If push has come to this, then I guess this must be shove

For all intents and purposes, and considering the stereotype that pseudointellectual college kids change their opinions as the temperamental wind of whatever propaganda they last read directs them, I should be a feminist by now. I was just tested on all the ways in which women are still Donna Reed-ed by society and spent the majority of my spring break reading The Bell Jar and a 400 page book about the sexual liberation of a group of black women. Plus I've been listening to a lot of Ani DiFranco.

One of the more interesting things about having one of these websites is that the brief clicking it takes to access, say, 2004 betrays the wide discrepancies in mindset/opinion I might have gone through in what is now represented by seconds of browsing. Or stayed the same. It all kind of blurs. But I have a feeling anything I said about feminism before probably isn't much valid anymore.

Because one thing I've since learned is that I really shouldn't write anything unless I have a definite, informed opinion, or at least given the subject some serious thought. And as well acquainted as I am with the experience of Being Female, the line I put down between Honor Thy Husband and Hear Me Roar is drawn more with an airbrush than an exact-o knife. I naturally believe women are intellectual equals to men and entitled to independence, but when I read To the Lighthouse, I was sincerely disappointed that Lily Briscoe wasn't going to get married. I always want the women to get married.

I think it's impossible to grow up in this day and age and not be what in 1940 would have been considered a feminist, even if you're a dude. But for the moment I'm still trying to decide if the fact that I currently still largely see having a husband as essential to my life's success is a legitimate opinion or just another product of societal upbringing that another year or two of liberal arts education will beat out of me.

I guess it's never too late to learn something.

Scars remind us that the past is real

So, as emo-sounding as that little headline is, I decided I still like it. Once I get past the wrist-slashing, silent-tears-in-the-night image it initially inflicts, logically, it is important sometimes to have visible or otherwise striking reminders that painful things happened. Especially if you're like me and tend to forget before you forgive.

And that sentiment shouldn't be limited to your Sad Face History. It'd be cool if good things left scars, too, but I guess people just have to settle to take it upon themselves to keep little mementos and personal souvenirs from the happy times to give them a more lingering aftertaste.

Actually, have you ever noticed how easy it is to get wound up in trying to be constantly happy, yet considered the fact that happiness is the only emotional state which we expect to be able to cling to for long periods of time? It's not like we try to force ourselves to live in a constant state of surprise or pity or fear. We tend to unthinkingly accept every other emotion as transient and fleeting, but for some reason we think that happiness not only can but should be caught and retained like an endangered panda.

Of course, the unconscious logic may simply be that if SOME emotion has to be our status-quo state, why not happiness? It'd probably give you less ulcers than trying to forever embody paranoia. But do we really even have status-quo emotional bases? Is it too weird to think that we're never really in the clutch of just one emotion, but simultaneously encompass several, which independently wane?

Currently I Am:
Happy that the weather looks like a Disney spring
Annoyed that history repeats itself
Confused by noises coming from the hallway
Freaked out that I'm 2.5 months away from being 25% done with college

Do you live for someone else?

While at the moment my skin still more or less retains that glowing, elastic smoothness that so many aging trophy wives seek to revive, I've recently discovered what I'm pretty sure is going to be the first place I get any serious face creases. Which, I believe, is in the same place as my mom: two vertical lines between the eyebrows, caused by an excess of squinting, frowning, and general incredulity. What do YOUR future facial disfigurations say about you?

I think if there's one thing that's relatively solidified about me, it's my priorities.

Have you ever wondered how people can really go around saying the word "poodle" like it's not hilarious?

So life goals were brought up in one of my classes the other day. And when I put my mind to it, I was able to make a pretty quick list of things I never particularly considered a life goal. I don't want to be wealthy. I haven't given my career all that much thought, nor do I consider being in a single, stable career my entire life very important. I have no grand illusions of changing the world beyond hopefully adding something to the lives of those in immediate choking range. I'm not even entirely convinced children are on my agenda, though I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up at some point. I realized that my only consistent, ardent hope for my life is that I'll get happily married. Which probably equates to telling Susan Faludi, Virginia Woolf, and Emma Goldman to bite me.

"Then the city acted in wartime like an intelligent woman under siege. She gave what she couldn't with safety withhold, and secured those things which lay within her reach. The city became for me the idea of what I wanted to be as a grownup. Friendly but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness."