"All I can do is be me, whoever that is"
--Dillion

About Me

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I am a lot of things, sometimes it drives me insane,and I think too much, but at the end of the day I am happy with who I am. I spend most of my time trying to understand this life, creating the person I would like to be, and learning. I always appreciate the little things, and I try to be better than, and to make better, the bad things.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Reality Romance

I have lived with boys my entire life. I have woken up to SportsCenter, come home and discreetly turned down the volume of whatever game was going on, and tried to zone out the zombie apocalypse on Sunday nights. But with a female roommate, a whole new devil moved into our home; The Bachelor. My roommate, like many women, would float home on Monday nights to the anticipation and seduction of, dare I say it, Juan Pablo. Despite being dead set against shows exactly like this one, I found myself casually tuning in periodically until Juan's exotic Venezuelan accent and rock hard chest sucked me in entirely.

Every Monday seemed farther apart from the one before as I eagerly awaited the romance and imagined being the lucky girl chosen out of a pack of 27 beautiful women to ride off into the Fijian sunset riding on an elephant ( I don't even know if there are elephants in Fiji). It didn't take long for me to realize that watching this show was affecting me, more than that, disrupting my relationship. My fiancé would hand me a box of chocolates on valentines day, or take me to dinner on my birthday, and I'd think, or accidentally say, "Why can't you set up a private concert with my favorite band while we bungee jump down a waterfall surrounded by candles and baby monkeys?" To which he respond, "because I'm not backed by ABC."...If you loved me you'd find a way!

I am not ignorant about these lies, and this show still subconsciously ninjad its' was into my brain until I had doubts about my life. I found myself so angry at this show for making me unsatisfied with my perfectly healthy and  REAL relationship. Whether we are aware or not, these shows affect us! They ruin women's expectations for romance, and completely distort their idea of true love, at least that's what I think Don Jon was trying to get across between the obnoxious Jersey accents and abhorrent masterbation scenes.

But then the show took a giant turn. I've never gone from wanting to be someone's dirty little concubine, to absolutely despising them so quickly. In the season finale Juan Pablo, with a disgustingly giant Neil Lane rock in his pocket, chose not to propose to anyone, I was outraged! How dare he not commit his entire life to a woman he met 6 weeks ago! What does he mean he doesn't know her well enough to love her?! Stop being selfish! This isn't about you Juan, it's about all of us out her that want to believe in some bullshit love that doesn't really exist and spend the rest off our lives turning down good guys in pursuit of it! 

It makes me giggle that this show upset me so for not being a realistic representation of love, and then pissed me off for delivering the exact opposite. Because the truth is, we don't watch reality tv shows to see reality, we watch them to escape it. 

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Changing my Lens

I've spent so much of my life wondering and worrying about the pressing issue of my fast approaching future. I couldn't decide what I wanted to be and all my choices sent me into massive decision anxiety. Suddenly I found myself in the doldrums where I refused to move forward in any direction and instead put all my efforts into stopping time. I've suddenly realized I wasn't going about my future in a helpful way. I would beg God to make my heart's deepest desires loud and clear, help me find what I love doing, what I'm good at. Through all of it I kept my future in my own hands, grasping it tightly. It wasn't until these last couple of years when I have truly relinquished complete control over my life that I've made any progress. Lost and tired I finally handed my dreams, goals, fears, and future over to God and said a different prayer; please use my life to make the world a better place. Please help me be the person you created me to be, your will be done with my life. In doing this I realized something, maybe what I am "meant" to do isn't something that will come easy to me, or even something that I love. Maybe I do have a calling but contrary to what I have always believed, it will be hard, it will challenge me everyday and some days I might hate it. Maybe God calls you to do things in life that don't play off your strengths, but instead force you to face and cripple your weaknesses.

~Care