Quarantine Day 12: Self Love through Masturbation, a Journey.

Disclaimer: this post is ultimately going to be about masturbating. I strongly urge male family members or men who think of me in a sisterly/daughter way not to read this or to read with caution and never talk about it with me. Thanks.

I stopped seeing people besides my apartment mates and boyfriend 12 days ago, but today is the first day I’ve decided not to see anyone inside for a full two weeks. I had been hanging out with building people assuming it was futile to avoid them in a 6 unit building, but that’s just a lie I was telling myself because I’ll miss hanging out with them and they can all hang out without me now.  But two of them (and the third lives with one of those people) still have to go into work and see 100-500 people a day and if I ever want to see my boyfriend and his daughter again I’ve decided I need to be more cautious.

To be honest quarantining doesn’t feel too different to me yet because this is generally how I live my life. I work from home, I isolate myself often, I don’t go out too much. Mostly I see building people. Many people are feeling pretty stir crazy and hungry for human interaction, but I’m just grateful I got quarantined alone instead of getting stuck with anyone for 14-? days. I’m getting less done, because the internet has become SO distracting. If there was a COVID-19 exam I would ace it from all the studious news reading I’ve done. I can’t stop watching my friends’ stories of what they’re doing while stuck at home. The memes are addicting, although nothing has been more addicting than watching this girl jump like a horse (which I intend to try today).

All that said, I know I haven’t been truly alone yet so I’m revving up to start missing human touch. Which brings us to my disclaimer: the fact that this post is going to be about masturbating. And it might turn you on. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m good at getting myself to climax in like 5 seconds if I put my mind to it. Part of it’s that if I’m going to the trouble of masturbating, my brain is already 90% of the way there, and for me that’s most of it. Sometimes I wonder if I could make myself climax with no physical touch at all (something to put on my quarantine bucket list). But due to it being so mental, I usually have a story in my head, or I’m watching porn. I really rely on that story to get me there, so much so that I don’t pay attention to physical sensations the way I used to, and this has leaked into my sexual interactions with other people as well (to no fault of their own).

Like most people, whether they’d admit it or not, I started exploring my sexuality before I was old enough to understand that’s what I was doing. At our first house, my mom kept a book on giving birth in a basket with other books that I don’t remember behind a yellow chair we used to have to sit in when we were being punished (GO TO THE YELLOW CHAIR). Seems appropriate that I’d be lurking behind this chair hungrily consuming this book of women with their legs spread open, bushes on blast. I can still remember a specific photo, and the stirring it caused “down there”. I didn’t really understand what I was feeling, but she was naked, and I knew showing strangers your naked body was wrong, so I assumed looking at them wasn’t right either. I had no idea what that feeling was, only that it was deeply intriguing and I’d follow it to the ends of the earth no matter how long I’d have to sit in the yellow chair if it got me in trouble.

Many of the people with vaginas that I’ve talked to have described rubbing on corners of furniture or pillows as children for no other reason than that it felt good. I followed those instincts as I got older but I can’t remember if I ever figured that out before I was a teenager. I vividly remember laying on my bed and kind of fiddling with the flaps of my vagina eventually discovering THEE hole of all holes. I slid my finger up there experimentally and was horrified to discover it just kept going. This could have ended somewhere more exciting than me not understanding my own body, but it didn’t, sadly. As I got older I was fortunate enough to develop a friendship where we could discuss masturbation. She asked if we had a detachable shower head at home. As a matter of fact, we did. So began two-a-day showers, with the scents of old spice, dial soap, and store brand hair wash becoming triggers for me after countless sessions of lying in the tub surrounded by their steamy perfumes. It wasn’t terribly sensual, what with siblings hammering on the door saying they needed to use the bathroom (“I’LL BE OUT SOON GO AWAY”), but it didn’t need to be. It just felt nice.

This is how it was in those days, going off of pure instinct, touching and feeling around simply because it felt nice. As I started “dating” boys I’d experience arousal stirred by another human for the first time. I wasn’t really allowed to date yet at 14, so we’d just sit by each other at movie nights with friends and they’d put their arm around me, maybe slipping a hand slightly under my carefully chosen shirt, gently touching my waste, maybe even boldly going for the edge of my bra or just beneath the waistband of my jeans. Nothing more than that, I didn’t even get properly kissed until I was 17. But it was, exciting. And they were just happy to be there. I feel I should note that I was lucky enough not to be self conscious. I was traditionally pretty for a young teenager, almost boringly so. No one ever shamed me for anything other than having boobs early on, and they got over that pretty quickly. So there was nothing it even occurred to me to be worried about. I could just sit there and wonder where their hands might end up—and you can forget about them, I didn’t care about touching them at all. Penises were weird and foreign objects that did bizarre things I didn’t want to think about.

My first orgasm “with” a person was when I was 16. I was dating a 19 year old and he was FAR more experienced than I was, and he was reasonably patient with me until he broke up with me probably because I was terrified to even kiss him, or maybe he just didn’t like me anymore. Can’t say I blame him either way, that was a big age gap at the time. But during our brief time together, I would lay on top of him on the couch and straddle his leg while he’d touch my butt and it was during one of those sessions that I first came from another person’s intervention. VERY exciting. Very scandalous. Again, with no thought for his pleasure, I assumed the pleasure of touching me was enough of a treat (cannot stress how not self-conscious or aware I was). This happened with my next boyfriend too at 17, who was exactly the kind of boy I should have dated and appreciated but really didn’t, and I eventually broke up with him. My next relationship was the one where I really explored everything, but it took me months to reciprocate. Which means for months I was receiving nothing but un-reciprocated foreplay. It was AMAZING. It took me a long time to realize this wasn’t exactly fair, but he never seemed to mind and I assumed boys were just happy to be there so I didn’t worry about it, until I did. Once we crossed that bridge it opened up a new world of erotic pleasures and I learned I enjoyed reciprocating, and didn’t understand why anyone would do anything but 69 all day everyday. I didn’t worry if I smelled, or if I was wet enough (I always was, because I wasn’t anxious, and was 18), if I was “good”..all I worried about was when we could do it (any number of “its”) again. It wasn’t until I got older that I learned to be self conscious due to unkind or thoughtless comments, cheating, getting dumped, etc. This is when I started employing the use of “stories” in my head. Heinous things I’d never want to do or have done to me, but to think about were exciting. I attribute this to those early explorations of my sexuality, the feeling that you were doing something wrong, but it felt exciting. It’s like things had come full circle with only a brief period of totally unhinged, out of mind and body, blissful sexual engagement.

It’s impossible now for me to not think about what my partner wants, vs. what I can/am willing to give them, which is maybe not always the same as what I want. But because sex and pleasure are so mental for me, if I feel guilty accepting only what I want, what I want becomes useless to me. But the right partner values your pleasure as much as their own. I don’t want to go down roads that infringe on the privacy of the people I’ve been with or am with, but suffice it to say I am not currently with a selfish or unkind person, and let’s leave it at that.

The road I will go down however, is one of rediscovering that feeling of someone just being happy to be there. There being my vagina and surrounding body. Someone being me. I’ve continued to enjoy masturbating as an adult, and though sadly I do not have a detachable shower head, I do have some fun toys, and my hands of courses. Generally, as mentioned earlier, I can get there in like 5 seconds if I feel like it. And since orgasming is more of a goal for me rather than a journey that may or may not have a destination, speed is generally preferred. So I think my thoughts, and use my vibrator, go to the bathroom, and go to sleep feeling nice about five minutes later.

But last night was different. I felt sick of depending on these stories to get out of my head, so that I could enjoy any sexual experience whether it be alone or with someone else. I decided to try and focus on sensations only, still using my vibrator, but once it was in place I used my hands to tease myself the way I felt teased as a teenager at the beginning of her sexual awakening. I gently touched my body, almost tricking myself, sucking in to make it easier to slide my hand down my waist, then pulling away, gently nudging the side of my breast, intentionally giving myself goosebumps with a soft caress on my side. It felt, amazing. I also realized I hadn’t felt my body this way in a long time, maybe ever. I’ve never explored my body trying to think like a fourteen year old boy who is just happy to be there. I noticed how soft I was, how parts of me have changed as I’ve gotten older, and tried to explore how that was positive rather than view any change as I age as negative. I’m softer, more gentle somehow, matured rather than firm and buzzing with a buoyant energy. It took a while, but eventually I finished and it felt SO NICE. I didn’t miss my stories, I was completely tuned in with what I was feeling, and I was truly just happy to be there.

So, I urge you all to take this time to practice the ultimate act of self love during this quarantine. Because there’s not a lot else to do, and it feels really nice.

Love,
Heidi Girl

Getting out of the Spiral

Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing posts based off of prompts people gave me (or give me—feel free to make a suggestion, it can be about LITERALLY anything). I enjoy writing, and wanted to do more of it. I’ve had a lot of ideas I could write about to the point where I lose focus, and to be honest I’m not always an idea person. I tend to build really well off of the ideas of others and since my work is often quite solitary this is a nice way for me to do something a little collaborative.

Prompt 1: How you’re able to get / stay out of the spiral of terrible news/stuff we’re constantly inundated with

Ironically this exact subject came up in my therapy the other day. For the past three summers I have struggled a great deal with existential dread. It’s come up in the past but with many years in between and not so consistently. Probably because in the past my goal was to smother it, put it out of my mind, and not think about existence and mortality. Not anymore.

Existential dread isn’t something that can be fixed in therapy, or with medication. Even when I was medicated my thoughts still drifted to the weight of having the freedom to make meaning in my own life, and the knowledge that I was born, with the certainty that me, and everyone I know, will someday die. Because this is learning to be anxious in the right way, about things that are true. Except now the goal is to have that dread shift to acceptance.

I have several theories that I suspect are right in what causes my thoughts to cycle through these heavy realities more now than ever. One, I am getting older. I am spending more time thinking about how to remain youthful both in appearance and physicality, and putting energy into making both happen with a combination of movement and serums and spa services. I also spend a lot of mental energy trying to do all of those things for more mentally healthy reasons, but that’s a topic for another blog. For many reasons I feel I’m at a point in my life where aging and death don’t feel too far away to worry about. I’m watching people get older and struggle with their health, friends are losing parents, putting down their first independently owned pets, having kids of their own, etc. While the lives of many of my peers are consumed by starting families, their careers, and homemaking, I find I’ve sort of settled into where I will likely be in some form or another for the rest of my life. I work for myself from home, I don’t intend to have children of my own or get married, I want to live alone until I’m ready to retire to a living situation much like the one I have right now (friends in the same building), at which point I assume we will all still be hanging out, but we will not still be discussing my obsession with death because I will be incredibly zen and will have written a book detailing how to get comfortable with all of that.

In essence, I’m ripe for the existential / midlife crisis at the young age of 30. Also practically everyone makes jokes or seriously says women are pointless at this age, so there’s that.

But the other thing is, the world is changing, and my awareness has grown. Which brings me to the actual prompt I’m supposed to be writing about. Part of my dread comes from the environment we are all living in. Summers bring on fear because they’re hotter each year. Water levels are rising. Forests are burning. Racism and bigotry are raging. The rich get richer, while the poor get poorer, and it’s the poor who suffer most as our earth dies. The news is a constant weight in my stomach. Everything I buy, and consume, are moral dilemmas. How will this further impact the environment? Where is all of my waste ending up? Who will buy our recycling? There are families being torn apart at the border as they seek safety. A president telling people to go back where they came from. It’s all terrifying, frankly. And to be able to exit and leave the spiral of absorbing all of the bad is a privilege.

But I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And what I think is, if it’s a privilege you have, you should take it for a few days each month, before returning to fight the good fight. We can’t be complacent, really. The earth and all the people in it need us to be vigilant and determined. But in order to do that, we also need rest. Some people can’t have that rest, it’s not right and it’s not fair. But if you resting means you’re able to do more for those people, then you have to. If we’re all exhausted, depressed, and beaten down, it’ll be hard to find the hope and strength to persevere. It feels naive and convenient to admit this, but I believe there are minds out there working hard to come up with solutions to reverse what we’ve done. I have hope because I have to, I need to have hope to feel like there is a point to trying.

There’s a lot of self care that’s promoted that’s not attainable for everyone. It’s again something reserved for those with privilege, or even just with time. A lot of people are doing their best to keep their heads above water most days. So maybe you can’t go get a massage, or go to yoga, or seek therapy. Maybe you can’t even get enough sleep. I’m going to try and make suggestions that I hope most of the people reading this can do, and if you have more please share them. 

• Read the news once a day, 5-6 days a week. I personally get The Skimm in my email on weekdays. I generally read it in the morning. It doesn’t take long to read, it’s well written, witty when it can be, and it offers further reading for any topics you want to know more about. It has guides for ongoing issues.
  • What I’m saying is, don’t read the news all day long. Set aside a time during the day to do so, giving yourself time to absorb what’s happening, and decide if there’s anything you need to do in response to what’s going on.
  • Give yourself a day off. But not just from the news, from media period. When I was growing up we weren’t allowed to use electronics on Sunday. It was different because we had landlines so you could get calls without having the rest of the internet at your fingertips, but try some limited variation of this. Use this extra time you’ll gain (and you will gain it) to do something in nature. Just in case we end up totally destroying it you may as well enjoy it now.
• Always be reading or listening something that takes no mental energy. People give me so much shit for rereading Harry Potter and to them I say WHATEVER. I reread books because I find their universes comforting, it’s a little break that requires not much of me. When I’m in a mental space for new material, great. I’ll read something new. But right now for instance, I’m all up in the Sorcerer’s Stone because that’s what’s manageable and comforting.
• Drink more water. It never fails to amaze me how much drinking water makes me feel better. My brain is sharper, my body is more energized, and whatever it’s good for your skin and what’s the point in pretending I don’t care about that. We have water available to us at the moment, so we may as well drink it.
• Download a meditation app and try meditating for 5 minutes a day. I have liked the Calm app in the past, but in all honesty I’ve given meditation about a 1% effort overall. However, everything I read and listen to claims mindfulness is the thing that Westerners SUCK at, but that it really helps. And it makes sense, if you’re focusing more on the moment you’re in and what you can do with it, things are going to feel more meaningful, manageable, and it slows time down.
  • Not into the app? It can be pretty simple. To calm myself down I repeat to myself in my head, “breathe all the way in” (and then I do that), “aaaand all the way out” (and then I do that), “deeper and deeper relax, nothing worries you, nothing bothers you”. This is what my medical hypnosis doctor used to say to get me into that relaxed theta state of mind and it works every time. I focus on individually relaxing all the muscles in my face and neck, and so on. Everytime I tense up again I just start over.
• Accept what you are capable of doing. We can’t fight every battle or give our all to every cause. We just can’t. I do my best to support the friends are are giving their all to causes I’m not, and focus on the ones I can. Here’s the things I’m trying to do:
  • When people around me say things that do not align with my values, I use all the patience I possess, and respectfully talk about it with them. Sometimes I have to have painfully uncomfortable conversations with people who I respect, who are perpetuating ideas that I do not respect. Sometimes it’s with strangers, either way, speaking up with an open heart can go a long way.
  • Starting to recycle again, I stopped for a while. It was too hard because I don’t drive, my landlord stopped taking it, Akron stopped recycling glass, I heard China wasn’t taking our recycling more, etc. But I have a vespa that I can drive bags of recycling on if I don’t let them pile up too much, and my dad can take my glass bottles. I’m also making sure to wash all my recycling so it’s not contaminated.
  • Eliminating my use of single use plastics as much as possible. I try to remember to let servers know I don’t need a straw, and I REALLY want to remember to bring a container with me for leftovers at restaurants. I pack an empty water bottle for trips. Sometimes I forget, but I’m trying to do better.
  • I vote in all issues, I’m not great with research so I usually have a friend whose values align with mine give me the rundown on who I should vote for outside of the big races, and why.
  • That’s about it for right now, those are the things I am focused on. I’d like to volunteer and do more in all the areas but this is mostly what I’m capable of on a weekly basis. I can’t shit on myself about it everyday or I’ll never get out of bed. Just like with anything I need to slowly incorporate new habits. I wasn’t doing most of this shit before and I am now without really thinking about it so there you go.
• Follow some good news accounts. I follow @tanksgoodnews. It interrupts my scrolling with good news and I love it. Sometimes you need your faith in humanity restored a little bit. So find some things to interrupt your day that make you feel better.
• Stop saying we’re all doomed and you hate everyone. I get it, I really do. But I’m not convinced condemning our entire species is helping anything. Like, we’re here. Here we are. Are we on the fast track to eliminating ourselves? Seems like it. But like any other living organism we evolved with the basic instinct to survive. We have gotten too good at it, and we’ve gotten greedy. Some of us don’t realize that, or notice, or care, what’s going on. But a lot of us really do. And we’re trying to fix it. Honestly it reminds me of health class when all the kids who were going to or were already doing drugs weren’t getting scared any straighter by the videos. No, but I was. I was scared shitless of everything they showed us, and it was all stuff I wasn’t going to do anyways. We’re mostly making those of us who understand what has to change and are already working on it panic even more. Panic isn’t really a great state to accomplish anything in. Should we be realistic? Absolutely, but also we need to calm the fuck down a tiny bit or we’re going to implode.
• Avoid screens before bed. I’M FAILING AT THIS RIGHT NOW. I fail at it pretty much everyday. But for a couple hours before bed just try to avoid any devices that can stress you out and also prevent you from sleeping well. We as a nation need to sleep. Go to bed for christ’s sake. No one is impressed that you’re tired. Aside from doctors, and the scientists I’m hoping are solving the climate crisis, no one is doing anything that important that they can’t just sleep longer. Obviously parents with babies probably can’t either, but the rest of you go home and go to bed and put your phone somewhere else (she says from bed where she has a laptop and phone out at the same time at 4:30am).
• Keep a journal. Not like a Dear Diary blah blah blah journal, but one that when you’re having some of those thought spirals you can write your thoughts down in it. For later, or for never. But sometimes the easiest way to stop a spiral is to just write down the triggering thoughts. You can revisit them at another time if you want to.

 

Alright that seems like enough suggestions for now. Even suggestions of how to calm your thoughts can be overwhelming. All the time I’m like “If I could just drink 100oz of water a day, sleep 8hrs nightly with a consistent wake up and sleep schedule, exercise for an 1 a day, never shop again, have zero waste, eat all the fruits and vegetables from local farms, find a chicken for eggs, volunteer at animal + human establishments alike, be a perfect contractor, meditate, do yoga and all my posture exercises every morning, wear 10 gallons of 1000 spf sunblock, do a self oil massage every night, get bi-monthly massages / facials / scrubs, spend time with family, check in with all my friends, see the entire world, accept and defy death with the grace of Albus Dumbledore I WOULD BE HAPPY” but like I probably can’t do all that stuff all the time. So I’ll just do what I can in a day, or even in just a moment, and know that I’m not a bad person and I’m doing pretty close to my best a good chunk of the time. And so are you most likely.

Love,
Heidi Girl

2018 set the bar really low for you 2019, try not to mess it up.

2019.

The other day Aaron asked me what my new year’s resolutions are and I sort of jumped down his throat about diet culture toxicity, and the pointlessness of resolutions, etc. It was very rude of me actually but in the world of women (and lots of people) a new year often means losing weight or something body related and it was all I was seeing online. I realized I overreacted and then gave it a lot of thought because while it can be arbitrary I generally love designated fresh starts.

This is why I MISS high school—a new quarter meant a new chance to have better grades, it was an excuse to re-organize my locker, and another opportunity to achieve self actualization (I’m reading the Princess Diaries series and all she talks about is self actualization, that and not having any breasts). So that used to be my fresh start, same with college. Without school to define and shape my time I’m a lot less inclined to reflect and plan. Especially because I don’t even care about forming eternal “good” habits. Life is cyclic, and I like that. I like that sometimes I’m very physically oriented, working on getting strong and having consistent poos, and other times I am balls to the walls indulging in pizza, cocktails, and frivolous spending. So, all disclaimers aside, here is my plan for 2019:

1. Pick up embroidery, I’ve been seeing all this great embroidery art and I love it. I think it would be a fun creative outlet and I can do it while Annie is knitting and we are watching horrible hallmark christmas movies (still).
2. Start making necklaces again, but with a new process that I will require me to learn some new skills, or outsource if that seems too impractical after doing some more research.
3. Be a better listener. I’ve already made great strides, but sometimes I react too quickly (re: Aaron asking me a thoughtful questions, and me attacking him). I also do this annoying thing where I try to guess what someone is about to say. It’s annoying because I am often wrong.
4. Train for a race. Any race, I don’t even care. But I’ve been wanting to do the Olympic Triathlon forever and it’s not until the fall so there’s plenty of time. I miss feeling strong, I’ve become a limp noodle who can’t even do a headstand anymore. It limits me from doing things I like, because I don’t like feeling weak so I just piss and moan and do nothing instead.
5. Get out of credit card debt, again. My grampa must be rolling in his grave. I am not a responsible person, but I’m going to work very hard at being better with money this year. This is the most likely of my resolutions to fail.
6. Document all my keepsakes and then purge most of them. I’ve started this already. I’m saving some handwritten letters, but I have bins filled with drawings/notes/ticket stubs/etc. and I’d like to scan everything in, and create photo books out of their contents in combination with actual photos. I have like no physical copies of all the photos I take and I really love looking through old things so this is stupid.
7. Clean out my garage and making it a cool outdoor space. I want to have a lil grill and a cool outdoor rug and seating and string lights and we can watch movies in there. IT’LL BE GREAT!
8. Get my motorcycle’s license so I can 
9. Get a Vespa
10. Find temporary motorcycle license so I can achieve 8 + 9. I lost it one week after getting it, I could also just order a new one.
11. Spend more time with family and Dakota. 

I think that’s a pretty good list. Those are also all things that I feel excited to do. 2018 was pretty rough, and the tail end of 2017. But Elizabeth Warren is going to try and run for president and that gives me new levels of optimism. I’m also off anti-depressants, and will soon be going off birth control which means it’ll be the first time in 6 years I’ll have no drugs of any kind in my body, and really I only took a 2yr break from BC before that, so it feels like I’ve been on it for about 13 years. Should be interesting.

Trigger warning: Food stuff

I’m going to be blogging this week about the Raw Trainer flush I’m doing. If you’ve been paying attention to my stories or Facebook posts or earlier when I mentioned it, I have some pretty strong negative feelings about diet culture. I worry that a lot of cleanses and flushes are pretty much an excuse for disordered eating. I also think talking about it too much is damaging. Most every woman I know has struggled with an eating disorder at some point, so the whole raw/clean/whole eating movement is often toxic for their mindset. They’ve probably worked very hard to not overthink what they are/are not putting into their bodies and that makes me hesitant to share how the next five days go because I don’t want to contribute to that. But that’s what trigger warnings are for, and I don’t feel negatively about Raw Trainer cleanses because it’s a shit load of food. Like SO MUCH FOOD–talking three full meals a day + a smoothie. And I’m not doing it to lose weight, that’s a terrible reason to do something temporary, because while for some people eating raw/vegan is sustainable, it’s just not for me.

So why am I doing it? It has very little to do with it being the new year, unless you consider the way I’ve been eating due to the holidays. Let me start by saying I do not feel in any way guilty about it, I haven’t stepped on a scale, I don’t care. I love eating, and I love eating holiday food. However, I followed all of that with a week in New Orleans where I ate and drank decadently all week. My body is reeling, it’s like “WHAT IS THIS CHAOS YOU ARE PUTTING US THROUGH” and I’m like “PIPE DOWN AND TAKE THIS MEAT PIE BODY I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT”. So totally worth it. But I feel awful now, not mentally, I have zero regrets. I just physically feel like I poisoned myself for a week. Which I kind of did, since alcohol is technically poison.

Thankfully, I create content for Raw Trainer, and I suggested that I do the flush and document my experience (I never pass up an opportunity to talk about poop). So that’s what I’m doing, because I’m craving this kind of food after nonstop meat and cheese, and it’s also my job. I will still fully end this by going to Trentina and ordering 7 courses of pasta on Saturday. But I do think it’ll be helpful to poop my brains out for the next five days and should help me reset my energy and get me back to a slightly less luxurious life style, since frankly I can’t afford it anyways (see resolution #5). Also, I think it’s good for the environment to eat this way more often and that’s a reason I can get behind. And Marisa’s food is so good, it’s so dang good.

Anyways, I’m going to write another blog right now about the start of this flush.

Love,
Heidi Girl

Going off of Zoloft, the good and the bad.

Snugging dakota in my dumpy sweater is one of the best ways to cope ever.

I don’t exactly remember what day I decided to completely stop taking Zoloft. I know it was scary. I was afraid to feel what I felt in August 2017 again, to be visited by crippling anxiety attacks and dichotic feelings of apathy and terror, but I knew I was ready.

 

A number of people have asked me why, particularly people who have recently started on medication or don’t feel ready to be off of it, or might never be ready to be off of it. I’ve told them all the same thing. When I started taking medication I needed it, I couldn’t live the way I was. I wasn’t able to get enough food into my body, enough sleep, enough relaxation—being alive felt unbearable, but the idea of dying felt equally unbearable. My brain was in such a state of unmanageable distress that I needed help to balance it out.

The Zoloft gave me peace, and over time it made me more even than I’d ever experienced. I enjoyed a break from my mild OCD, and downward spirals. For a year I barely cried, I didn’t agonize over dust or the fact that my apartment would never truly be clean, I didn’t get upset with Aaron over little things, or stress out over work. It was the break my brain desperately needed. I was still me, I just wasn’t experiencing my highs and lows. This was hard for some of the people who had known me longest or who were close to me. I didn’t react the way they expected me to, but I basically told them to get over it.

However, after a year of this I noticed I was feeling tired, sleeping all the time but not feeling rested. I realized the Zoloft was over compensating, so I decided to explore all the things that terrified me. Death, life, existence—what does it all mean? How will I ever be okay with any of it? I was still pretty uncomfortable even if I wasn’t panicking so I listened to relevant podcasts. I realized l hearing other people talk about their studies on these things that scared me, and learning from them, made me feel better. I made peace with my fears, at least for now. I feel weird about them, they are weird, but I think I can accept that in the same way I can not teach Bellatrix to speak English, there are some things I simply cannot understand, but I can trust I’ll eventually accept them. People age and die every day, and they aren’t all running around in a panic about it, so it’ll probably be okay.

Anyways. I tried to start tapering at the end of the summer. This was a mistake. I do not like summer. People often chuckle when I express my distaste for sunshine and bright colors but the fact of the matter is, both hurt my eyes. You wouldn’t like the sun either if it made you feel like you couldn’t open your eyes when you went outside. And I sweat like a mother fucker. I find the heat oppressive so I stay inside, and then I feel cooped up. I hate being hot so I run the AC but I miss fresh air. However fresh air should be cold. Hot, muggy air is gross. Also..bad things happen to me in the summer. Or things that I struggle with I should say. It’s just not my time of year, I hate it, and I can’t believe how many stupid summers I have left in my life. It’s something Annie tells me whenever I freak out that time passes too quickly. It always works. Damn all those wretched summers ahead of me. Fall and winter forever!! All of that to say, end of summer—not a great time to quit my drugs. I had a small panic attack once I got down to a half pill every two days so I went back up to a half a pill daily (I had already been weaning for a month or so at that point, NEVER EVER EVER quit your medication cold turkey!!!!).

But then, October came. It came in all of its glory: it was brisk, it was spooky, it was dark. PRAISE THE HEAVENS. I decided to go back down to a half pill every other day, finally quitting all together maybe a month ago. It wasn’t bad, but for several weeks I had brain zaps. I still get them occasionally, particularly if I have a drink which I’m mainly just not doing. But in the past week I’ve noticed some new side effects.

I’m feeling again, I’m feeling A LOT. Midnight the other day—had to clean out the freezer, HAD TO. We’re talking take everything out, chip the ice out of it, wash it, repackage things that were in the wrong size containers, and organize it into a neat little freezie guy. MM yes. A different day I thought I might make a snack, instead an hour or so later I succeeded in wiping all the fingerprints off my kitchen cupboards…then I had the snack.

Also, everything makes me cry. The other day I was waiting to be picked up from the airport and this couple kept kissing and hugging and I was like OH SWEET LORD WHY MUST YOU DRIVE THIS COUPLE APART THEY ARE SO SAD, and just burst into tears only to see them get into the same car and drive away. My sadness turned to rage, how dare they just stand and make out like they were never going to see each other again when she was PICKING HIM UP. Get a room b. holes. Tonight Aaron and I had a disagreement and I went about some things poorly, as did he, but the things I went about poorly I internalized and concluded I should never talk to anyone ever again to avoid conflict.

This all sounds kinda silly, it definitely sounds irrational, but what it feels like is reality. It feels like these anxious conclusions I’ve drawn are correct.

In the same way that before I had depression I never really understood it, I’m realizing now that people who haven’t ever experienced anxiety also don’t totally get it. I got really hysterical the other day when Aaron reminded me for the millionth time, in an exasperated way, to clean off his kitchen knife. I got up and started cleaning like a maniac. He tried to calm me down and teased that I was being just a little irrational (he thinks this will make me laugh, to all of you who are dealing with an anxious person take note..these jokes are NOT funny), to which I yelled as I clutched my face like an insane person “I KNOW I KNOW I AM BEING IRRATIONAL BUT THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO DO RIGHT NOW WILL YOU PLEASE JUST LET ME CLEAN”. Once I was done, and I sobbed my heart out, I felt better, and behaved like a normal human who hadn’t just panic cleaned a kitchen because that’s how she deals with feeling like she did something wrong.

Mom—I am NOT blaming you, this was something I came up with all on my own—but the truth is cleaning is how I used to cope with getting in trouble. When you’re the parent of 4 small children your main issue if you’re lucky is that your house is a MESS. So that’s mainly what we got in trouble for growing up, we were pretty good kids. However, I took getting into trouble much harder than my siblings (I think), at least when it came to cleaning. I felt like I could make my mom happy and feel better if I could just clean while she was calming down in her office. And it did make her happy, I remember those moments with a lot of fondness. I could tell it meant a lot to her that I heard her and did something about it. So for me cleaning = an expression of love, as well as a way to make someone else feel better when I did something wrong. It’s pretty text book. And I’m back there.

This all sounds kind of terrible, but the truth is..I missed neurotic Heidi. She’s a big part of who I am. Cleaning and organizing is a love language for me, a coping mechanism and a source of joy. Not caring about it was like..what? Who? Her? And even though I’m dealing with some pretty intense anxiety it’s over normal person things. I’m pissed at my boyfriend, I’m worried about money, I need to work out more. I’m not like BUT WHERE DID THE UNIVERSE EVEN COME FROM?! WILL WE ALL JUST GET SUCKED INTO A BLACK HOLE?!!? (yes probably) Every time I freak out about something small there’s this small voice in my brain that’s like “heeeey girl I see you! welcome back!” Plus, my highs are HIIIIIGH. I think I’m funnier, I might be wrong but I don’t think so. I’m also rowdy as hell. I have a lot to say, too much honestly. But it’s nice, it’s nice to feel like me again. Except I kinda feel like me x1000. It’s made me realize my anxiety is real, when you haven’t had a long period of no anxiety it’s easy to be dismissive. Oh it’s my period, or I’m hungry, or I didn’t sleep enough. No I legitimately have anxiety that I may occasionally need to be medicated for. It’s something that is hard to deal with and gives me a flight or fight response when I shouldn’t have it. There’s something validating in that. It allows me to not be dismissive of my anxious triggers, even if my reactions are too big—and I realize I’m not in control of these reactions, I’m not choosing to be that way. It’s also reminding me that I need to work very hard at my anxiety if I want to not be medicated. I need to write my therapist, do things to calm myself down, get enough sleep, clean more probably if I want to avoid midnight deep cleaning sessions, all of that.

So it’s an exciting time, in good and bad ways. But I don’t regret going off of zoloft, and I don’t regret the time I spent on it. I needed a break, I took it, and now my brain is making up for lost time. It’s intense. You’ve been warned.

Love,
Heidi Girl

p.s. I made a page on dealing with anxiety, I need to add some more stuff to it but here it is: http://www.heidimrolf.com/anxiety

Health update + the female orgasm

I always forget that when I first started this blog I barely had a job, and that’s why I had time to write 2500 word blogs every morning. Oh well, it’s a ENOUGH of a return to your regularly scheduled programming, let’s put it that way. The later half of this blog is about the female orgasm, partially from my personal experience, you’ve been warned.

Before all that, here’s some cute pictures of my cat:

She is so beautiful and silky.

Health + Fitness Update

UPDATE: This was written before I stopped giving a shit about weight, calorie counting, etc. Personally..I’d just skip over this section, but I’m leaving it for..proof of how far I’ve come?
Things are moving slowly on account of I got another sweet tatt on Friday and I can’t swim, or do anything that stretches my leg very much. “Well Heidi why don’t you do an arm workout or something?” HEY I didn’t come here to be judged, I’ll do an arm work out WHEN I FEEL LIKE IT. I did clench my entire body for 4.5hrs on Friday during my tattoo appointment and I am sore from that so. There you go, you can just lay around and get fit. Did I follow that appointment with half an edison’s pizza to the face? Yes, yes I did. But I was hungry, and Edison’s is a delicious treat. No regrets.

I’ve been down to the every other day of half a pill of zoloft for two weeks now and it’s going really well. No dizzy spells, no sadness outside the realm of normal. This is particularly exciting to me because August 26th of last year one of my very best friends got married and I spent half her wedding sobbing and hyperventilating in bathrooms and bank safes [don’t ask]. I was very underweight then because I could barely eat. Food had no taste when it felt like everything was pointless. For someone who really loves food, that was devastating.

Not having that problem anymore though! I like my new curves, I think it’s rounded out my shape in a very pleasing way. So I no longer feel this sense of urgency to lose weight, rather I’d like to just tone up all those curves. Be all strong and shit. So that’s the new primary focus. I’ve done nothing to actually focus on it besides think about it, but that’s a step in the right direction.

So far I still hate weighing myself daily because then I feel this insane amount of pressure to poop before I eat breakfast, but I need breakfast to poop so I end up basically not eating breakfast since it takes me too long to be ready to poop. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED NOOM!? GREAT JOB. I think I should just resign myself to the fact that most mornings I have to weigh myself and the poop. Sigh. What can you do.

I came up with a brilliant hack where I moved all my snacks to a shelf I can barely reach, and all my vitamins and health stuff to the former snack shelf. But then I realized I should fill my cereal containers with the PB cookies and white cheddar popcorn I love and those sit out on an open shelf that is within sight and reach. Long story short I ate like an entire bag of that popcorn and 8 cookies yesterday. Whatever, they are delicious and I don’t care. Noom only wants me to eat 1200 goddamn calories a day, are you fucking kidding me?! I try to stick to about 2000 and burn more than that. Why do I even pay for these apps, I just decide I know better anyways. Have I gained weight? Yes. So do I know better? Probably not. But I still think 1200 calories a day is deprivation and chaos.

So basically I haven’t made a whole lot of progress, last week was good, but things kind of went to shit by Thursday. Still I’m mostly putting lots of good things into my body, I’m sleeping well, and my pill tapering is going well. I feel good about all of that.

Pube update
They’re here, and they’re kind of soft, and they make sex more comfortable. No longer am I like “UGH MY PUBIS IS LIKE SWEATY AND FEELS LIKE I HAVE RUG BURN” maybe 10 min into sex. Instead I have this pleasant little cushion, albeit still kind of dry and itchy, but progressing well. It also defines the area in a visually pleasing way. It’s funny how these trends come and go. But comfort wise, this one is probably going to be here to stay for Heidi girl.

The Female Orgasm
My boyfriend and I have been talking about this A LOT for a while now. While on zoloft my libido tanked. But I’d had dry spells before where sex just didn’t seem all that appealing and I’d have to kind of talk myself mentally into a dirty place that made me feel like doing it at all, and hopefully climaxing. This place is delicate, no one can talk to me and I’m totally in the zone, aka completely detached from my partner. I also am like “just lay there and I’ll take care of this”. It’s like using a live dildo but it’s attached to a human who has thoughts and feelings and preferences as well. So, not ideal.

One of my main problems with sex has always been communication, in that it’s an actual turn off for me to provide direction during sex. It takes me out of my carefully curated fantasy and I also want them to figure it out, that feels more exciting. There’s no surprise if I have to carefully direct. However, it finally occurred to me, “hey you’re not climaxing anyways, what if you used this time to get over your stupid mental hang up about not directing”. Accordingly I signed up for OMGYes in hopes that it would provide me with some language to explain what it was that I wanted, because frankly I didn’t have any. I had insecurities that what I wanted was maybe “boring”, but when I logged into this website with videos based off tons of women describing what they like, I realized “NOPE I’m pretty normal”. So I sent the link to my boyfriend as well and let him know “these things, these are the things I’m into”. And he listened. And when he does them and it works I am very vocal about it, and if I need to guide him a little, I do. AND GUESS WHAT, last night I had two orgasms very close together. I’ve never had that happen before. One was just a lil guy and the other one was like a shouting to the heavens, laugh your joy out, earth shattering one. IT WAS GREAT. Afterwards we talked about what made it so great and that was great too. One of the things I did to help me stay engaged—and this might seem a little counter-intuitive but hear me out—was put on a sleeping mask and put in my earplugs during foreplay. I liked this because it cut off the senses that can sometimes distract me and take me out of it, and allowed me to focus solely on physical sensations. It also felt exciting to just give myself over to my partner and feel fully surprised by anything he did because I couldn’t see. So often I struggle with just relaxing and taking my turn, letting it be almost all about me, and trusting that my partner enjoys that too—and why wouldn’t he?! I enjoy giving him his turn. And then it was OUR turn. This sexual exploration has been really stressful but gratifying. It was hard talking about it all the time but now that it’s paying off it’s really wonderful. And it’s not like he was the problem by any means. Every person likes different things, if you don’t share what those things are for you, don’t be surprised when they do what has worked in the past for other people. It can be weird and awkward and take you out of it, but it’s so worth talking about until it’s right.

For more on the female orgasm, watch this: Explained: Female Orgasm.

This short episode is great for anyone to watch. Because it reveals how little we understand the female orgasm, and how little women are taught to do it, or are even exposed to what its’ like. There is no discussion of the female orgasm in health class. Now I’m not saying they need to get into teaching kids how to be good at sex, but shouldn’t I understand the mechanics of my vagina and all it’s capable of? We don’t even get what the muscles are doing during a female orgasm, BECAUSE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE CARE. Just watch it, I won’t recap the entire thing, it’s like 16 minutes and there’s not one person who shouldn’t understand the female orgasm, besides maybe gay men. It probably won’t come up for you. But it’s still interesting.

Well that’s all I’ve got for today. Also I got my temporary motorcycle license, just a fun fact.

Love,
Heidi Girl

Wow, day 2. Can’t remember the last time I made it to day 2.

This Noom app is working already, it has check lists. I LOVE CHECK LISTS, I want to check them off. The only thing I don’t care for with the app is it wants you to weigh in daily. I don’t really mind doing that, I’m not afraid of my scale, I’m just not sure how helpful it is. I guess the point IS healthy weight loss, and that is a way to track progress..sort of, but if I do start strength training it’s not the most accurate reading. My scale has body fat percentage though so I guess that’s useful.

Anyways. Two goals I’ve been working on for a while now are water intake and sleep. I feel like I am surrounded by a circle of people who doesn’t exactly brag about not getting enough sleep, but they like make fun of me for succeeding at sleeping more, or act annoyed about it. I mean SORRY that I live alone, have no kids, and set my own schedule. But I’m not going to sleep less to make you feel better about your own dumb choices (jks). The other pet peeve I have is when I say how late I’ve slept, and people are like “oh wow well I’ve been up since like 4am”. Okay WELL, I was awake until 4am because I’m a night person. There’s still the math that shows we slept the same amount. But today you can scoff, because I went to bed at 1:13am and I woke up officially at 11:13am. According to fitbit 50min of that time was spent awake, but let’s just go ahead and call it what it is. I was asleep for TEN GODDAMN HOURS. Part of why I’m tapering off zoloft is it makes me v sleepy. It didn’t at first but now that I feel better I just think it’s overcompensating. However I missed my last two days because last night I couldn’t find the bottle of pills and I was too tired to look harder. So I don’t know why I slept that much. Maybe because I walked 6.7mi—and as my dad would say in his dad way, these dogs are barkin. Either way, I’m glad. I figure, I wouldn’t sleep that much if my body didn’t need the rest. I realize this isn’t possible for most people, but where possible I say sleep your heart out. As a nation we are pretty sleep deprived, and there’s nothing to be proud of with that. If you want to be better at your job, and have a better quality of life, you need to sleep.

Water is the other big one. I’ve been comparing it to restarting your computer when some inexplicable problem is happening. It’s so obvious, and works 90% of the time. Water is the same. Literally anything going wrong with you mentally or physically water will help. Just throw water on it, until you’ve drowned the problem. When I’m not drinking the booze I guzzle water, and I get hopped up on it. I possess an annoying level of energy and speak way faster than usual which is saying something. According to what my current weight is however, I should be consuming 97oz of water. Seeing as I can barely get in the recommended 64oz I feel like that goal is unattainable unless I am home all day. I have a small enough bladder as is, so I’m gonna try and stick to the 64oz and see how that goes.

The pube situation.
People don’t really care about this, is the general feedback I’m getting from the only person I talk to, Annie. But when has lack of interest ever stopped me from talking about anything? Never.

When I was 15 years old the marching band (I played saxophone) was going to Disney World. I was concerned about the fact that I now possessed a very sad bush, like a bush you might see in winter, all withered and what not. What if it hung out of my swimsuit? My friend suggested I just shave it all off. Now, it wasn’t that long ago that I realized I should be shaving the backs as well as the fronts of my legs so this was a terrifying revelation. And you know what? I talked about how weird it felt not to have pubic hair then as much as I’m talking about how FREAKING ITCHY IT IS to grow it out now. But if you do the math, I’ve shaved my pubis for 14 years now. That skin is delicate AF as a result. So these sharp, mean, hairs pushing their way through is painful and uncomfortable which is why I have continued to shave all these years. I make it about 3 days before I simply cannot take it anymore.

But I’m sick of it. That hair serves a purpose, to protect my vagina. And besides, if I’m basically in discomfort every day besides the day I shave anyways what good is shaving? So this time I did my research. I got a face steamer to open those pores, and use my massage oil to soften the skin and—it’s still really itchy and horrible. What can you do? Nothing. Hopefully in another couple weeks this conversation will be over. But when I’m in discomfort I don’t suffer it quietly, I make everyone know my pain. This is big for me, as big as when I realized I could go braless and nobody cared or noticed. Did that stop me from pointing it out to everyone? No. It’s the Heidi way.

Anyways, I’ve almost finished my noom list for the day, I had a banana/almond butter/macadamia nut smoothie, I’ve written this blog, and now I need to poop and do my job. Heidi girl out.

Love,
Heidi Girl

Journey to health, while zoloft tries to thwart me.

For those of you who have only been reading my intermittent sad blogs in the last year or so I would like to warn you that this will be a return to your usual scheduled programming—aka, unfiltered ramblings about whatever occurs to me. In other words if you’re a family member you may not want to continue reading as I tend to talk about vaginas and things of that nature. But maybe you should because who knows, you could learn something horrifying.

Most recent blogs are primarily concerning the mental break down I had last year riiiight around this time. It was an intense existential crisis. I was struggling with super casual topics such as, “why are we even here?” “how does life exist?” “INFINITY” “one day I’ll die!” “ONE DAY MY PARENTS WILL DIE AND WHAT WILL I DO?!”. In addition to that I was questioning pretty much every life choice I’d ever made and wondering if I had set myself up for the completely wrong life.

As cool as not being able to function, eat, sleep, read, watch, talk, or do anything really was, I decided after a month of this I probably needed something beyond my regular therapy. I started zoloft, and it was wonderful. I felt lightly buzzed and zen after a few days, which was desparately needed after weeks of sobbing hysterically. I was eating again! I was eating a lot. Like, a ton. Comfort food mostly, you know the kind—grilled cheese, mac & cheese, cheese crackers, cheese pizza..etc. Soon enough I no longer looked like I was starving to death, and too soon my clothes stopped fitting. Now my bras don’t even fit, which some could argue is a neat problem to have and truthfully the front boob situation I’m pretty chill with, it’s more so the skin flapping over the back strap I’m not a huge fan of. My butt is much rounder which is also v neat, and without clothes on I’m not mad about anything going on. That being said, I’ve put on a cool 25lbs since my depression, when I also happened to be in extremely good shape because I’d been working out HARD for four months. The thing is you can’t really exercise when you’re barely eating, and when I started eating again my relationship to food felt different, because I was like OMG I NEED TO EAT OR I WILL LITERALLY STARVE TO DEATH. But it’s super easy to form bad habits fast.

Recently I unearthed some other interesting information concerning the Zoloft who had once been my dearest friend. After you’ve been on it 6 months to a year (it’s been about 11 mo), you gain weight! WOO!! This explained why even after cutting out booze and walking a zillion miles a day for a month I lost zero pounds, in fact I gained pounds. And before you’re like “well Heidi that was probably muscle!” let me stop you, because no it was not. I was only walking. I wasn’t lifting shit. I am a deeply lazy person. But anyways, this new, frustrating information was a relief to discover, but also like..okay well now what?

Luckily I’d already started tapering off zoloft. I was on 50mg, about 2 months ago I went down to like 35, and now I’m at 25. I think I’ll start taking that half pill every other day rather than every day soon, and then eventually nothing at all. But a few weeks ago I started feeling existentially weird again which made me weary, so I’m taking my time. I’d rather be voluptuous and order a new bra then go through the crap storm I went through last year again.

I would looooove not to care, I really would. But I can proclaim self love till the cows come home and it wouldn’t change that I’ve grown up learning from sources all around me that how you look 1000% matters. So when I see a photo of myself hunched over like a troll gremlin I find it hard to be like, “well at least you’re smart and good at things!”. My therapist and I talk about body image but even if I ever leap that particular hurdle it doesn’t change the fact that I do want a good quality of life, so it’s not like taking steps to being physically healthy are going to hurt me. I just hope to eventually be doing it for primarily the right reasons.

SO. I signed up for noom [fitness app, reminds me of talkspace because a live person is my “coach”], and it costs money so if I don’t utilize it I’m going to hate myself. The goal is to lose 20-25lbs by Christmas. Which is a little over a pound a week I think. I’d also like to be off Zoloft by then, have grown out my pubes, lasered my arm pits/bikini line/b hole, be making 5k a month, paying off 1.5k of debt a month, and have seriously deep cleaned my apartment because honestly it’s been a while. So really I won’t be talking about too many offensive things unless you’re offended by having to hear about the growth of pubic hair. But I AM going to talk about it, because growing it out is a horrible process for my delicate pubis skin, and I don’t feel like me or my skin should have to go through it alone.

So there you have it, for the next several months I’ll be talking about my health journey and pube growth, and probably anything else relevant that occurs to me. Welcome back to a Very Heidi Time.

Love,
Heidi Girl

Death is.

A month or so ago I tried to write a post about managing anxiety and how I overcame my depression, but I got really side tracked writing about something else and then kinda let it fall to the way side. The truth is, I never got fully “better” from when I really lost it last August. I still obsess over my mortality, all the time. It’s just that the zoloft keeps me from having panic attacks about it.

I take 50mg of Zoloft every night. Since I started taking it I have seen a drastic change in my ability to manage my emotions. It’s not like it makes you delightfully happy—I’d say I’m as capable of the same amount of happiness as I was before—it mostly just helps me not to spiral out of control. I’m really grateful for what it did for me. Before I started taking it I spent two agonizing months breaking down. Getting hysterical in public places. Unable to see the point to anything. It was the lowest I have ever felt, and taking Zoloft really helped me dig my way out of that. But now I feel like I could probably start to ween myself off of it, except for the fact that even with it I still have this unshakeable discomfort with death.

I have talked to a ton of people about death. Every old person I see I want to shout at, “ARE YOU FINE?!” I NEED to know that people are okay with dying. Almost everyone I talk to is. A lot of people don’t think about it. Sometimes I am torn between not wanting to think about it, and leaning in hard. My fear with leaning in was that I’d spiral out of control again, and not find the peace that some people do, because maybe it’s just not in my nature. When I think about how someday I won’t be here I feel this weird sense of urgency to be cool with it, but it’s like time won’t slow down for me to feel that so I feel rushed, pressured and a little crippled by the odd sensation. That was happening earlier today, and I decided I needed to go outside. I barely move during the day and I’ve been trying to move 6 miles because I feel like a fat (I blame society). So I mapped out a 6 mile walk and set off. At first I had my music on but then I thought, “no, you know what? I don’t want to let this discomfort with death control me. I AM going to lean in,” and I searched podcasts about facing your mortality. I ffound a promising one (after accidentally listening to a spooky fictional one) called, “Rethinking Death”. It’s from TED radio hour on NPR.

I wasn’t particularly optimistic, I didn’t think it would upset me but usually the things people say to explain their feelings towards death don’t really help me. For example, I often hear that we should talk more about death because it helps us to realize our lives our finite and we should be living them to the fullest. Nobody has to tell me to live life to the fullest, I do. I have never done anything besides what I wanted to do, and if something is no longer serving me, I get rid of it—even if it takes me a little while. I like most women struggle with body image, but I genuinely do not struggle with self love. Or self care. The self care revolution to me is like, “um yeah of course you should relax and do things for yourself, and absolutely not feel guilty about it.” I travel, I have an amazing home, I prioritize my relationships, I am passionate about my work, I do my best to take care of myself, to continue learning and growing, and be a good human. Truly if I died tomorrow I wouldn’t be like, “BUT WAIT I HAVE SO MUCH LEFT TO DO”. If anything, I’d want to give or contribute more. But I know in my own way I contribute a great deal to my community and the people in my life. It makes me think that part of my problem is I have the recipe for happiness pretty much figured out, and it makes death feel imminent. What else is there to do that will add to my satisfaction? We are programmed to never feel fully satisfied so that we continue to try at life. But I am deeply satisfied in most areas. My issue with death isn’t any of that, it’s just like, death is weird. How can I just not be here one day? Time passes so quickly, it feels like I could wake up tomorrow and be dead and I don’t like that. I find I’m not as panicky about the other questions anymore, like, how does life exist in the first place? That’s just too big of a question that I’m intelligent enough to ask, but not intelligent enough to ever understand. So in general I try not to go down that road.

Anyways. This podcast didn’t disappoint me. It actually made me rethink death in a way that was reassuring, educational, thought provoking, and overall comforting. I’m not going to get into everything that was said but here were my take aways:

We should confront death, we should talk about it, think about it, and view it for what it is. Death IS. It’s a part of an ongoing cycle, a moment in the phenomenon of being alive. We return to the earth and become the nutrients we were nourished by, if we are disposed of properly, which brings me to a section deserving of it’s own subhead, where I am going to get REAL into it.

The Infinity Burial Suit

We SHOULD NOT be cremated or buried in the traditional way. The former blew my mind. Cremation is bad for the environment, like 5,000 lbs of mercury a year bad. I literally had never thought of that before. I just was like “decaying bodies are weird, please just burn me.” But also, I kind of hate the idea of being on fire. I can’t believe my cat was burned into ashes. A thing that I loved, that I held, that was alive—just burnt up and put into a box. Bizarre. But then, the artist who was explaining this went on to further explain that our bodies themselves are full of toxins, 219 pollutants to be exact, and that if we are just buried even without a casket we are harming the environment. Like we hadn’t damaged it enough while we were alive. Add all the chemicals and things we do to bodies to make them seem alive at funerals + a casket, and it’s even worse. Thankfully she had a solution. A mushroom burial suit, designed by Jae Rhim.

This suit, also known as the infinity burial suit is available for purchase through her company Coeio. It does the following:

• Cleanses the body and soil of toxins that would otherwise seep into the environment.
• Delivers nutrients from body to surrounding plant roots efficiently
• Restarts life around the body faster than normal

  On top of leaving the environment better-off, Infinity Burial products:

• Are made of all natural, biodegradable material
• Use no harsh chemicals, preservatives, or processing
• Reunite the body with the earth and the ongoing cycle of life

You could just watch her Ted Talk but here were some of the most important take aways (to me):

We are both responsible for and the victims of our own pollution. Our bodies are filters and store houses for environmental toxins. So what happens to all these toxins when we die? The short answer is: They return to the environment in one way or another, continuing the cycle of toxicity. But our current funeral practices make the situation much worse. If you’re cremated, all those toxins I mentioned are released into the atmosphere. And this includes 5,000 pounds of mercury from our dental fillings alone every year.

And in a traditional American funeral, a dead body is covered with fillers and cosmetics to make it look alive. It’s then pumped with toxic formaldehyde to slow decomposition—a practice which causes respiratory problems and cancer in funeral personnel. So by trying to preserve our dead bodies, we deny death, poison the living and further harm the environment. Green or natural burials, which don’t use embalming, are a step in the right direction, but they don’t address the existing toxins in our bodies. I think there’s a better solution.

And most important for helping me rethink death:

I realize this is not the kind of relationship that we usually aspire to have with our food.We want to eat, not be eaten by, our food. But as I watch the mushrooms grow and digest my body, I imagine the Infinity Mushroom as a symbol of a new way of thinking about death and the relationship between my body and the environment. See for me, cultivating the Infinity Mushroom is more than just scientific experimentation or gardening or raising a pet, it’s a step towards accepting the fact that someday I will die and decay. It’s also a step towards taking responsibility for my own burden on the planet.

Oh my god. How cool. The idea that there is a safe way for me to decompose and become a part of the earth in a safe and nourishing way. When I pause in the woods and think how much comfort I feel from being there, how vital and alive it all feels, I can’t help but think, “it would not be so bad to be at this stage in circle of life”.

What I also realized, is that planning my death is actually appealing to me. A lot of people avoid it, and by avoiding it you have no control in the ultimate unknown circumstance. I do everything else with so much care and pride, why not plan my death in the same way? I keep my apartment clean when I travel so that if anyone robs it they’ll be like, “omg, she keeps such a tidy home.” So imagine the pride I’d feel when they open up my death plan, a beautifully designed, perfect bound book I’d imagine, with photos and a sound track, and say “goddamn, did she have her shit together.” My grampa left the world this way. He thought of everything, so none of us would have to. I imagine one day he was like “ah, all done, now I can die.” And felt the same measure of rest I feel when I actually manage to deep clean my apartment to my satisfaction (it takes five days, haven’t done it in years).

That was something else I was pleased to have confirmed from the NPR talk. Another guest who is an EMT and often with people in their last moments said that pretty much everyone accepted their deaths when he told them there was nothing more he could do for them. THAT IS REASSURING.

This anecdote I’m about to tell will seem disconnected, but it isn’t, just bear with me.

I remember when I was like 18 and I was terrified of what would happen if my boyfriend at the time moved to Seattle like he said he was going to do. I’d think about it all the time, because I knew I wasn’t invited (before you judge me, remember we were EIGHTEEN, I couldn’t spot red flags in a relationship that had my virginity, gimme a break). Anyways, one of my co-workers, said “dump him, just break up with him now, there’s no point if he’s just going to move”. I remember not being ready to hear that. So I just fretted about it every time he mentioned that goal for a solid two years instead, and you know what? He never moved to Seattle. And we broke up anyways. I often imagine swooping in on little 18 yr old bebe Heid and being like, “oh dear, if you knew that this wasn’t even going to happen you’d realize how silly it is to be worrying! Stop wasting that energy!”

Worrying is awful, it means you are experiencing the thing you’re worrying about every time you worry about it. Still, easier to know it’s foolish to worry, than to actually stop doing it. But I want to remind myself that old Heidi would probably smack current Heidi and tell her not to worry, because like most things we dread, death is not as awful or frightening as I’m imagining—it’s just that I’m not ready for it yet. I do actually have things left to do, like figure out how to stop blocking myself from orgasming lately (I also blame Zoloft for this, but that’s a different blog). And I haven’t even been to Europe. I have 4 more continents to check out. I want to have a drink with Clem on her 21st birthday, and with Josie on her’s. I want to meet Savannah’s kids. I want to fully embrace my status as the “cool aunt, not like other aunts”. I have a lot of tattoos left to get actually. And other stuff I’m sure. Who knows, I’m losing steam.

So I guess what I’m rambling on and on about is that this podcast did help me rethink death. It helped me to realize I should plan my own, that I can leave a nourishing mark on the world, that by not worrying so much I could embrace life better and not feel a sense of urgency that it’s finite, but still take full advantage of the magic of existing at all. I was lucky enough to be born into privilege, I have money, security, a home, I live in a mostly free country, I can do pretty much whatever I want. It would be pretty stupid to continue to dread what’s next, rather than embrace that as well. After all, “to the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure” —Dumbledore, obviously.

Love,

Heidi Girl

P.S. to whom it may concern,

DEATH PLAN SO FAR

• Infinity burial suit, I think I maybe have to train mushrooms to eat me also.
• I don’t know where these are allowed to be buried yet, so…location Tbd
• I do NOT want to die in a hospital, hopefully there will be some cool modern assisted living/hospice where I can die in my home, and my body won’t be rushed out and everyone will cover me in flowers or something. Or greens. I like eucalyptus and rosemary. And cilantro. and herbal essences shampoo.
• I want annie to bake a pie and eat it beside my body while she cries. No one else can have any pie. It’s my death pie.
• I want to be buried with my baby blanket.
• I want all my equipment to be donated to hopeful designers/photographers who can’t afford their own.
• I want all my possessions to be either claimed or disposed of in an environmentally safe way.
• I’d like someone to keep a small suit case with things that smell like me so they can smell me when they miss me like I do with my grandparents. Probably savannah, if she even knows what I smell like, and if she outlives me.
• I want everyone effected by my death to plan a small trip, one they wouldn’t normally take because of X, Y, Z. When they are on that trip I want them to eat a good meal, have a good cocktail and get a pedicure.
• People always say “I want everyone to party at my funeral!” I think that’s probably not realistic, but I do want everyone to have good cocktails, good food, and look at a slide show of the images I captured in my travels. Maybe that’s narcissistic, but they’re special to me, I’m proud of them, and I hope they’ll inspire some of those people to get out there.
• That’s all I can think of for now, I’d write letters. Maybe I should do that every 10 years, because who knows when I’m going to get run over on my bike.

My rant about the internet, our shrinking worlds, and my frustrations with the realities of my profession.

Let me preface what is about to be a rant with the fact that I love the internet, I really do. I love that it spies on me and tells me exactly what I want and need so I don’t have to spend hours searching for what I want and need [I do anyways].

But the internet causes everything to cycle so quickly that it makes my job, which I also love, kind of annoying at times. I am SO SICK, of the campaigns/copy writing that originate and then get copied over and over. I’m annoyed by the language that starts out annoying, then becomes ironic, and then quickly annoying again.

As a designer who now needs to know about marketing I find it debilitating sometimes. I encourage all of my clients to not sound like everyone else on the internet, but that’s hard to do because someone will see it, copy it, and it will become overdone just like everything else.

Right now I feel like everyone is being encouraged to be authentic, because only presenting your perfect life is annoying as well, and also makes other people depressed, but the version of authenticity that is being presented is inspired by a bunch of other authentics and everyone feels exactly the same. HOW DO I MAKE PEOPLE ORIGINAL IN THIS SOCIAL MEDIA CLIMATE?! How do I keep them from feeling repetitive and irritating like everything else?

On a more personally relevant note, I used to blog about my woes and I often did it in a comedic way, not like I was the originator of that, but now that seems to be exclusively how people talk about their woes or in the other extreme it’s like “don’t sweat the little things because tomorrow you could be DEAD”. Jesus okay, first of all the problem with that is if you live every moment like you are on the edge of death you are going to be an anxious mess. I know this because for the last quarter of a year I’ve been obsessing over the fact that I will one day die. And when I get to lose myself in an activity like organizing my kitchen, and decided it’s really important, I feel amazing. On the flip side with everyone joking about the hard parts of life it’s hard to tell if anyone is actually sharing your struggles. Currently I turn to anything and everything for reassurance and empathy that what I’ve been going through is normal and that people have good ways of dealing with it, but I’m becoming convinced everyone is a complete fucking disaster and we’re all just walking around laughing about it. Which is fine to an extent, but nothing really gets solved that way.

In theory this is an amazing time for my career. Everyone and their mom wants a personal brand, people finally appreciate good design and **sort of** see the value in it, but it also means a lot of people are rising up with the advances in technology and self education and claiming they can do what I do, which they probably can. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me a little anxious. I often wonder what advancements we’ll see in the next decade that will require me to completely re-educate myself. My dream job was never crafting tons of content for social media, figuring out work arounds for obnoxious algorithms, or determining what and when to share but I’ve accepted that about 50-75% of my job is just that. I don’t mind it, I honestly enjoy problem solving, but it means I’m balls deep in digital media everyday frequently debilitated by pinterest paralysis and irritation that everything is starting to feel kind of the same.

Part of why it feels the same is that social media is a sounding board for your own views and world. We are shrinking our influences instead of expanding them but it doesn’t feel that way because when someone has millions of followers you feel like you’re tapping into a larger and different community than your own. But the reality is that my world becomes increasingly gentrified, and I become further away from understanding and learning from other cultures in a way that isn’t just me (or the general white) taking and appropriating without really understanding. I try to avoid this by seeking out videos on things like “what black people hate that white people ask them” [arguably the whitest search ever] or “polyamorous people answering common questions”, etc.  I’m passively trying to expand my world but I know I’m barely scraping the surface and that it will get increasingly difficult as the internet forces me into a bubble of more me’s—and it’s hard to fight the presentation of everything you love right at your finger tips even though it turns out that’s preventing you from experiencing other influences that you could use.

This is a self gratifying, semi-pointless rant because I’m trying to build my own brand and services, and one thing I’m not worried about is appearing different. I’m not going to be different in what I offer, sure I have a unique perspective and style but I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m the ONLY ONE who can do what I do. Tons of people can probably. My goal is to inform truthfully and accurately what I offer, and make sure people get what I’m like so that they aren’t like “wow you’re an asshole why did I hire you!” instead they’ll be like “wow you’re an asshole, I want to hire you!” I also want to continue trying to present a truthful front anywhere I’m representing myself. Like, I’m not posting stories because I think I have cool things to share, it’s because I had a lonely day and it feels nice to know someone is following along with it even though they probably don’t care that much. Although, the hand held clippers I featured in my story yesterday ARE pretty cool, but I could just tell that to people who will find it relevant.

I don’t want to make it seem like I have this wonderful, perfect, enviable life, and I also don’t want it to seem like I think that I don’t. I think I have a really decent life, mostly by chance. I was born to an upper middle class family with liberal views, I’m white, I have good genes, I had a grandfather who financially planned well and consequently dug me out of several holes, I have access to health care, healthy food, a great support system of friends and family, an amazing job + boss, a wonderful boyfriend, and it’s all really great. I also experience anxiety that very occasionally triggers depression and existential crisises, but unless there’s an apocalypse or I have a physical health crisis it’s extremely unlikely that my world will ever go to shit. I mean we all die, I don’t get to claim that as my own personal struggle. And sometimes things that look and seem like they’d be great and amazing weren’t completely amazing, and I have a hard time and get sad for no reason. I’m starting to ramble here, but my point is I hope that whenever I shout into the void I’m shouting things that are true, and not annoying or ignorant. But everyone is annoying so that’s probably a futile hope.

Anyways, that’s my rant for the day, back to figuring out how to craft unique and original brands that aren’t annoying.

Love,
Heidi Girl

Dang 2017. You sucked.

I haven’t really felt much like writing in months, my depression really hung around and my questions about why we are here as well as my basic discomfort with existence have lingered. But as another angsty friend said, “I’d imagine we’ll be zen as fuck by the time we are 40”. That notion gives me a lot of comfort, however, like with anything I know I have to confront all my uncomfortable thoughts and feelings to make peace with them. So I have been doing so reluctantly, and things are going better.

I think this year has knocked a lot of people on their asses. Hard. Maybe that’s happening every year and I’m just at a point in my life where are lot of my peers are facing up to the same kinds of struggles. I think women probably have their midlife crises younger since we have to decide if we want kids before our bodies decide that we can’t, so that could be part of it too. But I also think that politically people don’t feel as safe and secure as they did with Obama, or you know..without an emotionally compromised toddler making the calls. Plus every year our exposure to what people all over the world are experiencing increases. I am not informed enough to know if things have gotten that much worse, or if I am just now realizing it because of my access to media. It’s sort of hard to feel good when I think about places where women have zero rights, when we’re as bent out of shape as we are about our lack of equal rights here. I can’t even imagine, except reading A Handmaid’s Tale is helping. That idea is so possible, and it’s terrifying.

It’s not that hard to understand why people are struggling with all this information, and possible catastrophe. And I can’t be mad at the fact that I’m broadening my mind to really think about what other people go through. Like REALLY think about it. My life is pretty cushy, and I still feel uncomfortable so it’s hard to wrap my head around.

So, what I’ve learned this year is that sometimes you have to fully confront all these impossible to understand things, and then balance that out with focusing on the mundane. How will I pay those bills? How do I make enough money to someday build my dream home? Is so and so mad at me? Why does Bellatrix keep peeing next to the litter box instead of in it when I’m gone? You set small goals, knowing it’s all kind of pointless but like..we have to be here unless we intend to kill ourselves so you may as well enjoy it.

Existing and not existing are the most natural things in the world. That’s the conclusion I’ve arrived at. And the only point to life that I can discern is human connection, and connection to our planet and the universe we live in. Making life better for those around us as much as possible, and thinking outside of ourselves. When my time comes to not exist, I hope I’ll have made peace with it, but even if I don’t, I doubt I’ll be any more bothered by not existing after having lived than I was by not existing before I lived.

Getting back to my specific bout with mental collapse—I figured out a lot. For one, I know I still want to live alone. That doesn’t totally rule out marriage as long as Aaron doesn’t mind living separately, but I do think it rules out kids. I’m still not 1000% sure but Clementine brings so much joy to my life that I can’t really imagine being unfulfilled in that area.

Aaron and Clem were uncertainties for a time though. I just had no idea what was making me happy anymore, and what was scaring me. In some ways her existence defined time for me in a way I was struggling to deal with. I was no longer the kid generation if Clem existed, she’s the kid generation, which bumps me up in line of the mortality queue. It freaked me out, having the future be more hers than mine. Sort of the general her, as in that part of my life is behind me. I know where I’m going, and somehow that’s more unsettling than wondering. I wasn’t sure about Aaron after years of trying to get settled into a healthy relationship with the complications of his situation. It was Clem’s mom who said “no one should worry about anything for like six months, things are going to feel really different.” She wasn’t kidding. Aaron now dishes out the love and attention I always wanted, I see him a ton (by my standards), things with Clem are so wonderful, we all eat dinner together, celebrate holidays together, etc. It’s actually a totally new thing for me to deal with, things just going well. I’m like wait..what? SHOULDN’T THIS BE HARDER? WHY ARE YOU BEING SO NICE TO ME? WHAT IS HAPPENING I NEED TO STRUGGLE. But as Aaron pointed out there’s lots of other things to struggle about. Struggling about not struggling probably doesn’t need to be one of them. He has really been there for me and now he’s giving so much that I hardly know how to receive it, but I know I’m lucky and I’m working on it.

I was having a hard time with tons of change initially but now I’ve embraced it and am making some changes of my own. After the first quarter of this year I’ll just have my own business again, with Steph (my current and wonderful boss) being one of my core clients. Through my years working for and with her I’ve figured out how to run a business that will allow me to flourish best (I hope) and do more of the work I love. She really is a good coach! You should hire her maybe. I’m working on her website presently, just saying. It’s fun to settle into the problem solving aspects of this new endeavor. I have several more months of making this transition but it’s exciting to think about. I’m thinking about the dream home I could someday have built. I am realizing, I haven’t peaked. I think settling into my career and relationship just made me feel like my life was over and there wasn’t a ton to look forward to and that made the future seem extremely present when in reality…I’m 29. Pretty sure a lot of the people older than me that I turned to for advice and comfort were rolling their eyes on the inside. There’s so much time left that it drags. And I am excited to see what things I’ll do with it, who I’ll do them with, and how I can make an impact in my own small nook of this sad, chaotic world. Probably it will be a little one but that’s okay.

This is such a stream of consciousness post, but aren’t they all? I just felt like writing again. I have a feeling I’ll be feeling like it more from now on. I hope. I do think that I have months maybe even years ahead of me where I’ll struggle with existentialism, but I won’t run away from it anymore until it just feels fine and normal again. After all there are plenty of humans who seem perfectly fine. So I’ll be fine too. And so will you. It’s soothing to settle into feeling not quite right knowing that eventually you will.

Try not to suck so hard 2018. But if we’re being honest, I don’t have a ton of faith in you not to.

Love,
Heidi Girl