It looks like I'll be able to do do at least a couple posts every week on here, and although I'll try to keep it focused I'm sure I'll vent some too. I work in retail with girls in my generation and older, and I'll admit it's difficult sometimes to bring my opinions into the conversation. Maybe I can let them out here instead.
I commute a really long commute to work every day, but I bring this little laptop and I can write and sip my coffee on the train, so it isn't that bad. Soon I'll move into the city and save even more time.
I thought I'd talk a little more about me (: since that's so much fun. This is a newer job so I'm still trying to find my balance between work and home and relationships, but I think it's a decent balance. My current relationship is pretty incredible, so I have some amazing support.
I'm hoping to go back to college once I move into the city, maybe online. I started my degree, but life happened and that train derailed. I've pretty much gotten everything else back into a great groove, except that part.
But looking at the state of today's colleges, I may be grateful that I didn't finish my degree in person. Colleges aren't very friendly towards Conservatives these days.
When I was a kid I thought I was pretty ugly, not in that way like “Ugh I look gross” but I genuinely thought I was unappealing. Through middle school and high school there was really no doubt in my mind that I was unattractive. I didn't grow out of my kid weight until maybe 2 years ago, and I expected that to happen when I was fifteen like most girls. I think it might have too if I didn't love cheesecake so much. My face was covered in red spots and blotches because I couldn't stop scratching at it. My hair was a mess of frizz when all the other girls probably had straighteners and all sorts of product to use. I never got asked to senior prom.
Then, out of the blue, when I was 19 I got a job working in skincare. Now, I wish I could say that that's when everything changed but it is when things started to change. I learned about what was up with my face, and what was with up with everyone else's face too. And how to help them. I started wearing cosmetics, which helped me to look prettier and also helped me stop touching my face because I looked so pretty I didn't want to mess it up.
(If you're reading this and thinking to yourself “mAKeuP DOEsn't MakE YoU PreTtIER” then I've got news for you.)
I also discovered that I am very good at sales. I had great training and at that age I was 100% malleable, which meant they could completely make me how they wanted me. I was a top performer where I was working. I asked for my first raise ever. I got it.
I also started to see what people my age were like grown up, because now we were. I didn't like it much. There was a particular girl who I worked with that I didn't click with very well; she was unattractive, not good with hygiene, timid and such an introvert. I didn't know why they hired her, she was completely wrong for the environment just visually. Anyway, complete and total liberal. Way out there. Hard to listen to her talk. Didn't shave her pits. You know the type. Would go off about how men are such ____'s all the time. As if she'd ever gotten a date with one.
I'm sorry. I'm being mean.
Anyway, there was this day that we were talking – not even about politics, just about life – and it was becoming more and more apparent that we had complete and total different ideas about how life ought to go. All she wanted was free stuff, no sense of personal responsibility, wanted someone else (the government) to just take care of all her problems. And a song came on the radio called Admission to your Party by this boy band in Europe. Except since they were European, she was hearing Body instead of party. She went off about the patriarchy and how this was such a rapey song – EVEN THOUGH, EVEN IF SHE WAS RIGHT, HE WAS STILL ASKING – and how women were victims of this kind of thing all the time and how dare we play such an anti-feminist song.
I told her to go look at the title. They're from Europe. They have an accent. He's saying party.
Stuff like this started to happen a lot. Just outraged people trying to find things to be outraged about. I started to get sick of people my age, especially girls. Constantly getting down on men. Constantly talking about how they were victims, even though they were some of the luckiest people alive, were getting degrees, had great boyfriends, while I was dealing with hell at home.
But this was before everything happened, and I didn't know why I was disagreeing with them at all, or how to counter their ridiculous claims. So when I tried pushing back, I didn't have a lot of my own evidence or research to cite.
When that job ended, my marriage started to really go downhill. I don't think I'll talk much about that year (except that that's the summer PokemonGO came out, and that summer was amazing).
I moved out of my apartment with my husband that winter. I've been moved out ever since, up to and after the divorce. We were married for four years, two living together, two not. The two years we weren't, I tried everything I could. Marriage therapy, space, giving him money to help with all the stress he said was the cause of his yelling. He would shout at our therapist, take space and never ask if I was okay, and spend the money on vape.
It had to end. I was really sad about it, because I was so young when we met and got married. It's all I wanted, for this to work out. I never liked the idea of having a second husband, at least not until it was a real possibility. I tried to leave so many times. I tried going back so many times.
Two years of that, and it had to end. He broke it and I threw it away, and now I'm just getting on my feet again. I looked for a new job, and I found one that's amazing, and that's where I am now. I looked for a new relationship, and I found one that's amazing, and that's where I am now.