Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Hypocritical?

I get hit on occasionally, it's never really anything to write home about and for the most part I keep it to myself. I'm in a committed relationship (the term "committed" makes me think of padded walls), living with my girlfriend of one year and four months and our cats doing, the domesticated thing.

The last time I reallly got hit on I was buying a new pair of hiking shoes at Eastern Mountain Sport. I walked over to the wall-o-shoes looking for the pair I wanted and this chick descended upon me like no one's business. If I had been single (or a lesser person) I totally would have flirted back. There is a girl who keeps coming back to my work (I help students at my school with papers) and signing up for my time blocks and sitting realllly close to me when I'm working with her. When her fingers brushed my hand one time it was everything I could do to not fall straight out of my chair. That was less being hit on and more being bashed over the head, in my opinion (in that there was nothing subtled about that action).

I usually tell Hillary when I get hit on, I don't know why. Maybe it's a subconscious desire to make her jealous. Maybe it's a subtle hint to her that she best appreciate what she has (because if she doesn't someone else will appreciate it for her). For the most part we have a good relationship, certainly better than average. The fact that we enjoy cooking together and cleaning together (most of the time) definitely helps, and being able to sit quietly and read or write or do homework without disturbing each other (again, most of the time) is good. A lot of the time we bicker like sisters, and then I wonder to myself "is this really what I want?" I don't know if this is really what I want. I don't know if I want to be twenty years old and in a committed relationship, I'd love to be able to go out with that girl from my job. Sometimes in the morning though, when the orange morning sun is peeking through the curtains in the bedroom, the glow will land just right on Hillary's hair and I'll see more clearly how beautiful she is, how beautiful she always is. I'll remember all the good times we have and have had and will continue to have, forgetting all the rough patches and all the (really) bad times. I'll reach my arm around her waist and pull her in to me really tight, and when the alarm clock goes off at 7:30 she'll wake up in my arms and it will be the start to a better, brighter day.

I've been home in Connecticut since last Friday, and Hillary has been alone in the apartment. I bet she is lonely, and understandably so, but I needed some time to spend at my house with my mom and my friends and my animals over my spring break.

Today Hillary called me and told me that some guy who she had a meeting with yesterday (a big meeting of the big shot college admission counselors) flirted with her today. I think it's funny, Hillary is so goofy it never even occurred to me that someone else would think she is attractive. She's a very attractive person, but she's just so darn goofy, and she's not a stereotypical pretty girl. She loves her job and she does it well, she's not out there to meet a man (or a woman, for that matter) so I guess I am kid of surprised at how presumptuous this guy was.

Apparently he emailed her asking her about something from their big meeting yesterday and they emailed back and forth about work stuff for a bit and then he asked her for her number (although, I have to wonder, why would you give some near-stranger your phone number?) and she gave it to him. He started texting her and initiated the flirting with something to the effect of "you should be happy that you have a cute guy's phone number."

Hold. the. phone (literally). Did he just compliment HIMSELF? Bold. Homeboy's got balls.

She texted him back something to the effect of "not really, I don't think my girlfriend would be too happy about it."

Annnnnndddd in comes the stereotypical "girlfriend??" and the wonder at the fact that yes, a woman MIGHT choose to be with another woman because there are guys like you (addressing this gentleman who made the decision to flirt with my girlfriend) out there.

I can't wait for him to text her asking about a threesome, because that's all lesbians live for obviously.

College is a strange world, not quite high school (where heterosexuality is the ONLY sexuality) and not quite adulthood where (at least on the East Coast of the U.S.) sexuality and "love relationships" are left to the adult's choosing or inclination.

Boys still assume girls want them, even if that girl is a lesbian. Girls still assume boys are going to drool over them if they come to class with their tits hanging out, even if that boy is gay.

If I were a man, in a heterosexual relationship with Hillary, I would have every right to be pissed off at this guy and to be protective of my girlfriend. I feel like, since I'm in a homosexual relationship I don't have the social ability to be pissed off and to be protective. I'm supposed to just go belly up to any advances made on my girlfriend. She's not my property and she has the ability to make her own decisions and defend herself, but I still feel kind of... I don't know... hurt?

Not hurt I guess... but funny. People don't usually hit on Hillary because she's goofy, and that goofyness is part of what I love the most about her. I also love it when she laughs because she has the FUNNIEST laugh. She has a cute nose and a beautiful face. Anyone with two functional eyes could see that about her and love her for it, so I can't really blame this guy. But he doesn't know that she's a really good cook and a really fun cooking partner. He doesn't know that she'll slip her hand into yours when you least expect it when you're meandering the grocery store. He doesn't know that she loves gummy candies (especially those fruit slice candies) and watching Greys Anatomy on her laptop instead of reading files on Thursday nights. He doesn't know anything about her, and the fact that he thinks he knows her and he thinks he has the right to know her is what pisses me off the most. I don't even know this guy and I know he's not good enough for her, and he never will be. And that's what really bothers me.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Conservatives Beware

Sarah Palin admits to crossing Canadian border for health care

That was basically the best thing I heard all day. Thanks to the array of liberal blogs that I read daily, I am a very happy camper today.

I keep getting in fights (over facebook, no less) with one of my cousins. He is ten or so years older than I am, he dropped out of college and joined the Navy for seven years when he was my current age. He couldn't hack it at college, and he knew he couldn't hack it as a pilot like his father was in the Air Force and he didn't want to go to the front lines with the Army or the Marines, so he joined the Navy. Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that. The bottom line is, he didn't join the Navy because he is patriotic or felt a sense of duty to his country. He joined up because he didn't want to get shot at, to learn new skills or have to really do anything. He joined the Navy and worked in the boiler rooms as someone who keeps the ship running because he just could not hack it in the real world, either finishing college or getting a job.

He dropped out of college because they asked him to leave because he is/was an alcoholic and never went to class or did his work.

And he's a conservative bigot who thinks that, because he is a white heterosexual male (with a wife and three little boys, who will all be brainwashed by their good for nothing father) he is entitled to put others down and his opinion is always right.

We fight about everything, because he is "extremely right" and I am "extremely left." He thinks socialism is the worst idea he's (n)ever heard, and I think, after extensive reading and studying the matter, that socialism is one of the best economic systems imaginable.

He doesn't want to do his research, he doesn't want to hear what the other side has to say. All he wants is to spout off his opinions and for everyone to hear him and tell him how right he is.

Well I'm simply not going to do that. I'm not going to go belly up to him because he is a white heterosexual American male with too much free time and not enough common sense. And that pisses him off to no end.

If, at the end of the day, I can sufficiently piss off a conservative, I have done my job, and it will have been a good day.

The only word of advice I have for conservatives: do your research. If you're going to say this that and the other thing about socialism, make sure you've actually read the Communist Manifesto. If you say that socialism and communism are the same thing, you sound like a dumbass so go back to middle school. I read the Communist Manifesto for the first time in the 7th grade. Now, I know that many conservatives didn't make it that far in their education, since they were too busy worshipping idols and preparing for the rapture, but there is no excuse for talking about things that you haven't researched.

If you come to me spouting off your ideas and telling me that I'm wrong (unless, of course, I am wrong. There is nothing wrong with being wrong, there is something wrong with being wrong AND STILL trying to impress yours wrongness on others), I will ram you into the ground with knowledge and vitriol so hard that you'll have to go crying back to your mommy.

Nothing would satisfy me more than to know that I've made my 30 year old cousin go crying to my aunt because I schooled him over facebook.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Ed-you-ma-ka-tion

As you may or may not know, I'm twenty years old.

I'm a public high school graduate from Connecticut and a junior at a private liberal arts college in Massachusetts. I'm the daughter of a woman who has worked all her life, the widow of a victim of cancer (my father, one of the most wonderful human beings to ever walk this Earth), who will hopefully be able to retire in fifteen years or so in her early seventies.

Next May I'll be graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in English. This time next year I will have applied (and hopefully have been accepted to) graduate schools in both counseling or clinical psychology, PsyD programs or MA or PhD programs in English. In the next ten years I hope to get either a PsyD or PhD in counseling/clinical psychology or a PhD in English Literature.

I wonder if every college junior gets as worried as I am now. I'm painfully aware that I'm a type A personality (though most people don't use that classification anymore) and that I get stressed out very easily, but this just seems like so much to be dealing with at one point in time.

Not only do I have to worry about my school work, about my job and about getting jobs and internships lined up in my fields, but I have to worry about graduate school and post-grad and where I want to be in the next 3/5/8/10 years.

I worry so much that in ten years, when I'm thirty and my mom is in her mid-sixties, I'll (hopefully) finally be in a financial position where I can have children and my mom will be too old to enjoy her grandchildren. I worry that with all this education and all the money I'm spending on this education I'll never be in a position where I can support a family financially. I'll always be paying off loans and living in a one-bedroom apartment with screaming babies in the hallway.

I'm just worried I guess, stressed out about everything. Everyone always reminds me that they're XX years old and they still don't know what they want to do with their lives, and that's perfectly fine but I am so worried that if I follow my dreams of getting my education and my PhD and wait another 10,15,20 years to start a family my mother and my aunts and uncles are never going to be able to enjoy my children the way they enjoy my cousin's children (my cousins are mostly significantly older than I am).

It's a lot to think about it so I guess I should just try to worry less, but that's hard to do when you're me.