relationships

Woah, When was the last time I stopped by?

Fired!

Anyway. Ended up moving in with an ex boyfriend turned roomate. Bad situation which I do not recomend. He was never even home at that. So I had the place mostly to myself.

Ladies. I cannot stress this enough. Every time someone tells you a story. (In this case about some insane violent tenancies) If during said story you think to yourself, "Man, I hope that never turns out to be me." Chances are that is your inner voice tell you to get the frick out.

So having a threat made on my life for no apparent reason by a man who's clearly off his rocker and I never really even wanted to date in the first place I got the heck out of there. I am now living with a butch lesbian who's so awesome I don't want her to move away when she might. Not having a terrible living situation is kind of new to me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself.

At Scarleteen I routinely hear from young women who are feeling insecure about their boyfriend's use of porn. For me, what stands out about these women is the pressure they feel to satisfy every one of their partners sexual needs. That pressure appears to be internal - their partners are described as quite comfortable with an independent sexuality, e.g. their use of porn and masturbation. I've always thought of these women as unnecessarily jealous, making a big deal out of something relatively minor. It's not like they were taking a feminist stand against porn -- they just didn't want their partners using it.

Today I worked a 9 hour shift at our local health food store. Tomorrow is Rosalynn's first birthday party at my sister's house and she would like us to be there by noon, for a party that's at 2 . Which means I will be getting up at 10, if the baby doesn't get up before then. I still have at least a cake to make, maybe two. Things to clean, diapers to wash and a baby to take care of. My boyfriend is busy sleeping.

Even with Nik not working (he lost his job), working part time and having a baby is a juggling act and a hard one. Partly because I am still expected to act like a stay at home mom, while at home, while I am also expected to act like an employee at work. In both cases I am thinking about other things, while in both environments. Both are causing me to space out completely. I almost charged someone $1,116.00, instead of $116.00 in groceries this morning. Oops. When I left I forgot to check my schedule for this up coming week, I hope I don't forget to call in and ask.

According to Broadsheet:

Rutgers researchers Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan surveyed 242 American undergraduates and 289 older adults and looked at men's and women's "perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction" (to quote the press release). And guess what they found? Women who said their guys had feminist beliefs had "healthier" relationships. Men who had feminist partners reported "more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction."

Yesterday I had the radio on while I was in the car waiting for my boyfriend to get some groceries for our 4th of July party. The DJ came on the radio and started talking about how more beer is consumed on the 4th of July then any other holiday. Instead of talking about the serious dangers of drinking, such as drinking and driving...this guy decided to make a joke about domestic violence. He said that in some state a woman was arrested for hitting her boyfriend in the head with a telephone after he had said the names of other women in his sleep. The DJ linked the two together by commenting that men should be careful where they fall asleep after becoming completely obliterated on the 4th of July. He then continued by saying how the guy had gotten really messed up, blood was coming out of his ear...on and on while LAUGHING.

I think I'm afraid to be single. That's a lot of my problem. I don't want to feel alone again. I'm afraid I'm not quite strong enough to not hurt myself without someone there to talk about it, someone who knows my secrets, my fears, and my triggers. And I don't know who else I can share that with.

Should I just give up?

It's so hard. I can't do it just yet. I'm ready mentally, but I'm not emotionally. Emotionally I'm still a mess.

I want to give up, I really do. But I can't. I don't want to go through anymore of this torture, but I can't stop the emotional anguish inside of me. I wonder if it's always like this, for everyone. Does every woman have this irrational fear of being alone? Is every woman afraid to be left by herself sometimes for fear of a breakdown? I am. I am afraid to be alone.

My boyfriend of fifteen months dropped a bombshell on me not too long ago. It's complicated, and deeply personal, but here's the gist of it.

TJ told me that he had fallen out of love with me. He still loves me, but he isn't "in love" with me. I hate that phrase. If you love someone, you love someone. But, apparently, combinations of miscommunication and mistakes on my part (mainly) and his led him to cheat on me.

Now, cheating is a strong word in this case. All that happened is that he got caught up in the moment and kissed on of his "girl friends." Just a little kiss, as far as I understand. He apparently told her that he wanted to leave me because he wasn't "in love" with me but he still loved me and didn't want to hurt me, and she in turn told a bunch of people that we were breaking up, which wasn't true.

One of my good friends has been dating this guy for five months. A few days ago (on their five month-iversary)the boyfriend was at a camping trip/party with some of his friends. He called my friend at around 10:30 that night. Everything in their conversation was going normally, and then he brought up something that had happened when they had just began dating. My friend had gotten drunk with a few close friends, and one of her friends took advantage of her. She can't remember what happened. He said something really nasty about that, and then said that all he had to do was wait until their six month-iversary, get her drunk, and rape her, getting her pregnant.

I wanted to write a post to explain why I've been so quiet and to explain what I've been struggling with, but I am too conflicted about the situation to even manage to put it into words.

My ex-boyfriend is re-entering my life, and though everyone I respect and whose judgement I trust is telling me that he's a Really Bad Idea, I'm finding that I am still in love with him.

I'm feeling like the lousiest feminist on earth right now. And no matter what I decide, I need to figure out how I can reconcile all of this inside of me.

I'm sorry.

Yesterday as I sat on the couch after work comforting my friend who was sobbing on my shoulder due to an arguement she had with her boyfriend and how she didnt know how to fix it, I started to think about the many times I have been in this situation, sometimes it was me there sobbing on someones shoulder. Most of the time it happened I found out later that the guy was just out having a beer and a good time while I was at home trying to make everything good and nice for if he came over after and I could fix the arguement. So I asked my friend why do we do this? We didn't really know the answer to that question so we blamed our parent's for 30 minutes and then we went out for a beer.

So, me and my now-ex broke up on the second. No big deal, we've both moved on-he has a new girl friend and I like someone else. But, I was in a bit of a bitter mood and wrote this:

They say love lasts forever,
I say it can last only a day.
They say love cannot be broken,
Mine was broken anyway.
They say love never dies,
I say any immortality is a lie.
They say love is filled with joy;
Funny how love hurts me so.

Love,
How I despise it.
Love,
How it pains me.
Love,
How it brings the strong to their knees.

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Just felt like posting some poetry. This seems like a suitable topic, and I thought you'd like it.

It’s a familiar story. Every couple weeks I find myself sitting in the living room of my apartment, with my three favorite girls in town, complaining about the men in our life as though we’re in an episode of Sex and The City. Sometimes we even turn on the dvd player and watch Sex and The City.

My friend E is getting married in May, to a guy she’s been dating for less than a year. I have no doubt that they love each other, but they are both depressive, he has been having other health problems and is in the middle of writing his dissertation. They are both trying to plan a wedding, but more importantly, fulfill their commitment to spend the rest of their lives together.

Last semester was full of stress and surprises for me, which is why I haven’t been around on the AGA so much. In addition to adjusting to being away at college and adjusting to being a transfer student at a school with a wildly different academic program, another big change for me was that I broke up with my girlfriend of two years, and shortly after that became involved with a man. Although I’d always been a bit uncomfortable with the “lesbian” label, I’d only ever dated women and never really anticipated getting seriously involved with a man. As a queer woman in an opposite-sex relationship, a lot of things came as a surprise to me, particularly how we’re perceived by people we don’t know.

Last night my boyfriend and I attended a holiday party that was being thrown by the company he works for. It was my first night out since having the baby. So like at most adult functions, one of the first questions people asked me was "So, what do YOU do?"...what I could I say... that I was a student, a graphic designer (that's what my boyfriend keeps calling me, but so far the only things I have 'graphically designed' have been ideas for political buttons), a knitwear designer, a blogger, an artist, or heck just admit I was unemployed? Instead I said words I never thought I would say, "Well I guess I'm a stay-at-home mom right now". Just writing these words make me cringe.

So, I've been trying to avoid saying anything anywhere until I know it's serious. Well, as of today-as of four hours ago, to be precise-I know it is. For just over a week now (maybe too early to tell sometimes, but this isn't one of those times) I've been going out with someone who was a very close friend beforehand.

The transition from friends to more than that was smooth, and I really love spending time with him. He's a great guy, incredibly nice, and every moment is a joy. We do spend a lot of time together, and I'm beginning to feel like an idiot-I think I fell in love. *Headdesk*

Bad timing for me, but then love always comes when it's least wanted, right? I'm making time for it, at least, but not letting it control my life. No guy is worth giving dreams up for (or concerts!) as far as I'm concerned. It's a bit odd, but he has similar dreams for the future as I do, which is pretty cool.