Category Archives: let’s hug it out

Fat.

This was taken around ’07 or ’08 before I dyed my hair dark. I remember when this was taken. I hated my body and thought I was fat, so instead of wearing a bikini and getting in the pool, I’m wearing track pants and posing goofily with a pool net. Being silly was my default. If I looked purposefully goofy then I couldn’t be scrutinized for my appearance. That was a very sad, very sick girl. I am now 10 – 12 pounds heavier than I was in this photo and I wish I looked as “fat” now as I did then. I’m learning every day and trying to be healthy and accept myself. If you have similar issues, please don’t listen to the voice in your head that tells you you’re not good enough. I wasted and missed out on fun because God forbid anyone see me in a bathing suit. NOT WORTH IT. I’m too fabulous. You are too!

(I originally posted this on Instagram and on my Facebook page and it seemed to get a big response, so I thought I would share it here too.)

More on body image:

A woman with curves.

Because I just don’t care anymore.

Mirror error. 

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Smile through the tears.

Thank you Invisalign for sponsoring this post. Invisalign, a new alternative to braces, is celebrating 2 Million Smiles (2 million straightened smiles and counting!).

I’ve been on this high school nostalgia binge which is kind of like a McRib binge, and I don’t recommend either one. Now that I’ve done both, I feel a little ill, and am trying to fight off the regret.

I found a photo of me in 8th grade and wanted to go back in time and hug that girl. I’m giving the shiest of smiles, only barely revealing my purple and green braces, which turned out to be the school colors, which made me want to die. I hated every moment of wearing my braces. In my dreams, I can still feel the rough metal scraping the insides of my mouth. I also had to wear headgear at night. I rarely did.

There was this thing out called Invisalign, the new alternative to braces. To date, Invisalign has straightened 2 million smiles and counting. I was not one of them.

Oh, so sad for me, I know, that my parents could afford modern orthodontia for their little girl, but not the one she wanted. But really, braces have a special way of making a young woman feel like the absolute worst of everything ever. It’s hard enough when you don’t look like the typical teenage dream; when my friend asked me, “Do braces get in the way when you give head?” saw my horrified expression, then gracefully tried to retract it with, “Oh, I guess you haven’t…done that yet…yeah me neither” I felt like maybe I didn’t belong in my year, like I accidentally “Big”ed my way into this body, this life, and I was trapped.

Damn you, braces! I wish I had Invisalign. I didn’t. I don’t think my mom believed in it and thought they were too expensive. I don’t know if they were, and now they’re probably more affordable than ever, but you can figure that out for yourself here. So instead, I looked like this:

My BFF Michelle got Invisalign and my mom thought they were great, and was like, oops, sorry, enjoy those braces. So I wore those braces, and I eventually came out the other side. Here I am with my beloved mother (she’s on the left):

I guess what I’m trying to say is, go blonde.

For more information, please visit Invisalign. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

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Readers talk back.

A long ass time ago I said I would interview the 1,000th person to “like” me on on Facebook and I did and then I forgot to post it because I’m an asshole. Congrats to Hillary for being my 1,000th like and to Matthew for being my superfan. I interviewed them both. They’re hilarious. Thank God. I mean, of course they are!!! Why wouldn’t they be??

1. Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?

M: Well, obviously. I also often feel like one that is drifting through the wind. Wanting to start again.

H: Totally. Actually, not totally. Partially. Actually, I feel kind of like a paper bag sometimes. Like, a paper bag can’t really drift through the wind, but it can definitely roll around on the ground while it tries to make it’s way to some new life experience. Also, “Paper Bag” is my fave Fiona Apple song. Yes, Fiona Apple is still relevant to me. 

 

2. How did you find my blog?

M: Well you see, I know this poet person (she tweets like a tweet god @fartmaster5000, that’s not her real name. lol) and she posted a video of yours on her Tumblr, “How To Get Over A Break Up”, which is still my favorite video of yours. For a while, I only watched your videos and LOVED them. Then, I eventually found and read your blog religiously and told ALL my friends about you and your loveliness. 

H: If I’m remembering correctly, I found your blog through Filleosophy. I believe it was when you gals did that advice formspring thingy. Then I proceeded to read every single one of your entries. You think I’m joking? Is Mick Jagger your real dad? Yes. 

 

3. What do you order at Starbucks?

M: Tall Carmel Macchiato, because life is sweet!

H: Starbucks is so intimidating! It’s like going to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and the locals aren’t very friendly. I’ve only been once, and that was for a meeting with my boss. I didn’t order anything. Instead, I sat there clinging to my purse for dear life and making note of all the exits. What in the hell is a venti? Sounds like a type of car to me. 

 

4. What is your dream job? (It doesn’t have to exist!)

M: At times, being homeless in New York seems like it would be my dream “job”. I actually plan on attending film school, so I guess my dream job would be a film directing job. Or, you know, being a bum on the street. I’ll take what I can get.

H: This is really tough because I think I’d be content with doing nothing my entire life. Literally. I could sit and do nothing forever. BUT that is no way to live, so I think my dream job would have to be a professional people watcher. Is that creepy? I don’t mean it to be. I just want to go all over the world and observe. I don’t need interaction, just observation. Is that creepy? I think it probably is. Whatever, this is my dream and you’re all living in it. 

 

5. Someone is visiting your city/town. Tell them where to go and what to wear and what NOT to do.

M:  Hahaha! Well, I live in this little town called Paulding, Ohio. I think the population is around 8,000. So, as you might expect, fashion and culture isn’t exactly busting from every corner. I guess I would tell them to go to the nearest exit, wear whatever you please, and to NEVER come back again??

H: Welcome to Raleigh, North Carolina! We have something for everyone in this fair city! Would you like to go to a place where all the dudes are named ‘Trip’ and wear Callaway visors? Natty Greene’s, it is. How bout a bar full of flannel-clad men with beards and Buddy Holly glasses? Raleigh Times, it is. Better yet, want to go somewhere where you can drink three Long Island Iced Teas and ask the D.J.(multiple times) to play “Diva” by Beyonce and can he turn the fog machine on pleazzzz? Downtown Sports Bar, baby. (Yeah, I did that once. I love Beyonce. And fog). What to wear? Stick to skinny jeans, a tank top, and heels (or black flats, if you’re me). If it’s cold, throw on a blazer. I’ve also seen lots of girls wearing fur vests lately. I used to want one until I saw that lots of girls are wearing them lately. What NOT to do? There’s nothing you can’t do! Just like NYC. I will say this, though: don’t be from any other state besides North Carolina. I’m pretty sure smuggling cocaine into the country is easier than getting into a bar with a Virginia license. You think this i.d. with the pretty dogwood flower background is a fake, man? OKAY. WHATEVER. This thing has RAISED PRINT, dude. 

 

Follow Hillary here and read her blog here. Follow Matthew here.

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Like Paul McCartney.

fashion's night out

I wrote this on my facebook and it seemed to resonate with a lot of people:

Today I saw something on Facebook that made me jealous and instead of wishing that person got hit in the head with a sled and wondering why my life isn’t like that and what’s so bad about me and screw everyone, I instead thought, “How nice for this person, I’m glad they’re doing well, and I ate a lot of cheese tonight so I’m pretty okay too.”

I’ve talked about overcoming jealously before but it seems like now that Facebook is as big a monster as ever before, and now that Google+ has arrived (LOL just kidding, no one cares about Google+) I’ve noticed that a lot of my friends feel more insecure about themselves. Someone will say something about how so-and-so has a great life and career and call them a “bitch” or a “slut” and I say, how do you know this, I haven’t seen that person since high school, and the answer is always the same:

Facebook.

Here’s what you can do: you can feel bad about or yourself or you can comment on that person’s post, “That’s awesome!” or something. It’s okay if you don’t fully mean it, as long as it doesn’t come off as sarcastic. Because eventually you will mean it. “The more you give, the more you get.” — Paul McCartney and probably lots of other people. This was a really hard lesson for me to learn. First I had to realize it. My thinking was, “Why the hell should I be happy for this person, they’re a jerk and I’m awesome and nothing great is happening for me.” But thinking that way didn’t make me more successful. And it didn’t make them less successful. It just put me in a bad mood.

And I guarantee you that for every Facebook post you see about someone’s awesome life, there’s about two that you don’t. Remember, few people are going to post things like, “Today I cried on the phone with my therapist and gave up on my life.” Actually you might see me post that. But that’s not because I’m looking for sympathy, it’s because I have no filter at all, and just tell it like it is. This actually got me in trouble today and I feel horrible about it. I have to learn to say things in my head before I speak them. (And I really am sorry and I heart you very much.)

OK so. Conan O’Brien kind of changed my life when he said, “If you work hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.” Work Hard & Be Kind has become my motto, my mantra, my manatee. (I needed to keep the alliteration going.) When you do this, amazing things DO happen. When you help your friends, they help you. At the core, all people really want is to feel okay. Not even great, just okay. And it’s so easy to make someone feel okay. All you have to do is sign onto Facebook and “like” something. Again, at first it will feel like you’re lying to yourself, but you’ll soon realize that people are honestly touched when you reach out, especially if you’re the kind of person who never does. Some people are genuine assholes, but those people have terrible parents, so it’s only half their fault and really you should feel badly for them. Even if they have their own house that their parents paid for and they have a great job that their parents got them. Because again, there’s no reason to wish them harm. It’s not going to get you anywhere.

Geez, this went on long enough. Tell me, does Facebook make you jealous? Studies have shown that it has this effect on people. What do you do to overcome jealously, or do you not bother?

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Look At This Fucking New Year.

Lately I’ve been changing the way I think about life. BY GETTING HAMMERED ALL THE TIME!!!! No, I’m kidding. That wasn’t even a funny joke. I’m sorry. Anyway. My default has always been to chose negativity over positivity. To be cynical, not sunny. I think I realized why I do this. I’m always bracing myself for disappointment. When I was a little kid, I thought I was fucking awesome. I mean I wouldn’t shut up about it. I was Kanye on the playground. I thought my life was awesome and would always continue to be awesome. Then I started to hear all of those sayings: “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch” “Not so fast” “Look before you leap” “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” “Wait for the other shoe to drop” and so forth. And I started to think, maybe it’s arrogant to think that I’m going to be okay. Maybe I shouldn’t go through life with confidence. Maybe I should constantly brace myself for disappointment, and constantly put myself down even in a joking way, and maybe I should always tread lightly.

But the thing about disappointment is that there is nothing you can do to soften it. Disappointment is disappointment. Preparing for it doesn’t make it any better. You don’t purposefully drive with a flat tire to brace yourself just in case you get one.

When did it become tacky to believe in yourself? To say, things are going to work out for me and mean it and follow through with it? Why do we have to walk around apologizing for wanting success? And why is it so much easier, for me at least, to be negative than positive? Feeling positive feels so much better. Feeling negative takes up so much energy. It’s exhausting trying comparing myself and making myself feel bad, so why do I keep doing it? I need to change my roommate’s behavior. I am putting all of my eggs in one basket because if I drop the basket, it’s just a bunch of broken fucking eggs.

I don’t believe in high stakes anymore. I don’t believe that if I did this or this my life would change (or even worse, wouldn’t). My life is not supposed to be this difficult. I am allowed to love my life, and myself and I am allowed to believe in myself, and if that sounds like some stupid Marlo Thomas Childen’s Special I don’t even give a fuck. We are all allowed to have good, happy lives! Really! I know, right? Somewhere in between our transformation from children to teens to adults we got tricked into thinking that life was hard and that we have to make ourselves feel bad. There is absolutely no reason to do this. We’re all fine. We all have our strengths, our weakness, our likes, our dislikes, and there’s room for all of that and all of us. So what isn’t there to happy about? Leap and a net will appear — it appears because you want it to. All you have to do is want it.

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I’ve been pretending I’m OK, just to get along, just for, I don’t know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen. (“Synecdoche, New York”)

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It’s Okay.

All right everyone! We are turning a corner! Happy days are here! I loved reading your confessions in the last post. Thank you for opening up with me. It reminds me that we’re all in this together. Everyone has a shared human experience. Unless you’re a psychopath (which I think is now called Antisocial Personality Disorder, but I’m not sure. Please feel free to correct me!) Is weird that I’ve always wanted to be a psychopath just to know what it feels like?

So anyway. I am dispelling my own belief that life is harder than it is easy. There is no reason why my life should be hard. I am going to approach all aspects of my life like I’m the luckiest person on Earth. What is luck anyway? Isn’t it just a state of mind? Because who ever heard of miserable people who are lucky? No. Luck and happy people have been tighter than Nicole Kidman’s face. We’ve established that everything sucks. But now we need to embrace the part about how it’s okay. Follow my lead. If you have to, tie a string around your wrist to remind you to be positive. Or buy yourself a Cartier watch, whatever.

Last night in acting class we talked about Keanu Reeves. We talked about how every role he plays is him getting lucky in some way or other. Keanu is “the chosen one.” And yet, in his real life, he is the most unlucky person ever. Everyone he has ever loved, everyone who is close to him, has died in some freak accident. Kind of like Kelsey Grammer. I think his sister was killed in a robbery or something and then someone else who was related to him was eaten by sharks. Sharks. But Fraiser’s life is pretty good. Sharks!

You just have to find what your thing is. Like our acting teacher told us that Tom Hanks’s thing was he always plays someone who isn’t prepared for something. “I’m not prepared to be a kid in an adult body.” “I’m not prepared to date a mermaid.” “I’m not prepared to become the poster boy for AIDS.” “I’m not prepared to live in a world where I have an IQ of about 56.” “I’m not prepared to be stranded on an island.”

(THIS IS ALSO THE BEST PARTY GAME EVER. Someone theorized that Leonardo DiCaprio’s thing is that he always has to escape from something. Feel free to play this game in the comments!!!)

What is your thing? What human quality is consistent in your life? What keeps popping up? Embrace it and use it. Maybe you don’t like what your thing is. But you don’t choose your thing; your thing chooses you (instead of “thing” our acting teacher calls it “myth.”) This whole conversation blew my mind. If you know who you are and you’re comfortable with it and you believe in yourself, there’s nothing you can’t do. You need to look at what you have and not lament over what you don’t. I’m not Charlize Theron and who gives a fuck.

Does it mean I’m “cured” from years and years of putting myself down? No. But it means that I’m going to view every day in a different light. Light! Not darkness! You are meant to have a happy life! You are allowed to feel good! You don’t have to doubt yourself! You don’t have to wait in anticipation for the hammer to come down! Good feelings bring more good feelings! We’re going to be okay, you guys!

We Are The Champions — Queen

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Positivity or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

 

It’s a Zen thing, like how many babies fit in a tire. — Waiting for Guffman

 

I’m going to make a conscious effort, right here and now, to stop giving myself an ulcer. I am not past Almie or future Almie; I am present Almie. I can’t just sit back and let Future Almie take care of everything and I can’t blame Past Almie for everything. If I keep it up at this rate I’m going to wind up like F. Scott Fitzgerald but, you know, without the talent or the career. I’ll just be a poor drunk who dies of a massive heart attack. Or I’ll wind up like Zelda and I’ll go mad and die in a hospital fire. I’m not sure which death is worse. At least F. Scott was probably wearing a nice sweater vest.

 

Every time I want to skip past this part of my life or let my wind wander to another time I am going to take a deep breath, simply to remind myself that I am here now and alive now. One day, God-willing, I will be old and I will wish that I were in my place right now, typing this, worried about my future career and lack of love. Then I will really want to kick Past Almie’s ass. But then I won’t have learned my lesson at all. Even talking about it now clearly proves that I haven’t learned how to be in the moment. I am never going to be Mick Jagger. I am never going to be Charlize Theron or January Jones. I am never going to be Marion Davies. I am never going to be Oprah. I am never going to be Ellen Paige. I am never going to be Jeff Golblum. I am never going to be Serge Gainsbourg or even Charlotte Gainsbourg. But I will get to be me. I will get to be Almie. I will get to be Apocalypstick. So I’m going to honor that and I’m going to let that mean something.

 

I believe that “Let It Bleed” is by far the best Stones album. I can’t stop listening to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” How many times in my life have I heard this song? In how many movies, TV shows, and Coke commercials? How many times have I wondered, what the hell does this song actually mean? When has Mick Jagger not ever gotten what he wanted? Did he want the private jet but could only get first-class commercial? And am I a hopeless teenager at heart for wanting to apply this song to my own life?

 

No matter. If I can’t get what I want, I’ll find a way to get what I need. Not what I’ll settle for, mind you. There’s a difference between getting what you need and getting what you can get. I’ll get what I need. Seriously, this song and the Mary Tyler Moore theme song may have changed my life. How will I make it on my own? This world is awfully big…but it’s time I started LIVING! I’M GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL! MEOWING CAT! I’LL GET WHAT I NEED! CHOIR OF CHILDREN FADING OUT! I’m going to be genuinely happy for people, and anyone who isn’t happy for me doesn’t deserve to be in my life!

 

I’m going to start enjoying this weird and awkward time in my life the way mothers love their weird and awkward preteen children.

 

Tomorrow I leave for the east coast for my Nana’s 90th birthday! I’ll be back next week!

 

Love Is All Around (Theme From Mary Tyler Moore) — Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

You Can’t Always Get What You Want — The Rolling Stones

The Mary Tyler Moore Show Theme — Sonny Curtis

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