#18- The Truth

I am not a political person; I want to say that first and foremost. Foreign policy is, as they would say, foreign to me, and the economy is nothing I should be weighing in on. However, I am a female, and I know what it feels like to be a woman who has concerns about her reproductive health: A. I am single, 2. I sleep with men I am not committed to, and mostly importantly...

Four months ago I was sexually assaulted.

I was walking home alone at 3 AM (not the best idea, I know, but I didn't have much choice). I thought maybe someone was watching me at one point, but I just kept moving and made it all the way home. As I unlocked the front door of my apartment building, a man grabbed me from behind. He wrapped one arm around me, pinning my arms to my side, put his other hand between my legs to grope, and then bit my shoulder.  I screamed, "HELP ME!" in a voice I didn't even know I had, over and over as loud as I could. Suddenly he dropped me and ran.

The whole thing probably lasted about five seconds tops, but it felt like a lifetime. Fortunately I was wearing biker shorts under my dress and his bite didn't break the skin. But the scariest part of the whole ordeal was that, even though I was screaming at the top of my lungs, no one came outside to help me.

I called the police from the ground. Lying there, crying and scared with a fresh bite mark on my shoulder, I called the cops. And then I picked myself up, walked upstairs, called my mother and waited. I watched; not one neighbor came outside.

And I realized, that man could have raped me. Or worse.

He could have dragged me in to the adjoining alley and done whatever he pleased with me. NO ONE came to my aide. Not one neighbor called the police or came outside. Later a co-worker told me I should have shouted, "Fire!" because people are more likely to respond to that; "Fuck you," is what I wanted to say to her. I was not in my own body in those five seconds. I was too scared to think of the most logical thing to do. If he had knocked me out or gagged me or silenced me in any way, he could have raped me in that alley.

And if he had, THANK GOD Barack Obama was the president. I work with children, I love them and want nothing more than to have my own. However, a pregnancy caused by rape is not something I would endure. I would absolutely have an abortion, because I know the alternative...

If Mitt Romney were the president and I was raped, I would have a trans-vaginal ultrasound, and then I would see the fetus in my uterus, and if I felt guilty enough, which I very well might, I would have that baby. But all the depression medications in the world would not help me through that pregnancy. I would have that baby and resent it and that child would not have the life it deserves. I KNOW this about myself, and I have watched enough "Intervention" to hypothesize that a traumatic event like being raped could send me in to a  downward spiral... unless I was able to rid myself of the memory.

I am a person. I am a good person. I love children, and I want the best for each and every one of them. However, I am also the victim of sexual violence. Forcing unwilling mothers to confront their unwanted fetuses is just cruel; you can't guilt someone in to having a child. When you vote against abortion you are essentially voting for child abuse, child neglect, and children spending their lives waiting to be loved. That scares me more than a strange man biting my shoulder.

Please think of the women in your life when you vote this week, because sexual assault happens, and could happen to someone you love. It happened to me.

#17- Sunshine:)happyRainbowtimes...

I think I might owe everyone an apology...

Recently a few people, independent of one another, have told me that my latest narratives have come across as negative, emo, desperate even. This was never my intention. I titled this blog "Other Affirmations" because I wanted to use it to spread positive messages, and to make myself feel empowered. I might have gotten a little off topic as of late. I want to explain myself.

I am a happy person. I have a great life. I adore my family and friends, my job kicks ass and there really isn't any major upset in my world currently. Well, other than the Bulls... Let's not talk about it. The point is, I am not a complainer normally, but when I work out emotion I do it through writing, and that is why you get my bitter narratives about being alone. What I should be doing is expressing my positive, upbeat emotions and saving all the negative crap for my therapist... who happens to be me. (I'm very good.)

I do want to say that I don't like the connotation of the term "desperate." So what if someone is desperate? Aren't we all? We are all desperate for love, for affection, for satisfaction and the knowledge that we're doing it right. Sharing my writing is a way to say, "Hey, I feel this way. Maybe you do too." Some people respond with similar sentiments, and that makes me feel good. That satisfies my desperation for concrete proof that what I feel isn't strange. And I guess that is the whole point...

I AM NOT ALONE!

I know that. I do. When it comes to having a boyfriend, yes I am technically alone, but whatever. Honestly, in the past few months I have discovered that I love being single. I look at people in relationships and I think, "Wow, it must suck to share your bed with someone every night." It is so much more comfortable sleeping by yourself, is it not? The other day someone told me she and her husband had been together for six years. My immediate reaction was, "Oh my god. How could you be with the same person for six years?" For the first time in my life I am terrified of the thought of being with someone happily ever after... and I like it.

So the bottom line is I am sorry. I never meant to bum everyone out, or to give you the impression that I have no faith in humanity. I think what I found funny/sad about my life you just found sad. I can laugh at myself without the whole world reading about it I guess... or I'll become a stand up comedian.

Love to love you all.

#16- How I Met Your Sperm Donor

In the words of the honorable Rafiki, "It is time!" I am officially calling out the television series How I Met Your Mother. (And in the words of the honorable Chris Bridges aka Ludacris, "Imma tell it like it is.")

First I want to say that I LOVE this show. I am a huge Friends fan, if not the #1, and HIMYM is Friends done with far more creativity and forethought. However, the show is also incredibly manipulative. Ted is in search of "the one," which is what makes the inevitable finale when he meets his perfect match so exciting... and infuriating.

Really Ted? You dream of this woman who plays bass and digs architecture and blah blah blah and then BAM, she shows up and you live happily ever after? Sure, you had to wait until you were like 35 or whatever, but I bet you a million dollars Ted meets his wife when she is in her mid-twenties. (We already know she was in college when he was a professor...).

What ticks me off about this show is that the hopeless romantic character that women sympathize with is a DUDE!!!

Women can't be hopeless romantics the same way men can. We have timing to think about. A show about a hopeless romantic in HER mid-30s would be called Nearing Time For In-Vitro. Sure it worked out for the women on Sex and the City, but let's be honest; they were huge whores with talented writers who made it all okay.

I feel for Liz Lemon (from 30 Rock). She's chronically single. She is the other side of the coin that women fear, yet she is strong and driven and can laugh at herself. She tells me it'll all work out no matter what.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I wish there was a show that truly told it like it is, that followed a woman through the ups and downs of dating and found her in a position where she had to make a choice; baby or no baby? Again, I LOVE HIMYM and I want Ted to find his Mrs. Right. I just get a little frustrated thinking about myself in the same situation.

Give me a show called How I Met Your Sperm Donor. Yes it would be a dramady, and yes it would involve a lot of lady talk and wine, but hell yes would it speak to the single 20-something girl with a jaded but optimistic view of love, marriage and children. I like knowing that I could end up married or I could end up on my own, and either way it could be awesome.

Love ya Ted, but we all know it works out in the end so... screw you. Here's to the rest of us still working toward it and a little scared we might end up alone.

UPDATE: Since writing this post I have discovered Ally McBeal. This is the show I have been looking for. It is slightly outdated, and Calista Flockhart isn't the most endearing actress, but this is the show that makes me feel okay. She is lost and you just don't know what will happen to her. This is how I feel, how most of us (men and women) feel. It's wonderful.

A Little Poetry...

I used to write poems as a way to deal with challenges I faced in my life. Words poured out of me, phrases and snippets of a full thought, and I would sit for hours at the computer perfecting my emotions. As a result I have a ton of un-read poems collecting metaphorical dust in my computer. I think it might be time to air them out..

Most of these are about love and death, the least cliche topics ever... Through these poems I worked out a lot of issues I was having as a teenager and taught myself some valuable lessons. These words are still very powerful to me and ring true even now. I hope you see a glimmer of yourself in these verses...


Folded

You carried my heart in your back pocket,

A reminder before you began each day

Sweet words to be cherished forever

You folded it up and kept it close

Your gift to me was receiving mine

We found a new verse for every moment

And drowned ourselves in the words

Floating on a sea of expectations and false hopes,

We devoured time and made it empty

The years passed as the days passed

And slowly we lost our luster

You carried my heart in your back pocket

You folded it up and kept it close

It began to grow heavy with time

Soon the creases wore thin

We began to come loose

My heart fell to pieces

So where will you keep her heart?

Will you fold it up and tuck it away

Let its creases wear thin and watch it decompose

A reminder of what you could have done each day

Sweet words to be cherished for the moment

Or will your heart be the one to bend?

- February 2005
-----------------------------

Of Glass

I’m sliding, slowly sinking

Transparent and no one can see

Strong against the storm

Absorbing cold and warm

Rattle, the wind shakes me

Throw me up, force me down

Your shield, your source of light

Pull back the curtain where I hide

Stare through to the other side

Status symbol, out of sight

Pulling against the sides and top

Getting thicker at the base

Waiting for something to break the pane

Something to relieve the strain

Framed, sealed in place

Slowly, sudden strike and then

Fall to shards upon the floor

Piece me together but never intact

New way of seeing, distorted, cracked

Look through me no more

- Spring 2006

---------------------------

Coffee

You are delicious

No, I’ve never had you on my tongue

But when I inhale your scent

I taste you; I soak in your ‘ness’

Your voice through the wire stirs something inside

A memory is expelled and you are in my mouth

You’re running down my throat and warming my chest

My cheeks glow red with your tea

Your touch is cinnamon on my skin; a sweet spice meets salt

But you smell like wonderful; like real, like the reason

Bottled, you’d be called ‘Come Home’

I swallow and suck at you on my lips until it’s gone

My pallet is cleansed until my thoughts escape me again

Or until I can truly inhale your scent

Taste you; soak in your ‘ness’

No, I’ve never had you on my tongue

But you smell like wonderful; like real

The reason

You are delicious

- Spring 2006

--------------------------

Light Blue Scrap

This is the sweater

This is the sweater you said you loved

Because it brought out my

Eyes

The light blue sweater that fit my ever-growing form perfectly

You said you liked the color

And I knew

I knew you wanted me to make you happy

I wore that sweater when I wanted you to look

And you looked

I got what I wanted and you got yours

And now as the fabric rips I remember how tight this sweater fit

This sweater you said you loved

But it wasn’t my eyes you were looking at

And I know

- August 2005

--------------------------------

In My Grandmother’s Gloves

I hid her carton of Virginia Slims in the antique chest

When I was a child

It wasn’t there yesterday

They cleaned out old scarves and hats

And I swiped a pair of off-white gloves

Moth-eaten and singed between the pointer and middle

She’d wear them on the back porch, hiding

They still smell like her

And as I exhale new life upon them

Long, slender, white and mine

I hide them away

So my mother will never know and

I’ll smell like her

One day my grandchild will take them for herself

And the promise will never be kept

- February 6, 2007

------------------------------------

2012

A lifetime of family, worship and labor

To spend eternity in a brown cardboard box

Raised high in honor on a shelf along side

Hundreds of ancestors

Bones ceremoniously rested on styrofoam blocks

Undisturbed

Offerings to the Gods carefully placed in sterile containers

Pulled from the ground to be glorified by strangers

Mapping out a history that’s not theirs

Passage to the next world

Detoured

Layers of tradition peeled back and placed horizontally

Thousands of years of joy and pain categorized

The afterlife displayed

Appreciated at a price

Items made invaluable with time live out their sentence

In limbo

With secrets exposed for no purpose other than

To preserve what always was

Living, breathing texts survive

Past existing in the present

The mystery solved but the search continues

Civilizations scattered across the globe

Under glass

Predictions of the end printed on a postcard

Mass-produced replicas of patience and skill

Deserted cities silent with the voices of educated ignorance

- 2007(?)

-----------------------------------------

Seconds

And I cry because there really isn’t anything else I can do

Search through the photo albums a thousand times

Try to read the faces and place them in your history

But nothing can convey the person you were like your own voice and

Second-hand stories can only take me so far

It could have been different

I had the time to ask the questions

To pick up a phone and have that conversation

To let you tell it like it was

But in my mind there was always another day, another year, another chance

But like you said, we’re only here for a minute

With no time to spare you told me

And you said just because you had it didn’t mean it would have you

Maybe it was just the end of one minute

And the beginning of another

But when the second hand reached the top it wasn’t the cause

I’d like to believe it was just your time

It was your time

And I can only hope that your next minute is spent in good company

- 2006 (?)

--------------------------------------

Roll Me

Roll me

Press up against my back and stick like glue

Keep my spine straight and move me forward

Lift my hands, my voice, my eyes

Balance me out and raise me higher

Float me over the mess and bring me down

Dancing as you swing my limbs

Loosen my hinges but keep me tight

My neck collapses with my eye lids

You hold my chin as I roll

Shove me in and heave me out

Grip my tired hands and force them up

Rock my hips spontaneous

Roll me

Feel the weight of my body and fill me with air

Turn me sideways and bend my vision

Wrap yourself in me and strut

Take me off, put me on

Carry me left, right and center

Twist my breath into fragments and wait

Watch me sway and linger, drop and crawl

Guide me back to neutral and roll me out

Roll my shoulders past my knees

Roll my smile to the small of my back

Flatten and inflate

Coax me to my feet and stay

And just above my shoulder hide

Until I roll away

- (???)

-------------------------

There are many more but I think I've shared enough for you to get the hint; I'm f-ing crazy. At least I was, but thank god I worked out all this crap on my own. Saved my parents a lot of money on therapy!

#15- 7 Years Bad Luck

Today, January 13th 2012, is my seven-year anniversary... of being single. WAIT! I know what you're thinking, but this is not going to be a "take pity on me" sort of thing. It's not even going to be self-pitying, because I don't pity myself. I'm good. I just have some thoughts on the subject...

Seven years ago today, my ex-boyfriend and I broke up. I know I should have forgotten the exact date years ago, but my brain won't let me. I remember lots of weird stuff; I still remember my preschool boyfriend's name! (That's so me by the way; boyfriend at 4, single at 24. Funny how these things work).

Anyway, those seven years have been filled with all sorts of adventures in love and dating; unrequited crushes, drunken hook-ups, flings, awful first dates, amazing fifth dates, guys who disappear after the fifth date....What? Did I break a mirror in 2005? Because it's certainly been seven years of bad luck (ba-dum-ching). Oh so many failures, on my part and on the part of guys who missed out on a great thing. I mean, I think I'm a pretty okay person. I'm mildly attractive, fairly smart, funnier than most, creative... The list goes on. I get it; I rock. I just don't understand why guys don't get it. But maybe it's this, exactly what I'm doing right now...

I am so aware of my singleness.

All day, every day, in the back of my mind there is this little voice that's saying, "But you're single..." Ugh. What the hell is that? How can I get that voice to shut up? It's like everything I do somehow has to do with the fact that I am alone and that needs to change. And I know that I'm only (almost) 25 and I know I have SO much time, but the stupid voice doesn't accept that. It's like, "Alone now, alone forever!" Grrrrrrrrrrrr...

It doesn't help that right now I find myself single and all of the people closest to me have a significant other. Literally everyone. It's kind of incredible. But this happened to me before, during my junior year of college; my six suite-mates had boyfriends and I was the unlucky 13th wheel on the bus-o-love. I've gotten really good at talking to other girl's boyfriends in a way that is friendly but not too friendly, so that the guy feels comfortable around me but not so much that the girl feels like I'm a threat. Yeah, it's a skill, a survival tool even.

And I have heard all the advice, every cliche thing mothers and friends say to the single girl, like "No one will love you unless you love yourself," or "When you least expect it..." BLAH BLAH BLAH. Don't you think that after seven years I have kind of stopped expecting it? I expect nothing. I expect to meet someone the day monkeys come flying out of Wayne Campbell's butt, and he doesn't even exist...

So what do I do? Nothing I suppose, just keep trucking. I do think it's fitting that my seventh year of bad luck comes to a close on Friday the 13th, the unluckiest of days. Maybe all of that bad luck in love will cancel itself out, and tomorrow I will wake up next to Heath Ledger, alive and well, ready to devote his life to me... Or maybe I'll just wake up, and I will get out of bed, and I will venture out into the world on my own once again. Either way, I'm good, because after seven years I know that on my own, I do pretty well for myself.

Happy anniversary Maggie. I love you, and I always will.

#14- Protect them. Help them. Find them.

I have a new hero in my life.

Her name is Jaycee Dugard. She is the girl who was kidnapped at age 11 and held captive for 18 years in a backyard by a sex and drug addicted schizophrenic and his deranged wife. She had two daughters with her abductor, the first at age 14, and suffered sexual abuse unlike anything I have ever heard. I am reading her memoir, a stolen life, and am nearly done after just a day and a half (a record for me). I am finding myself on the verge of tears or vomiting pretty much through every chapter.

Jaycee's story is truly fascinating, gut-wrenching but fascinating, and sheds light on just how sick humans can be. It makes me angry, it makes me scared, but most of all it makes me feel helpless.

Jaycee writes, "It's easy for people to be horrified and shocked when someone is abducted, but what about all the other adults and kids living in sad homes?... I know I am not the only child to be hurt by a crazy adult. I am sure there are still the families that look great on the outside, but if someone were to delve deeper they would discover horrors beyond belief."

How do we help these children? How do we recover the abducted, save the prostituted and reclaim the sold? How do we uncover the true nature of an abusive household? More specifically, how do I? I want to comb through every picture of every child who has ever gone missing just in case I might recognize one, might have some sort of clue to solve the mystery and relieve the pain they and their families must be experiencing. They deserve closure, even if that closure is in the form of a dead body. These families need to know what happened to the most precious thing in their lives.

I would like to think I know the difference between appropriate and inappropriate when it comes to children. I would also like to think that if I do realize something isn't right, I will have the courage to say something. But it's difficult to question a parent, especially if that parent is a stranger. However, had a stranger not questioned the peculiar actions of Phillip Garrido, Jaycee's abductor, she may never have been reunited with her mother and sister. She would still be living as a slave to a crazy man, a mother of two raising her children in a backyard prison.

Jaycee writes, "We live in a world where we rarely speak out and when someone does, often nobody is there to listen... For many... it can be tough and scary to venture out and leave that comfort zone behind. It is so worth it, though. You could be saving a person or a family who is not able to save themselves."

Can you imagine how many kids would be saved if everyone who saw something suspicious spoke up? Sometimes mistakes would be made and people would get offended, but maybe if someone had said something sooner, Jaycee would have been safe at home years and years ago. I wonder how many opportunities I have missed to save a child just because I wasn't looking hard enough.

Use your eyes, your ears and your gut. Protect them. Help them. Find them. And most importantly, educate yourself. Jaycee is a survivor, one of the lucky few. There was nothing she could have done to prevent what happened to her, and had someone not been brave and observant enough to ask questions, she may not have made it. It is up to us to find them.

a special thank you

To the 2010/2011 Chicago Bulls...

Thank you.

I can not tell you how much you have meant to me. It has been a year of ups and downs in my personal life, but since October the most consistent and wonderful thing in my world has been you.

You have given me new friends, strengthened my relationship with my father, and made me believe in the beauty of Chicago again. During my sophomore year of life, a time when I could easily have given in to loneliness or frustration, you gave me hope. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true. You are the men in my life and I have a great respect for you and what you do.

In my heart you were already winners, despite the MVP and Coach of the Year and Best Record titles. You are incredible. The heart and soul each one of you brings to the game blows me away and inspires me to take on my life with such courage and passion. Who knew we would make it this far?

You are amazing, and I cannot wait to see what we can achieve next year.

Love and devotion,

Maggie Stamell

(P.S. Luol Deng: You are still my boyfriend. DEAL W/ IT!)