Stupid Things I Say to My Dog

I live alone with my dog, so naturally I talk to him. A lot. We have some pretty deep conversations. Here are some gems:

• "Do you want a treat? That was a stupid question."
• In the bathroom: "Get out of here; I don't need your help. I can pee by myself. I've been doing it for a long time."
• "It's almost March, so I hope that means it's almost spring. I better not have to wait until April."
• "That would be the correct sentence structure. Not that you care about sentences. You only know five words." *
• "I love kisses. Except the ones that go up my nose."
• After working out: "Yep, lick all the sweat off. Salt is real good. Tastes like Gatorade. Sweat flavored Gatorade."
• "No, if you're not going to pee, then we're going in. I didn't come out here in the snow to chase squirrels."
• As he barks at the neighbors: "You're so ferocious. You just made me shit myself in terror."

He pretty much always has the same response. He tilts his head and looks at me like this:

You talkin' to me?

*He actually knows at least ten words: no, okay, bad, sit, stay, down, out, walk, treat, food, ride, and leave it (which is two words, but he doesn't know that)

Depression Meds

I've been living with depression since my high school years, maybe since 2005-2006. Since then, I've tried a bunch of different medications to try to treat my symptoms and make living bearable.

These are the some of the medications that I've tried:
Prozac (fluoxetine)
Celexa (citalopram)
Paxil (paroxetine)
Lexepro (escitalopram)
Zoloft (sertraline)
Effexor XR (venlafaxine)
Cymbalta (duloxetine)
Viibryd (vilazodone)

Some of these have been more effective than others, and some gave me some pretty bad side effects (like dizziness and terrifying nightmares). I had been using Effexor for a couple years until I started having regular panic attacks--a couple every week. My doctor switched me to Cymbalta (duloxetine) about a week ago, so now I have a new med to add to my list. I really hope that this one is going to work. I have not been sleeping well since I started it, but I'm not sure if it's because of the medicine or from something else. I'll give it some more time and keep my fingers crossed.

Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size

Over the weekend, I went to a GSA Summit at Dickinson College, and I finally got to meet Ragen Chastain, author of one of my favorite blogs, Dances with Fat. Ragen spoke about body acceptance and the media, and she taught a dance class after lunch, which was actually really fun (I've never danced before, so I was waaaay out of my comfort zone).

Ragen Chastain presenting at Dickinson College

Ragen is a really inspiring person and speaker, so now of course I'm stoked to talk about Size Acceptance and the Health at Every Size philosophy.

The thing is: I'm fat. I'm 5'2'' and around 175 pounds, which the doctor's office loves to tell me is obese. I used to be a "normal" weight in high school (still felt fat though, that's another story), and I gained a lot of weight in college. So now I'm fat. There are a lot of fat people in my family, so I'm sure some of it is genetic.

I'm also moderately active: I do yoga, walk my dog multiple times per day, walk 5k's a few times per year, and do other activities such as swimming when the weather permits. My numbers (aside from weight--like blood pressure etc.) are in the healthy range. I happen to have asthma, but who knows if the weight caused the asthma or if the asthma caused the weight or if it was caused by something else entirely (possibly genetics, since my mother also has asthma).

The point is: yes, I'm fat. I'm also working out, trying to stay healthy, and working on loving myself and my body the way it looks now. Yes, I am tired of hating my body, which is why I was so happy to discover the Size Acceptance (SA) and Health at Every Size (HAES) movements.

Size Acceptance is essentially a movement for civil rights for fat people--you know, basic human dignity and respect for everyone regardless of their weight. Chairs and airplane seats and hospital beds to accommodate everyone. Radical, isn't it?

And Health at Every Size is a health practice based on the belief that people can be healthy no matter their weight (thus "at Every Size"). HAES practitioners work on intuitive eating and doing exercises that they enjoy with a focus on being more healthy, not losing weight.

I've been working on accepting myself and other fat people for the past couple months, and (SHOCKER) it's a lot harder to accept myself than it is to accept other people. Thankfully, there are people like Ragen who tell me every day that being fat does not mean that I'm a horrible person and that foods are not morally good or bad. It was wonderful meeting such an inspiring person! Check out her blog if you're interested in learning more: Dances with Fat.

Guilt

Living with depression and anxiety comes with a lot of guilt. Up until recently, the main thing I felt guilty about was moving out of my aunt's house while she was in the middle of chemotherapy treatments. Even though she assured me that she would be okay and that she had friends that she could rely on, I felt lousy about it for months.

Then I drove by the trailer where I spent a few months of my childhood while my family was homeless. I was in the area for other reasons and wanted to show my partner a piece of my past. I figured that it had been many years since I had been by there, and I was a little curious if it looked as horrific as I remember it.

The place itself still looked like a hell hole, but how it looked was nothing compared to the memories it drug up. Being told continuously that we (my brother and I) were unwanted and on the verge of being kicked out onto the street (we were about 10 and 12) is what I had remembered from this time; being told that you're going to be "on the outside looking in" is hard to forget. However, I had apparently repressed even worse memories.

The one that haunts me is of our family dog, a rottweiler/lab mix named Bo (named for Bo Diddley). We usually kept Bo inside at our home, but when we moved to the trailer, there wasn't enough room for 12 people as well as our dog (obviously there wasn't even enough room for just the people). Bo stayed outside like the other animals, tied up by himself.

Honestly, I don't know whose responsibility it was to take care of him and make sure he had food and water. All I know is that one day I saw him for the first time in weeks. He was skin and bones - literally starving to death. I can't even imagine the pain he went through during those weeks. It makes me sick just thinking about it.

Bo survived for about another year before he died when I was in 8th grade. I was heartbroken. I had awful dreams about his death. And now I have the weight of guilt. It doesn't matter if his pain and death was my fault or not. It's going to be on my conscience for the rest of my life.

Bo and I at our old home

"Cultural Differences"

I've been seething about this incident ever since it happened, so I'd like to vent about it here:

One morning at work, my boss was reading off a bit of news to my two co-workers and I about the 8 year old Yemeni girl known as "Rawan" who was sold into marriage by her parents to a 40 year old man. The girl died after suffering severe internal bleeding on her wedding night.

Guy At Work (hereafter known as GAW) just chuckled and said, "Oops." My boss just gave him a dirty look and said, "I'm gonna come over there and smack you." He looked around at the three of us, got only more dirty looks, and then tried to save himself: "You have to understand that their culture is extremely different from ours. That's normal over there." I was too angry to say anything.

First of all, he could have shown some sympathy. This girl was brutally raped and died from the resulting injuries. Even an "Aw, that's sad" would have been better than a laugh and an "Oops," like it was a comical mistake that could have happened to anyone.

Second of all, just because child marriage might be socially acceptable in other countries, does not mean that it is any less of a human rights violation. This poor girl's parents sold her to a 40 year old man to be used as a sex slave, AKA a wife. That is not acceptable, no matter what backwards ass culture you live in. Condoning that kind of social norm in any part of the world only allows it to continue. Women will always been seen as lesser beings, or as property or objects, until we are allowed to decide what happens to our own bodies.

How many more girls have to die this way until people wake up?

Depression and Communication

When you have depression, you can feel very isolated and alone. Talking with other people helps, but holding a conversation can be very difficult.

For example, when they ask, "How's it going?". You want to respond, "Lousy," or "shitty," or "Well, I'm not dead" because that pretty much sums it up. But then they want to ask you what's wrong, and you really don't want to get into it, or you don't even know how to explain what's wrong with you. So you respond with a "Good" or a "Fine," both of which are lies, and they really don't mean anything. Communication failure.

Or they ask, "How's your family doing?" Now, you don't talk to most of your family, and some of them you actively hate, and the rest are in and out of the hospital or just as depressed as you are. You don't want to talk about it, and they don't want to hear about it. So, of course, you say they're doing "Fine."

Or maybe they ask, "How's your job?" and you want to reply, "Same shit, different day," or "It sucks." But you know they don't want to hear you complain about your job; no one wants to hear the constant stream of negative thoughts running through your head. So you tell them the job is "Okay" or that you're just glad that you have a job in this shitty economy.

It doesn't work. While you're busy trying not to say all the negative things that you're thinking and only saying one or two words, you clearly can't keep up your end of the conversation. Sometimes you forget to ask them the same questions, and then there's a lull.

When you go through this process enough times, you don't want to do it anymore. You avoid people and isolate yourself even more, which - surprise! - increases your depression.

I think Allie at Hyperbole and a Half understands:

Fetuses and Doggies and Protesters, Oh My...

I know I shouldn't care about what other people think, but sometimes I have to consider how I present myself and my beliefs, and/or how it reflects on my job.

Let me explain.

If you know anything about me, you know that I'm an outspoken supporter of women's rights and reproductive rights--including abortion. My bumper stickers include a picture of a uterus with the word "Mine," a rainbow that says "If the fetus you save is gay, will you still support its rights?"* and a pink "I Stand With Planned Parenthood."

I also support organizations that rescue homeless and abused animals. I rescued my dog from the Humane Society, and I give money and resources to the local shelters. However, I do not have any SPCA or "Rescue" bumper stickers on my car. I am hesitant to even put a generic dog related sticker on my car.

It's not that I don't feel strongly about saving animals who are homeless or living in abusive situations. It's that I don't want people to think that I care more about animals than I care about "babies," aka fetuses. I can just see one of our protesters taking a picture of the offending bumper stickers and posting it around the internet as "proof" of how terrible Planned Parenthood is: how we don't care about killing "babies" but we care about the poor, homeless dogs.

These are just the things I think about when I'm bored at work.


*This is what my boyfriend calls the "Obligatory Inflammatory Bumper Sticker." I call it calling out the twisted logic of conservatives.

Don't Pray for Me

Whenever shit goes wrong in my life, other people (family or friends) feel bad that my life sucks. Sometimes they honestly feel bad and want to help. However, depending on the situation, their ability to help is very limited. Truth is, they can't make life not suck. They can't bring back a dead dog or make someone get over a hard breakup. Even though they know that they can't fix the situation, they want to do something--anything--to make it better.

So they give that irritating line: "I'll pray for you."

Let me make this very clear. You praying for me does absolutely nothing for me. Nothing. It doesn't make my problem go away, and it sure as hell doesn't make me feel better. In fact, it makes me feel worse. It says to me that you feel bad for my crappy situation, but the best you can do is talk to your imaginary god about it. What this does is makes you feel better about the situation without you actually doing anything to help.

I think the time this pissed me off the most was when my grandfather died. At the funeral, some woman (not sure if she was family or friend) told me that she would pray for me and my family. Clearly, she felt bad enough to feel the need to do something for us. However, instead of offering to actually help us (see below), she just said that she would "pray" for us, thereby alleviating the guilt she felt about our loss without actually doing anything for us.

Long story short: Praying for someone does not help the situation. It only makes the person doing the praying feel better about a situation that they can't fix.

If something bad happens to someone you know and want to help, try some of the following things that might actually help them:
~Give them your phone number and tell them to call you if they ever want to talk and/or vent about what happened. Be sincere, but don't push them. If they don't want to talk, then don't force it.
~Offer to cook them dinner. Be sensitive to dietary restrictions or allergies.
~See if they need help with other household chores. Grief can make cleaning or babysitting even harder than it usually is, so offer to clean their house or watch their kids for an evening.
~Send them a nice email, but don't expect a response. If they're feeling lousy, they might not be up to answering emails, but it is nice to get a friendly message.

If you have a neurotic impulse to pray to your imaginary god about me, and you can't resist or your head is going to blow up, fine. Just don't tell me about it. Seriously.

Teenagers and Abortion

I work at Planned Parenthood. When there's something about our services that I don't know enough about to answer questions about it, I do research. Sometimes, I get questions from teenagers about pregnancy options, including abortions.

First of all, let's get this out of the way: (some) teens have sex. Some of them get on birth control, some don't. Some use condoms, some don't. Some of those condoms break. Some teens are raped. Some get pregnant. Some decide to become teen parents. Some put their child up for adoption. Some decide to get an abortion.

The problem with Pennsylvania is that teens need a parent's permission to get an abortion here. While some parents have no problem giving this permission, some will not grant it. Furthermore, some teens are too scared to ask their parents, or they don't want their parents to know that they're pregnant (or even that they're having sex). Those that can't or won't get permission from their parents have one more option: to get a judicial bypass.

The teen seeking an abortion can "bypass" her parents by meeting with a judge, who can give the permission necessary for the procedure. The judge asks questions to decide if the teen is mature enough to make her own decision about getting an abortion. If she is not deemed mature enough, then the judge has to decide if an abortion would be in her best interest.

Although it seems to be uncommon, the judge can deny the teen permission. Here's an article about a case in Pittsburgh where that happened: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/teen-rights-to-abortion-in-dispute-285291/. In 2010, "Jane Doe" went to a judge for permission to get an abortion, and she was denied. According to the article:

"After questioning her for more than an hour, the judge decided that she couldn't have the abortion, ruling she was not mature and capable of making an informed decision about the procedure."

Forgive my language, but: What. The. Fuck.

A 17-year-old young woman is not mature enough to make an informed decision about what to do with her own body? Even though she has to watch an informed consent video at least 24 hours before her procedure (by PA law). I call Bullshit.

If this young woman is not mature enough to get informed consent and decide to get a medical procedure that is arguably safer than nine months of pregnancy and childbirth (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/23/us-abortion-idUSTRE80M2BS20120123), then how the hell is she mature enough to take care of herself and a developing fetus, handle the stress of pregnancy and childbirth, and then parent or put a child up for adoption? That was a rhetorical question.

Like other backwards states (i.e. Texas and Mississippi), Pennsylvania is making it more and more difficult for women to get an abortion. If lawmakers could overturn Roe v. Wade, I believe that they absolutely would. Politicians would love to control every aspect of women's reproductive lives, and we cannot let them do that. If you do nothing else, at least pay attention to what's going on around you. This is not an isolated incident.


Sources/further reading:
http://www.womenslawproject.org/NewPages/hrAbortion_young_bypass.html
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ppsp/judicial-bypass-pa-18389.htm

Obviously, I'm writing this on my personal blog, and my opinions in this and other posts are my own, and should not be seen as representative of Planned Parenthood Keystone or Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Dressing Up for Class

For those of you who don't know me, I went to an all women's college for my first year of school, Bryn Mawr College (BMC), before I went to a "regular" school to finish my Bachelor's degree at York College of Pennsylvania (YCP).

When I was still a lowly high schooler, touring college campuses and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I remember staying at BMC overnight for a prospective student weekend. One of the things we would talk about most is the supposed benefits of attending an all women's college. The current students went on and on about what a relief it was not having to get "dressed up" to go to class--as if women at "regular" schools have to spend hours every morning before class to primp just because there are actual men in their classes.

Let's just pretend for a minute that there were no men in my BMC classes (people from three other colleges could attend BMC classes, so we usually had a few men in each class).

Even at YCP, where the classes were usually half women and half men, no one cared what anyone else wore. People wore pajamas to class regularly. Sure, some people went out of their way to look nice to go to class, but not many people cared enough for that. I usually wore ratty jeans and an old hoodie to go to class, both at BMC and YCP. The point is that no one cared, at either school, what you wore to class.

The point of going to college is to get an education (and/or a degree), not to pick up a hot date. If you're looking for a date, go to a bar. It's cheaper and a LOT less work.