Whole Woman Whole Woman by Jessica My name is Jessica, and I'm from Ontario, Canada. I read about you guys in Germaine Greer's Whole Woman. When I got pregnant, at 15, I stopped wearing makeup. First everything but my lipstick, then lipstick, too. Then, after my girl was born, I stopped shaving my legs. My best friend said I looked like her brother. So I stopped shaving my arms and armpits, too. I started really liking being really different. I told myself, after reading the Whole Woman twice more, that I would never be proud of myself until I stopped tweezing my eyebrows. A couple months later, I did. It's hard seeing myself like this, knowing I could look better, and I still tweeze the very middle of my brows, to keep off a noticeable unibrow. But you know what? I really am very proud of myself! I became a bisexual. It was sort of the next step. I say bisexual because mentally I'm a lesbian, but physically I'm still hetrosexual. It might take a while for that to wear off. I like myself. I'm about 20lbs overweight, and I'm struggling with that, but things will get better - either I'll deal with my eating disorder, or I'll love my fat and watch Busty toons. Both of those will be hard. Thanks for being around to support women of all shapes, sizes and attractivities.

Another plea: Please buy my book!
The returns are coming in from the bookstores of God Save My Queen, and I'm getting scared. The next couple of weeks are vital if the book is to be re-ordered and kept on the shelves. If you're reading this, please do consider buying a copy for a Christmas present. If you go to a Barnes & Noble or Borders, it will be in the music section under Queen. Please do ask if you don't see it -- it's there!

If you want, you can mail the book to me, and I'll return it signed and with goodies, like some God Save My Queen guitar picks and a 45 collector slip. If you buy 3 copies, I'll make you a customized mix CD. All by Christmas!

Seriously, when you do this, you first and foremost help support Soft Skull Press, a place that publishes actual readable and exciting books, all outside the terrible mall culture.

The word 'if' is a vile word.

'If' only makes you mull over things
that you neither have the knowledge of knowing
what to expect,
nor the courage to accept.
'If' is always accompanied by worries,
and worries only lead to exasperation,
you ponder on and on about the things
that could have happened,
about to happen,
and whether you could have changed,
or at least, affect the outcome.
Yes, 'if' is a vile word,
but without 'if',
there can never be any hope for possibilities.

 

 

Been doing some drawing after the exams...
need to at least get that exam stress out of my system.
we all can worry about failing later.
-________-;;;;
Worked like shit for the prelims, and what do i get?
The same piece of shit thrown back at me.

"...The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law..."
(Shakespeare)

 

People always talk about how love -- real, true love -- is oh so blind. And ever since I met Nate that day, I can actually say the myth is true.

Words on a screen and a voice over the phone for a whole month can really lure a lusty 16-year-old girl in. Late nights, 3 a.m., laying on my bedroom floor curled up with a teddy bear, trying to talk softly so I wouldn't wake up my parents. I could talk to him forever.

I didn't fall in love with him at first. Even in that short month, when we hadn't even met, we were so silly to tell each other "I love you." He told me that he couldn't wait to be with me, that when he got back home he would smother me with love and never ever let me go. And I was caught.

I was his.

I didn't recognize him at first. His hair was darker and his eyes larger. But I didn't care. He was everything I ever wanted, because he loved me. I needed someone to take all my pain away, and he was it.

I slowly approached where he was sitting, all the while staring down at my feet. I sat down on the bench next to him and didn't say a word. For some reason I couldn't. I knew it was him, but for some reason I couldn't believe that it was actually him.

This was the guy who had told me for so many nights that I was his one and only and that he wanted to make me happy.

"Katy?" he said, and came to the other side of the two-part bench to sit closer to me.

"Yes," I smiled, and looked at my feet again.

It was one of the most awkward moments of my life.

About 20 minutes later he hugged me. That was the first real hug that I'd had in my life. And what I didn't know at the time was that those arms that hugged me there, next to those stairways, would be the arms that I would later want forever and the arms that so many nights would comfort me when I felt I couldn't go on.

He was 18 and more experienced than I was. He taught me to love him. I learned what it felt like to want to take care of someone when they woke you up crying in the night, scared to go on.

I learned how to love myself, and I learned that I was beautiful.

I learned that no matter how many people in the past told me I was ugly and worthless, someone out there still cared about me and thought I was the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world.

I learned what it felt like to not want to let go of someone while saying goodbye.

I learned how to say I love you and really, truly, mean it with all my heart without choking on the words.

I began to depend on his arms, to rely on them for comfort and support. I looked forward to being able bury my face in his chest, soaking his shirt with hot tears.

Tear-stained face and all, he loved me even then.

"Now, I want you to turn with me and look into this mirror," he told me, guiding my shoulders so I was facing my bedroom mirror. He propped my chin up with his fingers. "Tell me what you see."

"I see ugliness and sadness," I said quietly.

"No", he replied. "You're wrong. You see the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world, and you see the girl that I love with all my heart. Katy."

I creaked a slight smile through wet cheeks. But it was pure.

We lasted for nine whole months. It was the longest relationship I had ever been in, and the relationship that made me and at the same time broke me.

Eventually he stopped caring. I would cry, and he would not comfort me. I don't think he knew how to anymore. The love escaped from those arms I knew so well ... I didn't know where it went.

We stopped talking on the phone when we were apart, and he rarely wanted to get together. I'd force him to talk on the phone with me, late nights on the phone until 3 a.m. ... but this time it wasn't the same.

This time, it was spent with me crying my eyes out begging for him to understand, and him, silent on the other end of the line, listening to me and not saying a damn thing about it.

After about two months of this I realized it was too late to save the relationship. He had become a different person behind my back and I kept wondering how he could do that to me. He knew how much I needed him.

He wanted to be friends, but I couldn't do that. Not after all we had been through, I couldn't be just friends with the love of my life.

So I stopped all communication with him and haven't really heard from him since. He tried for a while to get in touch with me, asking for me back, telling me that he misses me, composing songs for me, but it wasn't genuine, and it wasn't the guy I fell in love with.

He's two different people now, and the person I want is laying somewhere underneath whoever he has become.

But I'll never forget that person. Never.

For the first seven months we were together, he molded me back together, picking up all my broken pieces and making me whole again. When he changed he smashed me into a million different pieces once again, leaving me helpless and hurt.

Even though he hurt me in more ways than one, I don't hate him. I'll take the things he gave me, the happiness I once knew that stemmed from him, the love that grew from us and the lessons I learned, and pass them on to others.

And for giving me all that, I love him. The person he was.

You know, I'm a young lady. And they say a lady always knows when to go.

I think I know.

Know This

You know what I mean to you
so if you don't believe me
I'll have to cut myself loose
because you obviously have a problem with my attitude.
You must not understand where I'm coming from
so I'll have to clarify my position, in order to let you in
on a thing or two about me and my attitude.
You knew what you were up to
when you came into my life with the wrong attitude
and made me stand clear so you could do
what you had to do—which distracted me from rocking out.
It was a prime example of an attitude gone bad. I jammed my fingers
in an effort to free you from what held you back
from understanding me more precisely, but that was the price
I had to pay for doing what I did and getting
caught in the trap you set. I needed clarity, but I got caught in the margin
between your needs and the demands of your attitude. It's okay
to believe in failure, but I can't get caught
displaying the wrong attitude when
I could just as easily portray a winner with a winning attitude,
embodying high quality goals, values and ideals.
I could be making the grade, pulling
my weight, being a real bread winner,
and having a good attitude about it all while I rock—
not holding your arms behind your back
so you don't hurt yourself. How do you think I'd
feel if you hurt yourself while I was out rocking?
Do you think I'd be able to continue being a man who rocks?
When I think of you I have to become someone else just so
I can speak to you about the things that rock.
I look at that picture and I'm still rocking.