Can't We ALL Just Get Along

I love other ladies.  Not in a sexual way, but I do get a deep girl crush from time to time.  I see the appeal in the fairer sex.

I am not a hater of my kind.  Yes, I have battled jealously and I am open about it.  Sometimes the wave of WANT comes across me so quickly, I don't even know it is happening until I lose my focus and can only see my friend's perfect ass in her $200.00 years, my sister's beautiful newborn, my client's brand new car and house....BUT, everyone gets their own happiness and their own turn and I have learned (through lots of therapy and self reflection) to just chill it out, worry about myself, and live my life for me.

One of the best pieces of advice I have received lately, came from a vendor in my business who told me that he has no real idea of his competition.  He doesn't waste his time too much on social media or stalking out people who also offer his same category of services.  This helps him through life because he makes his own rules, his own goals, and his own paths  Organically, he is different because he isn't worrying about being like everyone else and this makes him successful....his own authenticity is his brand.

Sometimes I get really annoyed when people can't own up to reality.  When women can't share their truth because they need to be perfect.  You all know that I don't believe in perfection and coming to terms with this has been the best thing I have EVER done for myself.  I hate when ladies cannot admit a little weakness.....like that having a newborn is tiring, that dieting leaves you wanting, that being in a relationship isn't always peachy keen and rainbows and sunshine.

Please don't confuse this with negativity.  It is the opposite.  This is ownership.  This is pulling the veil off of life.  A gal should be able to ugly cry to her friend because she wants a baby and a man.  Then when she gets both of these things, she should be able to ugly cry again because her baby and her man both won't shut up and she is tired.  Hell, ask some of my besties....they have seen it all from me.

Now, time for a rant.

I love reading blogs and I LOVE each and every blog I follow.  Want to know why?  Because each and every one of you in your own way are REAL.  You have ups and downs, struggles and successes, you take the time to show the full range, the perspective.  It isn't all rainbows and sunshine, just like life.  Sometimes I want to like a blog because it is popular, but the baby always sleeps 15 hours a night, the oatmeal 101 different ways is always YUMMY, and the workout is always the BEST EVER and I call a bluff...tell it to me straight sister, or don't tell me at all.

In honor of being real, I share with you 10 honest and true facts about me.  If you are up for it, share a few about you!

1.  I wet the bed pretty regularly until I was 13.

2.  I have stretch marks and cellulite.  I have stretch marks on my lower tummy.  I fear that when I one day get pregnant, they will spread and I won't be able to wear a bikini and for me wearing a bikini is such freedom because I didn't wear one until I was 21 because of all of my weight issues.

3.  I have a big vagina.  I have big labia.  I know this is a current hot topic, but I do and it used to make me really insecure even though I have actually received many vagina related compliments from men....secret: straight men LOVE ALL KINDS of vagina.  I remember the first time I realized my vagina could be different was when one of my college friends got naked when drunk and I really looked at hers and thought, "Shit! mine looks NOTHING like that!"

4. It took me 5 years to graduate from college.  I almost flunked out my sophomore year of college because I was so lost, drunk, and depressed (even though in the moment, it was a pretty fun year).  It wasn't until I went borderline anorexic at age 20 while on WeightWatchers  and lost 30 pounds in 3 months did I realize that most goals can be attainable (not all, most) with focus, determination, and hard work.  A person who almost flunked out of college ended up graduating with a 3.4 GPA.

5.  I had sex with a person 2 times and remember neither of them because I was so blacked out drunk.  He was a friend of a friend.  I know I put myself in the situation and all, but sometimes I believe that he took major advantage of me.  I sometimes wish I could see what occurred, be a fly on the wall.  How did I allow it to happen a second time when I felt so angry, ugly, and betrayed when I woke up the first time (the 2 occurrences were separated by a few months).  As I have sought better clarity of my issues, this is one that has been coming forward and it scares me.  The darkness and danger I used to put myself in.

6.  I binge eat and have since I was 8.  My trigger foods are cereal, crackers, chips, and bread.  It will be something I struggle with for the rest of my life.

7.  I believe in ghosts and I have seen them.

8.  I accused Crush of having Asperger's (nothing wrong with that, but he doesn't) because he is terrible at casual conversation and in the moment forgets what he is saying and asks people questions he knows the answers to.  I was one of the meanest things I have done in a while.

9.  I have an anger problem.  When I was younger, it was bad.  Temper tantrums.  Now, I can control it, but one night when I was drunk a few years ago, I hit Awful very hard with my fist.  It was after we had a dinner party which I had arranged in honor of his friends and spent all day cooking, decorating, and serving.  At 2:00 am in the morning while I was cleaning up, he told me that the outfit I was wearing that night was a "fat girl outfit and that it was highly unflattering."  The rage I felt at that moment was white hot.  I lunged at him before I knew what I was doing.....I wanted to hurt him more than just a punch, I had to resist the urge.  This is the single reason that I no longer allow myself to get out of control with the liquor.  Both of my parents as sweet and as lovely as they are, have anger problems, too.  They used to hit my Sissy and me.  The way to end a fight in my home is to break something.  Once the glass shatters, the make up process begins.

10.  If I could be anything in the world, it would be a famous comedian.  I sometimes wish I would have honed my skills a bit more and actually pursued it for a bit.  Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler are 2 of my idols.

AND DISCUSS.....

More Dreams

I woke up in the middle of the night again last night and I ate a few snacks....pretzels and cookies.  It is such an automatic reflex, it isn't even something I notice until I am in the middle of doing it.  I know how this whole eating at night thing started.....

When I drank to excess in years past, I would often wake up in the middle of the night dehydrated and when I mustered up enough strength, I would stumble to the kitchen and slam soda (always diet) and carby snacks, so I wouldn't puke.  Often the bubbles and bread helped and I would wake up feeling like shit, just not like total shit.  I always wrote these calories off as an absolute necessity (so they didn't ever count) because I mean, I would puke if I didn't eat them, so they were crucial (perhaps I shouldn't have been drinking to puketown....hmmmmmm)

Then, I was taking sleeping pills for a while when I first went on my anxiety medicine.  I am afraid of the dark (I still am, but I am working through it) and coupled with my anxiety, I went through a phase a few years ago when I didn't sleep for months....perhaps 3-4 hours a day max and it wasn't always at nighttime.  The good news, I had Bravo, Lifetime, MTV, VH1, Oxygen and my absolute favorite WE, so I could be constantly entertained by quality programming in the wee hours of the morning.

The sleeping pills, unleashed the eating monster in me.  Rooooooaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr.  I would sleep eat and be just consciousness enough to not choke, but it wasn't fun and I stopped taking the sleeping pills very soon after I woke up with a half eaten Lean Pocket (meatball and marinara flavor, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) stuck to the back of my pajama pants. Reality check.

One of the advantages, there were a few, to dating Awful, was that I slept.  I slept because he had the side of the bed by the door, he had a security system, he owned several guns (many collectables and serious rifles), and he had a sure shot that could rival Annie Oakley.  I mean Awful did have some talent....he could have seriously shot a pea right through the middle from 50 yards away.  When I once saw him slay some birds, I had very mixed feelings of being impressed and being appalled. Contradiction he was, blue-blooded WASP democrat who killed baby animals....I digress, I digress again and again and again....

I can admit this now, one of the reasons I stayed with Awful was because his parents had a summer house, he had a boat, he owned a home in an expensive city, I slept.  I really slept, like black out slept sober, and it was something after years of not sleeping, that I really needed.  I do look forward to one day sharing a bed with a non-Awful because though I hate to snuggle and I am a hot sleeper (I like really cold sleeping quarters, cannot be confined by top sheets, and socks while sleeping is my version of hell), I do love the company of another warm body in a big cozy bed in a very chilly room.

My dream last night involved Dunbar from the Real World: Sidney.  It was brought to my attention that Dummy Bear (what all those cool MTVers call him) did some porn and I may have watched the clip (if you find it, SO NSFW obviously) and I will never get those 6 minutes of my life back even though sometimes (shhhhhhh) I do enjoy me some erotic film.  Being intimate with Dunbar in my dream made me feel like I was in college and whereas I like that feeling most of the time, I do remember being in some pretty bad sexy situations that I walked right into without knowing how to get out..one of them is that I was had sex with someone like on three separate occasions (I have been told) and I do not remember any one of those occasions.....I mean NOT good and I am SO lucky.

Being naked in my dream with Dunbar felt a bit like that.

Also, then I went to Starbucks in my dream and ordered a vanilla latte and forgot to say nonfat and then I thought they gave me whole milk even through I do believe the default is now 2% and then I never even got to drink that fattening delicious latte because my nephew came into my bed screaming "Rowseeeeeeeee" at 5am with really bad morning breath (I never knew 2 year olds can have terrible morning breath) because I must admit that I do a killer rendition of Ring Around the Rosie complete with a tickle-pickle (I made this genius up myself) breakdown that comes immediately after we all fall down.

Talent people, talent.