’s just my reality. I’m 36; this is intrinsic. 

So I push through. My brain wants to retreat in so many ways -- and not in sensical ways, because anxiety is a real thing -- but my heart presses me forward, because it knows what it wants, and what it wants is GOOD. And an acceptance of the comfortable led me into something that ultimately left us both dissatisfied. I know I can’t rob myself of that again.

But divorce makes you not trust yourself, and that may be the worst betrayal. You realize the cost of your mistakes when you’ve “failed,” and it haunts you. 

Thing is, growth is hard, and I know this is something I need to go through. I’ve often thought that the right things were the easy things when it came to love, but they may have just been...easy. Now I don’t believe in toiling through obvious incompatibility -- but rather, recognizing that my anxiety stems from a feeling that something’s at stake...and really, that’s how it should be. I should care. 

But I need to trust myself. I’m good, and I’m worthwhile, and I’m worthy of love, and I’ve done hard work on myself and grown so much, into a person who is absolutely not perfect, and never will be, but who still is a force. And I’m going to keep making mistakes, and not doing things perfectly, and not knowing if I’m doing it “right” because there is no such thing. Which is hard for me. I want to know the right things to do, because I care. 

Maybe it’s just about trusting that I’m enough, no matter what I do, because I’m a considerate and loving person at my core -- and if you know me, that’s going to come through. If it doesn’t work with him, it’s OK -- I’m still me, and I’m enough.

I’ll tell myself that every day until I believe it.

[beamingsuggestion]

and here you are, continuing on, despite how hard it’s been

[1dietcokeinacan]

And isn’t there love to be found in all those tiny moments that made you stay? Isn’t there love sewn into the lining of the agonizing stretches of time you thought you’d never make it? Wasn’t it love that kept you? Isn’t it love that holds you?

[prehyped]

No

That’s commitment and resilience

Love is what inspires you to keep faith in yourself

[prehyped]

i hate how much of my mood, psyche, outlook, basic life philosophy is altered based on whether I’m hungry or not

[prehyped]

The most important thing I have ever learned in my life.

When you are deciding, if you are with someone, if they are someone you want to remain with, whether in marriage, in friendship, even in employment

Do not pay attention to how they make you feel as your primary indicator

Pay attention to whether you love who they are

Notice if you would admire them, respect them, cherish them, love them, even if you weren’t connected to them at all, if you only knew them from afar, or if they were married to someone else in the hypothetical

If you love someone primarily because of the way they make you feel, question how you would feel if they couldn’t provide that anymore, and if you’d still love them

And if you would, you know your feelings are true

And if you wouldn’t, you know your foundation is on quicksand

The longest loves stand the test of time because they love the core of the other, their soul and spirit

And BECAUSE, when that love and respect is mutual, you DO love how they make you feel, because they are living out their quality and integrity and kindness toward you, the person who matters most

When you ask someone -- and this is not outrageous to ask -- “why do you love me” and they list all the things that you do for them, and the way you make them feel, and how THEY benefit

and particularly if you feel the same way

enjoy your time, for it won’t be forever

you’ll have life happen to you, and you won’t be what that other person needs, and they will let you go in search of what can give them that again

It’s far more terrifying to be in love with the soul of someone, because it hurts so much more if that person doesn’t love all of you in return

But it’s the only kind of love I’ll ever seek again

[prehyped]

for the strong women

be okay with the fact

that being told you’re strong

brings no solace

be sad and sit with your grief

over love that never was

since he deemed it unnecessary to give

to someone who stands on her own so tall

find your place in that pit

where your reassurances lie

that this will pass and you’ll get through

for in your valley there’s that shadow

you’re the flower that blooms amidst the dark

yet you crave the warmth and the light

and the sun will shine on you

but until that day

let yourself be weak

if you need

[prehyped]

doing a bit of an experiment

I’m gonna report at the end of the month how it goes

[brainstatic]

The key to getting over imposter syndrome is to know everyone else is an imposter too. Tell yourself you deserve a stake in the scam they’re all running.

[prehyped]

This is similar to how I approach it -- if I really am an imposter, I’m a really fucking good one, and I’ve kept up this “charade” successfully for a very very long time with no sign of stopping

[championsaremade]

Listen to me. This is your life– no one else’s. At the end of the day, it is you who has to be happy with the choices you are making, food you are eating, things you are doing, goals you are pursuing. Do not let the opinions and judgments of others stop you from doing what you feel and know in your heart is right for you. Eat the food that makes you feel best. Do what makes you feel at peace. Surround yourself with people who make you feel good, who make you laugh, who sincerely make you smile. Go after what you want– not because someone else is telling you to, but because you want to. Listen to that inner voice, trust your gut, and trust yourself.

[tan-antoni]

Serving looks today

[curliestofcrowns]

lion tamer, but make it fashion

[prehyped]

I actually cannot believe that Tan is wearing SWEATPANT CUTOFFS and still somehow not looking horrid

[curliestofcrowns]

taking a page from @prehyped let’s all talk about who we think has Big Dick Energy and who doesn’t

yes: aidan turner, sebstan, beyonce

no: henry cavill, edward rochester

[prehyped]

The true and most important discourse

Of course now I’m getting tired and can’t think of anyone

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

I genuinely do not understand this unrelenting insistence that we compare every horrendous thing the United States does to the Holocaust, when there are much better comparisons to be made to…well, the United fucking States. 

The United States has a long, sordid history of separating families: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the families impacted by slavery for generations after being stolen from their homes and sold to the highest bidder, for one. The Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools, where Native children were ripped from their families in order to have their language, culture, and beliefs stamped out of them through forced assimilation and conversion to Christianity, for another. 

The United States has an awful history of putting people in detention centres: Japanese and Native Alaskan internment camps during WWII, Fort Cass, Fort Snell, and other Native American internment camps that Indigenous Peoples were forced into throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, not even to mention Guantanamo Bay, and the camps so-called dissidents in the places like the Philippines, Vietnam, and other nations Americans had occupied were put into.

The United States has always been horrible to its immigrants, specifically non-white and/or non-Christian refugees. My own grandfather, an immigrant form India, couldn’t become a citizen of the United States despite being a college lecturer and the spouse of a US citizen due to Asian Exclusion, and had to continuously enrol in university courses he never actually took despite the fact that he was teaching them, just to stay in the country on a student visa. The one truly valid comparison to the Holocaust era you could make would be to the United States turning away Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe aboard the St Louis and sending them back to their deaths because that same law used to keep my grandfather from becoming a citizen had been put in place specifically to keep more Jews and Asians from coming into the country.

Like, the United States is not “becoming Nazi Germany” all of a sudden. This is not some aberrant “UnAmerican” behaviour. This is the United States being the United States, doing what the U.S. has always done from the moment of its inception. 

Also, as one of my FB friends said on this topic recently: “Nazi Germany was not famous for cruelty toward asylum seekers, it was famous for making millions of asylum seekers and then murdering millions including many from my family.”

There is no good reason to constantly trot out bad Holocaust comparisons when we know damn well this is the same inhumane bullshit America was fucking built on. Hitler, Nazis, and The Holocaust are not just shorthand for “the government being really bad.” It was a specific atrocity that devastated the Jewish and Romani communities of this world, and you don’t need to constantly devalue it and re-traumatise Jews and Roma over and over again when you can just as easily condemn the heinous way asylum seekers at the US border are being treated by saying the United States is still in the business of systematic oppression and has not learnt anything from its own appalling history. 

[yourbigsisnissi]

Learning to love in a healthy way. One that’s not rooted in neediness or emptiness or manipulation. We are taught that love has to have conditions. I’m realizing love isn’t about conditions, it’s about boundaries. That there are different ways to love a person fully but still recognize that their inability to accept my love means i have to have parameters for that love. I can love someone and pray for them, and have no communication with them. I can love a person and be kind to them, while understanding they cannot love me back like i love them, and create that boundary to prevent myself from getting too close to that person because not everyone is privileged to have that kind of Intimacy with me.

[bronzyglow]

need to come to terms with the fact that not everyone is made for you. everyone who comes into your life will not be permanent and you can’t spend your time feeling sorry about it, it’s just the way it goes. accept the lessons people teach you and thank the universe for the time you got to spend with them. release negative emotions, wish everyone well and keep your heart open for the next.

[prehyped]

If there’s anything in the last year that I’ve learned, this is the most important of all. And to be honest, I mostly mean it in the context of friendship. With divorce, you have a demarcation, a definitive end of a type of relationship, and there’s somewhat of a roadmap in terms of navigating that end. Most other kinds of relationships have more confusing ends -- the blowup fight, the slow fade, the sudden disappearance -- and so we grapple with those ends more. There will be a few people around when we die, but longevity isn’t what makes a relationship valid. Some of those connections are for a night, a week, a vacation, a class, a job, a mutual interest, a proximity, love that burns until it burns out, love that stays bright. And they all mean something, and can mean something truly wonderful. It’s a better world when I see it as enjoying what I have, while I have it, rather that fretting over the time when I won’t. Because that’s likely. Bask in the sun before its inevitable setting; you’ll be warmer for it.

[antigonick]

Pauline, what are your thoughts on being single? Do you ever yearn for a romantic companion? I've been single for two years now and I've been too cynical and disenchanted that it almost seems impossible to even venture out. I acknowledge there isn't a dire need for another person in my life, but it gets so incredibly lonely at times that I can't help myself. What do you do in times like these?

Mmh. First things first, I have grown very sure, these past few years, of my goals, my identity in life, and my expectations and desires when it comes to love. This makes me both very cynical and very idealistic; absolutely unforgiving and unwavering. And then, I’ve had my fair share of sad, if not threatening encounters; trust is an issue now.

This basically means that I consider futile the relationships that come from a desire of being loved, of being desired, of being reassured; I’m not interested in purely physical relationships; if that sometimes triggers loneliness, both physical and spiritual, I just rationalise. No flip-flopping. I’ve made a choice: I know that in my right mind, I would despise myself for allowing myself to invent, push, hunt intimacy. If I’m tempted to do so, I know it’s a passing weakness; a chink in my principles; something that stems from me and can stay within me, a fleeting notion that love or sex would help me love myself, validate myself, help me feel or be more important than I am now. All delusions. 

I am very clear with myself: love as we know it will never be a priority for me. I don’t believe in serial relationships, I don’t believe in pushing and thrashing and putting all your strength in a relationship although it has never worked, I don’t believe in emotional logorrhea, and I’m not interested in sex for its own sake, but rather as a (instinctive, imperious, although vain) attempt to pursue the human need for fusion that comes with feelings of love, trust, admiration, yearning, or avidity —the lover wants to melt with the beloved. Rationalising looks like this in my little brain: if there is no actual beloved right now, what’s the fucking point?

Of course this is only myself. I understand that this doesn’t apply for everyone, and most likely not for you.

Putting time, energy, effort in a bond that hasn’t come naturally, from friendship, certitude, that doesn’t feel familiar and tranquil and safe doesn’t interest me. Love as I see it could become a priority; I haven’t encountered it, though, and potentially will not. 

Bottom line though: there is no hierarchy in the bonds you create, although they have told you otherwise. Love is romanticised to the extreme, but there’s so much happiness to be found in friendship, in your relationship with yourself, in those lightning-quick encounters with people that make you laugh, share your ideas; those in-between relationships that you couldn’t define but are born of true familiarity. Cherish those as well, think it over; loneliness should recede, because there is no loneliness.

[prehyped]

So I feel some of this. Not all of this. I think there’s value in exploration -- I think it’s OK to feel out how you feel. I used to be such a harsh judge of my motives, so set in ideas of Who I Was and Who I Should Be. I give myself a lot more freedom now, and I’ve grown from it. And that applies to everything. There are two ways to go when you suffer from heartbreak: you let the heart harden and close it off, or you let the fullness of life in to begin to patch things together. I’ve done the latter, and I’m better for it. I can’t say it’s all been smooth, or without its mistakes. But every relationship in my life feels deeper. The fleeting physical encounters have their place too. There’s something special to every part of this new puzzle -- special in exploring the richness of what life has offer, what people have to offer, what love and sex and friendship and this interweaving web of connections has to offer.