Dear Internet,
What does it mean to be jealous? Is it simply to wish that you had what someone else has, or is it deeper than that? Is it as easy as wishing you had someone else's playground toy, or is there something more to it?
I think that that easy definition is something that is better associated with envy rather than jealousy. Envy is defined as "feeling discontent with regards to another person's advantages," whereas jealousy is "feeling resentment with regards to another person's advantages." It is my personal opinion that these are two very different things. Someone else can have something that we want, and that can be all, and we can envy them--feel that we are not content with knowing that they have it and we don't. But jealousy is a different ballgame, I think. Jealousy is all-consuming, it's uneasy, it makes you question yourself and every second of every day you've ever had, wondering if you should've been jealous all this time or if you're silly for being jealous in the first place. The hardest part about being jealous, that I think envy fails to require, is the resistance to feeling it at all. Whenever I feel jealous, I always try to make myself feel differently. It's not a sensation I like. It makes me uncomfortable to experience jealousy, as if I'm being silly or irrational, and I do what I can to avoid it. But the more I avoid it, the more prevalent it becomes.
I've found myself becoming jealous a lot lately. Whether it's simple envy: wishing I could dance as well as another girl in my class or wondering why my body doesn't have the stamina to safely work out every single day, to full on jealousy: not being able to take my mind off of moments that happen to those I love that I will never know about, wishing that I could have just an ounce of insight...it's been happening more and more.
I wish it would stop. So I'm now faced with a question: what do I do to get jealousy out of my mind so I can continue to live my life in peace? Is it something that I just have to live through, or is there a way to expedite the process so that I can carry on with my life?
I think that jealousy is a perfectly natural thing (although there are theories that it may be culturally conditional), and perhaps it's something that I will have to continue to experience. Besides, once I stop being jealous about one thing, I'll likely become fixated on another thing, and then another, and then I'll be jealous of those who aren't jealous, or of those who have time to watch Netflix when I don't, and it will go on and on. I think what I really need to do is simply confront it. Look it in the face, acknowledge that it's there, and then move on. Just let it be. Will this work for me? Has it worked for anyone? I'm not sure, but I hope so.
Stay tuned, Internet.
-mk.
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
The Power of Intimacy.
Dear Internet,
I was recently given an assignment where I have to bring in something nobody in my class knows about me and tell it as a story to my classmates as a way to express a belief I have that I live my life by. The thing can be anything--happy, sad, depressing, funny, whatever--as long as it's something that nobody else in the class knows.
I really like this assignment, and I'm excited about it, but I'm running into a problem with it: I can't bring myself to talk about anything that isn't tragic or sad or depressing in some way. Why is this? What is it about the happiest moments of my life that nobody knows about that make them so I do not wish to share them with somebody else, while I'm perfectly comfortable sharing the sad things?
When I ask myself this question, I always tend to think of that old children's story about the rainbow fish. If you aren't familiar, I'll give you a quick summary. A rainbow fish is really beautiful and has these incredible sparkly scales that everybody else wants, but he refuses to give any of them away and therefore has no friends because everybody thinks he's selfish. Then one day, he decides to share his sparkly scales with everyone so that they all can have a bit of sparkle, and everyone is really happy and decides to be his friend because they all share in his beauty as opposed to him hogging it all for himself. So I have to ask, am I being the greedy rainbow fish for not wanting to share the incredibly happy intimate moments of my life with others?
I'm not so sure. In an odd way, there's something easier about sharing the darkness in life in assignments like these, because it seems like you're revealing something easier to hide than the happy things in your life. In a sense, this makes it feel like you were more successful in completing the assignment. It feels as if there's a greater impact than there would be if you were to share a happy moment. But the happy moments have had a greater impact on me. So why don't I share those?
I think it's because, like the rainbow fish with his sparkly scales, I want to keep them for myself. I'm afraid if I shared their glitter with others, they would lose their sparkle for me. They would become less special to me if I gave them out like business cards to everyone I knew, going on and on about how wonderful they were. I would have less to hold on to when I feel lonely or sad or afraid or can't fall asleep at night. They wouldn't feel quite as powerful as they do when I just have them for myself.
So for now, I'll keep those moments to myself. Because what good would my memory be of the happy moment where I was standing in a dorm room, tears in my eyes, when I was told--
--Actually, you don't get to know.
That memory shines brighter when I keep it all for my own.
-mk.
I was recently given an assignment where I have to bring in something nobody in my class knows about me and tell it as a story to my classmates as a way to express a belief I have that I live my life by. The thing can be anything--happy, sad, depressing, funny, whatever--as long as it's something that nobody else in the class knows.
I really like this assignment, and I'm excited about it, but I'm running into a problem with it: I can't bring myself to talk about anything that isn't tragic or sad or depressing in some way. Why is this? What is it about the happiest moments of my life that nobody knows about that make them so I do not wish to share them with somebody else, while I'm perfectly comfortable sharing the sad things?
When I ask myself this question, I always tend to think of that old children's story about the rainbow fish. If you aren't familiar, I'll give you a quick summary. A rainbow fish is really beautiful and has these incredible sparkly scales that everybody else wants, but he refuses to give any of them away and therefore has no friends because everybody thinks he's selfish. Then one day, he decides to share his sparkly scales with everyone so that they all can have a bit of sparkle, and everyone is really happy and decides to be his friend because they all share in his beauty as opposed to him hogging it all for himself. So I have to ask, am I being the greedy rainbow fish for not wanting to share the incredibly happy intimate moments of my life with others?
I'm not so sure. In an odd way, there's something easier about sharing the darkness in life in assignments like these, because it seems like you're revealing something easier to hide than the happy things in your life. In a sense, this makes it feel like you were more successful in completing the assignment. It feels as if there's a greater impact than there would be if you were to share a happy moment. But the happy moments have had a greater impact on me. So why don't I share those?
I think it's because, like the rainbow fish with his sparkly scales, I want to keep them for myself. I'm afraid if I shared their glitter with others, they would lose their sparkle for me. They would become less special to me if I gave them out like business cards to everyone I knew, going on and on about how wonderful they were. I would have less to hold on to when I feel lonely or sad or afraid or can't fall asleep at night. They wouldn't feel quite as powerful as they do when I just have them for myself.
So for now, I'll keep those moments to myself. Because what good would my memory be of the happy moment where I was standing in a dorm room, tears in my eyes, when I was told--
--Actually, you don't get to know.
That memory shines brighter when I keep it all for my own.
-mk.
Monday, October 24, 2016
"You Don't Look Crazy Enough."
Dear Internet,
What does mental illness look like? Is it tall and blonde with crystal blue eyes? Is it short and pale and fun to hang out with on the weekends? Maybe it's funny and easy to talk to, with perfect hair and a dazzling smile. Does anybody really know?
I think the reality is, mental illness can look like anyone or anything. It can look like your mom or your best friend or even like you, whether it's you crying or eating dinner with friends or opening a Christmas present. That's what's so terrifying about it--mental illness can look like anyone doing anything. So what did a teacher of mine mean when, while directing a piece where a character is suffering from a mental illness, she said to me peer "you don't look crazy enough. You need to act a little crazier." A classmate chimed in "Yeah, a person with a mental illness would look a little more off. Not so normal."
As I sat there in my chair, astonished that such things were said so casually, it took everything I had not to get up and walk out of the room. What does that mean? What is crazy supposed to look like?
This is all a part of the stigma around mental illness--this idea that it's supposed to look or be a certain way when, truth be told, mental illnesses are not always visible. They hide in the cracks and crevices of the humans that walk among you every day, sealed under facades of makeup and cute clothes and comfortable shoes. They wear what a normal person wears, talk how a normal person talks, only it's as if that person were wearing a backpack full of boulders, trying to carry around their illness from place to place, hoping that at some stoplight they'll finally get a break. People with mental illnesses don't look a mental illness. They look like people. They have pet peeves and pets and grocery lists just like you have. So why would someone say that in order for someone to have a mental illness they have to look or project their illness out in a certain way?
Furthermore, why does a person with a mental illness have to be categorized as crazy? When I looked up the definition of crazy, it gave me "mentally deranged." When I looked up the definition of deranged, it used it in a sentence: "the mentally deranged gunman."
Wait.
Hold up.
It is unnecessary and inaccurate to assume that all people with a mental illness are on the same level as someone as violent as a gunman. Mental illness does not equal violence like that. Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, these are all mental illnesses, and I do not have enough hands to count the number of people I know intimately, myself included, who have struggled with a combination of all three. Roughly one in five teenagers will experience depression before they are adults. Anxiety impacts a quarter of all teenagers, and a third of all teenage girls. Roughly half of teen girls and a third of teen boys will use unhealthy measures to try and lose weight at some point in their teenage years. Are those the people my teacher knew she was speaking of when she referred to someone with a mental illness as generally crazy? I would hope not. In fact, I'm positive that she had no idea that she was saying something so hurtful in that moment. And that's part of the problem.
It is time that we educate ourselves on mental illness, particularly because, as I mentioned before, there are so many people who we all know and love who struggle every day with them. It is careless of us to be so careless about the language and tone we use when we speak about mental illness, or to assume that everyone in a room has no experience with mental illness so that the carelessness can take place to begin with. We have to take the time and listen to those around us and what they are going through. They must know that they do not have to stay silent about their experiences, that there are people listening to them, caring about them. And we can no longer stifle their voices by calling them "crazy" or telling them that they don't look crazy enough for what we think their illness is supposed to look like.
Let us all be more careful, friends. We have no idea what it is people are going through.
-mk.
If you'd like to learn more about depression, anxiety, or eating disorders, please visit:
The National Institute of Mental Health
Anxiety and Depression Association of America
The National Eating Disorder Association
To learn about the many other mental illnesses out there, please visit:
The National Institute of Mental Health Home Page
What does mental illness look like? Is it tall and blonde with crystal blue eyes? Is it short and pale and fun to hang out with on the weekends? Maybe it's funny and easy to talk to, with perfect hair and a dazzling smile. Does anybody really know?
I think the reality is, mental illness can look like anyone or anything. It can look like your mom or your best friend or even like you, whether it's you crying or eating dinner with friends or opening a Christmas present. That's what's so terrifying about it--mental illness can look like anyone doing anything. So what did a teacher of mine mean when, while directing a piece where a character is suffering from a mental illness, she said to me peer "you don't look crazy enough. You need to act a little crazier." A classmate chimed in "Yeah, a person with a mental illness would look a little more off. Not so normal."
As I sat there in my chair, astonished that such things were said so casually, it took everything I had not to get up and walk out of the room. What does that mean? What is crazy supposed to look like?
This is all a part of the stigma around mental illness--this idea that it's supposed to look or be a certain way when, truth be told, mental illnesses are not always visible. They hide in the cracks and crevices of the humans that walk among you every day, sealed under facades of makeup and cute clothes and comfortable shoes. They wear what a normal person wears, talk how a normal person talks, only it's as if that person were wearing a backpack full of boulders, trying to carry around their illness from place to place, hoping that at some stoplight they'll finally get a break. People with mental illnesses don't look a mental illness. They look like people. They have pet peeves and pets and grocery lists just like you have. So why would someone say that in order for someone to have a mental illness they have to look or project their illness out in a certain way?
Furthermore, why does a person with a mental illness have to be categorized as crazy? When I looked up the definition of crazy, it gave me "mentally deranged." When I looked up the definition of deranged, it used it in a sentence: "the mentally deranged gunman."
Wait.
Hold up.
It is unnecessary and inaccurate to assume that all people with a mental illness are on the same level as someone as violent as a gunman. Mental illness does not equal violence like that. Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, these are all mental illnesses, and I do not have enough hands to count the number of people I know intimately, myself included, who have struggled with a combination of all three. Roughly one in five teenagers will experience depression before they are adults. Anxiety impacts a quarter of all teenagers, and a third of all teenage girls. Roughly half of teen girls and a third of teen boys will use unhealthy measures to try and lose weight at some point in their teenage years. Are those the people my teacher knew she was speaking of when she referred to someone with a mental illness as generally crazy? I would hope not. In fact, I'm positive that she had no idea that she was saying something so hurtful in that moment. And that's part of the problem.
It is time that we educate ourselves on mental illness, particularly because, as I mentioned before, there are so many people who we all know and love who struggle every day with them. It is careless of us to be so careless about the language and tone we use when we speak about mental illness, or to assume that everyone in a room has no experience with mental illness so that the carelessness can take place to begin with. We have to take the time and listen to those around us and what they are going through. They must know that they do not have to stay silent about their experiences, that there are people listening to them, caring about them. And we can no longer stifle their voices by calling them "crazy" or telling them that they don't look crazy enough for what we think their illness is supposed to look like.
Let us all be more careful, friends. We have no idea what it is people are going through.
-mk.
If you'd like to learn more about depression, anxiety, or eating disorders, please visit:
The National Institute of Mental Health
Anxiety and Depression Association of America
The National Eating Disorder Association
To learn about the many other mental illnesses out there, please visit:
The National Institute of Mental Health Home Page
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
The Bad Boy.
Okay, you're pretty, your face is a work of art, your smile could probably light up New York after dark. Okay, you're cover boy pretty, stamped with a beauty mark. But it's such a pity a boy's so pretty with an ugly heart. {G.R.L.~"Ugly Heart"}
Dear Internet,
What is it about bad boys that girls like so much? I don't mean boys that wear leather jackets and ride motorcycles and stay out five minutes past their curfews to get their semi-negative reputations. I mean genuinely bad boys. Those boys who make unwanted sexual advances and make inappropriate, objectifying comments about every woman in their lives. The boys who get reputations for being abusive towards women and they actually are. What's interesting about these boys isn't that they look like hard rocking 90s punks with tongue piercings and a too-fast car, but that they don't look this way at all. Instead, they're clean-cut with perfectly coiffed hair and expensive clothes with cool lines that hug their well-exercised biceps. They seem like the nicest people you could know, until you realizes that they're simply...not. Yet somehow so many women still find them to be attractive and a valid option for a romantic partner...why?
I googled "why girls like bad boys" and got extensive explanations of how girls who are attracted to bad boys had terrible relationships with their fathers and subconsciously hope to recreate that same relationship in their romantic life. While I guess this could make sense--there is a common saying that girls are bound to fall like guys like their fathers--I'm not sure that this is really the reason girls seem come running when a bad boy comes around. There are lots of girls I know that are attracted to this breed of man who have perfectly fine relationships with their fathers. Google also told me that girls like the sense of adventure that comes with dating a bad boy (or even with simply being attracted to one). This may be true, but I feel like there's something more to the psychology of liking a guy that we simply know isn't right for us (or, as Taylor Swift would say, a guy we know is trouble when he walks in). What could it be?
I asked a friend of mine what she thought about this, and she said that she likes bad boys because she thinks that nice guys are too boring. They don't "challenge" her enough emotionally or intellectually, which is something she likes in a relationship. She likes competition, and in a relationship she likes feeling that a guy can meet her at her competitive level and then go one step further--something she says she's only found in "bad" boys. I think she could be on to something--are girls attracted to the bad breed of boy simply because they're more interesting than others? But what is so interesting about a relationship that is bound to end in disaster?
Which leads us to what I think may be the key to answering this question...perhaps what's so alluring to a girl about a date headed for a downfall is the hope that she will be the one to turn the boy around. Perhaps she, out of all of the other girls in the world, can take a bad boy and finally make him good. It may just be the secret desire of nice girls to make others just as nice that motivates the attraction to someone of an entirely opposite demeanor. This seems to be a common intention, but how often does it actually work? I would like to think it works often, but the reality is that the success rate of "making a bad guy good for the weekend" (thanks again, Ms. Swift) is small. Besides, the ratio of girls trying to make bad boys good to the number of actual bad boys is probably 20:1, at least.
With all of this in mind, why do girls still think that they could be the one to make that boy they know that their mother wouldn't approve of the man of their dreams? I blame the media for this--particularly movies. Films like She's All That and John Tucker Must Die show the baddest of boys finding that one girl that turns their world--and their behavior--around, much to the envy of the other girls they know. Suddenly, seeing this happen in a film or hearing about it in a song makes the probability of this happening in one's own life seem to much better than it actually is. Plus, when a situation like this is glorified on the silver screen, it becomes a goal, something to strive for, rather than something to run away from.
So here we have the perfect storm: the bad boy being desirable enough to want to change, the desire to make a bad boy good, and the validation from the surrounding world that, if you follow through with this desire, it could actually work. So what do we do? As girls, with the tendency towards this desire, do we run from it? Do we lean into it? I'm not sure. A part of me says run, but I know that most girls will roll their eyes when I say that and go back to dreaming about Danny with the dark eyes and the darker past. I think that the best way to go about dealing with this kind of fatal attraction is to actually acknowledge it, accept it, and then...let it go. Allow it to float away with all of the other hundreds of thousands of thoughts we have every day, and simply move on. For it is the lingering and the obsession, not the thought itself, that becomes the danger.
Girls need to learn to simply let the bad boy go. It would be such a pity to lose a girl so pretty to an ugly heart.
-mk.
Dear Internet,
What is it about bad boys that girls like so much? I don't mean boys that wear leather jackets and ride motorcycles and stay out five minutes past their curfews to get their semi-negative reputations. I mean genuinely bad boys. Those boys who make unwanted sexual advances and make inappropriate, objectifying comments about every woman in their lives. The boys who get reputations for being abusive towards women and they actually are. What's interesting about these boys isn't that they look like hard rocking 90s punks with tongue piercings and a too-fast car, but that they don't look this way at all. Instead, they're clean-cut with perfectly coiffed hair and expensive clothes with cool lines that hug their well-exercised biceps. They seem like the nicest people you could know, until you realizes that they're simply...not. Yet somehow so many women still find them to be attractive and a valid option for a romantic partner...why?
I googled "why girls like bad boys" and got extensive explanations of how girls who are attracted to bad boys had terrible relationships with their fathers and subconsciously hope to recreate that same relationship in their romantic life. While I guess this could make sense--there is a common saying that girls are bound to fall like guys like their fathers--I'm not sure that this is really the reason girls seem come running when a bad boy comes around. There are lots of girls I know that are attracted to this breed of man who have perfectly fine relationships with their fathers. Google also told me that girls like the sense of adventure that comes with dating a bad boy (or even with simply being attracted to one). This may be true, but I feel like there's something more to the psychology of liking a guy that we simply know isn't right for us (or, as Taylor Swift would say, a guy we know is trouble when he walks in). What could it be?
I asked a friend of mine what she thought about this, and she said that she likes bad boys because she thinks that nice guys are too boring. They don't "challenge" her enough emotionally or intellectually, which is something she likes in a relationship. She likes competition, and in a relationship she likes feeling that a guy can meet her at her competitive level and then go one step further--something she says she's only found in "bad" boys. I think she could be on to something--are girls attracted to the bad breed of boy simply because they're more interesting than others? But what is so interesting about a relationship that is bound to end in disaster?
Which leads us to what I think may be the key to answering this question...perhaps what's so alluring to a girl about a date headed for a downfall is the hope that she will be the one to turn the boy around. Perhaps she, out of all of the other girls in the world, can take a bad boy and finally make him good. It may just be the secret desire of nice girls to make others just as nice that motivates the attraction to someone of an entirely opposite demeanor. This seems to be a common intention, but how often does it actually work? I would like to think it works often, but the reality is that the success rate of "making a bad guy good for the weekend" (thanks again, Ms. Swift) is small. Besides, the ratio of girls trying to make bad boys good to the number of actual bad boys is probably 20:1, at least.
With all of this in mind, why do girls still think that they could be the one to make that boy they know that their mother wouldn't approve of the man of their dreams? I blame the media for this--particularly movies. Films like She's All That and John Tucker Must Die show the baddest of boys finding that one girl that turns their world--and their behavior--around, much to the envy of the other girls they know. Suddenly, seeing this happen in a film or hearing about it in a song makes the probability of this happening in one's own life seem to much better than it actually is. Plus, when a situation like this is glorified on the silver screen, it becomes a goal, something to strive for, rather than something to run away from.
So here we have the perfect storm: the bad boy being desirable enough to want to change, the desire to make a bad boy good, and the validation from the surrounding world that, if you follow through with this desire, it could actually work. So what do we do? As girls, with the tendency towards this desire, do we run from it? Do we lean into it? I'm not sure. A part of me says run, but I know that most girls will roll their eyes when I say that and go back to dreaming about Danny with the dark eyes and the darker past. I think that the best way to go about dealing with this kind of fatal attraction is to actually acknowledge it, accept it, and then...let it go. Allow it to float away with all of the other hundreds of thousands of thoughts we have every day, and simply move on. For it is the lingering and the obsession, not the thought itself, that becomes the danger.
Girls need to learn to simply let the bad boy go. It would be such a pity to lose a girl so pretty to an ugly heart.
-mk.
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