The holidays are over. We made it through, friends. What did you all get? What did you do for New Year’s Eve? How many e-mails were waiting in your inbox at work this morning? How many made you want to cry?
In case you missed them, here are last week’s columns from Mensah Demary (Liner Notes) and Aimee Nezkhukumatathil (World of Wonder).
Here is what Ina (Garten, of course) was up to over the holidays.
Ina Garten, creator of the Barefoot Contessa brand of TV shows, books and foods, is a world-renowned host of parties. So you’d think that for New Year’s Eve, the biggest party night of the year, she’d pull out all the stops and invite hundreds of guests to her house in the Hamptons for champagne and the finest hors d’oeuvres imaginable.
If you need help saying “shit” with flair, there’s an acting academy for that.
I was saddened to hear that Stuart Scott has died after a long fight with cancer.
That man is Stuart Scott, and his contributions to the sports lexicon are writ large. But they are only one aspect of his legacy. When he passed away, he left behind so much more. He inspired his colleagues with his sheer talent, his work ethic and his devotion to his daughters, Taelor, 19, and Sydni, 15. He defied convention and criticism to help bring this network into a new century. He spoke to the very athletes he was talking about with a flair and a style that ESPN president John Skipper says, “changed everything.”
Here’s a man who runs obscenely long distances. Does not compute.
In the summer of 2013, a then-36-year-old night pharmacist from Hamilton, Ontario, entered the Western States Endurance Run, one of the world’s most competitive 100-mile races. It would be the farthest he’d ever run—by 50 miles.
Over at GQ there is a profile of The Bachelor host Chris Harrison.
Nighttime on The Bachelor is lit golden by candles: hundreds of them on any given evening, thousands over the course of a season—lit, relit, stoked, oxygenated, basked in, had white wine sipped by the light of—all born of the dry-ice lovemaking fantasy that the show’s producers imagine women dream of.
Kima Jones is a writer whose name should always be on your lips. She shared an excerpt from her essay “The Aqiqah” at a reading last year and the rest of the piece is just as gorgeous and evocative.
Connie married the African one afternoon in a not-white dress, her nails polished, probably gold, her modest diamond and our father’s teary face. His youngest daughter and the hard-working man beside her. The prayer rugs and prayers said. For mercy. For fertility. For ease. Her wide face and the mascara lining each lash. Our father and the several goats killed. A lamb. Our father and his to-be son-in-law trampling into the woods together to choose from the grazing beasts. To rub their animal backs and pat at the place where rump turns to tail. To watch the sun shift and make the afternoon prayer, Dhur, in the wood with the beasts. Where the older man has always led the prayer in his home, he cedes to this younger son in the woods.
Leelah Alcorn’s final words should be remembered.
If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue.
Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in … because I’m transgender. I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally “boyish” things to try to fit in.
When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.
My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to Christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more Christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.
When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.
I formed a sort of a “fuck you” attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight Christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.
So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I’m surprised I didn’t kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent’s disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness.
At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they didn’t actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because they saw me five times a week.
After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone there is against everything I live for, I have decided I’ve had enough. I’m never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I’m never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I’m never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I’m never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I’m never going to find a man who loves me. I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There’s no winning. There’s no way out. I’m sad enough already, I don’t need my life to get any worse. People say “it gets better” but that isn’t true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse.
That’s the gist of it, that’s why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that’s not a good enough reason for you, it’s good enough for me. As for my will, I want 100% of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don’t give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say “that’s fucked up” and fix it. Fix society. Please.
Goodbye,
(Leelah) Josh Alcorn
Tags: link roundup, new year’s eve, the internet
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I have to admit, I was a bit miffed, upon my return to the office after a week and a half away, to discover that out of the 40 emails in my inbox, only one was actually for me. The others were our daily internal link round-ups (courtesy of Communications), newsletters, “So-and-so will be out of the office today” and other junk.
I had to work on Friday, except IT had deactivated my account (?) and required an email from my boss confirming that I still work here before they would reactivate it. My boss was not in. Her boss was not in. I tracked down the guy who was acting in place of my boss’ boss and he had no idea who I am. Miffed again! (They ended up restoring my network access after over 2 hours, just when I was about to give up and head home. Obviously.)
I had 26 emails in my inbox after two weeks away and 14 of them were spam, including some “$$eXy Ru$$i@n l@d!e$$$ 4 YOOUU!!!” type spam, which was fun.
I also had a bunch of weird Russian spam in my work email this morning! “27 y.o. Irina” wants to chat with me so much she sent me seven emails in a row.
My organization does a lot of international work, so I came back to an inbox full of a) everyone from this side of the international dateline who started sending emails after returning to work on *their* January 5, and b) all of the people who are emailing from countries who were not off on a holidays.
Great start.
68 emails in the inbox! Still haven’t read them – just looked at the number and minimized the window. Eeeeek.
For New Year’s, some friends came over and played Settlers of Cataan. They left by ten. I stayed up until midnight, but that’s because I was reading.
For New Year’s, I played Settlers of Catan with my family! We didn’t start until about ten though, so we were still playing at midnight, at which point we took a quick break to watch the ball drop and then went back to the game.
I think I might not be very good at Settlers of Cataan, but it’s hard to tell because everyone else was awful, and it is very hard to win at that game when everyone else is playing in a way that doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah, if everyone else is relying on luck to win, then you can’t really predict what they’ll do and it makes Catan a whole lot harder.
I got Seafarers for xmas and played it approximately 93 times in the past 2 weeks but not on NYE because there were only 2 of us. Your NYE sounds pretty much ideal.
Good for you. So much reading.
GM, Roxane! Over the holidays I bought/ read both Bad Feminist & Mallory’s book for a glorious double helping of misandry. In addition to too many work emails upon arrival, I also had an eager beaver call me at 9am to discuss things! But you know what, it was ok. Because I slept SO MUCH over the break and I felt somewhat lazy at the time, but then decided to just LEAN IN to laziness and I generally feel fantastic now.
Also chocolate tea in the morning helps. I feel like the world needs to know about this.
Also also– I got my bf “The World of Ice and Fire” book for xmas and have been HOARDING IT exclusively for about 2 wks. Its so gloriously nerdy I’m reveling in it notwithstanding the predictably problematic handling of gender/ race in a fantasy series. I AM ACTIVELY OVERLOOKING THAT.
I have an amazing chocolate coconut tea that is my favorite thing on winter mornings. So good.
A link so others may purchase? Maybe? Or at least a name so I can track it down because that sounds AMAZING.
I got mine at World Market! There’s only one and the pack is like $6.
I will continue to watch this space for info on chocolate coconut tea.
This is the stuff, but I don’t remember it costing me this much! I found mine at Wegmans.
http://www.republicoftea.com/coconut-cocoa-tea/p/…
My mom loves the peppermint cuppa chocolate stuff! It does smell amazing in the tin but I distrust tea that smells *that* good so I haven’t tried it myself.
It is deceptively not-sweet, but I like my tea overly sweet (case in point, I used three tablespoons in a regular mug’s worth the other day and it was Just Right) but it really does taste as good as it smells!
Thank you! I’ll see if my local health food co-op can special order it for me any cheaper. They carry lots of other Republic of Tea flavors.
“Lean in to laziness” might be my new year’s resolution!
I feel like this is something I can get behind. From my living room chair.
I worked all last week except Thursday, so no great deluge of emails here. The only miffed-ness I encountered was that my power went out ten minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off this morning, so I was awake too early, but hey, I made it to work on time?
Ina Garten, I want to live in your world for just a moment. But I rarely, if ever, want to eat a full pasta dinner at midnight.
The Kima Jones essay is beautiful and moving and I do not have enough words to praise it sufficiently.
You could wake me up at 4am and I would still want a full pasta dinner
Back to work after two glorious full weeks away from my hellhole of an office. My area thoughtfully gave us a gross, sloppy winter storm to welcome us all back. Now our internet is only working intermittently and I want to crawl under my desk and sleep for a year.
And a happy January to all.
I see your gross, sloppy winter storm and raise you northern Michigan lake effect storm, with temps in the low singles and wind chill of between -15 and -25! My hair froze while at the gas pump this morning. Monday needs to go DIAF.
As I convert C to F, that sounds like about the weather we had here this morning. It was so lovely. My husband is a saint who didn’t have to go to work this morning but got up and started my car and chipped the ice off for me.
This was while I was banging my finger in the cupboard while trying to feed the cats. MONDAY.
I particularly enjoy it when my nostril hairs freeze.
It is a balmy 10 degrees down here in Lansing. Without the wind chill, of course. I’ll wait to buy gas until this storm passes by, thank you very much.
I would’ve waited if I could have. It was bloody awful.
I felt like the smartest person in the world when I filled up on Saturday when it was just above freezing in my part of the mitten. This cold front is crap.
Gahhh I should have done that but.
Meeee tooooo. I will most likely never ever warm up.
I don’t think I have enough tissues in my office for both Stuart Scott and Leelah Alcorn links.
I saw this on Facebook this morning and immediately thought that it might be relevant to Mallory’s interests: Tough Guy Challenged Gaston To Push-Up Contest At Disney World And Got His Ass Kicked
Hahahaahah.
“He looks like he’s in trouble! Maybe he needs a hand!”
Ahhhhahahahahah!
There’s another video of that same Gaston/actor getting schooled by a 4 year old girl and it’s also wonderful. At one point, you can tell he’s just playing up the jerk factor to make her look even better, too, as she tells him he’s terrible and the beast is going to take him down.
Is it seriously the same guy? I was kind of hoping so. I was surprised to see a lot of people commenting on the video going “oh, what a jerk, he’s being so mean to that little girl, he should be fired!” when it was clear that she was LOVING the opportunity to stand up to a villain who was being appropriately (not excessively) villainous.
Boyfriend forgot to set an alarm before going to bed on New Year’s Day, so I missed my bus to the office on Friday. Rather than rushing to catch the next one, I opted to “work” from his house. Mostly I watched Star Trek on Netflix all day, and answered one work email.
I think that’s what most of the people who were “working from home” in my office on Friday did. We had Wednesday and Thursday off, then a single day of work on Jan 2, then the weekend.
Our office was “open” but nothing was done that day.
yeah. I had sent off all the things I needed to deliver to other people on Wednesday, so I really didn’t have much to do unless someone sent something back to me, so I didn’t feel too bad. Our self-evaulations were supposed to be due, but then HR changed the deadline.
Anxiety central, here in Noodge land! I’ve been trying to treat myself “right” with appropriate rest, diet, no or low caffeine, no alcohol, but I’m just miserable and anxious. So fuck it. That’s what it is. Anyone else wanna sit around with me and let things pile up because you feel like a deer in headlights?
(ETA: just typing this out seems to have made me feel ever so slightly better. What is this magic, Toast?)
Oh, me too. I’ve had to drag myself out of bed, and between work stress and holiday stress, December was freaking rough.
I’ve barely made it into the office this morning. Blargh.
I’ve been feeling sluggish and exhausted since I got back from vacation. Normally I bounce back from jet lag much faster (maybe this is my body’s way of saying it would prefer to remain in Europe). I’ve been going to bed 1-2 hours earlier than I usually do but I still wake up tired. I did 3 cardio workouts last week and had to cut 2 of them short because my head was pounding and I just couldn’t get through it.
Maybe pick one thing to cut out? It sounds like you are trying to do a lot. I am doing a no-sugar thing, but if I couldn’t still eat cheese, I would just be miserable and give up on the whole thing.
Seconded! I’ve always had much more success when I gradually added things on my list of stuff to cut out – so implementing the “no more caffeine” rule once I can get through a month of “no sugar” or whatever without being miserable about it.
Yeah, I already don’t drink much caffeine (about 1/4 cup of coffee a day? yeah, that’s it) and ditto to alcohol, and I have health issues that necessitate having very little sugar in my diet so… I’m pretty much just trying to stick to it a bit better.
Hi yes I am here too, fellow deer in headlights. I have a massive amount of work piling up and I am trying to remind myself that avoidance is not going to help my job. I am a department of one, so I can’t push things off on other people.
You’re right, typing this out has helped a tiny bit. Let’s just pass around hot cocoa with everyone else on this thread and commiserate.
Yes hello fellow department-of-one overwhelmed person, I am also here.
Caffeine, in moderation, is therapeutic for those of us with depressive tendencies. Just lobbing that your way in case it helps. Deer/headlights solidarity.
Can I just say, RoseCamelia, that you are the kindest person?
Oh my goodness. ;;blush;; Thank you.
Oh hi, me too. Let’s just hang out in this thread being miserable until. . .April, is when I see things starting to feel nicer?
Anxiety solidarity, noodge! Hugs to you.
I’m already on Drynuary, so I can’t imagine cutting out caffeine right now. Godspeed to you!
the comment/tweet release valve for anxiety is a thing!
it’s so strange, but every now and then, just typing out that i’m fighting anxiety with nothing to hang it on (which means I could compartmentalize that Anxiety Causing Thing or take care of it), even into the noisy ether of Twitter or some random anonymous blog comment, actually helps ease it a bit. but talking about it to someone else (or to the dog) doesn’t have the same effect. i think because typing to post requires more analyzation of the thoughts/feelings to put into words versus verbal babbling.
i cut out caffeine except occasional cups of tea a while back and found that i was falling asleep earlier, but also if i wasn’t horizontal by 7pm, i was basically useless, and could barely make it through a workday even so. i have to cut it out for heart problems, though, and because i’m trying to snuff my cherry coke habit. and my anxiety/depression hasn’t shown anything other than the usual fluxes. Likewise, i’ve been riding my bike 1-2x/week since the beginning of October and it has not helped my exhaustion or depression/anxiety one bit. I’m up to 8mi in a row, and the last 3 weeks have been 2x because of holidays, so my endurance and general health is better, but no change otherwise. (except also because of the holidays, i’m drinking cokes again after going all of oct and nov without them…)
i’m convinced that all the talk about healthy lifestyles to get rid of depression/anxiety is bunk. balderdash. claptrap. hogwash. malarkey. et cetera.
Glad you have relief in commenting and tweeting. Sorry you’re not finding exercise or diet changes helpful. I have fought clinical depression and anxiety all my (long) life and I can report exercise and moderately healthy diet are helpful for *me*. I know they can help others, but I accept that they are not useful for all. Do you have counseling? Are you getting what you need? I want relief for you. How can I help? I hope to hear from you again, even if you feel no different. Your feelings are OK here, no matter what they are.
Yeah, I’m 30 and have been fighting it since I was in elementary school, at least. I did loads of therapy in high school and university, and after, but at this point, it’s not productive for me. The last few times I tried, I just didn’t get anything out of it, and the co-pay is too expensive, to get beyond the getting-to-know-you sessions into real work.
Mostly, I’m bitching because I’m always so exhausted and the depression/anxiety adds another layer of weariness to it, so little things can feel like insurmountable obstacles. Because I’m always so tired, everyone tells me to get out and exercise, but exercise just makes me tired. (I’m definitely healthier than 4 months ago, but I always end up napping after my bike rides.) And I haven’t noticed any change in my mental health that isn’t the usual fluctuations, despite doctors always insisting that it’s my own fault I’m depressed, because I don’t exercise. (I was a lot more active as a teenager, and also more acutely depressed, so I never believed that anyway.)
It sounds like you’re really on top of things, so I apologize if this is already something you’ve done, but have you talked to your doctor about your exhaustion? That’s definitely the sort of thing that might have a treatable physical cause – your description of it reminded me a bit of when I was anemic and had no energy.
I know, you’d think it was something like that, right?
It’s something I bring up with every single new doctor I visit, and since all the tests come back normal, they just blame it on not getting enough exercise. My mom was always exhausted when I was growing up, and the doctors always just shrugged about her, too. I remember for a long time, they thought it was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but for some reason she stopped saying it was that, and I never found out why (I should ask! I’d forgotten about that). Eventually, a doctor tried hypoglaecemia and hypothyroidism on her, but my own bloodtests for those two and everything else the docs think of keep coming back normal…
Ah, the suckiness of mystery health problems. You have my sympathy.
haha, yeah, mystery health problems :/
But thanks! And even if I’m in a complaining sort of mood today, I do appreciate your replies and suggestions. Sometimes someone will bring something up that I haven’t tried recently, and I’ll try it again, or it’ll be something that hasn’t occurred to me for years.
I’m going to be asking for a more complete blood work-up when I go for my annual physical next month, so maybe we’ll find that it’s just something really small that affects me disproportionately, like how I got headaches so bad they gave me MRIs before thinking to check my eyesight when I was 15. 😀 (turns out? I had a very very tiny astigmatism in one eye, and otherwise excellent 40/20 vision.)
Yes, what Absotively said. Discovering and correcting a vitamin D deficiency helped my energy level.
When I was your age, I was very depressed. Even though I was jogging 10K *every* morning. For years.
My distance jogging was not a cure for depression, but neither was it ineffective. Jogging was the only reason I got out of bed some mornings: the comfort of routine, the promise of an endorphin high. I also credit daily jogging that long and hard for keeping me alive. I believe I would have killed myself without the comfort and temporary high it provided daily.
So, exercise did not keep me from deep depression. But it did keep me from suicide.
Are your bike rides attractive to you for any reason beyond exercise? I hope you have found some physical activity you *enjoy*. My husband will never pass up a chance to play basketball, for example, because he loves it. (It’s an Indiana thing. Growing up there brainwashes one to love basketball. Something in the water, maybe.) I went jogging because I loved it. (My joints now have veto power and I miss my long jogs.) Would you benefit from trying other forms of exercise? Kayaking? Golf? Tennis? Water polo?
Doctors who insist you are at fault for depression should never be seen again. I urge you to make a list of docs and visit each in turn until you find one that will actually help you.
I’m pulling for you.
Hah, yeah, biking IS my tolerable exercise. I find most exercise to be infinitely boring, but I like going downhill fast on my bike, so when I found out that it doesn’t worsen my back/hip pain, I took it on. 🙂
I’ve never got the endorphin high from exercise. Maybe when I was taking ballet lessons as a teenager, but that may have been as much about the music and focus on control as on the exercise. I can’t ride my bike without music, because it’s too boring, but I am pleased when I’m able to bike further than before, because it means my endurance has increased (and thus my heart is getting stronger – 2 years ago, I had a sudden onset of POTS/dysautonomia symptoms, including tachycardia, and part of why I resolved to start exercising was that doctors were telling me “this happened to you because you don’t exercise” even though it started while I was going to PT for severe lower back pain because I wanted to be able to go to the grocery store without hurting from walking, and was actually doing MORE exercise than I had been for several years… and the dysautonomia meant i could barely walk short distances some days. it has cleared up on its own, coincidentally it started/ended with the pain relief from a spinal steroid injection, but i’m still working to get the tachycardia down, and regular exercise is supposed to help with that. It hasn’t, but it’s still early days there, and at least I’m not getting the sudden increases to 140+ beats per minute when I stand up!)
Anyway, I should also say thank you to you and everyone else replying to my comments, even as I shrug my shoulders and obstinately insist that I’ve tried everything. It’s frustrating for me that I have tried most suggestions, and there doesn’t seem to be a cure for me. I keep muddling on, as I do have good days here and there, but sometimes I do just want to complain about it all, and I hate complaining at people I know personally, because then it feels like that’s all I do.
I am of the personal opinion that most exercise is infinitely boring and everyone else is just lying to me. If I’m not competing with other people or learning something, I am just suffering in boredom for the sake of my health and some minor endorphin boosts. Judo is good for me because I am learning things and competing, sometimes simultaneously (plus keeping people from choking you during ground work is surprisingly motivating). I have also had good luck with swim lessons, because learning. Running is terrible and nothing is likely to convince me otherwise. I mention this because it’s helped me frame whether or not I will like an exercise activity- now I focus on skills with a side of exercise (or beating people up) and I have a lot more fun.
I am confused by my little sister SO MUCH because she’s practicing to run marathons (she was actually within something like 6 seconds of qualifying for the Boston marathon a couple months ago, but tripped within sight of the finish line and didn’t make it, and I’m so proud of her, even as I’m bewildered), but apparently a lot of the motivation to get out and run is a club she joined, so you’re probably right. I think half the attendees at her wedding last month were club members! (I hear they started doing push-ups and squats when they began to get drunk after the reception, making bets on who could do the most while liquored up, and that’s a regular thing for them??? i don’t get runners AT ALL)
Anyway, good point about the skills thing! I’ll have to think about what appeals to me about different types of exercise and try to work around that. Like music helps a lot, and the opportunity to be around nature. Maybe I should look into kayaking, especially now that my sister owns a couple and lives on the water, and we need to do more stuff together. 🙂
Been having the same down cycle lately, with nobody getting back to me about a place to live and very little on-the-ground support or assistance with the search. Someone left some decaf coffee here and I’ve been drinking it in the afternoon to warm up my hands while still preserving the ability to get a good night’s sleep, so that and taking a mid-life interest in Harry Potter have been the saving graces of this winter. Hope things begin to trend upwards for all of us in this thread/rowboat.
I know you guys aren’t so much about trigger warnings, I get it, but I may not be alone in feeling unhappy at there being the full text of a suicide note in this morning’s round-up, hey.
But if we’re gonna talk about it: isn’t it interesting the range of reasons for which people kill themselves? It’s not always “I’m in too much pain to go on,” sometimes it’s about vengeance or taking a stand for a cause. (I’m not denigrating that latter motivation, as there’s such a long history of it, from Mouhamad Bouazizi, who kicked off the Arab spring, to all the Buddhist monks, and also Emily Davidson, the suffragette who threw herself under a horse.)
Leelah’s note reads to me like she was motivated by both her cause and also vengeance. She wanted better gender studies and to “fix society,” but I’m also seeing a good deal of spite against her parents. How she chose to go out is also deeply regrettable, because she made another person an instrument of her death, and that’s quite a burden to bear. Her age is also painfully clear in how certain she seems that things just aren’t going to get better for her. I think it’s a shame no one was able to talk her out of it.
What worries — and also makes me kinda angry, in fact — is that she might inspire other vulnerable teenagers to imitate her. That suicide might look like a more meaningful, even noble or glamorous/romantic, end.
Yeah, I’ve been a little unsure about it. There’s a fine line between mourning someone and carrying on their cause, and lionizing her death like “yeah, she sure showed them!” I feel like some of the stuff I’ve seen on facebook lately tends towards the latter.
Yes. And *anything* encouraging teenagers to think that killing themselves will do more good for a cause than harm to those who know and love them (even the ones they might not feel kindly toward at the time, like their parents) — when it will in fact incur trauma their loved ones will carry for the rest of their lives — makes me want to tear down buildings. At minimum.
Many of us who seriously consider suicide don’t believe the loved ones will be all that traumatized, or think that they can eventually come to terms with it (everyone dies sometime!), whereas our own lives will forever be miserable hells and we’ll always be failures, draining our families and society.
It really upsets me when I see people talking about “what about their families and loved ones!” because it feels like it belittles my own deep unhappiness and wants to keep me unhappy just because it’s easier on everyone else. “But it will get better!” I’m told, except…I’m thirty years old. WHEN will it get better? I’ve felt this way since elementary school, except for two to four months in 2013, which now seems like an anomaly. I’m not actively suicidal, but that wish to not exist is always in the back of my head.
Been there. Sometimes I return there, though not voluntarily. Suicidal ideation is a significant symptom and can be treated. How are you fixed for counseling services in your area? Are there any good psychologists available to you?
I’m so sorry for what you’ve suffered your whole life, and I really hope you can find help (ideally in the form of a therapist to find the right treatment for you), because as RoseCamelia said, suicide ideation and major depression are treatable.
I’m not at all trying to belittle your deep unhappiness or tell you that others’ feelings are more important than your own. I believe in euthanasia, for example, for untreatable mortal illnesses (of which, again, depression is not one). What I’m specifically combating is when people say or think to themselves, “No one will care if I die.” That’s not at all true and it deeply upsets me. I know they can’t always help it, because depression blocks logical thinking, but it’s a sensitive issue for me and that’s why I react strongly to anyone promoting that kind of thinking to others. That’s my point.
Thing of it is, depression can be fatal. Mental illness is just that, illness. It has a pathology, albeit one not entirely understood. I know you’re trying to be supportive, but taking the stance that depression is not a justified cause of death smacks of the sentiment that mental illness is not real illness. That people can “snap out of it.” That family support matters (it does… but it also really doesn’t. when I went through a really rough patch of depression, nothing mattered at all, and no dose of familial support ever helped. It made them feel better more than me. See the oft-quoted Hyperbole and a Half when she told a friend / family member she wanted to kill herself).
Also, depression does not perfectly equal “unhappiness” as such. Unhappiness, see, is an emotion. A lot of the time depression is more a manifestation of no emotion, or a feeling of a lack of connection to the world around you, or a loss of interest in… anything. It’s like really extreme blase-ness.
Clearly some people have different experiences with the disease than I have, but I wanted to try to make you understand a little better what depression can actually be (i.e. not just a case of the “sads”).
You’re absolutely right about everything here! Thing of it is, I actually have a good deal of close experience with depression and mental illness because my brother committed suicide and I’ve loved and lived with a significant other who was extremely depressed and talked about suicide a lot and it tore me up every day, and I’ve dealt with the fallout of that ever since. Not to mention two of my other closest friends struggle with deep depression and I’ve talked with them a lot about their individual experiences and how they cope and don’t cope.
What I’ve learned from my experiences is 1) I am not actually able to help anyone and thinking I could was the most damaging mindset I’ve ever had and 2) there is no fucking right way to talk about depression that works for everyone. I almost didn’t respond to the previous comment at all, because it hit so many of my triggers and I know it’s like black ice to me. All I wanted to do was combat the idea that suicide is inevitable and therefore okay. I don’t know what the hell a “justified cause of death” is.
But thanks for your concern in helping me understand a little more about depression. I’m going to listen to my instincts and just stay out next time, this is not a place for me. I can’t help.
I am glad you pointed out the teenageryness of the letter so I don’t feel bad for noticing it too.
The “nothing is ever going to get better and no one will ever love me and my friends aren’t interested in my drama and it’s all because my parents won’t let me do what I waaaaant” aspect of it is everyone at 16, not just her. Granted, the thing she wanted was big and important compared to what most teenagers are mad about, but the mindset is the same. Sad that she was so isolated from people who could help her see that.
Exactly. It’s just so frustrating and tragic to see how clearly 16 she is, because of course you’re convinced at that age that you really can predict the rest of your life and you see so clearly it Not Getting Better. When the reality is she would have been an entirely different person in ten, twenty, forty years’ time. Her perspective was so limited and, honestly, skewed.
Part of why her perspective was so limited was her isolation. Teens with regular contact with a broad range of people don’t get so caught up for so long with the blinders on. Her isolation is the responsibility of her parents, imo.
I absolutely agree with you. I don’t blame her at all for how she felt. It’s heartbreaking she felt that alone and hopeless, and especially that her parents didn’t make a big effort to learn about what she was going through and provide her with better support.
“My parents won’t let me do what I want” is one way to put it. “My parents are denying my identity, telling me I’m going to hell, and cutting me off from all support systems.” Her reddit posts go into a bit more detail about what they were putting her through, and it’s grotesque: http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbad…
Of course her POV was filtered through a teen’s perspective- she was a teen. But her experiences weren’t all teens’- at least I hope they weren’t. If all teens are living through this kind of abusive hell, we have a problem on our hands.
I…really object to the characterization of her mindset you’ve written here. I understand what you’re saying about the teenageriness of it, because it’s there, but I feel like you have emphasized that over and above the reality of the fact that she was being abused. This is not a universal condition of teenagerdom and it does not deserve to be described in whiny-sounding language (“what I waaaaaant”). To wit, most teenagers do not kill themselves. Again, I understand what you were trying to get at but I find this really belittling, honestly.
Absolutely this. I think it’s unimaginably cruel to characterize the extreme pain that so many trans kids suffer as on a par with “typical” teenage drama. The dysmorphia alone can be excruciating, let alone when you are being abused and neglected by those who are supposed to love and care for you.
+1 I had a shitty adolesence for a variety of reasons- depression, bullying, abuse- but it wasn’t even close to what Leelah went through. If I’d been suffering from dysmorphia on top of all the other stuff, and my parents had been denying both my humanity and any chance I had at alleviating my own suffering- I can’t even imagine what that does to someone’s brain. Let alone a teenager’s. If anything, we should be viewing her suicide through the lens of her age in that she was especially vulnerable to the kind of mistreatment her parents put her through.
“No one will ever love me [because everybody thinks I’m an abomination and I’m going to hell and society hates everybody like me.]”
“My parents won’t let me do what I waaaant [that is, express the reality of my gender, have friends, like and respect myself, and live my life with honesty and dignity.]”
Not being able to see life as ever getting better is a quality of adolescence, yes, but it’s also a quality of abuse victims, especially abuse victims who are members of oppressed groups. She thought nobody would ever love her because her own parents had told her that she wasn’t worthy of love the way she was. She thought that nothing would ever get better because all she experienced was abuse, neglect, and indifference.
Characterizing severe abuse and mental illness as “drama” is horrifying. I also object to the underlying idea that teenagers’ feelings aren’t as real as other people’s, or that emotions influenced by biological factors such as age wouldn’t “count”. They are just as real people as adults are. And this severe depression clearly didn’t develop randomly. Being isolated and controlled is terrible. Being denied medical care is terrible. Being cut off from love, respect, friends and opportunities is terrible. Being cut off from your own parents’ love, while also being forbidden to leave?
Adults in abusive relationships can suffer the effects for years after they get out. Most people wouldn’t dream of telling an adult in an abusive relationship to just wait until some point in the far off future – “oh, you’ll probably be promoted in the next couple of years, you’ll be able to move out then, just hold on two more years!”- because it’s obviously wrong to expect people to resign to being abused for two more years. And yet, we expect this of teenagers.
Also, I think a LOT of people in this thread are missing the fact that transition actually IS time sensitive. The earlier you can get it done, the better. Putting important medical treatment off for several years means that the disease (in this case the dysphoria) gets worse, that you lose more years of your life to the disease than you otherwise would have, and in the case of transition it also means that the results actually won’t be as good. If Leelah had been able to start transitioning at sixteen, she wouldn’t have had completed a male puberty (since male puberty ends between 18-21). Being forced to wait after male puberty is complete means trying to reverse it, which just isn’t possible to do for many of the effects. It must have been absolutely excruciating for her to watch her body develop irreversibly every day, while knowing that treatment could be started the same day if she’d been allowed to get it. Instead, her parents treated her and her body as their property.
Not to mention, with transition, you often end up feeling unable to get on with your life in even basic ways until it’s at least underway. I know that’s how I feel- that I can’t enter the job market in any meaningful way or start relationships or anything like that until I’ve begun. I’m 21 and I feel like I’ve spent half my life waiting for the sign to start running in a race everyone else started years ago. And I’ll be doing testosterone HRT, which is spoken of as LESS time sensitive than oestrogen.
You can start HRT at any time and get great results, but it can be so much easier to only go through ONE puberty instead of two. And the way cis people casually brush that off is utterly baffling to me.
Yes! And in a way, EVERY illness, disability or condition is time sensitive – because LIFE is. How many years of your life do you feel you want to use up on unnecessary illness? Not that many, right? Well, how many years do you think OTHER people should spend suffering? HOPEFULLY NOT THAT MANY EITHER, RIGHT?! I can’t BELIEVE that people think it’s okay to decide that it doesn’t matter if other people lose years. No one on this earth has ever gotten more than 122 years to live, and most people get fewer than 80. And they’re not all the same either. You are actually only young once. Why shouldn’t Leelah get to be sixteen, and seventeen and eighteen? Why should she just try to get to the other side of those years like they don’t matter? Why do some people talk like she should be okay with just losing out on her youth? No one should be okay with that! No one should decide that someone else ought to be okay with that!
(I’m cis but I’ve been denied treatment for my disability with this same reasoning. I’ll never get those years back.)
The thing is, there are so many well meaning and far from incorrect people now pointing to the fact that later transition is frequently just as medically/physically effective in giving you the changes you want and need through personal anecdote- which is great, and very important! We need to reassure trans youth that they are not ticking time bombs to self-destruct if they don’t ‘fix it’ by some arbitrary point in their life, and that all bodies are good bodies, that they can always embark on whatever path they need to, any time.
HOWEVER. There is also a distressing apathy towards the psychological and social effects that you’ve outlined really well here. It feels like we don’t discuss the fact that if you are depressed due to lack of options for transitioning, or unable to start intimate relationships due to being closeted, or feel unable to enter a career until you can go stealth… you really can feel as though you have lost years and years of your life. No platitude will overcome and eradicate that depression. No reassurance you’ll look just fine after HRT will change the fact you are lonely in the meantime as you struggle to form relationships. Nobody should feel they’ve lost twenty years of their life being lived correctly and authentically because ‘well, it will work just fine no matter when you deal with it!’ Nobody should spend a decade in marginal living circumstances because entering a career and THEN transitioning is such a public, dangerous thing.
Every woman deserves her girlhood to be free of all that shit. Every man should be allowed his boyhood. And the rest of us deserve whatever we damn well need. It just aches.
a few things:
a. I kinda, sorta agree with you about the trigger warning. It might have prevented one of my coworkers from seeing me wipe tears away at 8 in the morning. At the same time, the more people read this letter, the more people will be aware of the hell some transgender kids go through, and may prompt some actual results from people who sometimes turn away from transgender causes.
b. Leelah wrote beautifully, exhaustively, and precisely about why she was ending her life. While speculation is obviously allowed, it seems particularly gauche to do so when Leelah made it very clear that she was doing so both to end her own suffering and to further the cause of transgender rights.
c. I highly doubt that transgender kids, or other possibly-suicidal kids, will be inspired by Leelah’s act. I highly doubt that transgender kids who are living in un-supportive environments would need Leelah’s example to contemplate or commit suicide. It seems to me to be an argument for looking away, for ignoring the plight of these kids.
d. I think we should take her at her word and follow her expressed wishes to love and support transgedered persons at every age, in every space.
b. I’m not speculating, though I just realized that Roxane didn’t include the remainder of her last tumblr note, in which she gave specific addresses to people. The last one was to her parents: “Mom and Dad: Fuck you. You can’t just control other people like that. That’s messed up.” followed by: “I don’t really feel the need to apologize to anyone else… odds are you didn’t give a shit about me and if you do, you did something that made me feel like shit and you don’t deserve an apology.”
(The notes are quoted here: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2015/01/01/leelah-… sorry to link to an asshat’s blog, it’s just where I first saw it.)
Given that and the tone of the rest of her note, I don’t feel I’m speculating to say she was motivated in part by vengeance against her parents and the friends she felt didn’t care about her.
c. It is proven science that high-profile stories about suicides influence other people to commit suicide, often the same way. (For one example, look up the “suicide forest” of Japan.) I’m not disputing the awful truth of how high suicide rates already are for transgender people, but I am still upset if Leelah’s example leads others to imitate her. Especially as she promoted the godawful notion of “I want my death to mean something.” For kids who are convinced their life doesn’t mean anything (and I was once one of them, as most teenagers are), that’s an attractive notion.
I would really like to see a campaign to tell kids that there are better ways to promote gender studies and fixing society than stepping in front of a truck. Like living.
fair enough. Thanks for replying.
Again, the reasoning sounds, well, reasonable, and is sourced to a respectable organization, the Samaritans. You don’t want to “sensationalize” a suicide in order to inspire “copycat suicides.” You don’t want to intrude on a private moment of grief. You don’t want to “politicize” something personal.
But hang on a bit. That, again, presumes that Leelah Alcorn’s death was an isolated incident. That suicide of transgender young people denied support by their parents is rare, and therefore inspiring new incidents—putting the thought in people’s heads—is the largest danger here. It presumes that there isn’t a massive epidemic of trans suicides already happening. It presupposes that the reasons for Leelah Alcorn’s death are mysterious, individual, and personal to her case and that there isn’t a huge, glaring societal problem that can only be addressed if we as a society take collective action.
There’s nothing to “politicize” here. When eight times as many transgender adults attempt suicide as non-trans people and when eighty times as many end up actually killing themselves, when one trans person is murdered every three days and “gay panic” can successfully be used as a legal defense for straight men murdering trans women, when, on a global scale, the average lifespan of a transgender person is only 23 years…
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/03/…
This is such a great article, and encapsulates a lot of how I feel about this; the reality of our society’s pervasive, intense transmisogyny and the ways in which trans women experience it throughout their lives needs to be understood when looking at this tragedy. We are irresponsibly letting ourselves off the hook for actively dismantling and addressing this in focusing solely on her parents’ abuse and religion, and it’s really not for cis people to “it gets better!” struggling trans teenagers with no actual experience of what living as trans in this world is like.
Yeah no shit, especially since, as trans activists and authors have been saying for years, it doesn’t “get better” for many trans people, and the whole slogan and concept is irredeemably flawed (haha no shit Dan Savage came up with something transphobic and exclusionary, he of the “defending the t-word because some of my friends are drag queens” fame). I’ll dig up some links when I get home.
I really wish “it gets better” were putting more pressure on allies to say “it should get better, and we’re going to fight for that better future for you.” Because otherwise, damn, stop writing checks that society may very well decide not to cash.
While I agree that Leelah’s death and the initial sharing of the note was important, it’s untrue that the Samaritan guidelines view suicide as an isolated or individual thing. The opposite, in fact. While rates of suicides and suicide attempt for transgender people are abnormally (and horribly) high, the vast majority of suicides are connected to a systemic issue – often, mental illness. That’s why the guidelines talk about “vulnerable persons”. Meaning, suicidal people. They’re not concerned about healthy people seeing reports of suicide or suicide notes and going “huh, looks fun, I’ma try it”. They’re concerned about people who already fit into some framework – as many as 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder, for example, complete suicide – being pushed over the edge. Guidelines are never universally applicable, and an argument can be made – which I agree with – for sharing the suicide note, or at least making it accessible while reporting the facts contained therein, like Leelah’s abuse, final wishes, etc. But while it’s correct to frame Leelah’s death as political, it’s incorrect to frame the Samaritans’ guidelines as normally applying to personal blips on the radar.
(I am, personally, pretty annoyed with the note being posted with no warning, largely because the discussion I’ve seen tends to lean towards assuming no one who reads The Toast is actively suicidal, has or had abusive parents, or is trans or otherwise not cis. Maybe everyone needs to read the note, but some people will be more strongly affected by it than others, and some of those people read The Toast.)
Especially as she promoted the godawful notion of “I want my death to mean something.”
She killed herself because she was miserable. She left an eloquent suicide note so that her death could be, not just a way out for her, but hopefully a way to also improve things for other people. She didn’t just kill herself as an act of teenage rebellion.
I think there were a lot of complex motivations involved, and of course none of us can definitively assign weights to one over another. I’m just reading what she said, and that literally included the line “I want my death to mean something.” Also the lines in her subsequent post: “Mom and Dad: Fuck you. You can’t just control other people like that. That’s messed up.” I don’t think seeing spite there is an invalid reading.
“Spite” implies a feeling of anger or resentment disproportionate to what her parents put her through. There’s no level of anger in the world that’s disproportionate to parents driving their child to suicide by abusing and isolating her.
True. I should have used a different word. She wanted to hurt them back for all they’d made her hurt, and I quite understand that.
I think what I’m having trouble understanding here is why her (justified, imo) anger against her parents is a problem. “Spite” carries connotations of pettiness, of meanness, of doing something for the sole purpose of hurting another person. I read the “fuck you” as less an “I’ll show them, I’ll show them all” postscript, and more of a refusal to let her parents blame this suicide on something other than their emotional and spiritual mistreatment of her. She wanted them to very clearly understand that she killed herself because she was miserable, and she was miserable because they were hurting her.
Yeah, it’s all about different readings of her text; I was just saying that I don’t think mine is unreasonable. I retract “spite” for the good reasons you provide. Perhaps “vengeance” is better. Again, I’m not judging her for wanting to avenge herself.
I know this is not at all what you intend to do, but the “We must protect kids from being inspired to copycat suicides” thing is being used to silence trans people talking about the issues trans teens face. The guidelines that the CDC and other organizations put out for news organizations to use when reporting about suicides are intended for news coverage, not for social sites and people talking about it, and the CDC guidelines are quite specific that in-depth discussions are also important and can be beneficial. The Toast is not a news site. Social media is not news. News organizations are, in fact, abiding by the CDC recommendations. No one else is obligated to do so. It is absolutely vital that the issues that clearly drove Ms. Alcorn to suicide be addressed, because there is an epidemic of suicide attempts among trans youth. More than 50% of them attempt suicide before age 20, and they are more than 8 times as likely as cis youth to succeed. Not talking about what happened and not disseminating Leelah’s suicide not does not protect them, it protects their abusers and a transphobic society.
I’ve been really mixed on the publicity of this note exactly because of your last point. We know suicide contagion exists and that teenagers are vulnerable to it! I don’t think it’s right to sweep her death under the rug in the name of suicide prevention, but there’s a lot of glorification going on.
I don’t know. Suicide-prevention agencies have been working for years to get journalists to cover suicides in really sedate, non-sensationalist ways, but social media is undoing any gains in that arena, I think.
Yes. There should be a specific message that her death is a tragedy, all the more because it was so needless, and here’s why: #reallivetransadult
But as a few people have pointed out, if this note hadn’t been publicised, nobody would know she was Leelah. She’d be a boy called Josh who was killed. Publicising her note is the only way to honour who she was.
I hear that, and I get the emotional power of it. But the thing is — she’s dead. I don’t know what happens after you die, but I’m willing to put down good money that, one way or another, she’s in no pain now. I feel like it’s not unreasonable to prioritize the lives that can be saved, of the trans kids who *are* still in pain.
It’s just not true that people are going to either kill themselves or not, they’ve made up their minds and there’s nothing to be done. Little bitty things swing people — especially teenagers — one way or another all the time. There’s a mountain of data on it. Still-living people’s lives are very much in the balance here, and I have to care about that more than I care about the name on Leelah’s tombstone. It feels just as harsh and awful to sit here and type as I’m sure it does to a lot of people reading it, but that’s my moral calculus in this case.
But the publicity of her death is motivating allies and trans* activists alike to focus more on those still-alive kids. I’ve seen conversations, good conversations, about how abusive conversion therapy is, and how it needs to be banned for gender issues, just as it is for orientation issues. Letting the world know about this girl’s story, rather than having her become another unknown statistic, is prompting a public outcry that might, I think, let trans* kids know that there are grownups who care about them.
Your moral calculus is missing a number of variables that are absolutely vital to making an informed decision.
Where my runners at? I’ve done a marathon and two halfs (halves?) and I’m hoping to do an ultra someday.
Oooh! Ooh! Me!
I ran my first marathon this past October, my first half last May, and am registered for an appalling number of races this year–so far, a 25k relay and half in May, a half in June, a 15k or half in July, probably a 5k in July as well, a 25k in August, and then…?
Ultra runners are freaking amazing.
Wow, that’s a lot! Racing can be so addictive. Yesterday I ran my first race (a 10K) since July, and I got such a rush from being in a huge crowd of runners. MY PEOPLE. Stinky and wrapped in absurd spandex and all.
I’m kind of a runner… I trained for a half-marathon for a year and after running it swore I’d not do that distance again. I’m much happier in the 10k – 10 mile range for my “long” races. One of these days I may even get my 5k to under 35 minutes (maybe this year if I work hard enough) but I think I’m one of those people who’s body is not designed for running. I keep it up because running with my friends is my current main source of social activity and if I didn’t run, I wouldn’t speak to anyone but my cats face to face.
I’m so amazed with folks who can run the long distance. You go!
Running with friends is the best! I miss running on teams–even when teammates aren’t the best of friends, I still think there’s a kind of bond there from running together and sweating together and lending each other hair ties and possibly peeing in the woods together.
Amazing! I just started doing long-ish distances — have done my first half marathon and am signed up for my second — but the leap from half to full is intimidating, much less the leap from marathon to FIFTY MILES…!
When I trained for my first marathon, my plan was “run whatever I have to run to convince myself that I can race for 4+ hours.” Running for an hour or even two felt very doable because I had a good sense of how to pace myself over that stretch of time, but 4 hours seemed like “??? maybe forever?” I was living in a rural, mountainous place at the time and my heart’s actually beating faster now as I remember some of the amazing views I got to see during my training. Mountains, valleys, rivers, dirt roads, deer, snow, flowers.
I’m an aspiring runner! I’ve run a number of 5Ks, an 8K, and am currently 2/3 of the way through half marathon training. I don’t have a race picked out yet (as my training will end when it’s still obnoxiously cold outside), but I’m loving the training program!
I only had the bank holidays off so only the normal 100-odd emails this morning! But as I was working over the holidays I did get everything done while the people whose work I edit were off, so I have nothing to do and I’m arsing about on the internet this afternoon.
I got a glitter stencil ‘tattoo’ set for my horse for Christmas which is delighting me, consisting of stencils, glitter, non-toxic glue and some brushes, so I will be blinging my pony up when the weather is a bit better.
A recently single friend came over for NYE as her ex is still in her house and sleeping on the sofa and the woman he left her for has just dumped him (HAH), so she didn’t want to spend the evening sat in acrimonious silence with him. We watched NCIS and ate party food.
You are gluing glitter to your pony? I want a glitter pony! Will she spontaneously grow a rainbow mane to go with, or do you have to add that separately? Also do you have a horn she can wear?
I do that separately… I have blue hair anyway and plenty of pink and purple dye from when it’s been pink and purple, so I do periodically make the pony match me. This summer I might have to do her all up and take her to a show so we can do fancy dress as My Little Pony.
YOU OWN RARITY?
Apparently so, I had no idea (given I haven’t watched a my little pony cartoon since the 1980s). I will make a point of making some stencils like that!
Her real name is Petal and she is the absolute light of my life.
You are truly living a dream. This is amazing.
That is so amazing!
Oh, and all the places I’ve found that do bridle parts with horns attached are in the US. She wears antlers or a halo at Christmas, but I need to either make it myself or source a UK-based unicorn-horn place.
I WILL SEND YOU A HORN, TELL ME WHERE TO GO
because I MUST see your totes adorbs pony girl with a horn
OH PLEASE LET ME HELP!!!!!!
(I have always had a mad things for grays.)
That is a lovely offer, thankyou! I will get round to getting her one at some point though, I’ll see one on etsy and just go ‘oh fuck it. I want it’ and spend the money…
I like greys much more now that mine is retired from the show ring and I don’t have to get her clean any more.
Oh yes the cleaning… also yes the gray pony with creosote in his tail (at the Pony club testing too), and the gray horse who was most desirous of being a bay and attempted it daily with mud, and the gray who prefers his manure for a pillow and to soften the floor under his hocks, and the gray girl who had perpetual grass stain in her mane from rolling.
I just thought I’d offer, RE the horn/bridle because, yes.
Oh man I am so fascinated and baffled by ultramarathoners! I love running, but I can’t imagine EVER wanting to run 50 or 100 miles at a time.
Honest to pete, I was totally with you until two things happened: 1. I started training for a half marathon, and 2. I started hanging out with the local running community, which is CHOCK FULL of crazypants lovely people who routinely run 50-mile and 100-mile races. I finished my marathon thinking “eh, nbd, just 26.2, the REAL big kids run hundred-milers,” and that thought pattern is so so bizarre when taken objectively. Anyway, yeah, now I feel like an UNDERachiever having only done a full, so we’ll see?
Obsessives, every one of them.
I went to a talk by a woman who rowed across the atlantic ocean. She’s an extreme endurance whosis or whatever and the trips raise money for charities. And the whole time I was like, “but…it sounds SO BORING. Sure sure, grueling and impressive, but also you are alone, rowing a boat for months. Whyyyyy would you do that. Have you been to a wine bar and seen a cheese tray ever? What about a movie theater. If you see these things, you’ll know there are all sorts of delightful ways to kill time.”
But…the road. It pulls you. After a couple of hours, your mind starts to melt and everything gets simpler.
I love the way running makes my world so small. I’m out on the road or in the woods with nothing on me but clothes and keys–maybe a water bottle and music. I cannot at that moment be responsible for that paper I need to write, that app I need to submit, or that email I need to send. I can only do one thing, and I’ve chosen to run, so my only duties are staying hydrated and not getting lost.
(spoken as a person who sometimes uses running to procrastinate)
I read an article once about an ultramarathoner who gets a large Hawaiian pizza during a 75 or 100 mile run, rolls it up into a log, and eats it as he runs. WHAT. That is absurd.
This isn’t the article I read, but it’s mentioned in here: http://www.themonthly.com/kilduff-08-05.html
Got about 2 “real” emails and 15 “internal mailing list” emails + 1 baby announcement over the holiday. Not bad at all! Plus, my sit-stand workstation arrived so I’m using it for the first time today. It wiggles a bit when I type but is much better than the “stacked books” standing workstation I had fashioned before. And the first order of business of 2015 is… writing my performance self-assessment!
I had some goodies lined up for y’all for open threads but missed both because they were on Wednesdays. So… hopefully Friday I can finally deliver.
ETA: ALSO ALSO my parents got me a subscription to Elle for Christmas, and in the January issue, what to my wondering eyes should appear but OVO Roxane!!! blessing the pages as part of a “Board of Awesome Women” the magazine had created for the upcoming year. It was a little unclear what their roles would be but I am starry eyed about this crossover. Congratulations Roxane, can’t wait to see what you do!
Also, totally unrelated to everything, but I paid $1.83/gal for gas yesterday. VIVA LA COSTCO
I sold my car last year but now when I see gas prices it makes me want to buy a car again just to put gas in it.
Nononono. Think of the insurance and maintenance costs. You’re well ahead without a car. You did the right thing. Let me know if you need a ride. With a little advance notice, I’ll even vacuum out the dog hair before picking you up.
Ha! Where I live now it would be basically impossible to own a car (the cost for a monthly parking space behind my building is nearly as much as I used to pay in RENT) so you don’t have to worry about me backsliding.
Thanks to Kroger fuel points and VERY low gas prices, I filled up from low fuel light to full tank with premium for only $20. It was amazing.
My uncle posted a photo in western Michigan where gas was $1.74/gallon. whaaaaat
Toasties, I promised myself that January would be a low-key month of self-care, cleaning, and general catching up after the busiest and most stressful months I’ve had in a long time. Except I went and made an offer on a house yesterday. And not just any house, one that would take a ton of work to get to closing all of which would need to be done quickly. So. Waiting. When I hear back from the sellers I will either be relieved that I get to go back to the zen month I had planned or filled with anxiety about trying to get it closed but thrilled that I got a steal. I hate this part!
Well, for New Year’s I had a massive fight with the only good friend I have here and now we’re not talking, so that’s cool and fun and I’m definitely a-okay with it.
I want to eat dinner with Ina Garten. She seems like a pretty cool lady.
Ouch. I hope y’all resolve it in a manner that’s safe and healthy to all parties. Losing a good friend is really the worst.
I’m not happy to be back at work at all, but at least being at work puts me back on my normal Toast-reading schedule.
Whenever I see commercials for The Bachelor, I get really convinced that I should be on the show. I could pretend to be really into it all through the auditions, but then when the filming started I could reveal my true misandrist self! Imagine the clips – the group of women is excited to be going on a date, but there I am in the background wearing a huge sweater and jeans and rolling my eyes Liz Lemon style. Or, the dude shows up wearing a tux carrying a bunch of roses and I just hold up one finger to him while continuing to chat on the phone.
This made me smile. Thank you.
I’ve threatened to submit my sister for exactly the same reason. I would so enjoy cackling at someone like that on the bachelor.
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease do this. I will help pay for your travel costs. Not even kidding.
Speaking of ultramarathons, everyone should check out this project: http://www.womenofthemountain.com
It features women running ultras and the women who live in the mountains where the races are held. Rebecca Byerly is a friend, an amazing woman, and obviously, slightly crazy.
First day back at the office since Dec. 19. I checked my work email yesterday, just to prepare myself, and while I had 63 messages, more than 40 were German spam and 15 more were other (American) spam, so all things considered, it was manageable.
I learned today that I was officially promoted into the position I’ve been “acting” in since September. Not much changes except I get a whole bunch more vacation time, which will be nice.
My friend’s mom is an ultramarathoner. She started running at 48 and has done races through Death Valley and over the Himalayas. Considering the only thing that would induce me to run is a murderer with a chainsaw, I find her delightfully insane. She wrote a book about it (Running Past Midnight).
I’m on a study break for a (work-related) exam next Monday. The annoying thing is I don’t get any extra days off for it, so this goes out of my vacation time, and it’s making me a bit rebellious. On the bright side, I think studying mornings should be enough, and I’ll have afternoons to get shit done I haven’t had time for, like get a haircut, buy new shoes, watch tv, etc. At least that’s the theory – I did study almost all day today.
Kindle users: Grave Mercy, book one of the His Fair Assassin trilogy, over which I and others were gushing in the open thread a few weeks ago, is currently $1.99. Killer Nuns, you guys. Enjoy! http://www.amazon.com/Grave-Mercy-Fair-Assassin-T…
I am so not into being back at work today, in no small part because my coworker gave notice and now it’s going to be weeks upon weeks before a replacement is brought in. I am thisclose to stress leave.
However, I have just been messaged by a cute young Scotsman on okc who is moving here in a couple of months, so. *cackles witchily*
Back to work for the first time since the 19th. I had more than 100 but less than 1000 emails, many of them not actually important at all. I figure I can take a week to slog through them before I am officially behind. My life would be easier if everyone would stop sending new emails though.
As I was getting ready for work this morning, I noticed that I still had layers of green and orange and purple point under my fingernails from various projects over the holidays, and no amount of scrubbing would remove it. I finally gave up and hastily painted my fingernails instead. Never paint your fingers in haste, gentle reader. Today is going to be an awkward day of trying to be subtle about holding my hands in fists so that people won’t see my fingers every time I have a meeting. I think my boss might think I developed some sort of anger management problem over the break.
Also very sad about Stuart Scott. I watched the ESPN tribute video yesterday morning and was a crying wreck for a solid hour afterward.
Can we just cancel work for January? It’s too cold to leave the warmth of lap cats. (I’ve requisitioned an office cat, but thus far the transaction has been denied.)
Hello! Good morning (where I am)! I can’t wait for an open thread! I need advice!
My boyfriend has quit smoking, basically today! Hooray! He has been a pack a day smoker for 10 years. I COULD NOT be happier that he is quitting. I’m so proud of him for taking these steps. I would like some advice as to how I can support him, if you’ve got it. Anecdotes and stories welcome!
For context: he’s wearing a patch. He is, the dear darling man that he is, otherwise pretty underprepared, in my very humble opinion. He tends to think he can muscle his way through problems and not seek out the support and advice that might help him, and also not plan things very well. All of that makes me a bit concerned.
well, I would just say, make no assumptions. It’s easier for some people to quit than others, despite the propaganda we get about it — people’s bodies are different and so are their reactions to addictive substances. It may be really hard for him, it may not — but I would try not to overshadow what he’s doing with assumptions and let it be his own thing that he’s in control of. (Which maybe you are already doing, anyway!). For me, it was not that hard, physically, to quit, but what was hard sometimes was when a few people I knew would be very congratulatory about the change to me and make me self-conscious — that always backfired. Especially from people who themselves never smoke.
More power to your boyfriend — great news! If he hasn’t already, it is also a good idea for him to think up some habits that can substitute for smoking when he gets the urge. For me, smoking was not just about the cigarette but also about that great moment in the afternoon when you got to take a break, and just breathe in and out deeply, and not have to do anything, just be present, observe the world, enjoy yourself and the little rush of calm that a cigarette provides. So sometimes I would make a cup of tea right at that moment, and other times I would just go step outdoors and breathe some fresh air, but without a cigarette (cheesy as it might sound) and then go back in. Whatever works for him. It might help for him to articulate out loud at some point what he misses or what he’s wanting when he gets that urge, and then figure out his own alternative way to satisfy it.
Also, watch out for those nicotine patches. They can get stuck to *you* in the night when you two are sleeping and roll over! No really big deal, but probably something you’d like to avoid! 🙂
I’ve quit smoking several times–the last one has finally stuck for 17 years. Basically, you have to take it one cigarette at a time. Each time you don’t smoke a cigarette is a triumph, each time you do smoke a cigarette, well, you smoked a cigarette, and the next time you want to smoke a cigarette is an opportunity to not smoke a cigarette. Eventually you just forget to keep smoking. It helps to just think of it as a minor inconvenience than a heroic battle. But I have to say that the best incentive is getting a massive head cold that makes it impossible to breathe, let alone smoke.
I have been through this with my husband. I agree with @leslieellenjones below that every single time he could smoke but chooses not to has to be treated like a triumph. It feels ridiculous as a lifelong nonsmoker to praise someone hard for *not* doing something, but that is what my husband needs. For him, the trigger is boredom, especially in the car. I have to make a point of being really great company when we are on a long road trip.
On the other hand, I also made it very clear that I can tell when he slips up and that I am disappointed. I don’t belabor it, just make sure he is aware that his gum or whatever is not fooling anyone.
1. The patch–good work, him!
2. Moral support–good work, you!
3. If he has an iPhone, the QuitNow Free app was SO SO helpful for me over the last year. It keeps a running tally of how long you’ve been quit, how many cigarettes you haven’t smoked, how much money you’ve saved by not smoking, and how much extra time has been added to your life. Just being able to see the stats rack up was a huge motivation for me.
MrChouffe and I quit together last New Year’s, and he had a much easier time of it than I did–primarily because even though he’d been smoking a lot longer and was a much heavier smoker, he was much more psychologically ready to quit. Whatever else happens, the more ready he is, the better he’ll do. Tell him we’re rooting for him.
Aw thanks, I will!
He downloaded the QuitNow app last night (after I was like “so, my love, apart from the patch, what is your plan?? Because you know there are a lot of resources out there and you *might* want to make use of them because they *might* help you achieve this goal that seems really important to you”) and this morning I was like “check the app! Let’s see how much more time boning we’ve gained!” And he had gained two hours of life, and I told him I would bone him twice with that time.
I’m super proud of him in taking this step. Privately, I’m not 100% sure that he’s ready – he LOVES smoking, and it gives him a lot of things he really values – alone time, the chance to take breaks, etc. He started smoking after his dad died of a sudden heart attack when he was 21, and I think it was a bit of a “FUCK YOU WORLD” move, and I’m hoping he’s ready to come back to the world. I think it’s psychologically super complicated for him.
The thing that is scaring me the most is that he is quitting smoking hoping that it will give him a much-needed self-esteem boost right now. He quit his job after sort of being asked to, and is looking for work right now with really limited success (he’s still working, but on a ticking clock), and really feels down on himself. My fear is that quitting smoking is a really hard thing to hang your self-esteem hat on, especially when you are a black-and-white thinker who tends to see things as either SUCCESS or FAILURE. I really believe in him, but I also believe that he might take some time and some “slip ups” before it sticks, and it’s hard to communicate that those things are ok without intimating that I don’t believe he can do this. Which I totally do.
It’s stressful! I just want him happy and fulfilled in all aspects of his life, and this is stuff I can’t solve for him, no matter how much I want to.
Mine quit over summer, he used the e-cigarettes and never looked back. He had to as he got a chest infection and asthma started and he was really sick and *really* had to stop, but he has kept at it and totally credits the e-cigs with a lot of it.
Seconding Es_Petal’s suggestion of an e-cigarette. They’re so dorky and they SO WORK. I love smoking, I miss smoking, but I still get to step outside and re-set with something in my hand a couple of times a day. Weirdly, I discovered I want nothing to do with the tobacco-flavored juices and am all about tart fruits, so I smell nice, too.
No emails, as I’ve been working retail. Just the immensely screwed up sleep cycles that come from working until midnight with a half hour drive home. That being said, my birthday is this week and I posted a potential activity on my fb. I’m sure that the lack of responses will make me if not cry, then at least loudly sulk. (My birthdays are historically terrible, it’s a thing)
This is perhaps more of a open thread topic, but I gave my mom (a high school English teacher) Texts from Jane Eyre for Christmas, and she’s been periodically declaring Mallory a genius since (naturally). Today was her first day back at school and she apparently told all her English teacher friends about the book and now they’re all clamoring to read it. Tomorrow at their planning meeting they are going to read aloud from the book. Texts from Jane Eyre, taking over the world one high school English department at a time.
I crashed my neighbors’ new year’s celebration. After toasting the new year, we had a dance party in the living room, and then the 5-year old walked me home to protect me from dragons. With a sword. Which I’m sure was particularly magical, as it was invisible.
Squeeeeee! Your five-year-old safety escort is adorable. Dragons. Magic. Invisible sword. Swoon.
He’s the cutest.
The longest I’ve ever run was 7.4 miles about 2 weeks ago. (I’ve been slowly upping my mileage since October.) It felt good, like I could’ve gone longer! I was not expecting to feel that way.
The racing bug has not bitten me yet, weirdly. But one of these days I’d like to just go out and run as far as I can run and then go eat egg and cheese on a bagel and take the subway home.
(This is in reply to Dishkit above!)
I saw pictures of Kristen Stewart being very friendly with a lady, and my first thought was, “Does Mallory know?!?”
My sister and her fiancee almost break up every time we play Settlers of Catan (he always wins). It’s kind of scary to watch, actually.
I read an article once about an ultramarathoner who gets a large Hawaiian pizza during a 75 or 100 mile run, rolls it up into a log, and eats it as he runs. WHAT. That is absurd.
This isn't the article I read, but it's mentioned in here: http://www.themonthly.com/kilduff-08-05.html
Thanks to Kroger fuel points and VERY low gas prices, I filled up from low fuel light to full tank with premium for only $20. It was amazing.
Oh yes the cleaning… also yes the gray pony with creosote in his tail (at the Pony club testing too), and the gray horse who was most desirous of being a bay and attempted it daily with mud, and the gray who prefers his manure for a pillow and to soften the floor under his hocks, and the gray girl who had perpetual grass stain in her mane from rolling.
I just thought I'd offer, RE the horn/bridle because, yes.