We need to talk…
This will likely be long, and somewhat disjointed, and maybe by the time I’m done typing it all out I’ll decide to not even post it. I’ve done that before when I just got tired of reading myself talk. But I hope I don’t, because this is too important to not talk about.
Before I begin, I want to say that I’m a weirdly dichotomous person. I take certain things extremely personally; I get choked up when a friend hands me a candy bar for no reason other than I’d had a bad day. I get teary-eyed when I listen to a group of people singing in perfect harmony. I take off-hand remarks to heart, to the point where it’s made me so self-conscious that I rarely ever put myself out there. And then there’s the part of me that just does not give a fuck. Call me names? I’ll take it as a compliment. Insult me online? I’ll probably find a way to make a joke out of it that I’ll laugh over with my friends for months to come. Bash my books? I’ll take that criticism and do better next time. I am a woman who freezes first, flees second, and fights only as a last resort, which is kind of scary in practice.
I also hate with the passion of a thousand suns being presented with a problem I have no power to fix. Which is why I tend to stay away from politics, political discussions, and any drama swirling about it. Unfortunately, that’s becoming next to impossible this election season, and it’s got me frustrated to no end, because there is no escaping it anywhere, and there are things I am seeing that are actually making me afraid for the future of this country, and for my own personal safety as a woman. So here is me, addressing the big orange elephant in the room. This is where I drop the cliched line every cliched man dreads hearing from a cliched woman: We need to talk.