Arn't I A Woman?

Today is New Year's Eve. It's a complicated day for everyone. For me, it's not only my ex-boyfriend's birthday (more on him later) but what would have been my three-year anniversary with my child's father. Cool. Oh shit, also, I'm living in my parent's basement with my 20-month-old daughter, wearing near black lipstick, dressed up in goth chic for no one in particular except Taylor Swift, as she is currently sashaying across my TV screen. You know T. Swift is having a bomb ass NYE. Me, well I don't lament not being at some party or with some dude or whatever. I'm cool with this 7up and Korbel. But ya know what I hate? How at the end of the year there is always this onslaught of think pieces reflecting on the year and how to make the next one like, super great! They get posted all over your feeds and timelines, usually in the form of a bullet list from Thought Catalog* and it's just a bunch of bullshit to me: "Here's 10 Ways You Ca...

A Winter of the Mind “It's a season governed by the recluse, the hermit. Activity gives way to dormancy. Life is still, indwelling and silent. This is a time of introversion, contemplation and going within. Symbolic winter invites us to quiet the mind, still the soul, and crystallize our inner workings. This is a time to ice skate through winter whites as a means of gaining purity and clarification.” A depressive landscape emerges: it is marred with oblique jagged rocks shooting out of deep crimson sand, stabbing at lonely, barren air suffocated by a putrid smell of rotting flesh. I live here, for now. A winter of the mind has settled inside me; it is dark and all consuming and unquenchingly eats away at my hope and joy. A vanquishing, cancerous Pac-Man. As much as I tried to fight it; as many positive affirmations I muttered under my breath, glasses of water I drank, and moments of mediation...