#fearing change

[creativelifebynherie]

When change has historically been or felt forced, it's understandable why all change then feels exactly the same. I think leading your own change is what makes the difference. It'll still feel a little uncomfortable but that discomfort will be short lived. Are you leading in your change? Fearing change? Or feeling forced into change?

[mrkmciver]

# 5 Things To Quit

[lovesquotes333]

[wordsphraseslife]

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Who the fuck broke the Girl Scouts?

Day 119 – by PhotoKat

So I have email from my niece, (or at least a server somewhere pretending to be her and sending me a nice form letter) asking me to help her girl scout troop by buying nuts or magazines…

Ummm… what the fuck? Magazines? Nuts? Where the fuck are the cookies?

I may not know much about this world, but there are some simple truths that I rely on in order to get through this thing that I call life:

Water is wet

Fire is hot

Gravity pulls downward

The Boy Scouts exist for the sole purpose of discriminating against homosexual boys while at the same time indoctrinating heterosexual ones into a variety of thinly veiled homosexual rituals

The Girl Scouts exist for the sole purpose of providing me with Thin Mints, Do-si-dos, Tagalongs and Trefoils and therefore keeping me off the crack pipe.

That’s it. That’s how the world works. I don’t need a subscription to Family Circle or Teen Vogue. I sure as fuck don’t need a bag of pistachios. What I need is a box of Do-si-dos. Look at me. I’m clearly unstable. A Thin Mint or two may be the only thing keeping me from blowing some guy in the alley by my house for an eight ball cut with baking soda. See what you’ve done, Girl Scouts? See what has become of me?

By the way, the picture that accompanies this post is not my niece at all. I don’t have a picture of her selling Girl Scout cookies. Instead it is my good friend PhotoKat, because I’ve always loved that picture and because as creepy as I may be, I’d totally rather stare at Kat’s legs than my seven year old niece’s. See, even I have standards!

Sarah Presogna liked this post

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Who the fuck broke the Girl Scouts? was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

[lilysprite]

Sometimes--rarely--I wish I was still fifteen years old

Fifteen was a fairly monumental year for me.

It started loudly, with a one-day rock concert known as HFStival, in Baltimore, Maryland. My dad insisted on attending with me, the chaperone of my group of friends who retained a minute cool factor through the guise of 'actually wanting to see the music.' Fair enough, my dad did buy The Eminem Show when it came out--for himself--so it was believable.

My friends and I walked around the stadium, young, curious, me nervous. Sarah, with her thick busy hair tied back in a bun, was shouting to the folk around us 'It's her birthday today! It's her birthday!' arms gesticulating vaguely in my direction. A group of three presumably twenty-somethings approached us, one saying 'It's his birthday, too!'

The birthday boy grabbed my hand and started shaking it vigorously. 'Look how many came out for our party!' he said. 'Twenty thousand!' He shook my hand for about a minute more then the obvious age gap fizzles the conversation and we fissioned apart.

The rest of the day was sonic envelopment. I didn't know to dance, but I tried. I ended up crowd surfing and lost my phone. My dad got a call from it, the voice on the other end of the line trying to sound young, 'Daaaad?' it asked.

'I know you aren't my daughter,' he said. 'She's here with me.'

After being offered the opportunity to retrieve the phone at a bar downtown, for ransom, we decide dto head home. Sarah got a call from home, saying they've been prank dialed. I mentally listed the number of friends' house numbers I have in my phone, cringed at the idea of getting them in trouble. I loved rock music, but I was still a goody-goody.

About a month later, I met the boy who would become my first boyfriend--Craig Hollander. He was seventeen. It was the start of summer. My ninth grade symphonic band class joined that grades ten through twelve to create a sound to fill a stadium for the high school graduation. We played through a cheek-wrenching amount of Pomp & Circumstance, me groaning into my clarinet at how long the recessional takes.

Craig and I were introduced on the bus ride home by a mutual friend. He didn;t say anything to me but 'hi,' but later told me that he'd asked to be introduced because he'd 'seen me across the room and thought I was beautiful.' Two days after we first met, Craig became my first kiss. We were lying on the guest bed downstairs in my house, him holding me in a position that gives me neck cramps. I didn't move because I was afraid no one will ever hold me like that again if I do. His tongue was gentle and soft when it parted my lips; I fought the urge to pull away. He pulls back, smiling.

'Was I bad?' I asked. 'No,' he said. 'Why?' 'You're my first kiss,' I said. Craig bug-eyed a bit but kissed me again.

A week later, he was my boyfriend. Friends of his were saying that it's cute that he's my first kiss, that it would be so funny if he ends up being my first ev-ry-thiiing.

'Not unless we're dating for like two years,' I retorted.

The year I turned fifteen, two of my mom's best friends; one two months before my birthday, one a few weeks after. She spent the whole summer in bed, oblivious to my quickly de-magnetizing moral compass. I had no job because I still earned an allowance; my only obligation was summer crew in the mornings. Craig is reckless. He has a big scar on his elbow from skitching behind a delivery truck. I watched him ride an abandoned chair down the biggest hill on my neighborhood on two skateboards. I smoked weed with Craig behind the First Baptist Church near his house. I started sneaking out of my house, going to parties, got drunk for the first time. I started trying to be 'cool.'

Craig broke up with me once during the summer--three weeks after we started dating--and I cried for two days before flushing a bracelet he'd given me down the toilet like a dead fish. The breakup was short lived; he came crying back to me a few days later. Summer ended before I knew it and I had to resume the responsibilities known as 'homework' and 'attendance.' I did surprisingly well re-acclimating until I decided to lose my virginity to Craig. 'Making love,' we called it. It lasted maybe forty-five seconds with a Trojan 'Extended Pleasure' condom. He broke up with me later that night, because I'd told my mom. I was a red-eyed zombie for the next week, moving from bed only to attend school and getting passes from teachers on homework assignments because of my visibly distraught demeanor.

I cut myself for the first time. My dad was teaching me how to drive in the parking lot behind a Target and saw the scabs, in the shape of the phrase 'I HATE ME,' when I pushed up my sleeve. I had been focusing on putting on my right turn signal instead. I got caught smoking pot with my best friend Niara, ended up seeing a therapist, went long enough to appease my parents. Niara and I decided that our town was poison, that we wanted out as soon as possible. We had self-photoshoots, screaming 'FUCK VA' with our stiff fingers. We screamed along to Against Me! and Billy Talent, convinced that the only outlet for our teen angst was angry music. Niara made plans to move to Florida, I made moves to graduate a year early.

...and that was only the first half of the year. Craig and I did get back together about a month after the first fuck and managed to actually stick; my mom let me get on birth control just before my sixteenth birthday. I finished the school year with a 4.0 GPA and started the summer English course that would allow me to have enough credits to graduate the following year. I had the whole world ahead of me--all I had to do was run into it.

So yeah, fifteen was anything but easy. It was really the year I shifted my trajectory to point me in the direction of where I am now: in twelve short months, I went from being an innocent to a semi-bad girl with an overachiever façade. I hated my body a lot of the time, was gullible as fuck, was still subject to the whims of my parents. But I was racking up mostly good karma; I knew what I wanted, but I thought about how it would effect others. I didn't just think screaming along to a good rock song could solve all my problems, I knew it would. I might have started trying to be 'cool,' but I was still die-hard reliable. In any situation, I knew who I was. And I knew that person was good.

Now, I'm not so sure. My lack of full time employment is no longer freedom, it's condemnation. I use white lies and sometimes regular ones to make situations easier. I am selfish, only occasionally responsible. I feel less in-control now than I have in years, I feel less, in general. I have two degrees and no idea what I want to do with them. I'm being pulled in so many different directions that I keep spinning in circles trying to keep up with the trajectories and am falling down with dizziness. Forget the de-magnetization of my moral compass; now my desire compass is broken. There are so many things I wanted to be by now that I'm no more closer to than I was seven years ago, and now I just don't care.

So, yeah. Sometimes--rarely--I wish I was still fifteen years old.