19 Kids and Counting

I don't agree with them, but I can understand them. When Michelle was asked why she would have another child when she went through so much with her last one, she answered, "When I look at Josie's face, I just think that I would do it all again in an instant."

At first I thought she's thinking about how it would affect her and not how it would affect the baby, but then I thought that in her mind, it isn't up to her. She really believes that if God gives her another baby, all she can do is take care of it the best she can and do everything she can. She believes that she would do absolutely everything for her baby and if God still decides to take it to heaven, then it was meant to be.

Obviously, I don't see it this way. I don't see how birth control is any different from medicine or artificial respirators or any other unnatural medical device they used to keep Josie alive. I also don't understand why they think they should keep having sex. Like maybe God is giving them a sign to give more attention to their children instead of to each other. There are so many theories when you involve religion. But I still think they have good intentions.

Social Conventions

I'm taking Women and Gender Studies right now. I call it angry women class and I talk about how excessively liberal it is, but I actually like it for some of the points it brings up. One thing we talk about a lot in there is how we believe there are some things that are normal and natural when really, they aren't natural at all. They are simply ideas constructed by society that are so ingrained in our minds that we think anything that deviates is unnatural or wrong.

Just because something is different, does that make it wrong? It's funny how programmed people are to see things one way and no other. For example, people need labels to justify actions. In order for it to be acceptable to act a certain way, you need to identify yourself accordingly. You are a girl; therefore, it is okay that you cry and like to look at pictures of puppies. You are religious, so it's okay that you've never kissed anyone. You're just outgoing, so it's okay if you say anything that comes to your mind.

People also need you to define your relationships. If you don't, they'll define them for you. If you're too close to a same-sex friend, they'll label you as gay. If you're too close to an opposite-sex friend, they think you're secretly involved. People will label you if you don't label yourself and beat them to it.

This leads to another thing we talk about in class, how life is performance art. Every day, we decide how we want to be seen by others. We put on a show. The way we act and dress is a performance meant to express something about ourselves to other people. People often reconcile their inner and outer selves, but it's also easy to put on an act that hides who you really are. They live with a poker face, and people believe that's who they are because no one realizes that life is an act. They think people really fit into these black and white categories and that their actions and feelings can be generalized.

I think people's lives, experiences, and their nature make them all different from each other because no one will ever really understand what it's like to be them, but at the same time I think that no one is really an individual because they mold and shape themselves to fit an existing category in order to make sense of their complicated minds.

Not that I'm saying social conventions are bad. You perform what you want people to think of you, so if you don't want to be rejected, you have to put on a good performance. Not shaving or matching clothes for example tells people you just don't care about anything, which isn't the kind of message you want to be sending about yourself.

Just something I've been thinking about.

Love,

Juliana

Oh dear God.

So now parents are supposed to fully explain sex to their kids by the time they are 8 years old at the very latest. They suggest you explain it the first time the kid ever asks where babies come from. Now they're saying you're supposed to teach 9-year-olds how to use condoms.

Seriously? Are we for real here? As always, I'm taking issue with advice from supposed psychology experts. Maybe I'm naive, but I also know that adults really don't understand kids very well, and most adults really suck at parenting.

First of all, their argument is that kids are hitting puberty earlier than ever. Sure, this is true, but does that automatically mean kids are going to be having sex at that age? People think once hormones kick in, kids will give in to them, so we better give condoms to 3rd graders. Perfect solution. No. We talk about this in my gender studies class. People ignore their biology and do whatever is considered socially normal. Teens have sex as high school freshmen because they hear so much about it and are even encouraged to have sex with someone they've been dating for a certain period of time. This is socially normal. When you are 9, it is not normal at all. Unless the kids are really messed up (usually as the result of horrible parenting), they aren't going to do this because sex is not yet a part of their life.

If we start making it a part of their life, society is going to change along with biology and we're going to have a bigger mess to clean up. Take that any way you like.

I think the bottom line here is that so few people deserve to be parents. I think only 25% of parents in this country are actually capable of being responsible for another life. Out of the remaining, I'm sure half of them are barely capable of handing their own lives.

Love,

Juliana

Thoughts

• Sometimes I really like being away from home. It means I'm far away from my past. When I talk about my friends from home, my friends at school comment on how much drama my high school group had/has. We really do have a lot of drama for a group of people that say they hate drama. I miss by best friends, but sometimes it's great to know that if I don't want to talk to someone, I don't have to.

• Everyone talks about everyone, it's just a fact. When people leave the room, everyone else talks about them. I know people talk about me, not because I think I'm so special but because I'm not special enough to be the exception. I'd rather not know what they say, more because I can already guess.

• I hate that some people really just don't understand social cues. I'm socially anxious, but I do understand when I need to stop talking or go away. It scares me when people don't know. It's like this disconnect that makes you feel like communication with them is impossible.

• I'm not even 19 yet and I'm starting to worry that I'll never find a guy I want to marry. I worry that I'll never even want to get married. I only care because I really, really want a baby and a family.

• I hadn't until recently seen college as a blank slate. Senior year of high school was just terrible, and this year is so amazingly wonderful. I can't believe how much I used to cry. I can't believe I used to actually hurt myself. I was looking the other day for the scars and I couldn't even find them. They're only slightly visible in good lighting at a certain angle. My friend brought up suicide here one night, and we all pulled out painful memories from our depression days. Everyone was quiet for a minute and then moved on to something happier. This is everything I could ever want, and I'm so grateful to have gotten over that stupid phase, and I really hope I've grown enough as a person to stop it from returning.
• I really want to believe in God again so I can thank Him for all this and ask him to please take care of my friends in all the ways I can't. A few years ago, I would have said that in a prayer every night. I really wish I could get that back. Sometimes talking to my roommate makes me more skeptical of religion, but going to her house and celebrating one of her holidays, listening to their prayers of thanks, really made me wish I had that kind of faith. I'm going to teach my kids religion just so they have something to believe in.

Love,

Juliana

Excerpt from Angry Women

My Women and Gender Studies class (affectionately referred to as "angry women") was actually thought provoking today. Unfortunately, I couldn't even decide what I think about all this on the spot so I didn't contribute anything to these discussions, so I'll discuss them here after I had the 20 minute walk from class to think about her questions.

What is the difference between romance and romantic love? I don't even know what romance is. I don't like it, so it's hard for me to define it. I think it's a set of actions someone takes that are part of society's...courtship ritual? Sounds terrible, but that's really what it is. Everyone agrees that these are the rules of dating. Romantic love I guess is just love for someone you want to be with "romantically?" See that's hard too. What if you don't want romance, but you love them that way? Is it possible to love someone romantically and not want any romance?

This led to another question. Can you love someone romantically if you're not physically attracted to them? I want to say yes, but if you aren't attracted to them, what's the difference between romantic love and platonic love? Platonic love by definition is love for someone you aren't sexually attracted to. If you don't need attraction for romantic love, then what distinguishes it from platonic love?

Can you love someone who doesn't love you back? I thought this was obviously yes, but some people said no. This led to the question of whether you can love someone who has never loved you or will never love you back. Does it have to be reciprocated at some point to love that way? What if the person loves you but not in the same way you love them? Does that count? I think you can love if it isn't reciprocated, but a lot of people in my class disagreed.

There are more but this post is already too long. It's interesting to think about.

Love,
Juliana

Take this quiz!

I'll explain at the end. It's a spectrum, so you pick the number that corresponds to the place between the two personality traits you think you are.

1. Not independent 0 1 2 3 4 Very Independent

2. Not emotional 0 1 2 3 4 Very emotional

3. Very rough 0 1 2 3 4 Very gentle

4. Not competitive 0 1 2 3 4 Very competitive

5. Not helpful to others 0 1 2 3 4 Very helpful to others

6. Not kind 0 1 2 3 4 Very kind

7. Not self-confident 0 1 2 3 4 Very self-confident

8. Give up easily 0 1 2 3 4 Does not give up

9. Not understanding of others 0 1 2 3 4 Very understanding of others

10. Goes to pieces under pressure 0 1 2 3 4 Handles pressure well

Now add up the numbers you got for 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9. That's your score for feminine qualities.

Add up the remaining ones (1, 4, 7, 8, 10). That's the score for your masculine qualities.

We did this in my Women and Gender Studies class to talk about personality traits that are assigned to certain genders. I got 18/20 for feminine qualities and 3/20 for masculine. Unbalanced much?

Beautiful

Lately, things I never thought about before have seemed beautiful to me. On my way to class, I notice all the spiders on webs strung across trees, and I think it's beautiful that so many people walk by every day and see those spiders. They do their thing and we do ours. We all notice the spider and continue with our day while the spider continues with its life. I see some little kids running around and think that childhood innocence and inhibition is really beautiful. Hearing about my friend's first kiss. Exchanging smiles with a stranger. The lake in the middle of campus early in the morning. The way my family hugs me when I see them after time away. The sincere eyes of someone who is happy to see you. Engagements. The way my cousin plays with her two-year-old soon-to-be stepson. When someone who loves you plays with your hair. Deep conversations with friends late at night. When someone verbalizes exactly what you're feeling and in that moment, you realize that you aren't alone. Beautiful.

Love,
Juliana

Each is an island.

I was watching melodramatic 90s teen show called My So-Called Life, and in the pilot the main character says:

"It just seems like, you agree to have a certain personality or something. For no reason. Just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know it's even you? And, I mean, this whole thing with yearbook -- it's like, everybody's in this big hurry to make this book, to supposedly remember what happened. Because if you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book."

This show is too dramatic for me to get into, and the teen angst is sometimes overbearing, but it often hits these existential notes that make me think. How much of who we are is determined by others' expectations of us, or our expectations of ourselves? I think people are really too complicated to express the confusion in their own minds, so they make choices every day about how they want to express themselves to the world. From the clothes they wear to the things they say, their Facebook statuses, their friends, the things they keep secret and the things they broadcast, and the lies they tell to mold their public selves into something they're not.

I guess I've talked about this before, about the concept of normality and this human desire to fit in a stereotype while at the same time rejecting the idea of labels. This made me think about something different. Are we really independent and unique, or do we simply mold our interests, likes and dislikes, behaviors, and preferences just to make it easier, just so everything makes sense? Quoting The Breakfast Club, "in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions?"

Everyone has these thoughts, whether they be happy, sad, irrational, strange, embarrassing, whatever. They don't share them with others because they don't fit this image they choose to project, or people won't react well to them. Maybe they can't quite explain why they feel that way, and they could never make anyone understand.

Maybe someone has irrational thoughts that they know they can't justify, and logically they know they shouldn't feel that way, but those thoughts stick like a leech and drain them of happiness. Maybe they have dreams of traveling and exploring a far away place, and this makes them happy, but other people just don't understand why they want to do it. Maybe they have feelings for someone that they can't explain, and they know there isn't an English word to correctly pinpoint the emotion, so they pick one that is misleading but simple.

All these things make someone who they are, but no one else can really understand. Instead, they create this outward persona because it makes it easier for everyone else. They make their feelings fit into a category, assign inadequate words to complex feelings and give people a false image of themselves.

Here's an example. I don't want a boyfriend. I know I don't, but people ask me why I like to be so close to guys. I really don't know. They think that getting cuddly with a friend means I actually like them and won't admit it. That's not true. There's something about it that I really like, even though I don't know what it is. Instead, I label myself as a touchy person who just isn't ready to be in a relationship. It's true, but not completely, and know one knows the half of it. The whole situation is so complicated in my mind that there is no way I can make anyone understand, so I just don't try. No one knows how I feel because I can't make them understand.

There's a quote from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad that I really like, and I just realized it describes this perfectly.

"It is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone."

No one knows what it's like to be you, but what I think is interesting is that everyone has more in common than they know. Our experiences are different, but we feel the same. We're all alone in that no one can ever totally understand us, but humans naturally have the same fears, desires, feelings of pain, and the same intrinsic feeling of loneliness that inevitably washes over them when they realize they can't let someone into their mind the way they wish they could.

Love,
Juliana

My Purple-Colored Glasses

I know I went from not posting anything for a long time to posting twice in one day, but I had lots of thinking time as I wandered around looking for my Spanish professor's office.

I look at the world through rose-colored glasses, or in my case, purple ones. I'm not sure if there's a name for this in psychology, but I have a tendency to view my own life as better than it is and ignore the imperfections while viewing the problems of my friends as worse than they actually are. I worry a lot about outcomes, but I think in general, I'm optimistic. I think my life is great, and I've always thought so even in my worst moments. I have never once thought "my life sucks."

Since many of my major stressors are behind me now, I was thinking the other day about laying off my anxiety medicine. I don't like the idea that I'm dependent on drugs to maintain my mental health. I started thinking about the reasons I needed the drugs in the first place, and I came to the conclusion that senior year of high school was in fact the worst year of my life.

I hit my lowest point, and I remembered the days I spent crying uncontrollably, the ways I would hurt myself or think about hurting myself, how "punishing" myself actually made me feel better. It brought back memories of times when I was catatonic and would stare at a wall or lay in the grass for 30 minutes, motionless, and not realize how much time had passed until I was interrupted. There would be days when I literally couldn't eat, and I never wanted to. I know now that I hurt a friend who means a lot to me, and sometimes a trigger will set off that emotional pain and give me just a glimpse of what I lived with for months last year.

The funny thing about all this is that I never thought I was unhappy. Even when my neurologist asked me, I told him I think I'm a happy person. The rational part of me weighed everything in my life and decided that it was all good, that I had no reason for any of my behavior. I told him I was just always worried, which was true, but this constant anxiety caused me serious unhappiness that, even though I didn't recognize, instilled guilt in me that ate away at my already damaged psyche.

I love my life and everything about it. I wouldn't change a thing. I don't always love myself, in fact there are times when I hate myself. Last year, I hated myself every day. In a new light, I realized that my optimism about my own life and heightened concern for everyone else's was exactly my problem. I can't see things for what they are. I'm not realistic, I'm idealistic, but I'm not sure this is a bad problem to have. I would rather never realize my own unhappiness than live with both the nagging depression and the acute awareness of it's presence.

I didn't remember what it's like to want to get up in the morning. Now I feel like every day has the possibility to be an adventure or a new experience, and I think that's exciting. I really love life, and what I find very sad is that my friends from home have made me cry more since I've been here than anything at college has.

Love,
Juliana

Perfect Day

I think there's this thing about bad days. If you start the day off with something bad, then every little thing that happens later seems so much worse because you're already starting that much further down. Bad things just compound and their effects are exponential. Is the same true for good things? I don't know. I think people are less likely to notice the good things. Once you're already up, you're in such a good mood where nothing bothers you. Everyone has days when you start low and feel like the world is imploding with you at the center. Then there are days when your euphoria is like a force field around you, blocking anything that tries to ruin your good mood. That makes me think of this song from Legally Blonde.



I didn't have a great day today, but I reminded myself that people make too big a deal out of bad days. Even if everything is going wrong, but it's only one day. Maybe tomorrow, everything will be perfect.

Love,
Juliana

Don't you forget about me

I'm so much more sensitive now to the reactions of my friends. I don't see them every day now, so it's much easier to lose them. I feel like they're forget about me if I don't remind them once in a while. If we go a few days without talking, it feels like a year and that things have changed since. Our world used to be the same world. Now, we all have separate lives on separate paths that only cross when we make the effort to see each other. I never thought I was a clingy person, but I can't accept the idea that in a few years we really won't know each other very well anymore. I'm really afraid of how easy it is to break the bonds. I'm holding on, but just one wrong thing could just be enough to make them slip out of reach.

Love,
Juliana

What is my life now?

I don't even know yet.

It's amazing just how much has changed. I'm in college now. I've made new friends. I'm happy and I already feel like this new life is normal, even though it's only been a week. I've had a lot of firsts in the last month, done things I couldn't even conceive of doing in high school. I have secrets now that I don't even feel like I could tell my friends. I'm living away from home, responsible for my own decisions. I'm saying things like "this girl I knew in high school" as if the place that defined my identity for four years is gone and irretrievable. My TOK teacher said that once you leave a plane of identity, you can never return to it. I tried not to think too much about this until I was happy in college, but I guess we can't do anything but move forward.

Love,

Juliana

The Judgment

I'm not sure if I believe in God, Heaven, or Hell, but sometimes my mind drifts back to Catholic school when the nuns told me that I would need to explain my sins to God one day. I remember a time when I was little, when I was afraid God could hear my bad thoughts and would be mad at me. We were taught to fear God, and that was our conscience. I still have a conscience, but it's now based on my need to be a good person who makes other people's lives better instead of worse. I'm not afraid of 'dirty' thoughts or wishing harm on someone who deserves it. I'm okay with doing things the Bible doesn't like and all that, and I'm not afraid of hell. I am afraid of thinking, saying, or doing something bad to someone who doesn't really deserve it. I always have good intentions and it's not like I'm a saint or Snow White who sings to animals. I'm can't always be perfectly nice, but it kills me that I can't be as good of a person as I'd like to be. If I do have to explain myself to God one day, I'll would not be disappointed in myself for not following the Bible, for being lazy sometimes, for eating all those cookies at once, for daydreaming about Zac Efron...none of that. I would however apologize for every time I was selfish. If I'm kept out of heaven for being selfish, I would feel that I deserved it.

Love,

Juliana

What's normal, anyway?

Sometimes I worry about the things I consider normal. I'll talk to someone and realize we shouldn't be talking about that, or I'll do something I don't think I should be doing. Someone asked me why I hang on to this concept of "should" or "shouldn't." Who says what we should or shouldn't do? If it doesn't seem weird to us or the people involved and it's not hurting anyone, who cares what outsiders think? What if you do something you shouldn't have and are too ashamed to tell anyone because of what they might think? Judgment.

I don't know. How much do other people's opinions of us define who we are? I think it's annoying how everyone complains about being stereotyped but then they go ahead and label themselves at every opportunity. They try to make everything they do fit into a category. "I'm such a hipster. I'm so random. I'm a bisexual. I'm a girly girl. I'm a tomboy." Then they go ahead and complain about being stereotyped. Labels come with stereotypes. Once you're labeled, you no longer define you. The label defines you, and other people tell you who you are and who you are supposed to be. People want to fit in and stand out at the same time, so they have to adopt a label to be original that will tell them what is "normal." It's like picking a personality off a list to make sure it's acceptable.

"We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all." - The Breakfast Club

Love,
Juliana

Obsession

The first symptom on Mayo Clinic's list for Generalized Anxiety Disorder:
Constant worrying or obsession about small or large concerns

How do you stop it?

That's what's wrong with me. I obsess. Everyday. Over every little issue, big or small. That's why I go crazy knowing my friends are hiding things from me. It leads to total paranoia. When my friends say vague things and refuse to explain, I obsess about what they could be talking about. When I know someone's hiding something from me, it hijacks my mind. People wonder why I remember details about everyone, even if I don't know them well. I need to know enough about people to have an accurate picture of them in my mind. It kills me when my friends do it and it makes me want to lie to them, lead them on, and make vague statements without explaining. My childish reaction is "two can play that game" when I know that keeping things from me doesn't mean they love me any less and that I should trust them. My brain knows that, but that sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach and the tightness in my chest make me ignore my brain.

Even writing this is pissing me off. Thank you GAD for the uncontrollable anxiety that makes me freak out over absolutely everything, which is also part of the reason people don't tell me things. I can't handle it. I need to know, but it's too much once I do. I understand why people with GAD usually have depression. You can't live like this and still be happy. Obsession has driven me to nightmares, self-destructive behavior, health problems, eating problems, medication...and I'm sure I'm going to die much younger than I should. What sucks is I know it's stupid, crazy, unnecessary...I know it's a disorder. I just can't figure out how to turn it off.

Love,
Juliana

Edit: I had a horrible dream last night after writing this post. It reminded me very clearly what I used to be like before I started taking medicine. It helps me so much.

I want your ugly. I want your disease.

I've seen this quote on Facebook a million times. "If you can't handle me at my worst, you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." I thought this sounded extremely bitchy, and it does, bit it's also a twisted way of saying something very true.

Real relationships are all or nothing. You take the good, the bad, and the ugly. You accept their flaws because you know you have them too, and you would want them to do the same for you. It's so important for people to have relationships because they can share the good and the bad. When you share good, it spreads and multiplies. When you share the bad, the weight is divided, and it's not as hard to deal with. Everyone has a dark side, but the people who really love them will work through the darkness.

I would never expect anyone to want me at my worst. I get moody, I have anxiety attacks over small things, sometimes I cry at random, I'm stubborn, I always have to be right, I worry about everything, and the tiniest of triggers can change my mood in an instant. I'm sorry for all that. I wish I could change and I try, but I would never go so far to say that someone who can't deal with it doesn't deserve me. I'm more than grateful for the people who stick around when I'm bitchy, and if we're throwing around the word "deserve," I definitely don't deserve them.

It's what Lady Gaga's Bad Romance is about, isn't it? Or what Baby says to her father at the end of Dirty Dancing? If you love someone, you love all of them. You love them for who they are, even if it's not always pretty, because you know they would do the same for you.

Love,
Juliana

People ask me why I don't usually let anyone read what I write. To me, my stories are the most intimate things I can possibly share with you. Letting someone read anything I write makes me feel exposed because they are based on my real experiences and real imagination. In short, the purest expression of me. I express emotions in stories, good, bad, weird, whatever. Whenever I don't have words to describe how I feel, I write it into a story and make my characters feel the way I do. I let their actions speak for me. What makes me feel like I'm doing it well is when I let someone read a sad story I wrote and they tell me it made them cry. It made me cry to write it, so it makes me feel like they understand. I just don't like to show people because I'm afraid they'll judge me once they know what really goes on in my mind. I'm afraid they won't understand.

Regret

I don't regret the last four years. On my 12th birthday, I made all these plans in my mind for my 18th. I thought I would be more confident. I thought about my future boyfriend and what he might be like. I wondered if I would still be a virgin by then. I though my future self was pretty cool, and I admired her.

I'm not cool, and I do wish I wasn't so afraid of everything, but I don't resent who I am. I may not have done all the things I thought I would, but I remind myself that when it came down to it, I didn't want to do those things anyway. I went through high school doing what felt right, not what that naive little sixth grader would have wanted me to do. I definitely don't regret that.



Love,
Juliana

Chase Crawford

+

Rob Lowe

=

Ian Somerhalder

Yes? I think so.

Love,

Juliana