These three creatures gnaw at me. An idea for my novel will come to me when I’m supposed to be reading a report for work. A blog post for CU or an idea for a survey will come to me while I’m driving through some town or neighborhood.  Infinite ideas for this blog and other websites come to me as I hurl myself through my day at work, my home life with the GF or while I’m driving, talking on the phone, or cooking dinner. These projects are with me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Rain or shine, sleeping or awake. They haunt me.

My novel characters talk to me.  I promise them that their stories won’t languish on my virus infected laptop. That one day, I’ll at least compile their various Word documents into some semblance of order, change all the language from 1^st person to 3^rd, upload the whole damn thing onto Google Docs so that A. I can share it with my “editors” my BFF and the GF. (who are both waiting patiently) and B. so that I can work on it from work wherever.

I’m not kidding when I say I have notebooks and Word Docs and Google Docs galore of half-finished blog posts, and pictures on my phone, camera and computer of things I want to put on tumblr and flickr.

Every day at work I stare, (sometimes aimlessly) at the computer screen, absorbing inconsequential tidbits of news. I lament the fact that I’m an internet whore that just won’t quit. That I CAN”T get anything accomplished despite the fact that  I have these three things that are screaming inside my brain for attention. These things that I say I care about, but whom I neglect badly while I read the latest on twitter. I feel guilty. How dare I not spend my free time devoted to my work.

Now I think my subconscious is getting involved.

Over the past few weeks (maybe months) I’ve been having horrible, horrible nightmares. These are not my garden variety nightmares of devils attacking or me running from some unseen terror.  In these new nightmares, I’ve killed (or been privy to) the deaths of my siblings. Repeatedly. In these nightmares, I’ve watched them get attacked by snakes, lizards, a faceless friends, and finally, the unseen terror in the closet.  I’ve had dreams about going to weekend long family funerals, of someone being buried in the backyard, of multiple car crashes.  I had a nightmare that two of my uncles were fighting over money and somehow it was all my fault. Last night, I had two dreams.  In one, I was a dolphin in a dolphin family.  And in the other, I was fighting zombies like Lara Croft.

And those are just the dreams that I wake up and can recount. I have also had several dreams about transporting people in tubes across dimensions of space and time, and about medieval (or 22^nd Century) weapon technology, but I can’t remember all the details.

I, my therapist, and the GF, (bless her heart with infinite patience) have analyzed my dreamscape to death. Thank goodness that the GF is training to be a therapist since she’s had to listen to me talk about all the death and destruction that I go through most nights.

According to Freud, Jung, and the whole gang of therapy experts, dreams are our subconscious trying to tell us something about ourselves and our surroundings. Each part of the dream (even the parts played by other people) are symbolic pieces of ourselves.

After a bit of research, I was relieved to know that I’m not dreaming of the deaths of my siblings.  But I was horrified to know that I’m dreaming of the death or destruction of parts of myself.  I’ve taken some time to think about what part of my personality is represented by my siblings.  The answer came to me a few weeks ago as I stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night, refusing to go back to sleep after having a dream where I watched my sister get choked by an unseen hand from the closet. All of a sudden it hit me, I sat up in bed and using my cell phone light, wrote it quickly in my journal (scaring the GF half to death in the process).  My siblings are my legacy. They are the pieces of me that will live on after I’m dead.

My siblings are the reason I don’t want children. (And I mean that in a good way) As the oldest, I spent my childhood caring for them; reading to them, keeping them out of trouble, beating up their bullies, helping them with homework, making their lunches over the summers, making sure that they were ok. I consider them as much mine as my mother’s.  By watching my siblings die in my dreams, I witnessed the death of my legacy. Without them, no part of me lives on.

In one of the dreams, my cousin (who happens to be a a loud mouth) gives birth to a stillborn child, while I lay on the hospital bed beside her, unable even to birth the thing I could see moving inside me.  I think the dead and unborn babies refer to the unfinished projects and notebooks of ideas that I haven’t been working to GIVE BIRTH TO. My dreams are telling me that I need to stop talking, and start taking action.  It would be shame if my ideas die before I can do anything about them. I can’t depend on my siblings to be my legacy (somehow my mother thinks it’s cheating to consider them my children anyway). Only I am the master of my legacy.

Crazy, huh? The brain is a marvelous and mysterious hunk of meat.

This post is a rant and a confession and an invocation. I might curse. Forgive me.

Earlier this week I was watching Tough Love reruns on VH1 On Demand (don’t judge me). I actually love Tough Love. It teaches women to get over themselves, and be open to love. It also teaches them how to go after what they want, which is in this case, a man.

I was watching the episode where the ladies posed for a photos where they were supposed to be sexy. They were meant to be sexy, not slutty, not skanky, not tomboyish, not porn star, not business casual. Sexy.

Of course the ladies each had their own ideas about what sexy looks like.  Some wore t-shirts and boxers, there were a couple of short pleated skirts and baby doll dresses, one girl wore a large button down shirt, in past seasons, girls have worn next to nothing, or strawberries and whipped cream.  Most of them failed miserably at being sexy.

One girl, whose pictures came out horribly, kept saying that she didn’t know how to be sexy because she used to be fat.   Men never look at me, she said. Sexy isn’t something that I know anything about, she whined.

I call bullshit. How dare she use her weight as an excuse for not knowing how to be sexy!

I have always, ALWAYS been the fat friend. Even when I was 17 and a size 8, I was the fat friend with size 2 friends. In college, when I was a size 12, I was the fat friend surrounded by size 4’s and 6’s. Now, at my most rotund, my friends run marathons, and climb rocks, and do other ridiculously athletic shit like that.  I secretly hate those skinny bitches

As the fat friend, you might think I’d be relegated to the sidelines, watching all my skinny friends get hit on and danced with and talked to.

Nope.

In all my years of being the fat friend, I’ve never, NEVER not been sexy. Regardless of the thickness of my thighs, or the jiggle of my stomach, or the pudge in my cheeks, I am always among the sexiess people in the room.  I’ve never had a problem with getting attention from WHOMEVER I want.  Even in the gym (post workout!!) people try to get my phone number.  I get chatted up on the walking trail near my house.

So how dare this recently skinny chick talk about how she doesn’t know how to be sexy because she used to be fat? I wanna elbow her in the stomach for spouting that stupidity on TV and fuck VH1 for even allowing that to make it in the broadcast.

This poor woman’s problem has little to do with the number on the scale, and everything to do with her lack of self confidence. She doesn’t think she’s sexy. Not when she was fat, and not even now since she’s skinny. Somewhere along the way, she lost her mojo.

You can call it mojo, self-esteem, inner spark, personality, whatever. She lost hers. And that makes me sad for her.

But I’m pissed because somewhere some chunky girl heard her talk shit about her weight and might have thought, Oh I can’t be sexy because of my weight?

Dear Fat Girls of the World: You, too, can be sexy.

A few weeks ago I attended an awesome Food Seminar at Woo Cosmetics on carbohydrates with a buddy of mine.  Leaving the seminar my friend and I were talking about body size and body image, and I mentioned how being the fat friend has never stopped me from also being the sexy friend or the pretty friend or whatever.

She looked at me with a funny little frown. She said, I’ve never thought of you as my fat friend.  You have too much sass and spark to be the fat friend.

Notice that nothing she said had anything to do with how much I actually weigh. Being the fat friend is a state of mind, not the size of your skirt.

I have a friend who insults people by calling them fat. I look at the girls she calls fat and cringe. Because the girls she calls fat so aren’t. And if she thinks they’re fat, then what the fuck does she think of me?

I know for a fact that she thinks I’m gorgeous and athletic and too cool for my cube. She doesn’t even think about my weight when she cattily insults someone by calling them a fatty.

Even when you ARE the fat friend, it’s still what is inside that counts. Regardless of weight, age, height, whatever, we all can be sexy.

You might need to reach down inside yourself, find your mojo, set it up on your shoulder, and  smile but dammit your sexy is THERE. Bring it out and show it to us.

I didn’t have a TV much in my childhood, but when we had one in the house, my mother and grandfather made me watch western movies, Oprah, and the Andy Griffin show.  I never liked western movies; they were usually old, old movies, still in black and white.  I knew they were not the shows that my classmates talked about in school.

Despite my displeasure at having to watch those old movies and in my mind, “old people shows”, the cowboy movies always sucked me it.  Cowboys, to me, are exactly the way men are supposed to be. They are even better than the men from my favorite historical romances (which I LOVE).

Cowboys work quickly and quietly, they always do the right thing, even when it hurts, they are bound by honor, they always get the bad guys, they are good to the women around them, and they are kind to animals.  What more could one want in a man?

So when I listened to this podcast I was intrigued by the notion of a law created in the spirit of the cowboys from those old black and white movies. It only took a little digging to find this from Outdoor Life.

Although the historic Code of the West was unwritten, cowboys, trappers, hunters and others in the U.S. frontier knew it was about maintaining honesty, integrity and courage in a wide-open region where the affects of government barely reached and laws were not always enforced. Even though the bill is merely a symbolic gesture, carries no criminal penalties and is not meant to replace any civil codes, here at the Newshound, we think it reflects a pretty valuable ideology.

Ten Principles of Cowboy Ethics:

1. Live each day with courage

2. Take pride in your work

3. Always finish what you start

4. Do what has to be done

5. Be tough, but fair

6. When you make a promise, keep it

7. Ride for the brand

8. Talk less and say more

9. Remember that some things aren’t for sale

10. Know where to draw the line

Isn’t this cool, and so very true!? If only those in power (political, economic and social) believed and lived by these. But this list isn’t just for the rich or powerful.

What I love the most about this list is that it isn’t JUST about how to do more or better work. This is about how to live a better life. We all could live fuller, happier lives and make the world a better place if we keep this code in mind.

How different would the world be if everyone kept their promises (and we trusted them to keep their promises) or if everyone lived with the courage to do what needs to be done or our souls/environment/country couldn’t be sold to the highest bidder.

I’m adding this to my vision board. Who knew that the cowboys from my mama’s favorite movies were not only perfect men, but also good models of ethical behavior? Maybe THAT’S what made them perfect

This is what I learned from those conversations:

>>I am under tremendous pressure. Not because of deadlines, and papers and graduating from MPA School, however. I am under increasingly large amounts of pressure because I care too damn much about what other people think of me. Large amounts of my time is wasted because I am wondering, thinking, stressing over what this or that person is thinking about my decisions, my words, my life. I’ve called myself a chameleon for years, it is only now that I realize that this is not a compliment.  My chameleon behavior has caused me to wonder “Who the hell am I, really?” Because I’m someone different for everybody.

This is a problem, but I have no one to blame but myself.

>>I have carried friends and loved ones on my back, making sure that their lives ran smoothly, fixing their problems, being a sounding board but in the meantime I forgot about little ol’ me.  Who the f*ck takes care of me?  Instead of advocating on my own behalf, I have been more likely to work for the best interest of others. I ask, What works for you? What do you need? What will make you happy? Never once stopping to ask myself, What the f*ck do you want, Monica?

This behavior must cease and desist.

>>I say bad things about myself all the time. Regardless of all the great things I do on a daily. Despite all the awesomeness that seeps from my pores on the pages of this blog.   I often have feeling of unworthiness, inadequacy (this would be worse if I were a man, hee hee), I dwell on my shortcomings, my mistakes, regrets, etc. In short, I am never good enough (in my own mind).

And that is just plain wrong! I am so cool.

How do I know? Everyone tells me so .

Seriously, I have NEVER given myself a reason not to believe in my coolness. I always bring it. I rock. (Even as I say it, I don’t know why I have such a hard time believing it.)

I have to unwind my negative tape. And put in a better more positive tape (thanks for that visual, gf!) And give myself a daily pep talk.

>>My life is better when I’m spontaneous. And flying by the seat of my pants.  When I make a decision quickly, I’m a happy camper.  If I have time to stress, agonize, and worry about a problem, then I stress and worry, then make the decision anyway, but at the end I have a decision and an ulcer.

My need for spontaneity may explain why procrastination works so well for me. The last minute allows me to do what I need to do.  Then I release the decision, project, problem into the Universe, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore.  When I have too much time to work on a project, I end up stressing over it, and waiting til the last minute anyway.

>>I’m a rule breaker. I like to do things my way. I don’t like to walk single file. I don’t like to follow the speed limit. I don’t follow directions well. I will do stupid stuff sometimes just to see if I can get away with it.

But you know what? For 26 mutha f-ing years, I have done NOTHING but follow the rules and do what everyone expected of me.

And I’m over it.

I have been having a reoccurring NIGHTMARE for at least 3 years, where I’m suffocating and no one will help me, even when I scream my little head off.  Tuesday, someone that I pay to listen to me said something along the line of ” Well, if you’d let her out of her cage more often she wouldn’t try to kill you.”

She didn’t really say that. But she should have.

What she did say was that I am all I need and I am good enough. And when I free myself from the pressure of being PERFECT then I’ll stop suffocating. And when I truly understand and believe in myself, my super scary nightmare will go away. Because the real Monica is ready to stand up.

Intellectually I get all this. I see how all these horrible bad habits make my life harder and miserable. But old habits are hard to break. Will people still love me if I start caring for myself more than them? I sure hope so, but that is not the point here.

The point is that I’m learning, slowly but surely how to get back to me (for the first time, ever).

And I love my gf, ’cause she lets me be a complete teary mess and she listens to me.  She reminded me (and I didn’t even have to pay her for this nugget of wisdom) of all the things I’ve done over the past 18 months where I did what I wanted instead of what EVERYONE else expected.

• I broke up with my fiancé- who is a great guy, btw (just not for me)
• I started dating a woman
• I told my family that I’m dating a woman
• I moved out on my own
• I started graduate school
• I’m taking a hodge podge of non-finance/budget classes
• I’m moving far far away from here

And these are all things that make me happy. And I don’t care what you other f*ckers think!