My vices in Instagram

From Wikipedia's entry for "Seven deadly sins":

The Seven Deadly Sins, also known as the Capital Vices or Cardinal Sins, is a classification of objectionable vices (part of Christian ethics) that have been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct Christians concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin. The currently recognized version of the sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

But since I am not a religious (though I am a spiritual person), I indulge my vices -- Instagram being the primary one.

1. Wrath

Uh, well ... I don't know.

2. Greed

Catster was all like, "Hey, we'll pay you $$$ to cover
the Amazing Acro-Cats!" and I was all like, "Okay!"

3. Sloth 

Hanging out in Alamo Square with my bicycle
on a Monday afternoon ... because I CAN.

4. Pride

Amusingly I found this near Elizabeth St in Noe Valley.

GPOY: admiring my natural eyelashes. 

5. Lust

Dang I still really want these shoes ...
why don't I have them?
Oh right, because I impulsively bought one of these
and -- more outrageously -- one of these.

6. Envy

Hmmm, I am not a particularly jealous person,
but maybe I wish I drove a pink Cadillac!

7. Gluttony

(This is probably my greatest religious offense)

I eat a lot!

Mmm ... food.

Life is just a plate of gross-looking cherry pits.

I want caaandy!

I drink a lot of beer!

... and ice cream!

Bedtime beer, thank you very much.

Was this beer worth all of the $10 I spent on it?
I don't know, but the bottle was cute!

I get way too much Starbucks! (In a city with far superior coffee offerings!)

And -- dun dun dunnn! -- I smoke the cancer sticks!

"Did you know smoking kills?"
"I'm betting on it."

By golly, I am full of sin, but as the young folks say, "YOLO!"

You can follow me on Instagram @liz_from_LA -- see ya there!

You Should Talk About Going To Therapy | Thought Catalog

You Should Talk About Going To Therapy | Thought Catalog

I talk about going to therapy. Not in every article. Not every day. Not with every person. But I talk about it freely if the conversation arises. If I’m on my way to an appointment and I run into a friend who asks where I’m headed, I will say, “To therapy.” If my employer casually wants to know where I’m going on my lunch hour, and if I trust them and it seems appropriate, I usually say, “I have a therapy appointment nearby. I’ll be back soon.” If someone wants advice or brings up something relevant about stress, I feel all right saying, “My therapist says…” 

Recently, someone in the comments of one of my Thought Catalog articles, got indignant about one paragraph, in a piece about my anxiety surrounding my relationship with my sister, wherein I mentioned what my therapist thought about the issue. I didn’t harp. I just wrote, “My therapist thinks…” The commenter took issue with me talking so openly about seeing a therapist. “Every other article on here mentions therapy. Seems self-indulgent,” they wrote. 

I know there’s a stigma around mental health wherein for example, if I’m having a panic attack, most people will tell me it’s all in my mind and that I can control it. And I know that. And I can’t. 

Going to therapy or to a psychiatrist is seen as a weakness or an indulgence. You can’t deal with your problems yourself so you need to pay someone to do it for you. You don’t have any real friends you can talk to, a deficiency on your part, so you have to essentially pay for a professional to listen to you whine. You see a therapist? You must be Woody Allen. You must be a navel-gazing lunatic. You must be an unbearable human being.

The mistaken idea is, I think, that you go in, talk about your problems incessantly for an hour and get, I don’t know, patted on the back or something by a therapist who indulges your self-obsession. I don’t think going to therapy makes you self-obsessed and so what if it does? Introspection isn’t the enemy. Sometimes we can only be better to others, in our lives and careers, if we first start unpacking ourselves. But also, that’s not only what therapy is.

If you broke your leg, you’d go to an orthopedist to get it put into a cast. If you needed a root canal, you’d see a dentist. So why if your brain is not doing what it’s supposed to are you chastised for seeking professional help? And for casually talking about doing so? 

There’s also the misconception that therapy is for the rich. Sure, some psychiatrists charge a crazy amount per session, but not all. The therapist I see works on a sliding scale based on my income. I pay 30 to 40 dollars a session depending, and some weeks I could choose to pay nothing at all. 

My therapist is a student, but they are qualified and smart and I feel they do a great job for what I pay. I found them by Googling, “sliding scale therapy.” It takes an hour out of my week and it helps me feel okay when I do not feel okay. (I shouldn’t even have to explain this or get defensive about it to anyone, but I thought it might help someone who thinks they are too poor to seek help.) 

I have anxiety that manifests in physically painful panic attacks. I have issues with food and with growing up the child of an alcoholic. Those are just a few of the things we work on in therapy. The physical pain in my chest will not go away by seeing an MD. It will only go away through therapy. This is not an indulgence. This is medical. 

If it helps one other person see that mental health is worth working on, that their problems are treatable, that there is hope — then my talking about going to therapy will have been worth it. 

One friend I talked to about this said she thought everyone should have to go to therapy at least once. Her reasoning was that, “…therapy helps you to identify problems and then articulate and communicate them which are skills pretty much anyone could benefit from having in any relationship.” 

I liked that phrasing. People have such a hard time understanding each other, that if we all built the skills to better communicate, so many relationships — working relationships, dating relationships, family relationships — would run smoother. Therapy is not self-indulgent whining. It’s eradicating physical pain. It’s acknowledging the importance of your mental health. It’s working on yourself so you can be better to others. You look inward, but the ultimate focus is outward. 

The only way the stigma is going to go away is if we talk openly about seeking help — without shame, without criticism — the same way we would talk about seeing a dentist or a hairdresser or any other professional. If you’re on the fence, I hope you’re motivated to get help. Because I’m going to keep talking about seeing a therapist. And I am not sorry or ashamed.

On rape culture

So I was just reading this over on Jezebel -- Rapists Explain Themselves on Reddit, and We Should Listen -- and thinking about a recent conversation I had with a fellow (I'll call him B) when I told him about a time I was sexually assaulted. We were sitting on his porch smoking cigarettes.

Briefly, this is what happened: I was a freshman in college and I agreed to visit a male who was a friend of a friend, and on the phone before heading out I told him I didn't want to have sex because my heart was still broken after ending things with my high school sweetheart. I set my boundaries. Yeah, I went over there and I drank and I smoked, and even as I took the drink, I restated my boundaries and was assured they would be respected. Later I had to repeatedly tell him to stop before he did. Was it rape? I don't know -- but it was assault.

Upon finishing my story B said, "Well, you shouldn't have gone over there."

I didn't say this at the time, but my response should have been, "Oh, you mean like I shouldn't have come here, to your house, where you've similarly offered me a drink, because I should just not trust any man ever? I should just assume all men -- including you -- are potential rapists?"

You see how rape culture hurts everyone? 

Where in the world are Whoopi Goldberg's eyebrows?

I was kind of having a mopey day until I found this affixed to a light post in the Castro.

So thank you to whatever genius made this ... your cleverness has not gone unnoticed.

I've found lots of magical things in the Castro. It's probably because it's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

On growing up and getting caught between girlhood, womanhood, and adulthood

I really loved this piece from Thought Catalog mostly because yes, it references Britney Spears, but also because it speaks a lot to where I am right now in life (yes, I just bought some new shoes with "credit card dollars").

Well Yeah I’m A Woman Now, But I’m Definitely Not, Like, A Proper Adult Grown Up Or Anything by Kat George 

When Britney Spears sang “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” I was 16 years old, and I totally got it. I understood every word, and I wanted to shout it to the world; “Be patient with me, be kind,” I wanted to say, “but trust me, please because I’m old enough to know what I’m doing, even though I might not be old enough to know where that will take me.”

I’m 27 now, and I sort of wish someone would write a similar song for how I feel now, something along the lines of, “Well Yeah I’m A Woman Now, But I’m Definitely Not, Like, A Proper Adult Grown Up Or Anything.” Because that’s just as equally a frustrating feeling to try to articulate; of being on the brink of something, but not wholly understanding what that thing is and remaining apprehensive about diving in to find out. 

Technically, I’ve been a woman since I was 11, that ripe old child bearing age when spots of blood appeared on my underpants for the first time and I ran into my mother’s arms sobbing, “I don’t want to be a woman, mommy!”

But I guess emotionally I began to count as a woman somewhere in the grey area of my mid-20s, when I was no longer satisfied with being a girl; when I’d been in love and after that; when I was earning my own money; when I started really formulating solid ideas about the things I believed in and when I began to realize that I don’t actually have all the answers, and that I very probably have none of them; when I was literally out in the world by myself, holding my own against… well, everything. 

There are more things than that to which I hold my womanhood, and I assume and hope that each young woman has her own defining moments and achievements that make her feel worthy of outgrowing the role of girl in order to begin a later chapter. But here’s the confounding thing I’ve found about being a woman: it doesn’t exactly make you a proper adult grown up, or anything.

For the first time in your life, as a woman, you’re clueless. We all know girls have all the answers. And I mean. Every. Single. One. Don’t try and tell a girl she doesn’t because you’re not ready for the ultimate sass of a girl disagreed with. When you’re a woman it’s different. You suddenly have absolutely no notion of anything. You begin to pick your battles and your mind begins to open to the possibility that yes, you are wrong, sometimes. Maybe all the time, even. What’s “right,” anyway?

When you become a woman, nothing and everything is possible. You’re aware of your shortcomings in a different way than a girl is, but you haven’t come to peace with them the way a proper adult grown up is supposed to. You begin to shed your girlish insecurities but you begin to pick up new ones like will I have this career I want and will I be able to have babies at the same time and oh no, it looks like my vagina wants to start with the technical difficulties and ouch, these mammograms really hurt. You suppose that proper adult grown ups don’t have any insecurities at all — they’re rational and strong and deal with each blow as it’s dealt. 

You know you’re on the cusp of something, there in the middle of your womanhood. Part of you is groping backwards for the girl, doing shots at the bar at 3 a.m., kissing the bad boys, reading moodily in cafes downing coffee after coffee, writing too many things about too many feelings, and spending too many credit card dollars on too many shoes. 

But the other part — that’s the part that’s reaching forward. The part that tells you to eat better, take responsibility for your environment, go for that run, be objective about your white girl problems and meet a man that is good and kind and that understands and embraces your tumultuous, indefinable feminine personality. 

It’s scary to think that the proper adult grown up is closing in. That less irresponsible decisions will have to be made, that if I want to be the sort of proper grown up I want to be, I’ll have to leave little bits and pieces of this reckless, piss-into-the-wind young woman scattered along the path behind me. 

I couldn’t bring the girl with me, even though I can look back and see her clear as if it were yesterday, smoking in the toilet stalls and dying her hair pink. She taught me so much. And so I won’t be able to bring this young woman I am now with me, even though I’ve learned a lot from her, too. I’ll bottle her frenetic energy, her consuming existential battles, her absolute sincerity and probably, one day, will laugh at even this that I’m writing now, because proper adult grown ups are wise and jolly, and I guess see life as this beautiful, ridiculous mess that all you can do is shrug at and carry on loving. 

So maybe we need a song to define this time. Songs are good at that, even if they are silly pop songs; they still speak to us in blindingly obvious terms, which, for the most part, is as comforting a luxury as we can be sometimes afforded. 

And because this wouldn't be complete without the song in question: