A Fire Inside

“So the other day was weird. Just before I finished the first blog post of ‘Through Being Cool,’ I had gone out to Disneyland with my fiancé…”

That’s how I started the draft of this blog post back in August. After reading it, I couldn’t exactly remember what I was going to write about. But I wish I could! The only thing that came to mind was the sometimes occurring, and often overwhelming, feeling I get when old me wants to come out to play hard, hence the “fire inside.”

Yes, it feels like a fire: a fire that naturally wants to destroy anything and everything in its path (but mainly it wants to destroy me).

That Disney day’s particular fire, I’m guessing, revolved around booze, as it often(but not only) does.

I suddenly got the OVERWHELMING urge to drink, and if some clever,sneaky fellow offered me one at that time I would have taken it in a heart beat.

All of my hard work of temperance would end, right then, right there. No self-control…

“WAIT, BUT WHY?! I’m confused. Why do you still get the urge to drink even now? Shouldn’t that repulse you?”

I don’t know. Maybe because there are two sides of me, two beasts that are constantly battling each other…

Good vs. bad.

The carnal dog and the spiritual dog.

Okay I feel I must interject, here:

I was not an alcoholic. I just liked to party.

And with the partying came bad, bad choices. And bad choices lead to ruined relationships and even more bad choices.

It was like I couldn’t control myself.

Whatever princess-like idea anyone had of me could just fly out the window as fast as projectile vomit.

I was definitely not a princess.

“But Marissa, why do you even fight it? Just embrace who you really are, man.”

No. That is not who I am.

I thank the Lord Almighty that I am a new creation. The old me has passed away, and all things have become new…

It’s hard not to feel so disgusted with myself when I think about the mistakes I made, especially when I get these weird urges ( I think I’ll call myself Flame Princess whenever these urges come;) )

I hate it when I feel this way. I hate that I feel like I don’t have a grasp of my temptations…

But that’s just it. When I feel this way I’m reminded that it ISN’T my own will power. It’s something much, much greater than that.

And I also want to say this:

It is MUCH, MUCH easier being “bad” and doing the “cool” thing . If you really want to challenge yourself, try being different from everyone else your age.

Until next time,

Em

 

Is It Really So Strange?

So as a recently engaged and recently turned 25 year old, I find it only natural to get all giddy when I see young engaged/married couples walking around, at Disneyland, at the dress shop, etc.

But then my mind starts to wander… and wonder…

How many of these engaged couples are waiting until marriage to…you know? Do they live together? If they are already intimate or already live together, is getting married as exciting for them as it is for me?

I’m sure it is.

But of course the cynical and jaded me already thinks she knows the answer to the intimacy question:

DUH. OF COURSE THEY ARE INTIMATE.

Why wouldn’t they be?! And who isn’t these days?!

And WHY do I care?

What makes me so cynical? It’s funny…years ago I totally would not have had these thoughts or concerns about other people. I didn’t care. Why do I care now?

Maybe it’s because I see relationships differently now. Maybe it’s because for so long I accepted and thrived off of polyamory and now I feel the complete opposite.

I feel the opposite because, well…

1. I found the person whom I love and will love to the ends of the earth…who I would never in my wildest dreams want to hurt or live without.

I never felt this way about anyone.

2. I actually learned a thing or two about the principles of marriage, from a source that isn’t Hollywood or whatever is on t.v. or bookshelves these days…

Okay, well it IS a book, but it’s been around for centuries 😉

It’s funny… my senior year of high school my English teacher had us pull pieces of paper out of a bucket that read different questions we had to answer.

Mine was: “What’s your biggest fear?”

I didn’t have to think twice about it: Infidelity.

WHOA,WHOA. HOLD THE PHONE. How can you care about infidelity at 17?

Well, because I wasn’t faithful. I never was. Yeah, even at that age and every year after, I strayed time and time again. Not proud of it.

I guess the chorus to “Back In Your Head” would most def not apply to me >.<

And I wish I could take back all the mistakes I made with people in the past.

But I can’t. All I can do now is move forward and make darn sure I do everything I can to be the best wife I can be to my husband. I want to give him all of me. No, I can’t take back or change anything I did, but I can be sure to do my best to be the best.

I once heard a speaker say: ” If you want to find the best person, you have to be the best person.”

That’s a goal worth striving for. And yeah, to me that means waiting until marriage to be intimate *GASP*, amongst other things of course.

And yes, even with my soon-to-be husband. I could only see good things coming out of this decision.

 

After all, is it really so, really so strange?

Again I Go Unnoticed

Hey everybody. So you know how I said I was going to do a “Through Being Cool” Pt Deux?

Well, this isn’t it yet. But you can consider this a prelude of sorts because something did happen that lead me to hatch this egg of a post.

And that thing was…

Sitting alone on a blue bench by a tree while everyone else around me talked about their fun, drunken night together.

EVEN THE NEW GIRL WAS INVITED!!!

Yeah, it felt like day camp all over again.Sitting alone… on a blue bench… by a tree.

While all the kids around me played tag and swung on the swing set.

And then I said to myself:

Thanks to whoever made this.
(Thanks to whoever made this)

Just kidding. I did what anyone in my shoes would do after getting shunned. I bought new shoes.

But I did sort of recite those lyrics to myself on the inside, because more importantly, I felt uber, super, ultra lame and left out. And what did I say in my  previous T.B.C. post?

I hate being left out.

Yes, even at nearly 25 years old, I hate it.

Why do I hate it? Because I am a young, social being. I love camaraderie.

But I thought to myself,

Why can’t I just take part in their little stories and join in the conversation anyway?

Yeah, I just couldn’t. I felt as if my trying to squeeze myself into their fun times would only make things more awkward than how I already felt.

And besides, I didn’t want to fuel their fire and comment on stuff I didn’t do anymore. Taking part in the conversation would just lead me to talk about my own past drunken stories and remind me of that part of me that I put aside forever.

So I just sat there and stared off in an other direction while they laughed and reminisced, totally wanting to remove myself from this situation as soon as possible.

“Someday you’ll find those people you can relate to,” someone told me later after I threw myself a little pity party.

Yes, I had to remember what a wise man once wrote about what being friends with the world means…

So I got over it for the moment. But sooner or later the monster will come out again. Unless I find its lair and slay it while it’s sleeping…

Until next time,

Marissa (emdigistar)

(Pssst…If you have any advice on how to curb this awful feeling, please share your golden nuggets of wisdom with me 😉 )

Through Being Cool

I feel as though this entry may be written too prematurely since I really wanted to make another post before this one, but circumstances have led me to post this first.

So that being said, here it goes. So this blog title is from an album title of a band I used to listen to quite often in my  middle school days and is just SO appropriate: The album cover is of the band members sitting squished together on a couch with bored-looking faces as the others are enjoying a house party behind them.

That is exactly how I feel at this time in my life.

Not “bored” necessarily, but just through with it all, trying to live for something bigger and better than myself.

I made the decision to be “socially abstinent” ( a phrase I’ll use for abstaining from the usual young-adult social activities like drinking and partying) around the time when I just turned 21, which of course was odd timing.

You decided to stop drinking at 21?! MADNESS!!

Yeah I did make that decision, except there was one problem: it didn’t last.

I mean really, no wonder it didn’t last. I was caught in between telling(or rather, sort of telling) my social group that I was “trying to stay away from alcohol” while still going out with them to bars every week. No wonder I struggled.

Needless to say, I downward spiraled. My glass of water turned into mixed drinks and beer before I knew it.

And I just accepted that. I didn’t want to be that loser who wasn’t socializing with the masses. Heck, who wants to be left out? I know I certainly did not and still don’t.

I HATE the feeling of being left out. I always have. I always longed for that group of friends that I can turn to no matter what, but that group died out the summer before I entered high school (go figure) and the group I formed in high school died out just before college (go figure).

So naturally in my young adult life I want that again. But here is the twist…

I don’t drink anymore. At all. Ever.

I also don’t:

-Party

-Go to clubs

-Do drugs

-Have sex (wait, WHAT. But you’re 24!! Yeah, yeah, I’ll address this one later).

-Go to bars (generally) UNLESS there is some type of event like a birthday or a concert, and even then I have to really question if going there will benefit me.

“But you can have fun and still go to those places, just don’t drink!”

Look, that may be all fine and dandy to some people, but the reality is that I know I struggled being in certain environments. The fact is:

If you’re trying to change your life, you need to say goodbye to that old man.

So goodbye I said, and I haven’t looked back ever since. I have been nearly two years sober ( it will officially be two years on my 25th birthday) and  nearly 10 months sexually abstinent.

That does not mean I don’t struggle.

I do. But I have had so much change happen in my heart that I just can’t accept going back to that lifestyle.

I will elaborate on those struggles and the reasons why I made changes in a later post.

Until then,

Marissa

Cage-free, the way to be?

The tiny thing lies on the ground, eyes barely opening, its chest heaving with struggled breaths. Around it, others of its kind trample over it trying to find an escape from the light of day that never seems to turn into dark night.

I don’t know about you, but ever since my switch to vegetarianism (8 years ago), I have wondered how it is that people seem not to think about the state of living of the animals they eat.

I mean, just thinking about an animal being injured, let alone slaughtered, is enough to make me sob with little ceasing. It is as if my heart breaks day by day. The only thing that enables me to get through the knowledge of animal suffering, to get through a day of reading an article about a baby giraffe being slaughtered at a zoo, is that someday, I hope, all of that suffering will cease.

It helps, though, to learn a little bit more about how exactly these animals raised for food are treated. When I stopped eating eggs for a time, I was set on never eating another one ever again. I just could not be content in my heart knowing the suffering those animals went through just so I could scarf down an omelette. At that time, I had just finished a marvelously written book called Eating Animals by J.S. Foer. The chickens Foer witnessed were in conditions just like the one I wrote in the first paragraph, in fact that reference is from his book.

At that moment, I was set on what to do: no more eggs, ever.

But then two little words started making their way into my view: cage-free. Well, if the chickens are cage-free, it’s all good, right? That was the reason I decided not to eat eggs anymore, because they were all trapped in tiny little cages. So I started eating eggs again, sort of. I still wasn’t completely comfortable, but my conscience was not as heavily burdened.

CAGE-FREE, THE WAY TO BE.

Actually, cage-free is the way to deceive.

Cage-free, free-range, free-roaming only means they have some access to outdoors, with living conditions being just as bad as if they did not have the outdoor access.

They are still suffering.

There is no regulation on how many birds are squished in one space, male chicks are thrown away, and hens have their beaks removed without any pain-killing remedy.

Cage-free, the way to be?

I would rather live my life eating things that do not require another living, breathing being to suffer purely for my benefit.

Check out Eating Animals: http://www.eatinganimals.com/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eating-animals-jonathan-safran-foer/1100259257?ean=9780316069908