mp’s response–you are talking out of your ass

haha, so here’s an exact reproduction of mp’s response:

i don’t know why you get a negative vibe from me…i’m a positive person!

don’t take this the wrong way – but i’m leaning towards you talking out of your ass…or at least not understanding what (real) happiness is.

while i think emotional (and biological) “happiness” is relative – you have varying amounts of chemicals in your bloodstream and brain which signal that you are happy – real happiness is a state that is unprovoked.  you can be happy in response to something, but this is only a temporary condition.  spending time with loved ones, accomplishing something, or exercising.  even shorter term, drugs and pharmaceuticals can also cause one to feel this way.

in my opinion, contentedness does not correlate with happiness.  i feel that true happiness comes through detachment.  this is a theme seen in many world religions, like buddhism, hinduism, bahai, and even christianity – i belive with good reason.  unhappiness derives from suffering.  suffering comes from desire.  then to eliminate unhappiness, the goal should be to eliminate desire (or, i guess, at least to be content with nothing – so maybe contentedness does have something to do with it).  one thing that i think to myself regularly: if my job, my family, my possessions, and everyone and everything i knew were taken away from me, would i be happy?  for me, im not sure.  but i feel like i am getting there.

i think without this “inner” happiness, every person will be the wrong person.  i experienced this in my own life.  for the longest time i felt lonely, and wanted to have someone.  it wasn’t until i stopped caring about what others could give me when things fell into place.  the person who i am with now doesn’t MAKE me happy.  she does, however, enhance my already happy state.

i want to see what others think, then i’ll formulate my thoughts a bit more. and, thank you mp for creating such a lively discussion! really appreciate the response. i hope you don’t mind being featured here. i would have asked first but you don’t have an email associated with your name. oh well

in response to a comment

i originally wrote this as an answer to a comment on “the road of lost innocence.” however, because its subject departs from the point of that very serious post, i thought i’d reproduce a more eloquent version of my answer here rather than taking more focus away from the Somaly Mam Foundation.

the comment was,

i’m confident that people aren’t happy with someone unless they’d be happy without them, anyhow. mp

this comment related more to my recent singledom post where i moan and groan about being lonely and boyfriend-less. anyway, i’ve heard variations of this maxim and even used it myself a few times. but i think, on deeper reflection, that it’s too simplistic a rule.

1. first, humans are social creatures. i don’t think we’re meant to spend large amounts of time by ourselves. through the ages, there has been a progression from how people used to live in close-knit households and communities, to the sort of lives a lot of us now lead—flying solo in our own apartments and marrying late in life, if at all. in some places like india, you still see extended families living together and on top of each other, no one having their own room or privacy. now we come home every day to empty apartments. freedom, yes, but the concession we make for our privacy is greater distance, geographically and emotionally, from the people around us. that’s why, to me, it makes sense that when you have that BEST best friend to be particularly close to, it’s possible to finally achieve the content that was still somewhat out of reach when single. i don’t think this is true for everyone. it’s the closeness, the connectedness to people, that we need, and for some people that doesn’t have to be through a relationship.
2. i think happiness is a kind of complex state-of-being that doesn’t necessarily preclude feeling lonely sometimes. they aren’t mutually exclusive. i see happiness as the measure of your overall emotional state—a sort of mathematical average of your week or month that allows for a few blips.
3. also, i see happiness as somewhat relative. i’m the happiest i’ve ever been in my life. monday, i took my dog for a long walk and came to realize that i was just randomly grinning. yesterday, i spent a very wonderful day with my grandparents celebrating their 56th anniversary (olive garden + 500 card rummy and family gossip = bliss). and these aren’t isolated incidents of happiness. so i would say that despite my bouts of loneliness, i am happy. if i had the right person in my life, i could be even happier. it’s really just about a level of contentedness. obviously, if you’re suicidal, no significant other in the world is going to make you happy. but if you’re a glass-85%-full happy, i think that’s enough.

what do you think? i might be talking out of my ass or making excuses.

the road of lost innocence

i knew my checking account was dangerously low, but i was hoping i could feed it before it went negative. unfortunately, i woke up this morning to a stern email from my bank, again saving my ass through overdraft protection. and smacking me with a $35 fine. it turns out that my car insurance, macy’s and nordstrom’s off-the-rack bills, and gym membership fees left me with $3 in my account…but then i toppled into the red when my monthly automatic charity donation was deducted. sigh.

besides highlighting my reckless spending, it felt as if this charity was metaphorically slapping me in the face for my recent pity-fest: stop moping around because you don’t have a boyfriend and remember that other women do not even have the fucking PRIVILEGE to search out love!

i learned about this charity two years ago when i came across a book called The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam. this is the kind of memoir that rips at your heart as you try to empathize with a young girl caught in circumstances that should never exist.

an orphan growing up against the backdrop of the bloody khmer rouge regime in cambodia and later invasion by vietnam, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery at the tender age of 12.

when i was 12, i got a puppy.

she says of the brothels,

This was ordinary prostitution. Stinking mouths and bodies, dirty rooms, violence. The blows hurt, but the act itself was much worse. Sometimes there would be only two or three men a day, sometimes many more. If there weren’t enough, Li would tell Aunty Peuve not to feed us, so we’d try harder. If there were too many, you hurt inside and out, until you managed to shut all feeling off. (mam 60).

she speaks of never, ever feeling clean or good. of loathing the smell of semen, and feeling, for the rest of her life, as if she could not scrub the stink of it off herself. if she refused to work or attempted to run, she was punished brutally. it was a life of dead ends. the kind of life that would make most of us crawl into a ball and just never move, never feel, never care again.

somehow, Somaly escaped. she made it all the way to france where she started a new life. and yet, instead of quietly living out her days healing wounds as deep as the grand canyon, she chose to go back to cambodia to fight for the thousands of girls still being abused. since then, Somaly has begun a movement that has given new life to over 400,000 women in circumstances much like hers. sickeningly, her memoir recounts that,

Nowadays the girls are much younger too. This is because men in Cambodia will pay a thousand dollars to rape a virgin for a week—it’s always a week, for a virgin. Sex with a virgin is supposed to give strength, to lengthen a man’s life span and even lighten his skin….Often they are very young girls, just five or six years old. After the week is over, they sew the girl inside—without an anesthetic—and quickly sell her again. A virgin is supposed to scream and bleed, and this way the girl will scream and bleed, again and again. They do it maybe three or four times. (59-60).

i’m not quoting these lurid passages to be sensational. but if there was ever a book that needs to be read, this is one. you will cry, you will get up and pace, you will put it down because it is too much to absorb. i hope at the end, you will be moved, like i was, to visit the Somaly Mam Foundation website. i spend so much money on stupid crap that it was no hard decision to set up a monthly payment plan for this cause. i am currently doing $10 a month.

one last quote, i promise:

It’s still happening, today, tonight. Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book. My story doesn’t matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don’t sleep at night. They haunt me. (60-61).

ten, fifteen dollars a month is really nothing. think about that monthly $140 you pay toward the monstrously large HDTV in your living room. the four times this month you’ve ordered delivery. the $60 bucks you blew on tequila shots at an overpriced bar celebrating nothing special.

little, precious girls. just think.

singledom

how can one half of a person be so happy at what she has achieved, and the other half so achingly alone? last weekend i was so busy with different events and people that it wasn’t hard to keep my mind on a leash. but this weekend, no matter how much i will it to love me, my phone remains mute. when i have too much time on my hands, i resent waking up every morning and reaching for no one. if i cook, i halve the recipe because it’s far too much for one person. i hold off watching netflix movies as if i’m waiting for someone. i buy a new see-through nothing even though my only audience is a dog and kitten. i sit on my stylish leather couch in my perfectly decorated contemporary living room and watch the evening light fade to black. everything about my life is waiting for a man who is not there, and may never be.

when i consider my future, i know there are so many meaningful things in my life to which i could devote myself. especially as an attorney, there are an unlimited amount of victims to help. and yet somehow, all i can focus on is the thousands of times i will come home to an empty house, a dinner alone, a cold bed. i hurt sometimes with this desire to just BE with someone. literally actually—my cunt aches.

hopefully things change when i start work. i certainly don’t want to feel like my life is filler time until i meet a guy, especially since that kind of shallowness would not support anyone’s attention anyway. i have a feeling if i just had one gal pal to take on the city, i wouldn’t feel so desperately lonely. unfortunately, all my girlfriends are adorably paired-off. oh, how disgustingly adorably.

in other news, it has been exactly six months and three days since i have had sex.

respect the word!

even though i have a blog, i don’t often read other blogs. i’ve only found a few i enjoy reading, even after many visits to “freshly pressed.” food, technology, politics, and sports seem to monopolize the majority of blogs, and i don’t often want to read about those (especially sports).

i’ve also noticed that many bloggers try too hard. maybe it’s really just a matter of taste, but this blog i read recently felt as if it was written in victorian times. actually, it was probably more along the lines of someone who puts every word into a thesaurus and picks a more “complicated” word at random. that really annoys me. synonyms are not created equal! words have connotations and specific uses. for example, a synonym for “exclamation” also includes “ejaculation,” but the latter term makes every normal person involuntarily picture an erupting penis. so, probably not a great choice when you’re writing about something your grandmother said.

that was an easy example. at random, a more challenging instance would be the implications of someone who “loses” during a game and one who “succumbs.” again, “succumb” is a synonym for “lose,” but succumb implies not putting up much of a fight. or “famous” versus “notorious” where the second term hints at being known for something negative. or even just understanding that some words like “vex” are out of style right now. people are “vexed” in shakespearean times. i’m sure there are situations it would still be appropriate, but you have to be careful or your writing will sound stilted or overwrought.

anyway, i guess i’ve always enjoyed writing that is simple but vivid. wordiness puts me in a bad mood. shoving an adjective before every noun does not a good writer make. certainly, it’s not easy to write and i’m not saying i know exactly how it’s done. i have, however, read a lot of beautiful, moving writing out there. stuff that makes you pause and read it again. there is an art to using the tools of word choice and sentence structure to create something that resonates. respect the word!

ok, i’m done with my little english lecture feel free to use the comments section to share excerpts of writing you find moving.

the Match.com files part 1

a few months ago, i decided to try match.com. i spent $34.99, wasted a great deal of time, waded through a ridiculous amount of crappy emails, and went on five dates before i decided that i was completely fine being alone and sex-less if the alternative was online dating.

7 reasons why match.com (and possibly other datings sites?) sucks the big one:

1. it’s expensive. for just one month, it’s $34.99. for three, it’s $19.99 which sounds better, except then you come out having paid $60 for the most awkward interactions of your life.

2. if you don’t pay for a subscription, your profile is displayed in searches, but you can’t answer or in any way communicate with people who message you. so here i am, a paid subscriber, messaging cute guys who never answer me. i have no way of knowing whether or not they find me completely unattractive or just aren’t a paid subscriber. this means my ego gets to go on a wild roller coaster ride.

3. at least if you’re a girl, you get dozens of emails and winks EVERY DAY. sounds great right? think again. if you’re lucky, one out of 30 emails and winks will be someone who looks like a possibility. here is one of my favorites, reproduced exactly as written, fucked up commas and all, except that i made the font blue:

an Admirer
WOW!!

“WHAT A PROFILE”

YOU DO SOUND SO VERY GENUINE .

I am the breed you can only pray for in a loyal companion -Wit ,Gentlemanly,passionate,loving and I dance salsa aswell…

First, I must say forgive my pic here (not the best that portrays my handsome self ;-} ) -I need to upload more …so You can see the Man…LoL

THE WEIRD THING IS YOUR PROFILE IS THE ONE THAT LEADS ME TO FEEL THAT IF WE TALK 15 MINUTES WE ARE GOING TO HIT IT OFF..

Only fair to first tell you the whole me

Here goes :

ME-

Medical Professional and a business owner.

Great family !!

Tried THIS for 30 day trial about 16 months ago then stopped cause thought it was fruitless.then 3 months after a friend at the hospital coached me on to try a longer period so I gave it 3 months -and talked to 2 people and met 1 {no interest or chemistry felt} then it expired and did not renew for another few month and just decided to travel and enjoy life for abit (I went to san diego ,nyc ,boston ,Rhode Island,marthas vineyard etc..just had a great time)

Recently I met a few members and had coffee and found no real common ground or attraction in person.

Thats it “… not easy to find when beauty ” lacks within ” on most ..

Chemistry,honesty,intelligence and humor are important and so difficult to find in a woman .

I enjoy intelligence and substance inside the woman I seek .

What else can I say but it’s hard nowadays to find the Quality factor in a human being.

What I would give to find a real beauty is everything ….

Real Treasures are in relationships that start with a valuable partner.

warm regards,

———

i have no idea why he uses quotation marks as he does, why he can’t space a comma correctly, or why he feels the need to tell me about previous match.com failures. obviously, i didn’t answer this email, but this is a very determined/desperate/socially-inept man—he emailed me another four times before i finally got annoyed and told him there was no way i was interested. besides this ludicrous email, he was 47 and divorced. my profile specifically stated that my age parameters cut off at 32 and that i would not date a divorcee.

4. which brings me to another stupid match.com trait: you can’t limit who messages you by age, location, or other characteristic. i would say that 50% of the emails i received every day were from gross old geezers who had no business contacting a 25-year-old. shame on them.

5. nor can you avoid the whole business by hiding your profile. if you hide your profile, sure you can email people, but they can’t see your information so it defeats the entire purpose of the dating site. as someone in the legal field, i didn’t want my photo and “about me” sections plastered all over this site for people i might know to see. but i also didn’t want to waste the $34.99 i already paid, so there i was, naked to the world. and yes, three people i know contacted me and said, “hey i saw you on match!”. fan-fucking-tastic.

6. i think this particular reason is going to make me sound like an elitist, but hey, i probably am. i found that the vast majority of guys on here were uneducated. i love intellectual guys. let me point out here that “intellectual” is different than “intelligent”. i like guys who enjoy a good book, can write and speak eloquently, and don’t think that nietzsche is a russian dessert. my life revolves around more academic pursuits and i don’t think it’s somehow mean and shortsighted to say that i don’t want to date a mechanic, even a very intelligent one. i am aware that there are plenty of very intelligent guys who for whatever reason did not go to college. there are also plenty of idiots who did go. but of the intelligent guys out there, the ones i’d want to date are the worldly, sophisticated types who overwhelmingly have gone to college and probably grad school. these are not the guys on match.com.

7. even when you finally find a few decent possibilities in the morass of HELL-no, it can go very wrong. you email back and forth a few times, text a bit, and decide to meet. i lasted five dates before i made the command decision to delete my match.com profile. and no, they weren’t all awful. two were ok, but the overall awkward and stilted nature of the dates and fact that no one appears to be the same person described in their profiles just makes me tired. dating should be fun, not energy-draining. stay tuned for a date-by-date breakdown of the five guys who appeared to be the cream of the match crop.

ramblings on a recent life change

my first post in months is thesis-less and all over the place, but if you’re patient, you can share some good news with me!

my whole life, i’ve always wanted to categorize people. introvert, extrovert, popular kid, nerd, jock. and yet, if i don’t fall into any clear-cut categories, it’s unlikely anyone else does. my entire life, i’ve over-analyzed, watched from the outside, been painfully self-conscious and brutally self-critical. in middle school, i dreaded getting off the bus because i was scared of tripping. no joke, i would tensely wait in my seat, picturing how i would get up and hold my bag just so in order to smoothly exit the vehicle. i hated it. i was self-conscious about getting up in class, or having to talk to a teacher. i rehearsed conversations in my head, and took different routes through school hallways because it was easier than having to figure out how to interact with certain people. i didn’t like shopping for clothes because i felt intimidated by the other girls in the juniors’ department. i’m still like this over a decade later. i always feel other people’s eyes on me, but am much more adept at faking nonchalance and confidence.

which is why in high school, i shocked everyone (including myself) when i actually chose to audition for the school’s very exclusive and very popular show choir. even more jaw-dropping, i made it into the choir and even wracked up a solo which i performed over a dozen times.

now, at age 25, looking for a position somewhere as an attorney, i’m surprising myself again. i so very badly want to be a prosecutor. why, as someone so awkward and insecure, someone who has rampant insomnia because of her neuroses, would i want to be an attorney who must be in court five days a week? on record, doing trials, before a judge and jury scrutinizing my every action and word?

it’s a mystery. you would think i would be happier hiding in an office where i could limit the number of energy-sapping social interactions. just write some contracts, do some legal research and call it a day. during an internship, i did a few trials for petty crimes. it’s nerve-wracking. it can go very well, or very, very badly. and murphy’s law says that the courtroom will be packed on your bad days and empty on your good.

i do know that in a public situation, when you do something right, it’s the best feeling in the world. maybe that’s it, maybe i’m a gambler. i want those intense highs, and for it, i’ll risk some major humiliation. but why am i this way? why, for example, do i keep planning parties at my place when the stress of wondering who will come or if they’ll have fun is so exhausting? why strive for jobs for which i have no natural ability, social events which could go terribly wrong, and guys i feel are completely out of my league? for someone so scared of life, you would think i would stay in my comfort zone.

instead, i want to be a prosecutor. and guess what? the dream is coming true: starting in march, i will be a prosecutor for one of the top ten largest counties in the united states. i read that and i shiver.

i don’t think i could have chosen a job with a more mentally grueling and anxiety-causing interview process. it spanned from September 11th, 2010 to January 13th, 2011: **DISCLAIMER** i’m sure you will all find the rest of this boring, but i want to document my journey for posterity’s sake.

• interview #1, aka “the dead baby in the cooler” test–my mother always says, don’t try to look attractive for an interview, look competent. and so there i was, suited up, hair pulled into a chignon, a single strand of pearls. heart-pounding. you know when you can actually hear the blood pumping in your ears? just like that. i prepared by googling my interviewer and creating a document with every possible interview question i’d ever been asked, and solid answers i could give. i walk into the interview, prepared to earnestly explain to this woman why i’m the right person for this job. what do i get? a hypothetical wherein (do you like that nice legal insert?) a man goes about kidnapping babies, putting them into his cooler, going out onto a lake, and throwing the babies into the water. the cooler is a very standard plastic blue cooler. so, one afternoon, another baby is taken and in the wee hours of the night, an officer sees a man about to get onto a boat holding a blue cooler. can the officer search the cooler? talk about an “oh shit” moment. it felt difficult to breathe and even more difficult to think of a coherent thought. why didn’t i think to study criminal procedure? the interview went from bad to worse as i talked myself into a corner. i left the interview, my confidence crushed. i immediately went home and wrote a sincere and, if i do say so myself, eloquent email to this woman begging her to call my supervisor and get a real understanding of my abilities and passion for the job.

• it worked. callback interview #1, aka “dead baby revisited”–this time i’m really prepared. one week of going over all my old criminal procedure notes from law school and bar exam studying. i am determined to make a better impression. what do i get hit with this time? first, he wanted to know why i felt the need to write the email to my first interviewer (um, duh, because i sucked and i really, really wanted a second chance). two, he was back on that darned dead baby hypo. well, obviously i’d thought about it some and i had a few different ideas of how to get that officer’s itchy little hands into that cooler. i spun off a few of my theories, thinking i was so smart. did the man seem impressed? nope. complete dead pan. instead, he mentioned how they had over 400 applicants for just ten positions, and that i should really have a back up plan. he sympathized with recent law graduates with the economy being as it is, and said it would almost be better to still be in school. ok, that’s all folks, my rejection letter is as good as in the mail.

• ok, maybe not. callback interview #2, aka “the three levels of  hell and meeting the queen”–i imagine the only reason i received a second callback is because the previous attorneys i had worked with wrote me some very good reviews. bless them a hundred times over. new suit, new pearls, new pumps (annoyingly, the right shoe squeaked with each step). interview is at 3 pm. i’m fifteen minutes early. i wait. and wait. and wait some more. it’s almost 4 pm when someone comes and gets me from the lobby. we go to the 4th floor where i’m ushered into another waiting area. another half hour passes while i desperately scan the copy of “Super Lawyers” on the table next to me. at 4:33, a secretary invites me into an imposing conference room with ten seats and no people. i set my purse far enough away from my feet that i won’t trip getting up. i try to pose so that i look professional but can still get up quickly to shake the queen’s hand. i put my hands palms up on my lap so they won’t collect sweat. the minutes tick by. i’m starting to feel nauseous and my palms are sweating anyway. 28 grueling minutes later, she walks in. i remember wondering if she purposely makes her interviewees go through two hours and three levels of waiting hell just to ratchet up their anxiety level by the time she walks into the room. as the head of the entire prosecutor’s office, this is a woman who is on tv with precious little time to waste. and here she is, shaking my hand.  strangely, at the most intense and important of the three interviews, i did my best. i spoke well and made her laugh a few times. we ended up getting off onto a few tangents until she would suddenly check her watch and say, goodness we’re off track but that was so interesting! one of her final questions was also to ask me why i felt the need to write that email to the first interviewer. it surprised me. don’t people do things like that when they are truly passionate about a position? i told her i’m not afraid to put myself out there for something i want. she complimented me and said that i was very intuitive and eloquent. i practically skipped out of there. my “intuitive” self felt like i’d aced the interview. just three days later, i get a call from the hiring coordinator stating that they are offering me a position for the march class. i called my mother right after i got off the phone and screamed something unintelligible into the phone. i even called my dad, who isn’t exactly my best buddy. it was an amazing day, and i’m still floating on that high.

2011, you are shaping up to be my best year yet.

in the present

in high school on slow nights, my best friend and i would drive for hours through the meandering roads of a park. we drove because we had nowhere to be, but even though we drove in the same tired circles, we felt free, exhilarated. we would play the stereo so loudly we could feel it vibrating in our chests. we would talk for hours about boys, college, getting out of this horrible, cliquey town. it may sound ridiculous to you, but on those drives, we felt alive and young and present. it was like living life in color.

i’ve always had this problem living my life versus watching myself go through the motions as if i were the narrator to my own story. there are very few times, like those car rides, where i’ve felt as if what i was feeling was pure.

how to explain?

example: friend tells me about a mutual acquaintance, very close to her, who died at age 27 of a heart attack. my reaction is clinical. my brain, and i almost picture a dry british voice doing this, articulates that i should feel sad because that’s the appropriate response. and so i do ‘sad’. and truly, i am sad. what frustrates me is that i have an emotional middleman—nothing i feel is instant but the result of some sort of consultation. during special events when i’m out on a night where there’s no reason not to enjoy myself and be happy, this voice constantly flits through my head: “remember this moment, try to picture how everyone looks right now, laugh harder, make your face relaxed and happy in case someone is looking”. i’ll be taking care of my drunk friend, and as i’m rubbing her back as she retches into a toilet, that damned voice says to me, “look at what a great person you are”.

i think maybe this might be the root of my self-esteem issues. basically, i have so few seemingly unadulterated emotions that i feel like a fake. i can’t really believe things people think i am—compassionate, sweet, thoughtful—because even though i feel empathy, go out of my way to help or do nice things on a birthday, there are always those few seconds before whatever feeling i’m supposed to be experiencing kicks in, or that Voice takes satisfaction in a good deed. even when i know people like me, i’m left thinking that they couldn’t really because i’m not fully what i portray. they just don’t know that, and i don’t want them to because i desperately need people around to be happy.

why can’t i just BE? not just during those special days scattered throughout my 25 years of life, but every day.

genital herpes = huge threat

hearing from a friend about her friend whose girlfriend cheated on him, contracted genital herpes, and then gave it to him (drama, drama) led me on a steadily more horrifying research trail. forget about the obviously alarming but treatable STDs—apparently one in five people (and another site stated one in four) have genital herpes. that shit doesn’t go away.

reading those stats, my heart thumped hard in my chest.

i never knew it was so prevalent. worse, I didn’t know half of the other alarming traits about herpes which have since wreaked havoc with my hypochondria-addled brain. some fun facts:

• you don’t need to have sex to get herpes. not even oral sex. skin-to-skin contact is enough. kissing is enough. (fuck).
• building on that first point, using condoms may not help you since it may not cover your partner’s entire infected area
• women are four times as likely to get herpes from a male partner than the other way around (can’t find where i read this, but i’m certain i remember it correctly—it’s burned into my brain at this point)
• most people do not even realize they have herpes because they are asymptomatic. and if they don’t know, you definitely don’t know
• even for those who do exhibit symptoms, they don’t have to be having an outbreak to infect you
• symptoms vary person-to-person, and they often resemble other issues—bug bites, ingrown hairs, the flu, UTIs, yeast infections, other STDs
• testing for herpes is not very clear-cut. if you have sores on your genitals, it’s far easier to come to the correct diagnosis by taking a sample and testing it. the problem is that many people never get sores, and herpes breakouts only occur a few times a year for those who do. blood tests can be helpful, but they only test for herpes antibodies created to fight the disease—meaning that if you test too early, those antibodies won’t be present. apparently it can take as long as three months from the date of infection before antibodies are made (scroll near the bottom). finally, there are a lot of false-positives and false-negatives for these tests (and these tests are expensive)

let’s break all that information down to its scary and shitty conclusion: you can be careful, never sleep with strange, heck never even sleep with someone, and still get herpes. in fact, you could have gotten both of your boyfriends tested before sleeping with them (what i did), and they may still have this disease because the tests are not clear-cut and timing is essential. great. i’ve now spent most of the day checking out my girl parts in a hand mirror trying to figure out if that’s razor burn or herpes. unfortunately, i’ve only ever looked at myself one other time so i can’t tell if the landscape is different.

that brings me to three other observations:

one, we can’t just go around having sex anymore. forget sexual needs and safe fuck buddies and the whole bit—with at least 20% of the population infected, having sex with someone who hasn’t been tested (and tested correctly and probably multiple times), is playing russian roulette with your sexual well-being.

and also with your psychological well-being: two, there is a major stigma associated with having genital herpes. i would feel so dirty and unlovable if i had it, which is why a lot of people with the disease fail to tell their sexual partners. and yet, apparently somewhere between 20 and 25% of the population has the disease. these are people we know, people we’re screwing, people getting married and having kids. these people might be you and me. so why is there such a cloud over the disease, and why don’t we know more about it?

which brings me to number three, why is our sex education so crappy? here i am thinking i’m being so safe—limited sex to my two boyfriends, rarely had oral sex and used a condom where i didn’t trust the guy as much, got both my boyfriends to submit to an STD test before i would sleep with them—and it’s not enough. and honestly, most of the people i know haven’t been as careful as i am. and these are educated people! i only know a handful of people who have ever even taken a test. telling us ‘use condoms’ isn’t enough and preaching ‘abstinence only’ is a travesty of public health. worse yet, i have never heard that STD tests themselves are unreliable. without that information, we could be walking around with false confidence in our sexual health and infecting strangers, boyfriends—people we love.

i feel like i should go get tested. i did between boyfriend 1 and boyfriend 2. except that with the expense (probably between $100-200 bucks) and the embarrassment of having to go to an STD testing place, i really, really don’t want to. i wish i was still a student and could just go to the student health center. that’s a lot more private than having to walk into planned parenthood, and a heck of a lot less expensive. i know that doesn’t sound very adult, but you don’t have to be or act like an adult to have sex. that’s the problem.

girls and low self-esteem

Is it normal to get super needy and promiscuous after a break-up? So far I’ve only slept with my two ex-boyfriends, but I seem to hit the lower bases with regularity after each break-up. I don’t want to be this weak, un-wholesome girl. What if I really do lose it one night after drinking and sleep with somebody, not just kiss them or let them touch me? As it is, I can’t handle the guilt the day after I do anything and I’ve already screwed around with two guys in the month since I broke up with my ex. I know it only happens when I drink, but there must be something in me just lurking under the surface if it keeps happening. Not drinking would get rid of the symptom (promiscuity) but not the underlying issue (self-esteem). What’s worse is that with this last guy, he said I mentioned “relationship” to him a few times. I don’t want to date this guy!! Why would that even come up? He’s not my type at all, I think I’m just needy for male attention. So of course I can’t see him again and now it’s just another dirty secret stored away in my brain.

This blog isn’t just supposed to be my personal diary, but I’m trying to be honest about what I’m doing (and doing wrong) in life to get at bigger realities. For example, why are so many girls running around with such low self-esteem? I know that’s the root of my problem, but where did it come from? I know I’m a pretty girl. I know I’m a smart girl. And yet, I don’t really feel like I’m worth it. I don’t understand WHY. There are so many girls just like me out there who, at bottom, feel the same way. Heck, guys joke about finding insecure girls because we’re easy to get into bed. We want so badly to be loved but don’t actually think anyone could love us. And for some reason, that translates into promiscuity even though that’s the last way to get a guy, to get love.

Is this an American phenomenon? I don’t know if European girls are doing better. I also don’t know how to solve this kind of problem because I don’t know where it came from. I’m trying to pin-point where exactly in life I lost my self-worth. Do we all have a particular event in our childhood that killed our ability to love ourselves? Did our daddies not love us enough? Or is it just something chemical, just fucked up brain chemistry that we could never control in the first place?

What happened to this girl? It seems that just as I’m building my confidence, I meet a boy and he brings me back down. Other people break up and they don’t question their worth. Why do I?

How can I fix myself if I don’t know exactly why it’s happening?