Growth- An update

(Last week I wrote about a letter I was waiting for (give it a read before you read this.) It arrived about ten minutes ago and moved me to tears because of how far I can see I've come in a year. I will leave it below, exactly as I got it. The thing I'm taking from this is that the glimmer of light on the horizon is brighter than you can believe. I have found myself with the most wonderful friendships and the most affirming people in my life since the letter was written. I love you all. So much.)

Dear You,

You're having a day. Not a bad day or a good day but the sort of day that opens up your chest and your heart feels raw.I want you to remember this, in a year from now and every year for the rest of your life:

You're a good friend. You give and love and cheer for people and that is the best thing. You need to keep screaming hoarse and take a moment to listen for those who scream and cheer for you. You do not have time to waste on those who will not even whisper for you. Those who will not smile for your joy.

You must remember that your nature is one that forgives and understands and no matter how angry you feel - know that you need to be this person more than other people need it. Nurture your soul and forgive yourself. Remember that the things you resent about others that have hurt you, have built you to be better. To be kinder and to have a greater capacity for love.

You probably are having a weird week. Exam season depresses and you must must must remember that you carry light within you. You carry grace at your heels and you hold a flame that you cannot give others permission to extinguish.

If we're going to use June 9th to remember that good friends are jewels and that we must prune away those who are toxic- so be it. Nothing can hurt you in a way that lasts, so don't let it. You are fierce and majestic and so carefully made.

As always, I want the best for you and I want you to remember that you want that too. Choose kindness. Cruelty is a choice and you never have to make it.

All my love

Su's Tough Love Talk

This is for the troubled girls. The sometimes happy but mostly sad girls. This is for the ones who aren't sure if they can leave him. This is for the one who hasn't spoken to her friends because she knows he hates them and because they all said he was bad news. The girls who are too scared to dump his sorry ass and move on. This is for you, my girl- it's time for some tough love. 

I have many obscure Life Beliefs. But I hold firm to three of them when it comes to the people in your life: 

1) Never apologise for the high standards you hold. And if you aren't apologising for your standards in life yet... Pretend they are the roof and RAISE THEM. 

2) There are 7 billion people in the world (a handful in space). There is NO obligation to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to your choices in partners.

3) The men you choose to love must be like the books you cherish: Well read, highly recommended and critically acclaimed as something that doesn't come along often. 

Now I don't expect the last to apply to everyone, but the first two should be taught to your daughters as soon as they can say "Mama". Make them aware of their value early on so that no one can ever take advantage of them by low balling that value. 

Am I being too fussy? That I will never tolerate a cheater, liar, thief or someone who just doesn't quite reach the bar. No. I owe it to myself to expect Great Love, to demand nothing less. To expect love that demands mutual respect, kindness and understanding. I owe it to myself to pick a diamond in the rough and not grab at Fool's Gold. You should expect the same, you know why?

You are a woman. In the 21st Century. In an age where all the sex-based mountains of the past have been knocked down so you are on equal standing with men. The Suffragette Movement had women throw themselves under horses and going on hunger strikes in prison so you could stand up and declare your feminine power with pride. So you could go to the same institutes of learning and work at the same companies as your fellow man. You have all the opportunities that they dreamed of, all the freedom that some women STILL do not have. You represent a long line of thinkers, teachers, healers, leaders and so much more. 

So why the hell would you choose to settle for a man who does not do your potential justice?

 Why do you choose that "bad boy"? These guys come with a neon warning sign. And moths love neon signs right? So they allllllllll flock to them. You don't have to be a Moth. You're a frikken butterfly, you don't need his explosive, psychotic neon sign. The guy who your friends don't like and who is overly suspicious of you?  Still don't recognise that your "man" is a Bad Boy. Let me define that guy for everyone in a case study:

Bad: Defined as something that is Not Good. 

Boy: He is not a Man. He does not live up to the standard set by men. Great men who treated women with respect.He is a boy who will never grow or learn from his foolish ways. Do you need a boy in your life? I thought not.

Dead beat Bad Boy: defined as the Ideal Man by women who like to conduct their romances through the glass at a prison's visiting bay. Characteristics include Devil-May-Care attitude, possible addiction to narcotics /and/or/ Alchohol. Paranoid about losing you because many women see through him. Was arrested/will be arrested at some point ( possibly related to his narcotics). Displays violent tendencies but very quickly apologizes to his Lady. Ambition in life is limited to some dead end job, possibly with a kind relative.Always has a half baked "complicated" plan that never works out. May or may not hack into your social media to attempt to drive away your best friend with a horrible message. (yeah I know the guy all right) (You actually went back, again?)

Not-John-Mayer Bad Boy: he doesn't fit the stereotype but he undermines you, makes you feel trapped and he knows that he wields some kind of love-related power over you. He might not have the black leather jacket, but he's a douche. 

Sauve Playboy Bad Boy: He's the Too-Cool-For-Commitment guy. Everything is exactly the same as Dead Beat except he probably will leave before you figure out his ambition in life. His neon sign has attracted many other moths. He cheats but he really, truly loves you and will honestly never look at another... Oh darn there he is kissing your best friend, again.

Let's be real for a second- people use your name and "stupid girl" in the same sentence, often. You aren't but your choice of Significant Other makes people doubt you have a brain. My question is "Why him?". All I would like is an explanation or some justification from someone my age( or older) who chooses to stay. You have no kids or any real ties to him. He cheats, you go back. He gets arrested, you go back. He leaves you for someone else and comes back to you, you go back again. Where is the self respect? There is only so much that love can justify. 

 The world is your oyster- why must you dine on the kitchen scraps? 

Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection describes it as "The survival of the fittest". Those that cannot adapt- die out. 

-Does he fit your Life Plan?

-Does he fit your (now raised) standards?

-Does he fit in with the people you care about?

-Does he survive temptation?

If not, then he can just get selected out of your life. Dead like a Dodo and (you should pray about this) extinct from your life like a dinosaur. 

What I'm trying to say that even though he's "Just the boyfriend" now, he might end up as "just a husband" and then "just the father of your kids". And you'll be stuck with him because you don't want your (now estranged) friends to be right. You're gonna be 37 with family you haven't seen in years because they hate your husband and his violent outbursts. You might end up a statistic like the ones that I find in my Criminology textbook when it describes how some men kill their intimate partners. Or another perfect fit for Battered Woman Syndrome. 

There was never any shame in walking away. 

 Your choices now, can define the rest of your life. So Woman Up and walk out. 

A letter for the lobotomised

Greetings my dear companions (and my not so dear ones too)

In an age of spellcheck, Twitter-Wit and this abundance of enlightenment (or some vague notion that we are better off than our predecessors) I find it tragic that we still are plagued with a certain issues. This is my pep-talk for this year in a bid for my contemporaries to "up their game" (and their grammar). 

[Image via 9gag.com]

It is NOT 2007 anymore. We all have QWERTY keyboards on our phones- spellcheck and predictive  text are a free and active feature (I actually used the latter twice in the last sentence). And I'm not pointing fingers at the people who say "U" as opposed to "you", I understand the purpose of that fully. Instead it's "yew peeples wu aRe d01nG diż tôö meeee" (translation: you people who are doing this to me)

Typing that made my eyes burn. Reading it makes them bleed.

Why? 

That's all I ask you. It takes you twice as long to type with letters that have dots, accents and hearts and most rational people have NO clue what you mean. A yew is a tree, it's also the same length as the word you. I would like to show you a yew, with my ewe grazing beneath it. There is no need to personalise English. 

Why must you butcher this language that I love so very much? This attempt to be cool and "modern" has left much to be desired.  You bludgeon the grammar and starve your vocabulary until all that you express are monosyllables. Furthermore you choose to spread this moronic use of English to other people via social media and your social interaction with us.  This leaves me discombobulated and my eyes glaze over with sadness. This spoken and written word fills my soul with euphoria and I feel my heart become engorged with the prose of those who understood it's beauty.  How do you begin to detail the spectrum of your sentiments and how can you justly express it without these words? When did stupidity become trendy? 

Can we fix this? I'm pretty sure I can hear the 2008 Obama campaign saying, "Yes, we can!" to this query.  Read a book, a blog(this one is pretty nice, I think), a magazine or even… (Dare I say it?) A newspaper. We all make mistakes, you're meant to learn from your mistakes. When I was 14 and new on Facebook with a phone that had an alphanumeric keyboard, I used to shorten words occasionally in my wall posts to get the message across faster. I didn't bastardise the language with alternate spelling, "you= u" when I was in a hurry.Now I am 18, older and wiser. Many of my peers have not grown this way.

 You don't have to be the next Jane Austen but at least write in a manner that people understand. Its not cute or quirky so whoever told you that texting like you've been lobotomised was adorable, they lied.Don't sabotage yourself by creating an impression of being a total moron. 

Intelligence is the ultimate allure. End of story.