Year: 2017

Monthly Madness

mariethearistocatLeave a comment

Periods. Otherwise known as menstruation. Otherwise known as the precursor to pregnancy, that time of the month, the curse, the monthlies, shark week, and the list goes on. Yet, with its many names, society seems to forget about this natural way of life. The fact that 49.6% of the world experiences this process at one time or another would make it seem that the conversation surrounding it would be frequent and healthy, but no.

Anyone born with a uterus has heard the first period stories. I remember before I got mine, I heard about my mother’s. She hid her underwear and would sit crying in her room because she didn’t want to tell her parents that she was dying. Think about that for a moment. Albeit, sexual education has progressed since my mother was a teenager, but the lack of information about periods is still very much an issue. I don’t remember any information about periods except a movie in fifth grade titled Just Around the Corner and a brief lesson about it in freshman year. I don’t remember learning what pads to get, if tampons are right for me, how to handle cramps, how to predict/learn about my cycle, and many other questions that I still have today.

Photo Credit: huffingtonpost.com

“Most girls learn about their periods the day their periods start,” says Chandra-Mouli, a member of the World Health Orginization. He describes the all too popular story that usually goes like: “I started having periods at school. Spotting on my clothes. Giggling in class. I didn’t know what was happening. My panties felt wet. My teacher made me wait in the staff room. I thought my insides were rotting. My mother came and wrapped me in a towel, took me home, put me in a bath and said, ‘You’re a woman now. Don’t go out and play with the boys.’”

That lack of education is even worse in many other countries. Periods are seen as a curse; women are shunned from public life and aren’t allowed to cook, clean, or learn. It’s also immensely harder to get proper sanitary items and unhealthy options are almost always used. Did you know that 10% of girls in Africa miss out on school because of their period each month or that 4/5 girls in East Africa lack the access to basic sanitary supplies? Why are we letting these young, impressionable girls internalize these gross views of their bodies? In order to help the ever-growing future, we need to help young women all over the world to feel no shame about their bodies.

I think that the first step to getting rid of social stigma is education. Teach boys how to pick out period products for their sisters/mothers/ girlfriends and how to be supportive to these women in their lives. Teach kids that there are transgender kids who either do or don’t have periods and it kills them on the inside. Show us pad ads where the coverage simulation uses red ink instead of blue. Teach girls how to feel confident on their period and how to handle this intense shift in hormones. Open up this conversation in class or at meals. Yes, it may be uncomfortable, but if it could help one more person not stain their clothes or miss another class, then, in my opinion, it’s worth it.

Warmth of the Cold

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I love fall. The sheer aesthetic of sitting by a window with warm glowing string lights, drinking some sort of hot tea, surrounded with the smell of books. The fact that it is finally cold enough to be wearing wool socks and sweatshirts. The feeling of cold air filling your chest from the inside, making your home feel so much warmer.

I have to admit, I miss the cold winters back home in Germany. Right now, it is almost freezing there, the leaves that are turning red-orange, some almost pink-purple, are covering the roads like a warm-colored blanket. The lakes are topped with a paper thin layer of ice in the morning, and windows and cars are frosted the way they would be in movies. Horses’ coats are becoming thick and soft, and cows are being brought from their pastures back into their winter barns.

Credit: view.stern.de

I remember how much I hated the feeling of biking up the hill to my house after school, watching the clouds turn to a darker grey as the sun set behind them, and feeling the warm air in my lungs being replaced by the cold, making my throat hurt by the time I got back home. But I always loved the moment I walked through the door, embraced by my jumping dog and the heated floor, maybe even a fire in the chimney. The best days were the rainy ones. Your house just feels so much cozier when you don’t want to go outside.

 

Credit: moondog.de

I miss that weather. I miss the grey skies and the rain-soaked lawns. I miss the muddy roads and paths going through the forest by my house. I miss collecting chestnuts with my friends and cooking them with their whole family. I miss being freezing cold with numb fingers and an icy nose. I miss how later in the winter the trees would look like they had been covered in powdered sugar, reflecting the grey-purple of the afternoon sky.

I miss my home.

And no matter where I’ll live throughout my life, no matter how many times I’ll move and find new homes, that will always be my first home. My family’s home. My real home.

I’m Sure As Hell The Happiest I’ve Ever Been

maydaygaskarthLeave a comment

I never really knew what true happiness was until July 7th, 2017. Sure, I’ve been happy before. I smile, I laugh, but never have I experienced a day where pure happiness radiated through the whole room and it was so contagious that it made me happy also. I’ve never genuinely and truly experienced happiness without something in the back of my head keeping me upset, but July 7th was a different night. Ironically, the room full of these positive souls are also people dealing with their own battles every day, including myself. I may not know what those battles were for them, but everyone left those worries outside the room and didn’t let it affect them for the rest of the night.

It’s not what made this the happiest night of my life, but who made it the best night I’ve ever experienced. I got to meet my favorite band, All Time Low, for the first time ever. I remember when I got the email saying that I was selected to be one of the thirty people to meet them for free. My hands were shaking with excitement. I can’t even remember if I started crying, but if I did they were probably tears of happiness.

I obsess over lots of things. Pretty much the only things I ever talk about are every single TV show on the planet, how Jack Dawson should’ve lived, and All Time Low. So, when I had the opportunity to stand center barricade in front of my favorite band belting out the lyrics to my favorite songs while surrounded by the most amazing people, I was truly content.

The image of meeting All Time Low is still clear in my head. Taking my first steps towards them, Jack Barakat, my favorite band member, was already walking towards me with arms wide open before pulling me into a bear hug. Every single one of them did this. They didn’t have to, but they do anyways.

Photo Credit: Live Nation

They meet hundreds of fans every day, yet when I went into that room it seemed like I was the only one they knew, and obviously that’s not true, but they had this crazy ability to make every single fan feel like they were singing to them, talking to them, or looking at them.

I’ve never seen a band care so much for their fans. At my concert, they stopped their set twice because they were worried about these girls who passed out in the middle of the crowd. Afterwards, they made everyone clear their path to get these girls out safely. They invite their fans up on stage to dance and sing with them at every concert. They created a whole music video Skyping their fans and thanking them for being the reason for their success, though the fans were really thanking the band for caring enough to have a personal conversation with their fans. The song itself , Missing You, was dedicated to every single one of their fans begging for them to stay alive, and it’s still one of the most emotional songs I know to this day.

It’s not just the band, but it’s the community the band has made that is so amazing. I’m not outgoing, at all, but while I was standing in line to meet them, I ended up talking randomly to these two girls. I knew nothing about them, but by the end of the night we were talking about our pasts and our passions after already standing next to each other at the barricade singing at the top of our lungs to Therapy even though everyone was crying on each other at that point. I still keep in contact with them, and I still talk to the girls I met all the way in 2015 through twitter talking about this band.

To this day, July 7th was still the best day of my life.

To this day, since 5th grade, All Time Low has always been my favorite band.

To this day, from watching their cringe worthy yet hilarious interviews and videos from 2005 to their extremely inappropriate jokes they make on concert, they have never failed to make me laugh my ass off.

To this day, I still listen to their songs whenever I have a bad day, and they still manage to make me smile like I did that night.

Photo Credit: The Aquarian Weekly

Don’t hug me. I’m scared

localdreamerwithapenLeave a comment

A couple days ago, one of my friends introduced me to the youtube series “Don’t Hug me. I’m scared.” Before she played it, she told me it was gonna be pretty weird and messed up. I have to admit, she was definitely right about that.

It starts out looking like a children’s TV show. Strange puppets in bright colors in a room made of felt and fabric, all in a Sesame Street kind of style.

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Credit: images.genius.com

Every episode follows the same pattern. It starts out somewhat normal, then a song begins to play. Each song addresses a subject that is important in today’s society. There is one about being creative, one about time and aging being unstoppable, about love, technology, health, and one about dreams.

Those don’t sound weird at all, do they? Well, just wait.

Because as the video goes on, the song becomes stranger and darker and more twisted, with loud noises and abrupt animations and a surprising amount of blood and death.

Honestly, I don’t even know why I started watching it in the first place. However, I was actually quite impressed by the deeper meaning of the show. Don’t get me wrong, it is creepy and messed up in so many ways. But I like the way it addresses things such as the brainwashing by mass media.

The way that all the “harmless” things and characters in the videos turn into literal nightmares- consuming your entire life, the way the characters get trapped inside a computer- and killed when they try to escape, or how you can only be accepted by people around you by joining the cult of love perfectly captures certain things that are wrong with our world and society, in an extremely twisted but ironic manner.

I don’t necessarily recommend anyone to watch this show, since I’m not really sure if it was or wasn’t a complete waste of time, or if the producers actually meant to be that deep. But in case you are looking for a great way to waste time, just watch it! It is definitely unique.

The Deadly Truth About Love

maydaygaskarthLeave a comment

I’m not necessarily a person who trusts easily. It takes me a long time to open up to someone, to let them know what goes through my mind or what makes me tick, what makes me happy or sad. But somehow, I manage to put all my trust into a creature who could kill me if they truly wanted to.

I don’t consider myself a daredevil. In fact, I have irrational fears of even the smallest spiders in my room. People question how I manage to be brave enough to get on a 1500 pound horse and ride around an arena galloping over jumps with no anxiety, and honestly I don’t know. The sport is dangerous. Just last year, my roommate had broken her back falling off a horse, and I’ve been close to falling onto a boulder when my horse bucked me out of the dressage arena.

Even then, this didn’t phase me at all. I brushed off the dust, laughed it off, and got back on with no problems. My trust with my horse was still secure even though my luck could’ve been way worse.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

For the past year, since my back surgery, I was constantly warned that one wrong fall would potentially break my back and leave me hospitalized for weeks with the chance I wouldn’t be allowed to ride for a long time.

But I still took the risk, and it’s because my love for the sport was stronger than my fear of pain and injury. Every day I still ride, and every day the fact that horseback riding is considered one of the most dangerous sports in the world barely passes through my mind as I work with my horse.

But that’s the thing about anything everyone loves. Everything is deadly to us in some way and form, and that same exact thing gives some of us life. So horseback riding may be dangerous, but I feel like others can agree with me when I say a rider’s love for their horse is worth devoting their time and trust into these animals despite the threat that floats through the air every day someone steps into an arena.

Fair Harborside (3)

whynotstayinLeave a comment

Read Fair Harborside (1) and Fair Harborside (2)

Amelia was city-made and city-grown. From where she lived the city was just a writhing mass, gridded like a chessboard, and full of monotony. Her circuits were overstimulated. She was surrounded by wires, cords, and progress. She was living modernity and on clear days she could almost feel like a part of the masses, she could almost feel like she interacted with them. Almost.

Frank wandered the city, cataloguing every face and type like a child seeing the world for the first time, walking a new language, but the people seemed to pass by him – no, look through him, like he didn’t matter. In truth, he began to think, do they really matter to me? But as he took another sharp corner, his mind clipped the edge of the building and then lodging was on his mind. He was in the right district given the signs hanging above doors and out from awnings, but he soon found he barely had enough money to stay the week out. How strange that what had had so much value previously in his life was so empty and useless in exchange here in Harborside.

Amelia was coming down from the clouds about to face the world for the first time, naive and one of the richest and rarest people in the city, but equally mysterious. Her mind had yet to grasp value; everything to her was bought and categorized away into an advanced filing system of uses. 

Photo Credit: ashleyhooper3d.wordpress.com

The sky filtered into her windows, if she reached out, the clouds almost reached back, but who cared about clouds when she was going down to the ground.

From Amelia’s window far above Harborside its postcard appearance was breathtaking, heart-stopping from the aerial view, perfectly aligned like an OCD wet dream – but beyond the picture perfect Harborside was its dark truth, its fingers, its slums. Where the roads wended their way around makeshift homes, bodies being consumed by the cobbles of the city. The roads staggered like a drunk artist’s footsteps. The slums belied truth, the reality of the city for the majority. The true artists, the ultimate image of life, a slow burn out. The truth was, the city moved too quickly for anyone – even the top Moguls and Traders – to live contentedly, too fast for them to not eventually blend into the tapestry of time, of the city.

But while Amelia’s elevator sunk level by level, Frank’s feet were dragging him from job to job, ebbing closer and closer to that blight, the narrow streets, the moss, the dark sky, the forgotten, the true heart of the city. The cost of living had drained Frank, his week was up. Once a private person, he now broadcasted all he could, he needed all the help he could get. He dreamed of the past. When he was well off in the country, people tipped their hat to him, they knew his name, they cared. He dreamed of a city long past, just emerging from the harbor, crawling onto land like a new life form, full of opportunity and riches. His feet were carrying him further from the monoliths of global life. From the masses that thrived on standing out from the crowd, from the masses who had found what they sought, or at least the veneer of what they dreamed.

A Barbie doll

faithfulomnivoreLeave a comment

A Barbie doll is perfect:

you can see it all over her.

She has lots of friends, it seems.

the list of names grows each day.

Image Credit: Amazon.com

With every new season

comes a new friend for Barbie,

and also a new Barbie.

The old ones are packed away

and forgotten.

There are so many to choose from,

who should we play with today?

Barbie dolls aren’t just for girls,

the boys love her too.

A Barbie doll is fake.

Be careful, Barbie,

If you stretch yourself too thin,

you’ll break.

Barbie does everything, it seems;

she tries so hard to not try.

 

She spends hours

making herself look effortless.

But Barbie isn’t special.

There are millions of other Barbie dolls,

they could buy her anywhere.

But she’s still Barbie,

so they don’t mind.

Barbie sparkles when she walks.

But when you get to know her, after a while,

she gets boring.

A Barbie doll shouldn’t talk,

so why does she talk so much?

Too much talk is bad.

Trends are temporary.

Yours has come,

when will it be gone?

I used to love Barbie

when I was younger and naive.

Not anymore.

A Barbie doll is plastic:

you can see right through her.

where the heart is

mariethearistocatLeave a comment

it’s true what they say,

home is where the heart is.

my heart lies in a small piece

of california

where fire has burnt the once green shrubbery.

where the air is thick and sweet,

like a gooey piece of my aunt’s famous cheesecake.

where my body knows the winds

of my neighborhood’s roads,

like the lines on my palm.

Photo Credit: intercine.net

where my parents squabble over the air conditioning

because “it is way too hot in this car!”

where i can hear my dogs bark

from down the street

just like they can hear the rolling tires

of our mighty, little minivan

turning around the last corner.

where my bed is cool,

despite the melting heat outside.

home is coke on ice

and cereal boxes

spread across the countertops.

home is how i can walk into my room

and pick up a book i was reading before i left.

home is where i wake up from

my cat meowing outside my door.

but, i still know,

after all these months,

not to let him in

or he’ll be scratching at the door

to be let out in ten minutes.

home is my broken closet and messy garage.

but, when i move away for good,

home will be in the way

my parents stick their hands out the window

when we’re driving,

the way my dogs bark

more at paper in the wind

then people at the door.

it’ll be in the way my heart warms

when I see my city’s name pop up

on the freeway

and all the times

i’ve laughed at dad jokes

and silly faces.

for my home is in the smiles

and eyes

and teeth

and hair

and hands

and paws

and hearts of those

whom i love the most.

All My Fault

rufusdespacitoLeave a comment

All I can think is it’s my fault.

The heart beating as one, eyes seeing as one, love and devotion for the sport and for each other connecting as one, but all of this is leaving, disappearing when all I can think when I’m lying alone, is that it is my fault.

I can hear the hooves beating maybe way up above me but that is not where they are supposed to be, that is not where she is supposed to be, she is supposed to be next to me, down here, in my arms, not up there in the heaven, away from me and my life but as I’m drifting away in my emotions all I can think is it is my fault.

Even with all the people dying, and the children crying, and the murders, shootings, and the bombings happening in the world, all I can think is that it is my fault.

The disease creeps up on her like a kidnapper sneaks up on his kid, the beautiful angel, my best friend, all I can think is that it is my fault.

Maybe if I had checked her temperature again, or her nose, or her stomach it wouldn’t be my fault, but I didn’t; I left in a hurry, not thinking about the consequences, not thinking about what my life was for six years; not thinking at all, and I was the last person to ride her, to see her, before my trainer came, the vet came, and all the sirens and gunshots and noise in the world froze, and time came to a stop, the world stopped its rotation, the crickets froze their legs, my heart took its final beat before I was told the news… My mom spoke very slow but the words crept up to me, I tried to bat them away but they fought back throwing me against the wall forcing me to listen to what I thought was the impossible, I kicked and I screamed and I thrust myself away from the inevitable but the words felt like ice against my heart, “she’s sick,” she says and from then on the only thing that matters, the only thing that is keeping me up at night, and keeps my heart racing is that it is my fault.

And if this truly is the end, I know I need to be by her side, away from the noise and the chaos, and everything else because she is what matters, my best friend, the only one that would listen, who I can talk endlessly to, I can trust with my life and darkest secrets, because even when the clocks stop turning and the world stops moving, and the sun stops shining, and the birds stop chirping, and the people stop talking, and the hearts stop beating, and the voices quiet, and the earth fades away, admitting the darkening, skin crawling silence, it will still be my fault.

 

Prisma<3 From: sanaapharayrastables.com

 

Fair Harborside (2)

whynotstayinLeave a comment

Read Part 1 here

Below Amelia and beyond the borders of her glass and marble version of the city, the eyes of the workers were cast in coal and ash. Those of the slums were fading out of being, becoming just blurs, wisps of subconscious, hollow. They were being emptied of dreams, emptied of light, emptied of value. They looked – with light-burned, cataracted eyes, weary and broken from too many hours in front of a forge – toward the city they had dreamed of, the one they believed in, the one they were now part of, the one now using them as a whetstone to hone itself upon. They looked upon a city alien and yet familiar; one that shared the same name, shared a people, but was separated by a wall of prosperity, an insurmountable barrier of capital value.

Rising above Frank was the very tangible feeling of success and dreams realized. Above him – wrapped in their own private worlds, curtained off from each other – lay the world of Traders and Merchants and Moguls. There was no lost space, everything was worked to perfection, commodified and able to be owned. People had become slaves to their Ikea nesting instinct, they simply filled the space given, even the ultimate consumers did not own their space. The streets were wide and clear, everything at a crisp ironed angle, a city of well pressed pants. Those who walked them did not know each other beyond image: a Trader by the scale lapel pin, an Artist by the garish socks, an Economist by the gloves, a Mogul by the hat. On the great rising monoliths movies and media played, any new information came from those gargantuan marble monoliths. The world beyond Harborside was found in those rising towers of media.

But in the slums – from the roofs of their squat and makeshift shanties – the workers could just glimpse the edges of media. Their world was full of cracked screens and secondhand news. People were cramped, the heartbeat of one encroached on the next. The global world had all but disappeared to them, where they had come from was being wrung from them as they became just another road stone in the city. The cultural identities they had brought with them, had created neighborhoods around, had found their first jobs with were bleeding away. They were becoming the masses of the city, overwhelmed by the need for money, the vast cost of living had ensnared them, had separated them and pinned them by the wings. 

Photo Credit: pinterest.com

But the global world existed only in the harbor with the monoliths of media, with the bustle of trade, it was rich and thriving in the harbor. Money was not lacking, it seemed as if the less work one did the more money filled their coffers.

Frank was well off for a country boy, so when he docked in the sand of the fish market – the only place his little decrepit rented dinghy could -he was sure he could do anything he could possibly hope for. As he jumped from the boat he sunk to the knee into rotting, bloated, sun-blistered fish waste. His nose crinkled, What a welcome. He trudged upward into the city, tapping his breast pocket with a light rhythm. As he reached the paving stones his tapping ceased, he could not crane his head far enough, the city just kept going. The longer he stared the more his past months at sea ebbed away with the tide; his past was being drowned out by the sounds, the smells, and the people. The city was made of individuals from the ground, Frank was just another one of them, just another in a sea of people striving to flourish as themselves, he was just dressed a little more shabbily, a little more wide eyed, a little more idealistic, he was just a little bit poorer, he was just woefully unprepared. So he set out to wander the city, to find himself, or lose himself.