rainstormsandruminations

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 30 | 2/20/19

And here it is. The final day. Throughout this 30 day blog, I feel like I’ve done a lot of complaining, so I’ll end with some positivity.

Today, I took time to breathe. I had two of my classes cancelled, so I spent some time catching up on neglected housework. I went to tae kwon do, where I was subjected to a fun but grueling workout, and then I went to LCM. There I was able to spend some carefree time with new friends (and may or may not have dived face first into a snowbank with them, but that’s another story.)

Mental health breaks are so important, and so is having a solid friend group. I’m at a time in my life where it feels like everything is constantly unstable and changing, and my friends are my rock. They’re always there with kind words or a laugh when I’m feeling down, and they remind me it’s ok to breathe.  I’m beyond grateful for all of our ridiculous dish-towel fights in the kitchen and our late-night escapades. This semester has already been so much better than the last, and I’m finally feeling consistently hopeful and happy again.

It’s a little bittersweet because so many of my closest friends are seniors who are about to graduate and move on to greater things. I’m going to miss them a lot, and it’s hard to think about next semester without them. But thanks to the modern era of social media, I’m sure we’ll be in touch. 

(Was that cheesy? Probably. Whatever.)

I feel like I’ve gotten way off track from what this blog was supposed to be about, but doing this project has really helped me think more deeply about my daily life, and be more grateful for what I have.

I’m awful at conclusions so I’ll end with this poem by Emily Dickenson that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 29 | 2/19/19

Today, I spent two hours in the screenprinting studio desperately trying to finish my project so I could get a halfway decent grade. I feel like as a society there is so much emphasis placed on grades rather than whether you are actually learning, and it bothers me. I have a lot of grade based anxiety leftover from high school, since my parents were upset with me when I earned anything lower than a B.

Grades are especially hard for kids with learning disabilities and mental health issues- I know I struggled a lot with my ADHD and anxiety, and still do. Especially when it comes to getting into college, grades and test scores are treated as a competition. I would get so frustrated when I forgot to hand in my assignment or didn’t understand the material well enough that sometimes I wondered, why bother?

I still get worried and anxious about my grades now, even without my parents hounding me. I keep reminding myself that a C is meant to be an average grade, but it feels like a failure. I do think grades are important, but I don’t think they should be affecting mental health like this.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Collection post 4

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 28 | 2/18/19

Today I am stressed.

I have a lot of things that I need to do, not necessarily schoolwork related, that are slowly piling up and making me overwhelmed. Weeks like this, I sometimes feel like I’m too stressed out to do any work, which of course leads to more stress as I procrastinate.... And I know I’m not alone in feeling this. The average high school student today has the same amount of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the 1950′s. There’s something so wrong with that.

I’m especially stressed about housing. I had originally agreed to live with two of my friends, but one friend is holding off signing and the rent is only increasing. If these plans fall through I’m worried I’ll have to live far off campus or share a room with a stranger. First world problems, I know, but I’ve discovered that sharing a room, even with a close friend, makes me anxious and far less productive. I’m an introvert, and I need personal space and quiet to recharge and feel rested. When I interact, I prefer to do so on my terms.

Housing on this campus, to put it frankly, is a pain in the ass. So many new apartments have come up recently but they’re so expensive, and charge extra for amenities I’ll never use. (Seriously, who needs a tanning bed in their apartment?). I wanted to renew my lease in University Village, where I’m living this year, but the U of M will no longer be offering it as student housing, so if I end up doing that I’ll have to rent through a landlord. This makes me nervous, because my only experience with landlords has been the rental house my family lived in for 10 years, and the management was abysmal. 

I wish I had some time to breathe and make decisions without being on such a time crunch.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 27 | 2/17/19

Today, I had to refill my ADHD prescription, and it got me thinking.

From elementary school all the way from high school, I was severely ADHD. In some ways I still am, but as a child, with a mix of ADHD, undiagnosed anxiety, and unresolved trauma from the death of a close relative, I felt like I stood out from my peers, and not in a good way. I tried hard to finish my work on time and stay focused and shut up and sit still, the things I saw my classmates doing with seemingly little effort, but it just wouldn’t happen. I was nervous and impulsive and terrible at having normal conversations with my age group, so when I moved from New York to Missouri halfway through first grade, I was quickly labeled as ‘that weird kid’. And, courtesy of attending a small school in a suburban town roughly two square miles in size, that label stuck all the way through high school.

Things vastly improved in college, and I’ve grown in both my social skills and ADHD management techniques. But in some ways the stigma of being different still sticks with me. I feel like I overanalyze every social interaction I have, and I expend so much energy desperately trying to be liked and trying to be ‘normal’. I hate it. And I hate that, especially in small town Southern USA, everyone who has a mental illness or learning disability is clearly labeled as ‘other’. Even the accommodations I and other struggling kids were given made me feel like i was somehow doing something wrong. In my school district, kids were often either sent to another classroom to work or assigned an ‘aide’ to follow them and provide assistance when needed. For some kids, this may have made a world of difference, but for me, it felt like I wasn’t even trustworthy enough to participate the way other kids were participating, and that I’d never be successful on my own.

College was a godsend, and I’m grateful that I’m now able to manage my needs in the way that works best for me. I feel less like the weird kid and a lot more like an adult, but I’m still upset that I, and so many other children, were treated in a way that made us feel like lesser human beings.  

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 26 | 2/16/19

Today, I casually mentioned that I do martial arts to someone I don’t know very well. Their immediate response was something along the lines of “what?!!!? But you’re such a girl!”

For multiple reasons, this pissed me off.

First of all, martial arts is not in any way a sport limited to those who define as men. Countless women have participated in and made valuable contributions to the martial arts since their conception. For example: Yu Niu, a Chinese woman who lived around 770 BC. She was the victor over 3000 swordsmen in a seven-day contest organized by the king, and her methods are still recognized today. Modern day female MMA fighters earn fame by demonstrating their skill- Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm, Gina Carano, to name a few. So many people seem to assume that, because women tend to be smaller and less obviously muscular, they must be weaker and incapable of doing the same things as men. This, I can say with confidence, is utter bullshit.

Two, just because I choose to perform femininity and dress up and wear makeup doesn’t mean I can’t be interested in other things. I can and will kick your ass in a dress and look damn good doing it, as will all my female (and nonbinary!) martial arts friends.

It’s true that the martial arts world can be extremely misogynistic (shoutout to my old coach who once told me that because I’m a woman my sole goal in life should be becoming a mother). But it doesn’t have to be that way, and as more and more women begin to take an interest in martial arts and self defense classes, I’m hoping that will change. “Girl” and “martial artist” should not be considered mutually exclusive.

And that’s my rant for today. I’m off to practice throws....

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 25 | 2/15/19

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of fashion-themed youtube videos. My new year’s resolution was to finally get my act together this year, and part of that means (at least to me) dressing like an adult. Or, at the very least, branching out from the hoodie and leggings combo that has been my go-to since freshman year. In particular, I’ve started to identify with a very certain aesthetic. I watch a lot of youtube in general, and my youtube tastes at the moment trend towards young adult fashion vloggers. My favorite channels at the moment are bestdressed, studio 86, Elena Taber, and Allegra Shaw, all of which have a very similar style of both fashion and video format. 

I do enjoy fashion- I find it interesting and dressing up makes me feel more confident. However, I would like to start basing my confidence less on how I dress and look. Additionally, I feel like the more fashion lookbooks and try-on hauls I watch, the more money I’m tempted to spend. Which is not a good thing, because I’m unemployed and dead broke. I’m torn between seeing fashion as a fun hobby and expression of femininity, and seeing it as a product of the consumer culture we live in. Women especially are encouraged to spend more money and effort on what we wear. Social media such as Youtube and Instagram have only made this worse, since everyone is trying to hop on the train of ‘influencer culture’ which I honestly sometimes feel like is just another way for brands to advertise their products.

I have no idea where I’m going with this. I guess I’m tired of living in a culture where I’m advertised to from every angle, even the media I choose to consume.

[rainstormsandruminations]

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[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 24 | 2/14/2019

Ah, Valentine’s Day. 

Depending on your personal views, it’s either a joyful holiday or an excuse for companies to turn relationships into manufactured commodities for profit. Ever the bitter single, I tend to fall into the second camp.

Even though I’ve been in relationships previously, I’ve always been single on Valentine’s Day. I dated a guy in high school for a month after having an intense crush on him for two years, only for him to dump me on Valentine’s Day. Last spring, I started seeing my first long-term boyfriend, and I had hoped that for the first time I’d actually have a romantic partner to celebrate with. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Although I now am glad I’m not in that relationship for a multitude of reasons, I admit I still spent most of today feeling a little lonely. This, it seems, is a common sentiment. A Google search for ‘valentine’s day makes me feel bad’ turns up 292,000,000 results (!!!).  As I mentioned in my post about online dating, the pressure to be in a relationship can sometimes be overwhelming, even for the happily single. 

These were my thoughts for most of the morning. And I still stand by my disgust with the corporate nature of Valentine’s Day. Approximately 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged in the US annually, which to me seems incredibly wasteful. I think there are better ways to show people you care about them without killing the planet and giving more money to already loaded companies.

 I’m so lucky to have a group of friends who make me forget all about feeling lonely. I walked into the gym in a bit of a bad mood, but thanks to time spent joking and sparring with my teammates and learning some new mat techniques, which took all my concentration, I left feeling happy and empowered. (Is it weird that learning how to take down a taller opponent with a guillotine choke makes me happy?) Most of my taekwondo friends are also single, so we’re all in the same boat when it comes to Valentine’s Day. So instead, we take time to show each other how much we appreciate our friendships, and then we move on to other things. I think I like it better that way.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 23 | 2/13/2019

Today in taekwondo, we drilled jumping back kick for a good hour at least. for those who are unfamiliar with the sport, it looks something like this:

It’s not an easy kick, and because I’m uncoordinated and I’ve only recently begun to actually enjoy physical activity, I feel like it takes me 3 times as long to learn new things as it does everyone else. The end of the class left me feeling sore and frustrated.

I feel like the culture of instant gratification in the US puts a lot of pressure on people to be good at everything right away, especially young women, and that’s not always going to happen. We are more than ever surrounded by so much information due to the internet, and our social media feeds are filled with picture-perfect influencers and stories of ten-year-old prodigies. There’s a lot of pressure to match up, and especially as mental health among college students is beginning to be a growing concern, this pressure isn’t always good for us. Sometimes, I feel like I’m being given the message that if I’m not good at something then it isn’t worth doing.

I’m probably just feeling dramatic because I’m overtired and trying to drown out the sounds of my roommate’s weekly drunken pregame party (ugh), but I wish it were easier to look at my mistakes as places for growth instead of failings. I suppose that’s something, like the jumping back kick, that I’ll just have to practice.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 22 | 2/12/19

I’ve had a hard time being productive lately. I don’t know if I’m just so exhausted from 10 hours of martial arts a week on top of my school schedule, or if my ADHD and anxiety symptoms have been particularly bad this week, but whatever the reason, I just can’t seem to get things going. The laundry is piling up, as is the number of late blog posts (lol) but all I want to do is sleep.

This week has been particularly long- I spilled boiling water on my arm on Monday, necessitating a trip to the walk in clinic. I missed class that day, and now I’m trying to play catch up while even more things are piling on. The more work I have to do, the less motivation I have to do it. It doesn’t make sense. I’m extremely frustrated that these tasks that are so easy for others are such an effort for me. 

I’ve also been forgetting to take my ADHD medicine, which probably isn’t helping. I know I should use it more often after the process I went through obtaining it, but I often just don’t even think about medication as an option for fixing issues, whether physical or mental. I tend to blame myself for anything that goes wrong, and in the case of physical pain, I tend to just ignore it if it’s not too severe. I feel like that’s not a good thing. I wonder if this mindset is a common thing, and whether it affects anyone else?

[rainstormsandruminations]

Collection Post 2

I know I’m a little behind on these as well. I have continued to collect pictures of food labels from both regular and gluten free products.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 21 | 2/11/19

Today, I opened up my duolingo app and practiced my Irish, something I haven’t done in a while. According to duolingo, there are more people learning Irish (also known as gaelige) on duolingo than there are native speakers of the language. I am ethnically Irish, and it saddens me that the language could be dying out. 

At the same time, even though I am ethnically Irish, I feel like I don’t really have any claim on the language or the history. My great grandparents were Irish and German and Latvian, but I feel like because “we’re in America, we speak English here” was such A Thing™ when they arrived (and still is), none of the culture or heritage was passed down to grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We have their stories and a couple family heirlooms and recipes, but that’s it. We have no other language, we have no traditions, nothing. My dad lived in both Germany and Poland, and is fluent in both languages, but he didn’t teach me either of them. I was always a bit jealous of my friends who grew up bilingual, and I was upset to find out that some of them were bullied for it.

This tumblr post has an interesting take on the subject, explains it far better than I’m able to. I hate that America has such a culture of forced assimilation which is both exceedingly racist and very saddening. I wish I had the energy and articulation to elaborate on this topic the way I want to. This is definitely something to consider in future posts. 

I’m a little discouraged because I’ve read so many articles about how hard it is to learn a language as an adult. For now, I’ll resort to being bullied by the duolingo owl, and hopefully taking some legitimate language classes when I can afford it.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 20 | 2/10/2019

I did absolutely nothing today, so I’m going to discuss something I think I’ve brought up only a couple times on this blog: birth control.

Currently, I take a daily birth control pill. I choose to do so for multiple reasons, but lately I’ve been struggling with this particular method. I have the unfortunate combination of ADHD and an irregular schedule, so I have trouble taking my pill at the same time every day. I’m currently looking into getting an IUD because I’m so annoyed with the pill and its side effects. However, I’ve heard some horror stories from other women that make me a bit nervous. While it’s definitely better than having no access to birth control, I feel like birth control can be hard and scary to obtain.

American sex ed really does not do much for anyone. I was lucky enough to have a fairly thorough sex ed program at my high school, but even though they explained more about reproduction and birth control than a lot of places, they still preached abstinence only, and said nothing about LGBTQ+ relationships. My ex boyfriend went to a very conservative Catholic high school, and learned even less. I had to explain to him how birth control worked, and that birth control/plan B is not the same thing as an abortion. It was frankly exhausting, and I feel like so much of the responsibility of knowing about the reproductive system and birth control falls on girls and women. Besides condoms and vasectomy, there aren’t many options out there for male birth control. I’m sure plenty of men would like to have more control over their reproductive health, and I know plenty of women would like to have the burden lifted a little bit.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 19 | 2/9/2019

Today, my friend tested for his black belt. The whole ordeal took at least 2 hours, and although I knew there was no way our coach would fail him after seeing him do so well during class, it was still a little nerve wracking for everyone involved. He made some nervous blunders, and the black belts grading him were very particular about his patterns (choreographed sets of movements that every tae kwon do student learns.) 

Afterwards, we went out to The Tavern in Blaine, where I was confronted with food options for almost the first time since my diagnosis. They had gluten free pastas, gluten free burger buns, and gluten free pizza crusts, and I nearly died of happiness. After spending months being restricted to one or two menu items, it was nice to be able to eat whatever I wanted. I thoroughly enjoyed the burger I ended up consuming. 

Later that day I went ice skating with my team, and then we went back to Wahu to play games. Unfortunately I was overwhelmed with all the noise and extra people (we invited the new members along, and there was a lot going on). I ended up having an anxiety attack and went to my friend’s apartment for a little while to calm down. I was able to do so, but once I returned to the group setting, everyone was asking what happened and why. I wish I felt more comfortable discussing my anxiety disorder, but because of the huge stigma around mental health, I have a hard time discussing it with people who aren’t close friends. I wish mental health wasn’t such a touchy subject- it would be easier for so many people to recieve the help they need.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 18 | 2/8/19

I have once again forgotten to post for a few days, so this is my attempt to catch up.

On Friday, I went out to eat with my teammates as per usual. We went to Pagoda in Dinkytown, which, pre-Celiac, was one of my favorite places. Unfortunately, soy sauce contains gluten, so the only thing I was able to order was the kung pao chicken. This is not my usual order, because I personally do not like peanuts in my food. Now that I have limited options for food, I am slowly learning to stop being so picky. I know, theoretically, this is good for me, but I miss being able to eat beef and pork belly when I go out. 

I also found out on Friday that I’d been accepted to the study abroad program I applied for. It’s a May term in Greece, and although I am insanely excited to go, I’m worried about how to handle my finances and my Celiac disease. Going abroad is expensive, and since I don’t speak a word of Greek, I’m worried about how to explain my Celiac to restaurant staff.

I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Right now, I’m attempting to study from the Greek course on duolingo, but it’s..... confusing, to say the least. I currently know how to say ‘xylophone’ and ‘popcorn’, but that probably won’t get me very far when I inevitably wind up hopelessly lost in Athens.

[rainstormsandruminations]

Day 17 | 2/7/19

(Forgot to actually post this yesterday but I did write most of it yesterday so it counts?? right??)

Today I fell flat on my spine during Judo and since then, I’ve had a slight but rather concerning headache. I don’t think it’s concussion because I did remember to tuck my chin as I fell, but I’m slightly worried still. I’m currently doing That College Thing™ where I consume a couple ibuprofen and pretend like it’s not happening, but if it persists, I should probably go to Boynton.

I’m lucky I have such easy access to medication and healthcare when I need it, and in these situations I often think about the people who aren’t as lucky. It makes me so angry and frustrated that so many people are denied the right to have potentially life-saving medical treatment simply because they can’t afford it.

I know I’ve posted about this before, but this is one thing that genuinely makes me lose a little of my faith in humanity.  How utterly heartless do you have to be to turn away someone who is suffering just because you can’t turn a profit off of them? We live in a world where profit is prioritized over the health and wellness of living, breathing beings, and it makes me feel a little sick if I think about it too long.

I want to do something about it.