Kym

"Your feet may leave home, but your heart never will." That was the theme of this year's graduation at my high school-- the graduation I was supposed to be taking part in but wasn't allowed because one of my parents refused to allow me to graduate early.

But not being allowed to graduate doesn't stop me from going to the commencement ceremony and seeing all of my friends, some old and some new, enter a new phase in their lives, some of them leaving forever.

My friends Steph and Brandon, as well as my infamous ex TJ, are all leaving for the military extremely soon. TJ leaves in September, Steph with him, for the Air Force training base in Texas. Brandon gets shipped out in less than a month for Marine Corps basic training. He enlisted as active, so as soon as he's done, they're shipping him out to parts unknown, ready to be used as a pawn and most likely die for a tumultuous and hypocritical cause.

The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, also known as “Wombfest” or simply “Michigan,” has been held annually in early August in a northern Michigan forest since 1976 (“General… Information”).The festival’s central goal has been to create a woman-centered atmosphere where women can celebrate being women in an area free of male presence and patriarchy (“Out and About“). Although Michigan is not the first festival to celebrate women (“A… History“) , it is the longest running, looking to celebrate its thirty-second anniversary in August 2008 (“Rebuttal… Straight”).

I don't know how many of you know about this, but the House of Representatives here in the US introduced a bill on December 18th that will designate the first week in may as "American Religious History Week." Here's what they're hoping to accomplish:

"Resolved, That the United States House of Representatives----

(1) affirms the rich spiritual and diverse religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history, including up to the current day;

(2) recognizes that the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation's most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America's representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures;

I've been researching the controversy between Michfest and Camp Trans lately, because I read somewhere that Bitch and Animal weren't going to be allowed to perform because Animal is transgendered. This really upset me.

Michfest holds that it is open to only "womyn-born-womyn" who have lived their whole lives as womyn. I get what they're aiming for with the principle of creating a solely womyn oriented space, but by not allowing transgendered people to attend... it's a little too exclusionary for my taste. I was planning on attending Michfest this year, but when I read about all of this controversy, I was totally turned off. I was looking forward to a womyn only space as an exhilerating and life-changing experience... I still would like to experience it, but I'm turned off by the fact that they won't allow womyn to attend if they haven't been womyn their whole lives.

There are several terms that come to mind when I think of how I define myself as a person: activist, woman, and believer. Yes, I could label myself as a teenager, a vegetarian, or an atheist, but they only describe what I am, not what I believe in. These labels, in their own right, are both more complex and simpler than they would appear.

The most defining of these labels is my identity as a woman, which impacts my life on a daily basis. Being a woman may only mean that I do not have a penis and that, yes, I bleed, but it is also so much more than that. Being a woman means that I have seen and can identify with the oppression that women around the world face by dint of being women. Being a woman means that I have to deal with the conception that women are weaker physically and mentally. Being a woman means that, historically, I must do things twice as well to be considered half as good as a man. There is nothing more empowering or limiting than identifying yourself as a woman. In accepting the label of femininity, I have accepted the challenges that my gender faces in the search for equality in today’s society. In the past, women were almost universally perceived as being the weaker of the two genders, which led to the assertion of “male dominance.” These conventional stereotypes make it difficult to identify as a woman in that they project the historical view of the female and do not celebrate the individual strengths and weaknesses that each woman possesses.

Pardon the language in this girls, but I just listened to this song for the first time in a long time, and I just felt the need to post the lyrics. It may be crude sometimes, but it certainly gets me going, makes me feel powerful and comfortable in my own skin.

Bitch and Animal: Pussy Manifesto

"Manifest this motherf****** #1:
Every living thing comes from and returns to (get it?)

Manifest this motherf****** #2:
Let Pussy speak to me through every living thing.
As all creatures move and grow,
let them bring forth the open ness and warm ness
that flows in the energy of Pussy...

"Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths."
Lois Wyse

"Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive."
Marya Mannes

If there's one thing that history has "taught" us, it's that men are supposed to be strong and women are supposed to be weak. Yeah right. Men are not "supposed" to cry, or express their feelings, or take pride in their appearance (well, they can if it's that Paul Bunyan macho-man look). They're not supposed to do "women's work" or help out around the house, raise children. Women are "supposed" to be meek, demure, quiet little creatures, seen and not heard, ornaments. Women are supposed to look beautiful, fall in love with men, have lots of babies, and be a stay-at-home mom.

It's good to know that I can count on you all, my family away from my own family.

I really wish I could be as open as I want to be here. The sad part is I can't, because my family can't know some of the things I need to talk about. Which means I'm limited on what I can say. If it was possible to create another account, which I'm not sure I can do, just to talk about the things I need to without my family knowing then I would. Because I really need to talk. There are so many things in my life that I need help with right now, and I have no one else to turn to. I need to talk about what is going on in my life but I have no one. Select few people know anything of what has happened to me, and what IS happening. I need a support system, but with the limitations imposed by money, lack of trust from my family, not knowing what I can tell my friends or not, and just being as stubborn as I am, I don't have the one I need. I'm admitting that I need help.

*This was too long to fit into a response comment.

"It sounds like you have a lot of stressful things all happening at once. Are you getting any support anywhere? I think a strong support system is indispensable but you said you were having problems both at home and at school. Do you have anywhere you can go even to relax and be your wonderfully individual self for a few hours?"- Jill

That's one of my problems, finding somewhere to be where I can just BE. At home, it's "Do this, do that. Don't do what you want, do what I tell you that will keep you busy all night." It doesn't seem to matter that I have homework, or that I have to work. I recently started a part time job, and I need another one to pay to get to and from school and work. Two jobs on top of a full day at school, college courses next semester, National Honor Society, a honors club at my school, and Academic Quiz Team (which takes up three afternoons a week) I don't have time to relax when I actually am alone at home. The only times I have really relaxed in the past month I can count on one hand.

I feel like I have disappeared from the world recently. I started my junior year in high school a month and a half ago. It's been at least that long since I've posted anything, except for the blog I deleted at the end of August. Simply speaking, life's been hell.

I'm not used to not getting good grades. And now that I'm struggling to get things done in several of my classes, I'm feeling extremely stressed out.

Sometimes I wonder if I have a strange case of bipolar disorder. I'm not manic-depressive per se, but one day I'll be so tense and high strung that I'm on the verge of tears all day... even if nothing has happened. And then other days, even when my life seems to falling down around me, I'm as cool as a cucumber, though slightly less edible. It's strange, but it's happening. I don't understand it. I know it's probably just stress, nerves, puberty, whatever, but it's still disconcerting. It's no fun.

I removed this blog for personal reasons. I apologize.

I think I'm afraid to be single. That's a lot of my problem. I don't want to feel alone again. I'm afraid I'm not quite strong enough to not hurt myself without someone there to talk about it, someone who knows my secrets, my fears, and my triggers. And I don't know who else I can share that with.

Should I just give up?

It's so hard. I can't do it just yet. I'm ready mentally, but I'm not emotionally. Emotionally I'm still a mess.

I want to give up, I really do. But I can't. I don't want to go through anymore of this torture, but I can't stop the emotional anguish inside of me. I wonder if it's always like this, for everyone. Does every woman have this irrational fear of being alone? Is every woman afraid to be left by herself sometimes for fear of a breakdown? I am. I am afraid to be alone.

I realize I haven't posted many blogs here lately on political or social issues. I apologize for that. I really do have ideas, and every so often I find the time to jot them down on a piece of paper (which I always seem to promptly lose), but I've just been so busy lately that I can't even get a word in edgewise in my own thoughts.

If I sat down and listed everything that I've been doing that's kept me so busy you wouldn't understand why it's keeping me so busy, at least not every moment of free time that I have.

In between everything I have to do and trying to catch up on some desperately needed sleep that work has deprived me of, cleaning the house that I haven't been present in long enough to make a mess, trying to get in a balanced meal in between cleaning and work and other menial tasks assigned by the parental units I have been using my free time to RELAX. And when I say relax I mean I try not to think of anything that requires an immense amount of brain power. And since I'm having laptop problems and finding internet access off of it hard to locate I can't really write down what I'm thinking when I think of it.

My boyfriend of fifteen months dropped a bombshell on me not too long ago. It's complicated, and deeply personal, but here's the gist of it.

TJ told me that he had fallen out of love with me. He still loves me, but he isn't "in love" with me. I hate that phrase. If you love someone, you love someone. But, apparently, combinations of miscommunication and mistakes on my part (mainly) and his led him to cheat on me.

Now, cheating is a strong word in this case. All that happened is that he got caught up in the moment and kissed on of his "girl friends." Just a little kiss, as far as I understand. He apparently told her that he wanted to leave me because he wasn't "in love" with me but he still loved me and didn't want to hurt me, and she in turn told a bunch of people that we were breaking up, which wasn't true.

My sister is getting married in a few weeks. July seventh of 2007. That whole lucky 777 thing. Michelle is twenty.... four? Yeah. Sean is older, but I don't know how old. Not terribly so. But I'm a bridesmaid, and I have to wear... pink. A tea length dress, strapless, one of those dresses that pushes everything where it is supposed to be, even if it's not really where it's supposed to be. Should be fun. Michelle's really stressed out, very emotional. They're getting married outside, and it should be fun.

We'll see.

Weddings are usually fun, but I'm not looking forward to standing up there next to her. Even though the bride and groom are supposed to be the center of attention, you know you're being scrutinized as well. It's going to be pretty tradtional.