When I was in high school, I loved the song "David Duchovny" by Bree Sharp. I still love it, because it is the kind of song we can all relate to. Who hasn't been frustrated by a fantasy crush on a celebrity? Also, it is a song that is meant to be sung out of tune at the top of your lungs in places like the shower or driving alone in the car or at a Karaoke bar.
Today, I discovered another song by Bree Sharp through my Ani DiFranco station on Pandora. It was a live version of "Not Your Girl." While "David Duchovny" is a silly song about a dream that will obviously never be realized, "Not Your Girl" is a deeper pain. In it, I hear the story of girl in a relationship with a man who would rather be with someone else, but she keeps hoping that he will eventually see her as the someone else he wants.
The frustration and hurt expressed in "Not Your Girl" are very familiar feelings to me. I have been in several relationships, yet rarely do I feel like I am with someone who adores me. When I say adore, I mean someone who finds himself thinking about me every other minute and can't hardly breathe when he remembers the way I smiled the night before. I want someone who would lasso the moon for me even if he knew he couldn't. In sum, I want someone who would be as in to me as I am in to him. I'm aware that this isn't realistic or healthy or enduring, but it is what I recently find myself craving.
In some situations, I have had men express such sentiments early in the relationship. I find this suspicious since they can not possibly yet understand who I am or what they are getting into. Only one man seems to actually love me despite being familiar with my extensive flaws, but he is also completely unavailable right now and possibly forever.
What is further frustrating is that I see many of my friends finding the adoring partners that I want. Tons of men tell them how beautiful they are and how they have never met a more amazing person. Maybe my perception is skewed, but I have only ever heard one man say these things and actually believed him. I suppose that many of the declarations my friends hear lack sincerity as well. Still, I feel unworthy in comparison to them, even when what they have isn't something I want.
The real question I have at the moment is why do I want this adoring man in my life so much more now than I have in the past? Before I could listen to a song like "Not Your Girl" and relate to it, but I believed in myself. The difference is before I would have compromised a lot less for a relationship than I would now. So, what happened?
I believe that once again the answer lies with my family relationships. Before the three months that I had to live with grandmother in 2009, I had not spent any extended period of time with any single family member for seven and half years. I cut off most of contact with them and was secure in the righteousness of what I was doing. But then I got knocked on my ass by my own unwise and impulsive choices and ended up returning to my birth place and seeing my immediate family several times a month. Without being fully aware of it, I ceded control and lost my credibility. Now, the ball was in their court.
On a logical level, nothing has changed expect that I have more complete information than before, but nothing changed the basic understanding I have of my family. I know that they cannot love me and that it does not mean there is anything wrong with me but rather is an indication of the level of their dysfunctionality. However, emotionally, I wanted to believe that I was the one in control and that their hostility would go away if I ever chose to back down from my position. I wanted to believe that I was precious to my mother and father as they said I was despite what their actions implied. But when I had to go back home and be around them, that fantasy was shattered. I realized how truly unloved I am. My family members believe they love me because they are supposed to and they sometimes do things for me in an attempt to show the love that they think they are supposed to feel for me. But they don't actually love me.
I'm not trying to gain sympathy or pity by writing this. And I'm sure there are people out there who will think I'm exaggerating or that everyone's family is like that. And I'm also sure those people are wrong. My family's level of dysfunctionality is much higher than the normal every-day dysfunctionality we all live with. It is not something experienced by the majority population. This is just a truth I need to understand before I can accept it and take the steps to keep it from eroding my quality of life.
Right now, I can see what has motivated my yearning for someone to yearn for me and why I find myself diving carelessly into impossible relationships that I know will not end well. I don't know what to do about it yet, but having defined the problem should make finding the solution easier. For the moment, I think I will listen to "Not Your Girl" over and over again.

Over the last year, I have talked about changes I want to make. I made progress sometimes but I feel I am in a hole right now. I'm stuck in the same place and have gone no further forward. One friend actually called me out, telling me I always say I'm going to do something but then never do it. So, what's the problem?
In a word, shame. I am weighed down by so much shame. It's like a fog over my whole life and I can only see a couple of inches in front of me. Goals, I tell myself, I need goals! I had them before. What happened to them and how did I forget them? Friends and new acquaintances and family members ask me what I will do now that I have graduated. I try to focus and I try to concentrate, but the dreams I had no longer come to me.
I am so ashamed by my poor choices and of the even poorer choices the original poor choices led me to. Granted, some of it was out of my control, but I am good at surviving, at getting through to the next day. Many choices are made with little thought, because I simply want to survive. Sure, I have dreams about the future, but I never took them seriously.
I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Really, looking at the big picture I'm amazing. Right? I used to know I was amazing and the reasons why.
It isn't just the shame. It's the terror, too. I know if I think about it too much I will feel all the shame and the terror and be an even bigger mess than now. I've spent my life running from them and now my resources are exhausted and I can't run anymore. What the fuck am I going to do?

My first boyfriend and I broke up five years ago today. Our relationship lasted about four years, but I let him control my heart for six and a half years total. Of those five years since he dumped me, I have spent only three not considering a future with him to be a serious option. I think an appropriate way to celebrate this anniversary is to explore the positive ways that I have changed since then.
The biggest way I have changed is I do not have many absolutes that I believe in anymore. I can see all the different ways that people show their love for one another that I could not see before. Then, I could only see how I loved and did not understand other people could not and did not always express their love in the way that I did. I believed in things without thinking about them. For example, I did not like listening to a lot of rap or hip-hop because I believed it disrespected women. They had too many references to bitches and whores. Now, I can understand those references are just a small part of the picture. Rap and hip-hop are much more than what I thought they were.
When we broke up, I had almost no sexual experiences with other men. I saw myself as too fat to be attractive. Overtime, I have come to terms with my body and I know there are men who would even call me hot. On bad days, I still think of myself as fat but usually I can recognize having some extra weight is not the same as fat. My ex-boyfriend’s perception of beauty was strange, to say the least, and I constantly interpreted his lack of opinion to mean I was not attractive. I have heard enough appreciative outbursts from drunk strangers (and occasionally sober ones) to know that this is not true. To some degree, I have even begun to believe it myself and look forward to the day that I no longer need to hear from someone else to know that it is true.
Now, I am okay living by myself. I still have a long ways to go to become the person that I want to be, but I know I can do it and I know I can survive the small tragedies in life. I was a mess when I first found myself sleeping in bed alone. However, I have no regrets and I’m glad that our relationship is over.

Why does it seem like men have so much less to worry about when it comes to sex than women? For me, as a woman, sex can be dangerous and demoralizing. But I don’t see men experiencing the same problems that women experience. Diseases such as HPV, gonorrhea and chlamydia all cause more problems for women than for men. Additionally, it is more likely that a woman will catch something from a man than vice versa. And then there’s pregnancy, a condition which brings so many health risks along with whatever blessings an individual may choose to see in it.
All of these are concrete, measurable dangers to women that aren’t as threatening to men. Of course, sex poses certain measurable dangers to men, but my point is they seem to be greater for women. The mental and emotional dangers also seem to be greater. Maybe this has to do with the roles society has established for males and females. Maybe it has to do with the already-mentioned physical dangers. But sex seems to be more thoroughly intertwined with a woman’s emotions.
I’m not talking about the belief that most women think sex cannot exist without love. Sure, there are probably women that believe that and some men, too. No, what I’m talking about goes deeper than that.
In my experience, men can be pushy. I’m a passive person and when I’m drunk and/or exhausted, it is just easier to give in then to keep saying no or run away. Believe me, I understand the implications of what I’m saying and what it reveals about me, but I want to make a point. Most of the time, when I reflect on a particular encounter I find myself thinking it was fun at the moment but not something I particularly want to do again. However, other times, I find myself viewing an encounter as a reflection of my self-image. But, oddly, it doesn’t seem to bother the man (or men) who was involved.
How is it that immediately after and even during sex I am infuriated at both him and myself? Him for having pushed me and pushed me and refusing to hear me say, “no, I don’t feel like it” or “no, I really don’t like doing it that way” and myself for not having stood my ground and eventually just giving into him. Yet, he is completely fine, asking me if I had fun, even calling me a couple hours later and asking for more. Unbelievable! Not only was I clearly not into it the first time, I also clearly said it would not ever happen again.
Inevitably, some people are going to think, “well, if you gave in once, he thinks you’ll do it again.” So, that excuses someone who calls himself my friend from continuously disregarding what I am saying?
I am thinking the differences between men and women when it comes to sex have less to do with biology and more to do with society. I do not get upset about the actual sex itself. I get upset about how it occurred. Our society and a lot of other societies are sexist. It is more overt in some than in others, but it is there.
Personally, I don’t believe that men truly respect women. This even more emphasized when it comes to sex. Men aren’t usually called home-wreckers. A man is a player while a woman is a slut. When the majority of people view gender roles this way, it is exceedingly difficult to find a sexual relationship with a man who doesn’t in some way find it easier to justify his own promiscuity than that of whomever he is fucking.
In such an environment, it would be impossible not to be emotional. It is infuriating so many people do the same thing you do with less consequences simply because they are men. It is infuriating that such a pleasurable activity can become so dangerous just because you are a woman. And it is even more infuriating that some people actually believe this is the way it should be, a natural division between the genders.

I am a part of several sub-communities. Every day as I move through my life, I encounter the different communities that make-up part of my identity. I go to class and encounter other Spanish undergraduate and graduate students. I go to the library and encounter others striving to obtain a college degree. I go to the gym and encounter others hoping to improve their health and bodies.
The community of the ladies’ locker room is particularly intriguing. As my friend and I change into our gym clothes as modestly as possible, I quietly observe the other ladies. One is standing with her back to us, talking to her friend, topless in a pair of navy blue shorts. Her lack of concern over her nakedness is unusual in an environment where most other women attempt to minimize how long their nakedness is revealed. I wander off to pee and weigh myself and when I return to see if my friend is ready, the girl is still topless. I wonder if the friend she is talking to is at all uncomfortable with her girl’s exposed breasts in her face.
Don’t get me wrong, I have had my own naked moments but they tend to occur when I am drunk. I will flash people, strip and run up and down the block on a dare, or even possibly forget to get dressed after screwing my boyfriend and heading downstairs to refill my rum and coke. But my nakedness tends to take place within a sub-community that embraces it.
The gym is already an uncomfortable place. It is full of people who want their bodies to look good, people who are inevitably in better shape than me. I doubt I am the only one at the gym who feels this way. I suspect this is why most women spend as little time naked in the locker room as they can. When my friend and I return to the locker room after our workout, I notice another girl changing. She is wearing a thong. She wraps a towel around her lower half before slipping off the thong, avoiding eye contact with others while doing so.
My behavior would be more similar to hers’ than that of the topless girl. I would worry about things such as fat on my thighs and ass or legs that need to be shaved or how I shave my bikini area would be perceived. Too little or too much hair? Could it be interpreted as me being too slutty or too prude? Such personal details I would rather keep to myself and maybe a few sex partners, not something I want to flash around the locker room for other women to judge. Maybe this means I care too much about what others think. Maybe it means I am ashamed of my body to one degree or another. Maybe I am more of a conformist than I like to believe. But then again, is the ladies’ locker room really the place to rebel?