Lyrically Speaking

“Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.” - J.K Rowling  An Open Letter to my Doctor, Dude, I don’t need an appetite suppressant, I need to make better choices when I eat food and eat them regularly. Instead of looking at me as a fat person, let’s take out the FAT part and you can just look at me as a person . Maybe we could Discuss what my diet consists of. You’ll see that my main issue is that I don’t eat breakfast, rarely eat lunch and snack on small stupid things and clearly I know this, I need better tools to help change this.  If you actually talked to me like you might with someone who was not a FAT person and just a person in your eyes, you would probably know that my diet has been shit since I was a kid. When your foundation was mac and cheese, hot dogs and ramen consistently – you know those t...

Let’s talk about guns, specifically how when I was crossing the border using my Uncle’s truck when I went to Canada last week and my fear that I was going to be labeled a terrorist. Or a drug pusher. Sex trafficker or single white female... Whatever! Something awful. Yes, I said it.  Me, a white girl.  The biggest terrorist in this world are white people. And yet they are the ones who get passes and labeled “mentally ill” instead of what they actually are. That is an overly opinionated in a political opinion/statement. Anyway, I went to meet a friend I had met while living in Michigan in Canada the Sunday before I left, I was using my uncles truck as I said and my uncle is a redneck in every sense of the word. He grew up in backwoods Kentucky and has a collection of guns that he couldn’t possible ever use all of to defend himself. But don’t take his guns. (Side note, watch this video , it is hilarious.)  Getting into Canada was relatively easy, Canadi...

" It remains a radical act to be fat and happy in America…Being publicly fat and happy is hard; being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery. "– Melissa McEwan   I am getting ready to go visit my Aunt in metro Detroit for the Thanksgiving Holiday. I am flying and it’s not the flying part that gives me a panic attack. It’s the flying while fat part that really throws me off. Once I am seated and in the air, all is well. But the days prior to departure I spend an unhealthy amount of time trying to figure out how to reduce myself. Me in High School (Senior year?) with friends. I have always been fat, so I have never known a life other than an overweight life. I have been picked on, ridiculed, subject to prejudice and judgement merely for existing.  I know that I have broached this subject before when I discussed the Dim wit who thought that I should be considered attractive simply because he was not attracted to me. But I b...

"We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity."   - Desmond Tutu Cliff walk at the Pourville Claude Monet I often look at people and see an animal that they remind me of. It’s not always physical features, but also their personality and mannerisms. While discussing this older gentlemen in our office my co-worker made a comment about how if he were a painting he would be a painting of an office with browns and blacks. Leather-worn furniture, with a single cigarette burning in an ashtray. The line of smoke making its way up the middle of the painting with a single malt on the rocks glass on the table next it.  It got me thinking that what if we looked at everyone as if they were paintings or art? What would we see? What kind of painting would we assign to our selves? Would be something in nature? Or a figure in a room?  As I look at others and then to myself I find it hard to nail down one specific painting that really symbolizes who I am. ...

All nieces are brilliant and beautiful and obviously take after their Aunt. - Unknown My Sister is so crafty, she made a baby. From scratch. When I found out my sister was pregnant it brought on so many feelings of excitement. And I hoped so very much for a niece. I’d already obtained (not be questionable means) two nephews who I do adore, but my life was missing a little girl. I wanted to share the same love that my aunt gave my sister and I with a niece of my own. Of course, I love my nephews just the same and I make sure to spend as much time with them as possible so that when they look back, they can know the love I have felt from my own aunt. And lucky Surprise! It’s a girl. My heart soared with excitement and possibility.  When Aria was born, I had a hard time concentrating at work because I was so excited to meet her, it was my 3rd day on the job. But the true magic happened when I saw my sister holding my new niece. I saw the love and the exhaustion. I saw the ...

“If you are an adult, and you are planning to dress up on Halloween...don't. I will find you. I will hurt you.” – Lewis Black I’m generally pretty anti-holiday for the most part. It’s not that I want them to go away or that I despise them. It’s really that holidays have always been anxiety induced cluster-fucks for me. I love the idea of Christmas and Thanksgiving, not so much actually having to deal with them. Halloween though, I haven’t liked in years. And it is a general despise kind-of-thing. My entire feelings about Halloween are beautifully summed up by Lewis black in this audio bit that can be found here . I just find Adults who turn into Halloween-excited-morons to be… hard to handle. It strikes a nerve I can’t even possibly begin to describe. I of course used to find excitement about Halloween and the mounds of candy I could eat and dressing up was pretty good too. (For another funny bit about Halloween click here  because Jerry Seinfeld is pretty brillian...

Central Park, NYC JC Photography I have spent my entire life trying to escape Arizona. Running from everything that this state became to me. A trap. A nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. A constant reminder of all the things I had done wrong. Arizona was my emotional hell. When I was 18 I moved to Illinois to live with my aunt in search of a better future. I needed to pull myself from the tragedy that was the life I had become accustom to in Tucson. I was a high school dropout and suffering from extreme depression. I thought the change of scenery would be good and I could reinvent myself.  I survived 6 months before the loneliness took over and I couldn’t stand living so far from my friends and family. I moved back to Illinois with a GED. So I had made some progress. When I was 20 some friends and I decided that we should move to Las Vegas. I didn’t care where I moved as long as I wasn’t living in Arizona. I sold all of my things and left with my cat and a few pers...

"Women say their number one fear of online dating is the guy will be a serial killer. Men say their number one fear is the woman will be fat." So yeah, I use an online dating app/website because I go to work, I come home, I go to class. Rinse. Repeat. There doesn’t seem to be the time or the friend/family connection to more people that there could be for other people.  And I am at that point where I kind of wish I could get an arranged marriage. Not that I am in any hurry to get married. But more so that I am in a hurry to not be alone. I need someone to adventure with me. Companionship really. A while ago there was a video experiment that this group did where they showed a hot girl dressed in a “Fat Suit” and how guys responded when they met in person.  You can view that video here .  Then of course they did the reverse where they showed a man in a fat suit and the response from women. You can see that video here . The results are saddening.  I am fat so ...

The face I still make when I am mad. When I was younger, my mother was my world. She was the person I thought could do no wrong. I saw the drugs, the alcohol, and the absences for days at a time. I did not register them as faults but personality traits. They were who she was. They were not bad. Nothing she did was bad. I had this rose-colored image of her that I wasn’t able to shake until around age twenty. For twenty years I watched and allowed my heart to be let down time and time again just waiting for the moment when I would finally have a mother. Like a puppy, waiting by the door I diligently sat craving her love and attention. If that was just part of who she was, why did I have to feel so empty on nights when she was gone? To say I have abandonment issues would be an understatement. Last week, my mother was arrested. When my brother told me the news, I stared blankly for a moment. I did not ask why. My brain automatically assigned my feelings to resignation and lack...

I am a sucker for a good melody, a piano and catchy lyrics. I ’m also a sucker for songs with my name in them. I suppose this is why pop songs can get under my skin and make me groove before I know it. I can’t say I love everything the music industry churns out – Jonas Brothers, Justin Beib – but as I see teenage girls swoon, I can relate to what I used to feel so long ago, the young naive passion for something that seems so tangible and yet such a silly fantasy. Vanessa Carlton ’s song  White Houses  is just one of those songs that has always been a favorite of mine. In my mind I see memories of my life swirled into the lyrics like a movie playing. “Love or something ignites in my veins and I pray it never fades” Emotionally, I’m a sucker for memories and the past. I find comfort in the history of others and my lives. And maybe it’s sick that I replay the past for the good things and the bad. When I moved to New Jersey my aunt sent with some of my other stuff a Trunk ...

Burned Out Hearts JC Photography Detroit, Michigan When I drove my first Jetta, I began seeing them everywhere. When I bought my Jetta, it was multiplied. As if to say, "Hey, you're the same as me!" When I fell in love for the first time, I saw his name in everything that I did. I picked it out in street signs and clouds. I saw it in storefronts and movie credits. When I moved away from Arizona almost 7 years ago.. I saw Arizona plates everywhere. And then again when I moved from New Jersey to Michigan. My eyes zeroed in on those yellow Garden State plates. It didn’t stop there, When I left Michigan, it happened again. I easily find these things among the sea of Arizona plates. Michigan, New Jersey, & David. They flutter into my line of sight then seep into my memories and cloud my brain with Reflections in my Utopia JC Photography Tucson, Arizona a yearning and lust for the pieces of my heart that these people and places have. I remember laying wi...

When I was younger, around 11 or 12-years-old one of my mother’s friends husband pointed a gun at me and his nine-year-old son because the son had failed to do something impossible that was requested by the quick to anger military man.   It terrified me. From this point, I feared guns and the people who carried them. This included cops. In effort to overcome my fear of guns, I pressed my uncle to take me out to a shooting range as he had grown up in the south and owning a gun to him, was like me owning hair ties. Turns out, I’ve got great aim. I was able to overcome this fear of guns and understand that not everyone is bad, and some people are responsible.   So lets talk about recent headlines

The Ocean tried to kill me. When I was three-years-old I learned how to swim. And by learned how to swim, I mean my grandparents plucked the flotation devices that encased my arms from me and shoved me into the pool. I survived, though slightly water logged I managed to keep myself a float and from there it was smooth-ish sailing.   In my spare time I double as a mermaid, because of my obsession with water and swimming. Anytime the weather is warm enough or the pool is heated, I can be found soaking up the sun and submerged in a body of water (usually a pool.) This is truly my element. While I can swim, I am not a fast swimmer and 60% * of my ability to swim is due to my large mass and buoyancy. I always said it would be hard for me to drown because I am my own flotation device. Sunday proved me incredibly wrong. So very wrong. Not only did I find sand in places I would have never thought they could go, like my eyebrows guys. But I also managed to almost drown in a s...

The smoke billowed out the car window as I exhaled into the summer air. My hand absently and automatically reaches to change the channel on the radio. It’s hot and traffic seems to be coming to a halt in the distance. “Damn it.” I mutter to the vacant seats in the car. Work was long, and the amount of people calling about insurance and securities online courses who can’t use a computer is painstaking. Numbers are not case sensitive and I can’t believe I had to explain that to someone over the phone. I’m frustrated and I’m anxious. Anxious to get to class before others to carefully select the seat that I will intentionally hoard as mine, glaring at anyone who dares to sit there through the semester. A creature of habit, my ability to thrive and focus is dependent upon selecting the right seat. I begin to rehearse again, the inevitable introduction that must be made, as it is in every class or new work environment. I feel like a member of Alcoholics Anonymous each time I introduce ...