Happy Valentines Day, suckers.

I alluded yesterday to the fact that I would be doing a Valentines Day post to let you know why I don't like Valentines Day.

Basically, I think Valentines Day is used as an excuse for couples to get rid of all romance out of their relationship and limiting it all to one day so they can get away with not being romantic any other day.  Presents are over priced, and they take no thought - how hard is is to pay $70 for a bouquet of red roses?

That's not to say that I don't like love and romance - of course romance is awesome.  But it's so much more romantic if it's by choice, rather than because every one else does it.

I don't have a problem with people buying into the idea, and if you want to celebrate, by all means, do.  But I really really truly think that the vast majority of women don't actually like all the fuss around Valentines Day - and most men HATE the pressure of having to find something that's the right mix between romantic and thoughtful and generic.  Women get peer pressured into feeling like they need to love Valentines Day, and that if they don't they must be broken or single or resentful, which is totally untrue.

Whether I've been single on Valentines Day or with a partner, I have not celebrated a Valentines day except for the one just before my 14th birthday, when I had my first boyfriend.  It's not because I'm bitter or resentful or angry or anything - I just hate the commercialism aspect of it, and I hate the pressure.

Yes, it's wonderful to feel special, it's fantastic to feel loved, and of course we like feeling like someone's thought of us.  It's pretty hard to argue that we'd feel less special being appreciated on any other day.

I saw a tweet (that I can't for the life of me find again) saying that Valentines Day is where men buy women overpriced flowers in exchange for the possibility of a mediocre blow job.  Well, blow jobs are something we should be giving every day, and so are flowers and kisses and expressions of love.

Love every day, not just because Hallmark tells you to.

In saying that, I received TWO lovely Valentines Day gifts today.  One was from Kylie, who decided that me not liking Valentines Day isn't a reason to not embarras me in Wholly Bagels - thanks hun.

The second was from a random fire fighter, who handed me a red rose this afternoon and simply said, 'Happy Valentines Day'.  It made me smile, and I was very happy.  I walked about another 10m down the road and saw a sad looking man sitting at the bus stop.  I handed him the rose, and said 'Happy Valentines Day'.  It was obviously just what he needed, he smiled, and got up and hugged me and thanked me profusely.  Pay it forward.

Have you ever loved somebody so much it made you cry?

Valentines day is coming up.  Don't worry, I'm going to blog specifically about Valentines day, but this has been on my list for a while.  Valentines day brings up lots of stories about romance and love and sex. Well, mostly sex, let's be honest.  But anyway, I've been thinking about love, and what happens when you love someone and they don't love you back, or if you're in a relationship, and you have stronger feelings that the other person. 

First, I guess, how do you know you're in love?  

This quote by Dr Seuss gets tossed around every Valentines day: 

'You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.' 

- Dr. Seuss.

There are some others, too:

"Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me."

- Sarah Bernhardt

"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach..."

- Elizabeth Browning

"I find myself speechless,

This feeling of completeness is so strong,

And I was convinced that my heart had reached it's limit,

Until you created this new place in it"

- All Because Of You (lyrics), Celine Dion

In my mind, these quotes don't represent love very well.  Love doesn't have to turn your world upside down or stop you from having the ability to do anything else.  Sure, there may be times where it feels overwhelming and amazing, but most of the time, love sort of creeps up on you and before you know it, you'd rather be with the person than without them, and you can't imagine feeling whole without them.

Love it different for everyone, and every time they fall in love, they will feel differently.  Love is exciting and scary and it makes you feel powerful.  Love isn't unconditional, but it should be without judgement or prejudice.  There's that quote; 'love is never having to say you're sorry'.  I disagree.  Love is saying you're sorry and meaning it, then doing everything you can to stop whatever it is from happening again.  Love isn't about you, love is wanting to make another person's life better, wanting to do everything you can to make that person smile.

Some people fall in love easily.  I often get caught in the trap of feeling like I'm in love when I'm really not.  I think feeling like you're in love is a way of feeling accepted, and I have some abandonment issues, so attaching myself to a person makes me feel less alone.  It's a huge issue that's I've recognised and am working on.  The best thing I've found is to be honest about what I'm feeling.  I've learned that it's actually okay to love someone and tell them I love them, and expect nothing in return.  Sure, you have the risk of rejection and the pain that goes along with it, but without admitting how you feel, how can you address it?

What if you have stronger feelings than the other party?

This is a really really common issue.  I don't think it's actually possible for two people to love each other exactly the same; everyone loves differently, and we really should work on dealing with our pre-conceived notions of 'if he loved me, he'd do this', or 'if she really loved me, she wouldn't say this'.  It's not up to you to dictate how someone else should feel, or how they should act.  You can control your own emotions and actions, but there is nothing in the world that you can do to change someone elses.  

So what can you do if you love someone more than they love you?  Well, there are always the options of  distancing yourself from them so you can fall out of love, becoming involved with someone else to transfer the issue or even trying to convince the other person to love you.  Personally, I think the best option is to just keep loving them on your terms.  That doesn't mean you have to become a creepy stalker or call them 10 times a day.  I don't think you can make yourself fall out of love, and I definitely don't think you can make someone who isn't ready (or who may never be ready) to love you.  

The best thing to do is remember, before this person, you survived.  If it doesn't work out, you'll survive. You're not going to die of a broken heart, and it will be okay.  Give yourself all the space and time you need.  Look after yourself - much like hate is emotionally draining, so is love.  Love is a good emotion, it doesn't have to be creepy, and it doesn't have to be sexual or mean that you have to get married and have babies.  

Think about what it really means.  Is loving someone who doesn't feel the same about you going to make you act any differently to if they reciprocated?  Probably not.  Talk about it (not necessarily with the person you're in love it, although it could be them if they're happy to listen).  Talking seems to make things better.

There's not really a bandaid you can put on your feelings to make them stop or to make you stop hurting, but the best way I have found for dealing with them is to genuinely feel whatever it is that you're feeling.  Do it in short doses, do it when you're exercising or when you're sitting at home alone - whatever works for you.  

So what am I saying?  Basically, we can only control our own feelings, not other peoples.  We are allowed to feel whatever we want - no one can stop us.  We need to make sure that what we're feeling, we're doing in a healthy way (as in, not obsessing).  Allow yourself to love; it can't be nearly as hard as denying yourself. 

How I got to where I am today

I woke up this morning and my head was killing me.  I'm having issues with dizzy spells and lack of balance (although, to be fair, it's hard to tell what's off balance and what's balanced; I'm pretty clumsy).  On days when you're in physical pain, it's much harder to compartmentalize your emotional pain, and between my head, ribs and shoulder with no painkillers, it's getting pretty unbearable right now.


I've found over time that writing it down can make it much more manageable.  It doesn't make it go away; I don't think there's a quick fix for that, but it does tell your brain that you've done something about it, and makes you feel more in control.  So with that in mind, I thought I'd write down one of my memories that has really been playing on my mind for the last few days; the 'what if'.


WARNING: this is a suicide/self harm story. Don't read it if you're going to get upset, or if you're going to tell me I was stupid. I already know.  It made me cry to write it, and if you're a bit of a sop, you might cry too.


EDIT: Don't read if you're a sop and at work (via @newslettersltd)


Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations.  Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit.  ~ Robert Brault


This happened when I was 16, the Tuesday night after the the 'great loss' I spoke about yesterday happened. Maybe one day I'll write about that, but not today.  It was before I broke up with the boyfriend at the time, but I sort of knew things weren't going great.  I had started cutting; not to kill myself, but to feel physical pain rather than emotional pain.  At the time, I was much better at dealing with physical pain.  I suppose I still am.  It's something I can locate, and I can rationalize why it's hurting and when it will stop.  With cutting, I could control the pain.  It sounds cliche, but I was that girl who cut myself to stop the pain.  And, to some extent, it worked.


I usually cut late at night, when the pain was the worst.  Emotionally, I wasn't capable of dealing with it, and being alone and left with my thoughts was the worst.  One night, I went too far.  I took too many pills, and cut myself too far.  When I realised I was bleeding more than what I could handle, I rang my boyfriend.  My parents were right in the next room, but I couldn't face their disappointment.  Luckily, while he was seriously lacking in the common sense department, somehow, that day, he knew that ringing my parents was the best thing to do.  My parents woke up and came into my room.  


They saw what I had done, and I waited for the 'disappointed' talk, and it didn't come.  My mum took one look, said she loved me, and rang an ambulance.  My dad sat on my bed with me, and held my hand.  He said he couldn't imagine what I was going through, and he hated that he couldn't help me.  He said that he didn't think it was fair to put them through exactly what I had just experienced,  but he understood if I couldn't deal with the pain.  He and my mum spent the time until the ambulance arrived (which seemed like hours, but in reality was probably no longer than 30 minutes) telling me stories about  me growing up, and how much they had loved seeing me grow.  My mum left the room again, I think she was really struggling to deal with it.  I don't blame her.


When we were alone, my dad hugged me and told me that this was the moment I could change my life.  He said that he believed if I wanted, I could survive this, all by myself.  All I had to do was want it.  He said that there was nothing he could do at this point to help me, he couldn't force me to live.  He told me that if I didn't want to live anymore, I didn't have to; it was my choice.  He told me he had given me everything, but he had realised in the last week, that sometimes, everything isn't enough.  I remember sitting there, too confused to cry or be upset.  I felt like my dad was saying that me committing suicide was okay.  


I remembered what it had been like for me to lose my cousin who committed suicide.  She was my idol, and I never thought I would experience loss like that again.  Then the 'great loss' happened, and this was pain on a whole new level.  I thought about all of the other people in the world who had lost the same thing in similar ways.  I thought about how I would feel if I was sitting in my dad's shoes.


That night is 6 years ago today.  I made a choice on that night that I was going to live.  I didn't make the choice because I didn't want to cause my parents pain.  I didn't make the choice because I didn't want my brother to grow up without a sister.  I didn't do it for my friends, or for my boyfriend, or for the little person I lost.  I did it for me, because at that moment, I knew I was stronger than anything else in the whole world.  I knew that if I could get through what I had been through already, I could get through anything.  I knew that my parents loved me, more than I ever had been able to imagine before, but in the same way I learned to love the week before.  


I made the choice to get up and make myself vomit, and I made the choice get an ice pack to help stop the bleeding.  I made the choice to throw away all the pills, and I was the one who put the razors in the rubbish bin.  That day, I made the choice to live.  I knew it wasn't always going to be easy, and it hasn't been.  I also knew that by letting myself feel the pain, I was teaching myself how to process it.  


For the rest of that night, my parents sat with me on my bed, telling me stories about my childhood.  They told me they were proud of me, and that they loved me, and that I had made the right choice, no matter how hard it felt right now.  The next morning, I got up, and I went to school.  My parents didn't think I should, but they understood that I needed to live life on my terms.  I wasn't myself at school, and I wonder if anyone noticed that I was odd that day, and forever afterwards.


Since then, I've had ups and downs.  I've had great days, and hard days, but nothing has ever been as hard as that one week.  I finally felt truly at peace with my choice last year, on my 21st birthday.  My dad took me aside, and told me that he had thought that he was going to lose me that day.  He said he had never realised my strength until I got up, and said that I didn't want to die.  He told me that I was the most amazing person he ever had met, and that raising me had made him a better person. 


He handed me a piece of paper, and told me to read it later.  I got it framed.  It said:


The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.  The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.  ~ Frank Pittman


It's not enough for me to say that I'm a strong person.  I am, but I am only strong because I was taught to be strong by wonderful parents who loved me more than they loved themselves.  Teach your children strength and humility and teach them to love themselves.  Your children learn everything you teach them, and much much more.  If you're a parent, I don't need to tell you this, but listen anyway.  Every day, love your children.  They are the best thing that will ever happen to you.

Love

I was reading 'The Ethical Slut', and one bit jumped out at me.  It said 'Many people believe, explicitly or implicitly, that our capacities for romantic love, intimacy, and connection is finite, that there is never enough to go around, and that if you give some to one person, you must be taking away some from another.'  According to the authors, this leads to people becoming 'very possessive about people, things, and ideas that matter to them. They see the whole world in a limited light, so that anything they get comes from a small pool of not-enough and thus must be taken from someone else...'


I know in my household growing up, this mindset was something my parents wanted me to avoid having.  Both of my parents worked, and they were very devoted parents to myself and my brother.  Family was, and is, extremely important to me.  Holidays, weekends and evenings were spent with people, and I was taught that anything you have, including love, is useless if you fail to share it.

Both of my parents have always been involved in a lot of volunteer work where the focus is on imparting their skills on others.  As a result of this, I have become involved in similar things to what my parents do, and volunteer for things in my own right.  I tend to spend about 15 hours a week volunteering my time; I say this not to boast, but instead to illustrate how important this is to me.  I don't begrudge any time I spend volunteering (well, I try very hard not to, but there are sometimes people who test my patience!).  I have always been taught that volunteering is a way to make myself better, and to give back - the love that I share with people isn't something that's going to run out because I do it too much.

My first boyfriend's parents did not have a good relationship.  They used to fight all the time, and one day while I was sitting with the mother, she burst into tears and said 'I only have so much love to go around, and I love my kids to death, my business is my baby, I love my husband, and that means I don't have enough love left for me.  If I don't love me, who will?'  This has stuck in my mind for nearly 10 years.  At the time, I just felt uncomfortable and sad, and I remember that being the moment where I first started seriously thinking that kids might not be such a good idea for me.  Sure, it took a long time after that to really feel confident in the fact that if I don't have kids, I'm less of a woman, but it was at that moment that the idea seemed realistic.

I always understood, maybe inherently or from the way I was brought up - maybe both - that until you love yourself, you can't love someone else.  Love, in my mind, is sort of like a plant.  If you nurture it and feed it and water it and look after it, it will grow and multiply for you.  If you neglect it, it will get smaller and smaller, and eventually, you'll end up like the crazy cat lady on The Simpsons.

I don't think there's ever a question of not having enough love.  You can always love more. There is no 100% of love, with 10% allocated here, and 20% here.  Love it something you can aways give more of, and you can always find more to give.  Love isn't something you should ration.

In saying that, love isn't something you can give if you're not prepared to get hurt.  Sometimes, from the greatest risks, come the greatest rewards.  Yes, you do risk rejection and heartache and pain, but it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

T S Eliot said 'Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.'  Live like this. Live with no regrets.  Love totally and without reservation, always.

The blog we've all been talking about

Okay, this is going to be a very personal blog, about my 'innermost, romantic feelings' and soppy shit like that. If you don't think you can read it without being an ass, please don't. And please don't give me shit on twitter about it, I already feel weird enough without being mocked relentlessly by people whom I've never met.

Actually, after writing that intro, and talking to Kassh, I've decided not to write it. It's not worth ruining anything over, and I'm enjoying what I have right now. This might seem like a bit of a cop-out, and to be honest, it is. But telling the world before the person goes against my whole 'communication in relationships' rule - and that's the out I'm using here. If you really respect a person, no matter what it is you have to tell them, good or bad, it should be face to face. I was going to by text, but that's a terrible idea. There are some things you don't do via text, like telling someone you're pregnant or breaking up with them (I'm neither, to be clear).

I guess this would lead into a good post about respect and relationships, and the link between communication and respect. This segue is awesome, go me!

So, what do I think about respect? There's that general adage that respect should be earned, and I totally agree with that. However, I also think that we as humans have a responsibility to respect other people as people - even if we don't like them. This means that we have to respect women and children and murderers and rapists. Everyone is somebody's baby, even if we don't like what they have done. That doesn't mean that we need to respect them as anything more than a person, it just means that we have to treat them like people. On top of that, people can earn our respect by doing special things. I sort of think of it like a kid's sticker chart, except way cooler because I got to colour it in myself. What they can do to earn respect varies from person to person.

For me, a big part of respect is someone respecting me. It sounds circular and silly, but if someone respects the things that I do and the reasons why I do them, I will respect them a lot more than if they either don't care, or worse, actively discourage me from doing what I do. I think respect in relationships is super important. Too many people seem to forget that their partners are, before everything, people. You wouldn't scream abuse at a person on the street, and you probably also wouldn't yell profanities at a person on the bus, so why is it somehow okay to treat your partner like that? You also wouldn't just totally ignore the girl at the library counter if she said something you didn't agree with. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand getting angry and frustrated with your partner. However, has yelling ever solved a problem? Has shutting down and ignoring the person you have the issue with ever actually fixed anything?

I'm a firm believer that communication is the keystone to a relationship - and also, that yelling isn't communication. I think that if there are issues, they should be talked about. I've been in a relationship with someone who, when he got annoyed, would totally shut down and refuse to discuss the issue, or anything else, for that matter. It would drive me insane; personally, I hate going to bed angry, and I find it really hard to let go without discussing the issue and 'kissing and making up' so to speak. I would never be with a guy who shut down like that again. It sent me into a bit of a depression because I felt like I was being ignored. Now I realise that it was just his way of dealing with it, but it would have been much better for both of us if he were to say 'I'm angry, I'm not discussing this now, we can talk about it in 2 hours'.

I've never been with someone who yelled at me. I don't do yelling very well, it makes me cry. I think a guy who yelled at me would be a deal-breaker. There's no excuse for it. My aunty used to be terrible at yelling at my uncle and her children. She didn't do it because she was a horrible person, she did it because it was the only way she thought they would listen. My grandmother sat down one day with her and told her what she was doing. She took it to heart, and it took a while, but she very rarely yells. Maybe that would work in other relationships also, but it's not something I'm willing to be involved in.

I think conflict is totally normal. People will never agree on everything, and no one should have to go along with everything their partner says just to prevent conflict. The issue lies in ensuring that conflict is dealt with in the right way; that is, with respect for the other person. If I respect you enough to kiss you and spend time with you or live with you or sleep with you, I respect you enough to make the effort to treat you and your opinions with respect. Sometime's it's hard, sure. But there is never an excuse for belittling your partner. The way you show respect is through the way you communicate with someone.

Whenever I'm really really frustrated with someone I love, I take a second to remember why I love the person, and think about how they make me happy. It might not work for you, but it works for me. If I'm really really frustrated, I'll put myself in time out. Sometimes having a shower or sitting outside or going for a drive can take the anger out of the situation. Remember, anger is your problem, no body else's.