Virginity (Isn't So Bad)

This post won't be long, because I am watching a movie, and I am enjoying the movie, and to be honest I don't really want to write you a post right now; I just want to focus on the movie.
In Virgil's The Aeneid, Turnus' sister Juturna receives the gift of immortality from the gods, but for a price; that price being her virginity. Basically, what that says to me is that virginity, is, or at least used to be, majorly, hugely valued. It was a big deal. Juturna's purity was worth immortality.

I've managed to hold onto my virginity for coming on nineteen years now. I say managed because- well I won't get into why I say that- but suffice it to say, it's stuck around, and I'm glad for that.

Two girls in my literary non-fiction class were discussing their virginity the other day. Both of them had lost it, to men they had intended to marry, but had later broken up with. Both claimed they didn't regret it. "It wasn't my choice to end that relationship," said one of them. "If it had been up to me, we would still be together. So I think that justifies what I did."

Yeah maybe but it's definitely BS if you say you don't regret it. I know you do, I know you do so painfully with every fiber in your being. There are a million little things I regret doing with different people, even though none of them are on the level of having sex. Even saying things, giving away emotional pieces and intimacies of myself- I regret things as little as that. So don't try to tell me your virginity was worth nothing, that it didn't matter that you gave it away.

I know other people still, who are saving their first kiss, even, for their wedding day, or at least their fiance. I don't fall into that category. This is a choice I've made, not because I've already given away my first kiss (though to be honest, I have) but because for whatever reason, I don't believe that it's something that needs to be saved. I believe it's affectionate, and if I'm in a relationship with someone, the level of affection I have for them certainly merits a kiss.

But not more.

In that way, I don't have to fight a losing battle by trying to stifle all sexual desire entirely, but I don't make compromises either.

The problem is a lot of people disagree. And ultimately you need your partner to agree with you, or it's all just for nought.

I don't really know what the point is. That I'm a virgin and I'm okay with it, I guess. I haven't always been (okay with it). Some days I'm still not. Some days I wish I could say I was a virgin and feel like I was a virgin, mentally too and everything. Most days, I'm excited that I get to get married, hopefully to someone awesome, and sleep with only that person, ever, for the rest of my life.

Because it really is kind of awesome.



Next week maybe I'll post this essay I wrote for my non-fiction writing class. It's kind of an essay, kind of a book review. It's basically supposed to mimic The New Yorker and I wrote it on The Book Thief, and I'm still editing it, but I think it's fairly decent. So perhaps we can look forward to that.

Also, here is an awesome comic my english/writing major friend sent me: http://forlackofabettercomic.com/?id=35

So true.

Until we meet again.

Second Semester Blues

Ah, here I am back again. It's been a fairly typical Friday night here at Houghton. Spent most of my evening with some friends, watching The Fellowship of the Ring, which was a pleasant change of scene/company.

In other news, I rang in my second week back here in New York with a gut-wrenching, completely debilitating, all-out miserable stomach bug. It only lasted around 24 hours but then I pushed it by eating "normal food" (and by normal food I mean some goldfish and a bowl of Lucky Charms) too soon and so was out of class Tuesday and Wednesday both. Not the most promising way to start off a semester. But it seems to have passed now and I spent my down time in bed watching heaps of movies of a certain genre which I won't embarrass myself by relating here, and all in all, if that was the only time I got sick this school year, I'd be pretty alright with that.

I've had a few post ideas marinating in my brain over the past week or so (still haven't forgotten about the much-awaited tattoo post) but I'm afraid this particular one will only be a bit of rambling about my week, the semester, my life...as usual. In the future though, we can look forward (I hope) to some more interesting, varied topics. I have ideas! I promise I have them.

Starting off this semester has been confusing, exhausting and, well, lonely. I talked to a friend about it for a long time last night, why I was lonely, how I could get past it, what was the deal with me and all that- and while I didn't come to an immediate solution, the talking helped. Talking always helps guys. You might want to revert into your shell and just let it stew in your own head, keep it to yourself all stoic and tough guy-like- I know that's my personal tendency- but when friends are available to talk, take advantage of it. And be as honest as you can, even if it's tough. It helps.

I've been sad, lately. I know that's ironic considering I posted so adamantly recently about having a happy New Year. (Note that I also bragged, in that post, about how awesome my immune system was...) I can't explain exactly why I'm sad. At this point I think it's just a part of being me: inherent to the individual that is Lizzie Spaulding is a certain tendency to melancholy. Just how I am. I suppose if I were to really try to pinpoint my sadness it would be, as I said, loneliness. A feeling that something is missing. This could be attributed to a few different things: lack of a best friend here at college (something I have not gone without since the sixth grade really), the absence this semester of a few of my closer friends from this school, and not the non-existence of any sort of romantic relationship in my life, but really the non-existence of any desire or plausibility for such a relationship to come to pass. A realization that to live harmoniously, co-dependently, vulnerably, lovingly, and most of all interminably, with another human being- for me- is just...not. Not me. I don't think. But anyway.

So, yes, it's been a rough two weeks. Contemplating a lot of things. Friendships, missing people, emotional attachment, the ever-changing concept of home, of belonging, of self, conditionality in relationships, sexuality, psychological well-being, medication, our duty to share the gospel, purpose, responsibility, morality, Biblical teaching...to name a few. Also, there's been a lot of schoolwork and work-work and writing, writing, reading a bit, writing some more, and then a bit thrown off by that virus. But I'll get back on my feet again guys.

It's hard getting back into the routine of things. But I'll find it again. And I don't expect to have all the answers by the end of the semester, far from it, but I hope I'm somewhere farther along the road than the place where I am now, and most of all, I hope I make some friends along the way.

Until next time mes amis.

Fiction Friday V. 1

This is my first official Fiction Friday post, the first of what I hope will be many more to come.

I have to apologize for two things. One, I'm not posting this on Friday. I'm actually posting it on Saturday afternoon. But I am not one to be a legalist, by any means. And in my defense, I did have this written on Thursday night actually, but what can I say, it's been an exhausting week for so many reasons, not the least of which being I am working twice as much as I was last semester and it eats up a lot of my evenings. So I'm getting this to you, belatedly, and I'm sorry about it but not really that sorry. The second thing I'm (half-heartedly, because if I really cared I would fix it) apologizing for is that this is not my best quality. I like the idea but I know it could use a lot of editing and cutting down. But I never promised that Fiction Fridays would be super high-quality final draft kind of work. So here it is, as it is. Sorry sorry and enjoy:

In Love with In Love

I don’t remember when we met: people have told me we were five, naked in somebody’s backyard sandbox at a Sunday School barbecue. I wonder if, even as little kids, you had already started looking at me the way you do now, that way that makes me feel like I might do something scandalous: get up in the middle of Sunday morning service and do cartwheels between the pews, and you would laugh and it would make you love me all the more. You find me whimsical, enchanting, and it isn’t egotistical of me to say this, it’s just that I can tell, from the look that you have in your green-gray-blue eyes. I know that I scare you sometimes, but I think you love me all the more for that.

Then, when we were twelve, around twelve anyway, your parents invited mine down to your Saquish beach house to eat hamburgers and play pickle on the sea grass. Us kids rode tumbled together in your daddy’s truck bed, tucked under a blanket so the police wouldn’t see and get mad. We were comrades then, hiding together from any who might seek to separate us. But then, on the beach, in our adolescent swimsuits, you and your brother threw clumps of seaweed at my sister and me, and I tried to throw some back, but my throw wasn’t very strong and they always fell short of where you stood, so cocky and confident, and you laughed.

When we got older you apologized, real shame-faced and reticent, as if I was really going to hold you responsible for teasing me when we were twelve. I smiled and said it was fine and I saw relief slump into your narrow shoulders and your eyes follow the way my teeth bit at my bottom lip, nervous and flirtatious all at once.

You told me I was demure once, and I gave you a hard time about it, and you shrunk back into your shell immediately, trying to modify the statement, admitting you supposed you couldn’t really say, you didn’t propose to know me that intimately, after all.

After church you’d linger with me in the foyer, the smell of coffee and musty choir robes, dusty Bibles comfortably wrapped around us, pushing us together and sometimes the chatter of the mingling congregation would get so loud, you’d have to lean in real close to hear me and I could see the blonde stubble on your chin.

When we went away to school, you brought those conversations with you: you’d email me and I’d send replies, long and detailed and complicated, because I never could manage to make my writing very succinct.

I don’t know what you ever saw in me. You were always so good, always so content and quiet and thoughtful and happy to do your Bible reading and happy to wear ironed, laundered button ups to church, and happy to clean you room, and happy to wake up earlier than seven o’clock in the morning. I was the girl that got the tattoos and had a Mohawk that one year in high school and wore ostentatious clothing and unabashedly questioned things we really shouldn’t question. I was wild, flyaway, self-conscious, annoying, fickle. I was the color red: sometimes dark and intense and moody, other times bright and cheerful and lovely.

I don’t know, now, if I’m really in love with you. We were engaged last summer under the poplar tree with the swing in your cousin’s backyard and part of me wasn’t surprised, part of me felt like this was expected, maybe almost like I had done it before, like it was a dream and I was only living it out again, in real life. And part of me couldn’t help but wonder, though it felt natural, did it feel right?

You hold my hand now- that’s the farthest you’ll go with me physically- almost nervously you inch your long, cold fingers toward mine and I feel almost repulsed at times, at times it takes everything I have in me not to slap that cold, tentative hand away. But then I remember the way you were when we were kids on the beach, brutally teasing and rough and unapologetic, and it gives me hope, that the twelve-year-old seaweed thrower might still be there somewhere inside, that he might show his face again one day, that someday, if I stick by you, I will coax him out again.

I lie awake at night sometimes and wonder if I am actually in love with you or really just in love with the way that you are in love with me.

(Happy) 2012

In In An Attempt To Discover Happiness In Two-Thousand-Twelve:

We should all just relax man. We should all just be listening to Regina Spektor and hanging out doing nothing with old, comfortable friends, you know the kind of friends who are so familiar and warm, and smell the way you remember, like a worn-out faded red t-shirt that used to be your dad’s, but you stole it, and you’ve been sleeping in it for three years now and it just smells right.

And we should be watching episodes of Parks and Recreation because it is a funny show, and it almost never makes you sad, or feel like crying or anything too intense at all. It’s just funny, and nice.

We should all be taking baths too, long ones. Where did it come from that baths are gross? People always tell me, I don’t get why you like to take baths you weirdo, you’re just marinating in a vat of your own disgusting fluids or whatever. And I’m like, I don’t know about you, but I’m a pretty clean person, I shower A LOT and I am just generally pretty hygienic, so my baths aren’t really gross. And honestly, just embrace it, you only live once, and if you live your whole life too afraid to even take a frigging bath, then it must just be sad to be you. Me, I know, I freak people out because I don’t wear shower shoes at college and I believe you can eat things off the floor, generally, and you should wash your hands for sure, but don’t be whipping out that anti-bacterial crap all the time because germs are good for you, germs give you a frigging awesome immune system, which I happen to have. I know that kind of approach to living isn’t really okay with everyone, and that’s fine, but take a bath for goodness’ sakes, you’ll feel better. Even better use a LUSH bath bomb when you do it, and light some candles too, like maybe one that smells like honeysuckle, or the ocean, and you’ll never be the same again.

I also think we should all just invest in a good memory foam mattress topper, because that will also change your life, and keep your feet clean and manicured, because nothing feels as good as clean, nice-smelling, soft, pretty feet. We should also all be drinking chamomile tea, because it’s good for the body and the mind.

We should try to challenge ourselves, even in simple ways. One of the simpler ways that I’m challenging myself right now is I’m reading The Book Thief which is written much differently than the things I usually read and the things I usually write, and it really is making me think about language in an entirely different way. And so I’m attempting to write things the way this guy writes things and it’s hard but it’s fun and it’s making me better I think, which is good, because you should always try to be better at everything but especially at the thing you’re best at.

We shouldn’t be afraid to spend time wasting time either, as long as it’s wasting time with friends. For example last night I went to Friendly’s with two old friends which isn’t a waste of time, but then one of them showed me for the first time ever how to grow caterpillars out of straw-wrappers and so then we drove around looking for a place that sold individually-wrapped straws and finally we ended up at McDonald’s where I shoved fistfuls, literally, fistfuls, of straws into my purse and then we got out of there and we spent the rest of the night sitting around a kitchen table drinking tea and making straw-wrapper caterpillars. And it was stupid, really, but it was important. And sometimes, even more important, is just to sit, and talk to people. Make time to talk, even if you could be doing something more "exciting" or "productive". In the end, the time invested just talking to other people is more worthwhile, even if it's talking about pointless things or shallow things. It’s important to waste time with friends, sometimes.

Also, don’t spend too much time thinking about pretty boys, or pretty girls, or being sad because that one pretty person you spend all your time thinking about doesn’t think you’re that pretty in return. I know how it is, to feel this silly, yet painful sadness, deep sadness because the person you’ve found this aching, desperate beauty and need in, doesn’t seem to have discovered that same beauty in you. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if only because I myself need to hear it once more. You’re you, and being you, becoming you, and finding happiness in that singularity is good, and exciting, and an opportunity that you should take every advantage of. I truly believe that. If you allow yourself the time to become, others will see that, they will be attracted to that, to your individuality, to your strength, to the beauty that is inherent in a steadfast and defined sense of self. It’s beautiful and be grateful for it.

This isn’t supposed to be a list of New Year’s Resolutions, although we are still reigning in the New Year. It’s really just some suggestions from me to you, and if you add spending an extended amount of time patting a dog, riding a Subway though it might not be clean, but is filled with lots of different people from lots of different places, shopping at thrift stores in a (successful) attempt to find treasure in another man’s junk, and maybe, if possible, playing with some children, even if just for a little while, you have my vacation in a nutshell, and not a bad philosophy for living either. Just some suggestions.

Happy Two-Thousand-Twelve everyone. Happy, Happy, Happy.

Fiction Fridays

Guess what guys! I am really super very excited to announce that this blog will be hosting a new feature! I know! Who would've thunk it! I'm not really a "feature" type of girl.

I've had a plethora of blogs in the past, ones that I've created and used and then deleted or created and never used and then deleted, and as of now, I think three are in existence and two are updated regularly. My tumblr: is the blog that I kind of just use for fun, for personal things or random things or pretty and exciting things that I want to post whenever. This blog, when I began it, was meant to be a place for me to post completed works of fiction that I wrote.

As it was, I wrote more, I think I once termed them "impassioned diatribes" than works of fiction, hence the name shift and, on the whole, a kind of purpose shift for the blog. But I don't want to stop posting fiction altogether, as that was kind of my original purpose, and it is, ultimately, what I most enjoy writing and the place I hope to eventually take my writing, in terms of a career and my life focus, etc.

So with that being said, I present to you Fiction Fridays. Now that my fiction class has ended, I have no reason to be writing fiction on a regular basis anymore, and that's not good, because that means that I won't. I just won't do it. And I need to be doing it. So to keep me writing fiction and to maybe make my blog a bit more fun and interesting? (maybe not) I'm going to have Fiction Fridays, at least once, maybe twice a month. These are Fridays on which I will be posting strictly works of fiction. I have no guidelines for the types or lengths or quality of fiction at the present. I'm also going to set the goal of just getting at least one Fiction Friday a month for now, and we'll see how that goes. For whatever reason, I seem to do a lot better at posting regularly when I'm actually at school, so that seems to indicate I will still be able to do my regular weekly post as well as a Fiction Friday on the week that the two coincide, but once again, no promises. We'll see what happens with it, where it goes. For now, I'm going to try it out and hopefully, it's not a complete flop! I hope you're looking forward to it! (Maybe. Kinda. Ok. Shut up.)