I'm also not like, blind to what's going on, in case anyone was wondering

Like I guess this counts as my "platform" but considering the only readers I have are like, weird russian bots and people I know in real life, and the fact that I have never in any way, shape, or form tried to make this profitable, readable, popular, etc and have NO interest in that being the case, I do not and will not put myself in the category of someone with a platform. I don't have influence to the point that it's a job, or a side hustle, or some kind of moral necessity. And yet... I'm still here writing this.

This whole month has given me the gift of people opening up about their experiences to me. Talking to me about this. Making new connections. It's helped me see which of my friends cares about this enough to say "you know what, even if it's uncomfortable for me, I should probably share a thing or two that resonated with me"and which of my friends seem to be of the opinion that "I won't share, but I will be open about this personally with people I am close to" and which of my friends are still saying "I just don't wanna." It's white privilege to be able to ignore this and just continue your life, you know. Society is built for you to ignore it. You're okay being complacent in that? I also don't want to say there's some overlap with friends who have said absolutely nothing in any capacity and friends who attended a "ghetto" themed party in high school (DESPITE me protesting that the theme was OVERTLY and CLEARLY racist) but like... there is. (I also know some people just don't post on social media at all, really, and I've seen nothing from them for months- I know that people use that kind of stuff differently).

And also honestly like.. the world does NOT need my opinion on this. I'm a highly privileged white woman and while I'm intelligent and empathetic, we can all see how this problem does not affect my life. I live in a majority white city in a majority white neighbourhood. I didn't see any real diversity in skin tone until I attended a major university. The vast majority of my friends are white. At least half my colleagues are white, and I can see fields around me that are vastly majority white. And this is the point where I'm supposed to say that's not a bad thing, bla bla white people are good, but there is literally an entire social system here set up for them to think that as a default so I'm not going to bother. It should be obvious that I don't hate myself for being born white- I obviously can't help that, nobody can. But is the whiteness of all that a good thing? Objectively not. It makes me more comfortable because everybody assumes I belong... but I don't think I deserve to feel comfortable for that. I deserve to feel like I belong in that space because I do- I earned my way there (aware of how some of that was unearned as well), I want to be there, I am there, I'm contributing. Not because I'm fucking white and "of course white people do science!" Literally FUCK that attitude. That's what I mean when I say whiteness in the space I work in is objectively bad. That's what it is.

That's something I've been trying to check in myself lately. It's literally the smallest thing I can do, and I know that. but when I drive through an unfamiliar neighbourhood, I know nobody will call the police or give me funny looks, because I'm white. I know that if I'm on campus late and it's dark and I'm walking to my car with my hood up, people just assume I'm a student who belongs there, because I'm white. When people see pictures of me they will be less likely to assume I'm not capable, that I was given something unfairly, that I didn't earn my way to where I am (of course sexism still impacts me, but that's pretty much the only ism). People assume I belong, I'm right, I'm good, I'm smart, etc. I'm never the only person of my race in ANY space I'm in, ever. Nobody questions my presence in a space and if they do, I know they won't become aggressive. Nobody calls the police because I play music VERY loudly in my neighbourhood just because I like it. I am at the point where I flat out feel that I may have been given better treatment- more attention, more care, less hostility- as a graduate student in my program because I am white. Everybody looks at me and assumes I speak English and doesn't ask where I came from because of course I came from this part of the world. People look at me and assume I am capable, smart, and will do good things, that I am a good person doing good things, that I will be easier to deal with, etc. I'm not naive enough to think that doesn't affect how people treat me. If the colour of my skin means things to people before I ever say a word, it affects how they treat me. This isn't hard.

So when people tell me things have happened to them because of their race or describe their racial experience to me, I trust them, and I remember what they said, and I make the mental effort to think about how situations are different for me because I am white. I also make the mental effort to try and question my assumptions. I can't stop whatever automatic thoughts have been coerced into my brain, but I can try to examine them- therapy is already teaching me how to do this. Is there evidence to back this up? What is really going on here? Where did I learn this story? Sometimes the answer still eludes me, but I feel morally called to do that work, inside myself, all the time. Again: literally the tiniest thing I can do. I'd like to imagine the power it could have if every white person could do it, though. Question their assumptions about race. Look for the evidence. Be critical. Be open. Be curious. Hold themselves to a higher standard and accept that sometimes the answers don't come to you immediately or that you will resist them because they are so uncomfortable. 

Between that, reading some books, reading and sharing a lot of instagram posts, and donating money, I'm trying to help. Maybe this is performative, I don't know, but I also want to be part of the reason you can't ignore this issue anywhere you go, including your opinionated feminist friend's personal blog. So here it is.

-swegan

We're really testing my ability to call myself a homebody

Let me weave you a tale of me in mid-March: stressed. Very stressed. As always. It was marking time and I had a lot of lab reports to get through again, and I knew the last lab report, consisting of the two longest sections, was something I was going to have to mark next. I was juggling bridesmaids drama- namely that one of the bridesmaids was, if not definitively a piece of shit person, decidedly acting like one, and the other helpful bridesmaids and I were trying to put together a bachelorette party 3 weekends before the wedding in mid-April. I was going to the gym twice a week, which had a positive effect on my mental health that cannot be understated (and for 25% the price of therapy, too!), and was looking forward to my teaching duties being done early so I could start to get some real work done on my project. I was going to try Baby's First Apoptosis Assay once marking was really, truly done, get some positive controls for my CB1 western blots, find a way to isolate protein with a broken sonicator, finish my RNA experiments, and see about ordering a new cell line. 

I met with my supervisor on Wednesday, something akin to seeing Bigfoot in the woods, and taught all day on Thursday, something akin to having a hangnail that you just KNOW you can't trim until you get home even though it keeps getting caught on your sleeve. With a fellow graduate student and TA, I shared that I thought that the university would really try to wrap up the remaining two weeks of the semester before shutting down. There were only two weeks left. Only two other major institutions in the country had shut down at this point. I was silently mustering strength in the background to get through the next month of my life, which was going to be extremely busy and require delicate time management.

And then they brought the hammer down.

Classes- cancelled. Labs, including the one I taught- cancelled. In-person meetings cancelled. Suddenly we had to tell the PIs exactly when we'd be in the lab and for how long, and I was instructed to wear a mask when in the lab at all times- despite me only going in at 7pm or later and being completely alone the entire time. A week later I was advised by the same PIs to freeze my cells and not return to campus. I keep kicking myself for having left a bunch of stuff in my "office"- a charging cord, several types of tea, some snacks, a little cactus that is actually just a painted rock, a sense of normalcy- you know. But at the time I don't think anyone could have predicted just how long we'd be gone. I still haven't been back- that marks almost three full months out of the lab- the same amount of time I lost to the move to the new building last summer. Given how much more slowly we're going to have to proceed when we get back, I'm thinking it's safe to say I've now lost a lot more time than just three months.

The bachelorette party never happened. The wedding did. I attended it on zoom, something I cannot recommend against enough. There are few things more painful than watching one of your best friends get married over a low-quality web stream in which their other friends and relatives will not stop spamming the chat with smart ass comments and you can't hear any of the vows, but CAN clearly hear the officiant say "well, at least the people who really mattered were able to be here with you today." I imagine one of the things more painful is having to try and reschedule your wedding in the context of a major global pandemic, just to be clear. While I'll still be able to party it up in my bridesmaids dress I paid $100 extra to rush-order which is currently the most ironic thing that has ever happened to me, I'm still processing the pain of that experience in private, on my own time. I think a lot of us are doing that right now.

Oh, by the by- I'm engaged now too. Redbeard and I will someday get married- also someday we will live together BEFORE getting married, but of course the two-posts-ago-mentioned breaking of his leg delayed his program by a semester, so now we get to move in January during the same semester of my comprehensive exam, and before you say that we could just live with my parents for a semester, you haven't been living with my parents, which I would advise you to keep in mind. I would much rather throw away money on rent than listen to my parents talk for one more second about how rent is just throwing away money.

That's the kicker, too- I went to see Redbeard in person, so fortunately my engagement was not via low-quality web stream, but was instead by a high quality real life stream, with a ring gently nestled inside of a container of flyfishing flies, right between my favourites- the hoppers (which I used this weekend knowing full well it was way too early for fish to be interested in anything that juicy). However, my ever-paranoid mother has insisted upon my return both that I have to get tested (which will happen in about 24 hours and inevitably come back negative) and that I have to quarantine in my room for 14 days. Now I am about one week into that, and I feel as though my sister is about one more time preparing a meal for me away from just hugging me in full view of our parents so we can be quarantined together. It really is something to come home from getting engaged and not feeling a single human touch for two weeks. Probably also on that list of things more painful than attending your best friend's wedding over a low-quality web stream, along with having to live apart from your fiancee for another 6.5 months. This is despite the fact that neither Redbeard nor any of his outdoorsy friends he's been in contact with have reported having The Virus (and I know he would tell me if he was quarantining for that reason, if not because he knows I'd want to know, then because it would mean two weeks not being in the mountains and that would be quite difficult for him). Let me repeat: there is literally no basis to having me do this besides the fact that my mother does not see that she clearly has an anxiety disorder and needs to go to therapy so the rest of us can stop tiptoeing around her feelings lest we trigger another passive aggressive silent treatment.

And then comes the fun realization that this pandemic has fucked us all up, to the point that I'm almost certain I'm not the only one that can't watch movies anymore because any scene containing two or more people from different households in close proximity activates my fight-or-flight response and seems extremely unrealistic. We all took it as a given that it was safe to be social and enjoy the company of others, and that was ripped away, and we all know we can't move to some kind of online pod society where we never interact with others in person because humans are social creatures by nature and as such we now must find a way to end this situation such that we can like, hug each other again, or collectively we're going to lose it.

So for once I'm using some of the tags for this blog that I made when I was like, 13, and never bothered to change because I figured those were all the classifications I'd ever need, and then stopped using when I inevitably didn't need them anymore. Because you know what? This fully classifies as :(, dread and the like, low points, and sad stuff. Thanks, 13 year old me. I hope you all out there are okay.

reflections on burnout

I passed my transfer exam. I don't think anybody reading this is a real, genuine stranger, just friends who sometimes remember that this blog exists and kindly take a gander (hello, friends). But I felt it relevant to get that out there. I'm a PhD student now.

After the exam I went home and slept, and then later got a text from the postdoc asking when my RNA would be ready for sequencing. I told her I had 30 samples and would get them done by the end of the week. Of course then I ran out of tubes, so I only did 15. I farted around until Sunday, when I did all of my Christmas shopping in one day (mostly), then on Tuesday I went back in and did the rest of the RNA via borrowed tubes. On Wednesday morning I passed that off to the tech in the lab who is the RNA master, and then I left to get my sister from the airport. I have not been in the lab since December 18. And for a whole entire week and a half, I didn't do anything related to school.

Now I realize how severely and completely burnt the fuck out I was. Sleeping in until 10 AM even though I was waking up at like, 6:30, spending another hour or two scrolling on my phone, eating some small, pathetic breakfast around noon, going into the lab at like 2:30 after watching movies for two hours, puttering around being pathetic and leaving at like 5, coming home intending to work and ending up just watching TV with my parents and eating dinner until I'd inevitably shower or go to bed. And that was all the days. Going into the lab took so much convincing, and I hated it so much (reminds me of my fourth year when experiments failed because I couldn't be bothered to go in and check on my stupid flies on the weekend).

How did I think that was me at my best? Looking back, there are so many signs that I was desperate for a break, including but not limited to my own therapist telling me I was working too hard and needed a break. Why do you think you were scrolling for 2 hours every day? Why do you think you couldn't even talk about your transfer exam for 48 hours after without openly and fully weeping? Why do you think you spent study days just watching netflix for 6 hours only to finally feel and be productive at 7 pm? YOU NEEDED A FUCKING BREAK.

I think the truth is this: I do not work to earn a break, I take breaks to store up energy to do work. Sometimes I don't have time to take breaks, and I have to power through, and in some ways I think last semester was one of those times. But YOU DO NOT WORK TO EARN A BREAK. That is not how it works. That is nonsensical. You can't work without energy, and you gain energy from breaks. It's literally That Simple.

Of course, real life is complicated and people are demanding and people who are in charge of me or my peers who don't have high functioning depression (that is an actual real diagnosis-of-sorts from an actual psychologist now, so I'm just going to say it) set the bar where they think it's reasonable to set it. And I guess sometimes that's just not where I can set the bar.

I've said SO MANY TIMES that my real life is happening while I'm in graduate school too. I'm not just pausing it to get a degree. I'm in a relationship, making friendships, pursuing self growth aggressively, getting older, etc... all while in grad school. But I don't think I was really taking that seriously enough last semester, or maybe I just didn't have the option to do so.

At least the truth is this now: in terms of workload, I will basically repeat last semester, but without the stress of applying to transfer, and I will be making more money (the offer I got for my PhD was just to teach one lab per YEAR- let me let it be known that previously I was teaching 4 per year, 2 in the fall and 2 in the winter- but they need me to teach genetics labs so badly that someone is writing the Dean on my behalf to say "you need to pay this grad student more because nobody else can cover this slot, and these undergrad students need to be taught", which is AMAZING- this is on top of my stipend increasing slightly as I am not a master's student anymore). That is... quite an opportunity, if I've ever seen one. I mean, I now have until 2023 to be at school, getting this degree- though I don't necessarily want to stay that long- but this semester is a definite chance to just like... figure out how to work efficiently. I've been here almost 2 years, and I honestly can't tell if that's enough time to figure out how to do grad school at all or not. Oh well.


And the reason I always write shit like this, that's unfiltered and real, is that I find a lot of things written about grad school are ... they spare a lot of detail, so to speak. They just say "oh I was depressed, not leaving my house a lot" etc, which I guess is maybe helpful for some people, and it's certainly better than nothing. But if any of you are struggling in the way where you still get shit done and pass exams but feel horrible inside and have no self care and never fucking prioritize rest at all so you get things done but they drain you so much and you can't say anything because nobody would see it... I feel you. That's my reality. And for the love of GOD there is nothing wrong with you, please take your nearest exit from work and stay out of it as long as you feasibly can and chill for a while.

i took a mental health day

on the heels of my old roommate going back to work after 5 months of mental health leave. I don't know if she knows that I notice, but I'm glad she's happy. She was one of the pretty, popular, normal girls that was always kind to me in a very genuine way, who seemed to really want to know me as a person. People who treat other people that way always go very far in life. I wish I had been able to tell her that two and a half years ago. I guess she maybe needed it.

In the past two weeks, two different people I know have broken their legs, so let's start at my last therapy appointment two weeks ago, when I was feeling good: I was in survival mode. I just had to get through the grind until Thursday and then I could be done and go see my sister for the weekend. I stayed up until 3 am that night, grading, because I thought it had to be done by Thursday, and I wanted to have a good chunk done for the lab meeting on wednesday morning.

When I arrived to this meeting, on 5 hours of sleep (which I understand is a lot for some people, but I do not function well on less than 6), the coordinator was on the ground. Which is a very odd place to see a male authority figure. Turns out he had slipped and broken his ankle, and he tried his very best to give us instructions for the week. One of his notes was that he sure as hell wouldn't be able to finish grading now, so it was okay if the rest of us couldn't. Please let me bring you back to the fact that I had, just prior to this meeting, awoken from what was essentially a nap after grading for something like 15 hours (which involved a lot of breaks, don't get me wrong). So we- the TAs- made plans for how to cover for it, one of the TAs ended up teaching every day that week, which only made me admire her more, and we dealt with it. And I didn't do any more grading. I still have grading. Our students understood; they had a midterm on Friday and wanted to be able to study, and were happy to not have an assignment.

On Friday I drove for 6 hours, twice past a bus that said "Marriage is permanent, to separate before death part is ADULTRY" which so efficiently encapsulates the Vibe of the rural areas of my province, and saw my sister. It was a good weekend, actually- I bought new shoes that are actually waterproof, and some new bras so I didn't have to keep wearing just one, and I saw 3 dear, dear friends I had not seen in a very long time. While I was there, Redbeard decided to head down to the mountains as per usual. So I did not see him.

I brought my sister home, which was another 6 hours of driving and idle chatting, and three days were just normal, except for how badly I wanted to be alone at the end of the day, leading me to stay at school until 10 pm because I just did not want to come home and have to make conversation and watch stupid movies and eat the horrible vegetarian lasagna recipe my mother had found and made since my sister is vegetarian. On Wednesday, I emailed my supervisor.

The previous week, I had sent her a copy of my new thesis proposal, which needs to be submitted to my transfer committee two weeks before my transfer exam. I was told, and my supervisor and I both genuinely believed this, that my transfer exam had to take place before December. She told me my committee was settling on a date in late November. If you do the math, last week was two weeks before that deadline. She gave me the notes on Wednesday, which included adding a whole new section on a whole new tumor. I realized I was going to have to do the best I could by Friday, and told my family I wouldn't be up for socializing too much. They understood. I got out of cleaning out the basement. I told Redbeard to delay visiting me until Friday so he wouldn't distract me. I stayed up until 3 am on Thursday night.

Two things happened between the hours of 9 pm Thursday night and 9 am Friday morning which really fueled my current collapse. The first was a call from Redbeard on Thursday night, which was not actually from Redbeard, but from a friend phoning to tell me he had broken his leg quite badly and was in the hospital in a little mountain town a few hours away. The friend told me he was otherwise fine, and that I was not to come visit that instant. I did not. I planned to visit the next day, after I had submitted my proposal. I stayed up until 3 am reading papers, adjusting the proposal, reading more papers, and finally giving in to sleep. I woke up at 7:30 am.

In the morning, my parents informed me very kindly that they had booked a hotel room for me for two days so that I could go see him, a great kindness considering the expense of booking in hotels in that area. Shortly afterwards, I received an email from the school of graduate studies. Congratulations. Your transfer exam has been set for December 11.

AKA two weeks after it was supposed to be set.

Needless to say I have not read any papers since I got that email, and aside from putting my cells in a buttload of media (aka food for cells), I have not gone back to the lab. On 4.5 hours of sleep, I drank coffee for the very first time as I made another long drive in the dark, alone. I sat with my boyfriend in the hospital as he came off the numbing from his surgery and suffered in a 6/10 bout of pain for two hours until I finally told him that they ought to give him more painkillers, he finally asked, and was given morphine. The next day I went in in the morning and helped him leave the hospital once they'd gone through all the how-tos and given him prescriptions for some very powerful painkillers. I paid for his crutches. I carried all his things to his car and drove him to the hotel and parked in a very stupid spot. I set him up in the room and asked for a shower chair and a second parking pass and got garbage bags and ice and lunch, all while my new boots I'd bought the previous weekend worked themselves further into the already- bleeding blisters on my ankles. I convinced him to just go to the hotel restaurant and asked for a special table and carried a pillow and a garbage bag full of ice and guarded his foot as others walked by. I moved almost all of his gear into my car and took it home with me.

In the morning, I drove his car to a nearby town with considerably better free parking, and got a ride back from a friend of his I'd never met, at 7:30 in the morning. I packed my car even more full with our remaining things and he insisted on helping, and therefore carried one backpack. We got brunch and did a very painful (on his part physically, on my part emotionally as he refused to let me get the car so he could stop walking) short hike and had a small snack. I dropped him off at his car, picked up another friend, and helped move things between cars again, before getting into my own car and driving 3.5 hours to a gas station where I had to pull over because I could not stop crying and thinking about walking in front of a truck.


This morning I woke up and sincerely, truly did not want to have woken up. I knew what was in store for me today: marking, marking, and more marking, restarting experiments that take a ton of time, starting other new ones that are physically exhausting and often disappointing. I stayed in bed until almost noon just crying.


And then I just went... okay, if this isn't the kind of day where I can say no, what is? What will the limit be? Will it be the day I actually try to walk in front of traffic? Will it be the day I try to swallow a bunch of pills? Will it be the day I don't even eat? If I am really, truly, living my life right now as everything happens around me so much, why am I not allowed to say no?

So I did.

I have not done any work today. The only person I have talked to is my mother. I have unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, cleaned old dishes out of my room, drank copious amounts of water, watched eat pray love in its entirety despite the fact that I do not care for julia roberts, and I am working my way through the laundry so I have pants to wear again. I will have a shower and take out some trash later. I will probably get to marking.

All of this is to say that I'm not sure I can call myself depressed so much as I can call myself overwhelmed. And maybe this isn't what other people's mental health days look like, but I thought... if I can't have one FUCKING day to myself to do all the things i have been putting off in service of things that were "more important" then do I really want to live this life? The answer was no. So I took one fucking day.

I will go back to work tomorrow. I don't have the luxury of taking 5 months off right now. But I will go back with clean sheets and clean clothes and a slightly cleaner room. I will go back with just a little more energy to tackle what needs tackling. I will have had one day to not deal with all the problems in my life- the marking, the reading, the proposal, the boyfriend with a broken leg, the fact that I can't move out of my house until my boyfriend graduates, and now that he can't finish his clinical rotations he probably can't graduate on time which adds another 8 months to our long distance, the transfer exam, the fact that I can't tell what time of day it is anymore sometimes, let alone what day it is.

I kept thinking that was avoidance. But I realized: the only way I can tackle these problems is if I have the energy to deal with them. I don't have any energy. I need to find some first.

So tomorrow I have another therapy appointment, and today I took a mental health day. I hope anyone reading this is having fewer crises than me.

For fucking REAL tho being the teacher is worse than being the student

I had this epiphany while marking 61 thoroughly mediocre lab assignments. Let me lay this down for you.

I understand students have multiple classes. I understand they have multiple assignments due at a time and a plethora of other real-life shit to attend to. I get that- I fucking lived it, I get that. But here's the thing. When a student hands in an assignment, it's VERY obvious when they haven't given it their very best (I'm talking real stupid errors easily caught by literally proofreading your paper even ONCE, and major misunderstandings of what it was they even DID, and wording things so vaguely and confusingly that I don't even know if there's anything there to mark). But that's okay for them to do, they get to take a slightly lower grade and move along, and nobody gets mad at them for that.

Let's flip the tables. If I don't give my absolute very best when I'm grading, I get students hounding me about simple mistakes I made that could have been avoided with a quick review of my marking. I get students asking me why they were docked marks, which could have been avoided with me writing more comments (and just trying harder to get carpal tunnel). At the worst, I get called a picky bitch who is deliberately being unfair. I don't get to give anything less than 100% on marking, there are severe consequences for me.

You see where I'm going here?

Students get to slack off, pass the class, and move along. I have no choice but to be absolutely perfect at all times. I expect my students to give me their best effort: to read the lab manual ahead of time. To ask me questions when they are confused. Heck, even just having their work ready on time. Following formatting guidelines and simple instructions. Paying attention to me in lab. Starting their assignment more than just the night before, putting in some actual effort, and proofreading it once. And they can't even give me this.

They give me less than their very best at ALL TIMES. They give me mediocre, lackluster, don't care, and demand perfection from me in return. That is the definition of unfair. It is not fair to demand perfection of me if you won't meet me at that level. So either you give me your best and I give it back in return, and then you can complain when I slip through the cracks just as I dock you for mistakes, or you act mediocre and I don't focus as much when grading your assignment, and you don't get to complain to me when you fuck up.


"But my grade is in your hands!" bruh. It's in your hands too. Get your life right.

If you can't give your instructor your very best- you need to remedy that. Take fewer courses at a time. Switch to a program that actually matches your interests and talents- or be prepared to put in more work than everyone else that has the aptitude and interest you don't. Take time to save up money for school. Let me know when you aren't feeling well so I can give you extensions. Let me know about the accommodations you need. Take some time off, see a therapist, work with friends on assignments, ask me for help. Figure out what you need to succeed and how you can give that to yourself, otherwise you're being unfair not just to yourself, but to the instructors who have to deal with you.

It's only fair.

Stop telling me to validate girls who wear makeup and are pretty in the name of "feminism"

If you are a girl and you wear makeup you are not being brave or original or feminist. You already know that wearing makeup is "okay" and if you really need me to tell you that, maybe you aren't as confident as you claim? idk tho

Why why WHY are we all wasting so much goddamn time pretending that we have to "support other women who wear makeup" THEY ARE ALREADY SUPPORTED. BY EVERYONE ELSE. ALL THE TIME. People who don't think about this shit constantly are like "women wear makeup and that's normal and how it is" and then see me and are like "who let this child into graduate school?" because nobody fucking knows what an adult woman looks like anymore. Also i do genuinely have a baby face, but that cannot possibly be all of it.

"um actually sweaty people bug women about the amount of makeup they wear all the TIME" People don't support women wearing makeup because women are told simultaneously that they must be beautiful, which requires care, but that caring about beauty makes you vain. You are trying to break that cycle by saying "it is not vain to care about beauty" even though that is the literal fucking definition of vanity. I am trying to get you to focus on the "women must be beautiful and care about beauty" part. Why aren't we getting rid of that part. WHY CANT WOMEN BE UGLY IN PEACE? Men have this privilege. Men are allowed to be so ugly and that's fine. Women should be allowed to be ugly also.

There really is no trend online of being like "yassss queen, save that money by not buying makeup constantly! Challenge actual real life expectations by going bare faced for normal ass days at work and school! the best actual literal way to reduce makeup waste is just NOT TO FUCKING WEAR IT!" nope. there is like, no celebration of makeupless women, aside from a buzzfeed post that circulates now and then about "All of these female celebrities posted makeup free selfies on social media once, and we should talk about it" ok, sure, these women are already conventionally beautiful without makeup and likely have a lot of money to invest in skincare (which tbh is just the beauty industry under another name) and sleep and fucking plastic goddamn surgery, but like, ok sure, but why is this just one buzzfeed article?

"you just want people to celebrate you" actually no. I mean partly sure yes, because what I am doing actually (somewhat) bucks trends (but i do admit I am thin and white and have no acne), but partly because it's beyond hypocritical to say you support all women but then only really support them when they do what the entire world expects them to do anyway. Like woo, yay, let's play it safe and never challenge anything. let's never examine our own insecurities and instead hide them behind a veneer of "doing this for me."

Like O K i get that this is deeply rooted in my distrust of pretty people (people who are pretty, who know they are pretty and have always known it, and who care deeply about this, are the WORST people, who will 100% judge you on sight for being an ugly gremlin and liking nerd shit, do NOT recommend. This does not include people who are pretty but do not know or care, people who are pretty but do not care, or people who have only recently become pretty, or people who are pretty without knowing it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk), but seriously, s e r i o u s l y, I'm tired of being asked to support women who would never in 5 million years turn around and support my choices back. they just defend themselves and then accuse me of being anti-feminist for not supporting them. Sorry queen! Guess you'll have to get your validation from everyone else in your life including mainstream media sources, and not one ugly girl on the internet. Oh no!!!

Newsflash! Washing my face every 2-3 days and sometimes forgetting to moisturize saves me a buttload of money, energy, and time (again, I understand I do not have painful acne)! It is not actually important to be pretty! We all gonna age, we are all going to get wrinkles and die. You can do nothing to prevent it. Please just give up and have a good time instead. I haven't spent money on mascara since 2017.




Like genuinely, actually, really though: do whatever the fuck you want, but stop asking me to validate you, stop asking me to make you feel better about your choices. Wearing makeup is not and never will be a feminist action, so you can either wear it and live with that or stop wearing it to align better with your principles. Those are your choices. Stop trying to make there be some magical third option where anytime a woman makes a choice, she is a feminist- that is not even remotely how any of this works. None of us are perfect. I shave my armpit hair to avoid arguing with my mother. That's Not Feminist! But here I am anyway, accepting that and living my life and not asking people to validate me. Not everything you do will align perfectly with your ideals, and that's your mud to wade through. Ok? cool.

(is this my most well thought out post? nah. But here it is anyway!)

Period ramblings

This weekend I went camping with my boyfriend (still Redbeard) and forgot my birth control. It's the patch so I had a couple of days before the period really set in. I've learned from the past when I've done this and I know that once the period starts, it's here, and you can't just slap another patch on and pretend everything is okay. Just accept it.

But as we were driving out to the campsite and I had this realization, I referred to it as a mistake. Oops, I forgot my birth control, dammit, now I'm going to have a period, what a mistake.


I was driving home today when I realized how fucking stupid and shitty it was of me to say that.

It's not a mistake that when I don't perfectly control my menstrual cycle it happens at unplanned times. It's not a mistake that I'm menstruating right now, that's what my body DOES. That's just the kind of body it is. And then I took it further. It is not my fault that I was born into a world where menstruating is something shameful. I mean, people say women get so emotional, they get tired, they can't do work, you can't give them menstrual leave, it will just make men look like better candidates. Yeah, because the world was set up by men, dumbass. It's set up for men, and men don't menstruate, so why would they have to consider that at all? (thinking of other people, nope, never heard of it)

If menstruating didn't make me tired or grumpy or in need of rest, it wouldn't be a problem at all. the fact that I need those things is the "problem" because i'm just supposed to work forever and be efficient all the time. That's why birth control has made my life so much easier: when you don't have to manage having a period all the time, you get to experience the world like it was actually made for you.

But in my case, menstruation still comes.

It is not a mistake. It is not a problem. It's just a fact. I have a body with a uterus that produces a uterine lining and sheds it unless a very worthwhile embryo implants (because that's the whole point of menstruation, to protect women from undeserving embryos that would waste their time and resources and risk their life even though the embryo has no chance of surviving. It's not my body punishing me for not being pregnant, it's my body protecting me from pregnancy unless it meets only the strictest, highest standards), the lining is shed. This lining is the equivalent of a small organ, and growing and shedding it takes physical energy from me. That is why menstruation is tiring. The hormones in my body change to facilitate this process. That has other physical effects on me. This is just a fact.

I can control this with artificially high levels of estrogen, I can create the hormonal signals of pregnancy in the body in a way that stops the cycle. For a period of time. For me that is about 3-4 months at a time, but that lining starts coming out eventually no matter what I do, and that's why I can't just not have a period, ever. My body will have one whether I like it or not.

I think I got too into that, into pretending I didn't have a uterus and was able to exist in this world like it was designed for me, and experience all the convenience of that. And when I need to take time to rest, when I'm tired and my hormones are different from how they normally are and I need a different sort of care for myself, the world cruelly reminds me that that's not allowed, that's not considered normal, it's a problem and a liability and this world was not built for me to have a period, and because of that it's not built for women.

My body and its normal functions are not a mistake. Me failing to perfectly control those functions such that I may experience the world as if I am one of the people (men) for whom it was designed is not a mistake. it's just how things are. And I realized how much I was alienating myself from my own experiences by calling them wrong, bad, mistake, stupid.

So I'm having a period. The world should be built for me too.