My Mother points to this story when she’s explaining how I’ve always been overly concerned with other people’s feelings. It was 1990, New Kids on the Block just dropped Step By Step (ooh baybaaay). I was 9 years old and that album and my hamster Dusty were the most important things in my life that summer. I was a ridiculously huge fan, my room was plastered in posters and collages I had cut out from Tiger Beat and other such bubblegum publications. I had stickers and t-shirts and even my bed sheets that were graced by the faces of NKOTB. Initially I had a crush on Joey Mac, that baby face, those icy blues, his prepubescent swoon-inducing songbird vocals on “Please Don’t Go Girl”…. 9 year old me was like “THIS IS SAFE AND I FEEL SQUIRMY”. But then I matured a little, as you do, and it was all about Jordan. His smile, and the way he sang “Baby I believe in us…..”. Ohhh and the way he danced, I was lost in daydreams of marrying him and doing things I couldn’t quite imagine as he sang to me.

Later on that year something inside of me shifted. I started listening to other albums that had just come out, fucking Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson,

Pummmmp Up the Jam (pump it up) by Technotronic, Love Shack by the B52′s. I heard Just a Friend by Biz Markie at the roller rink in my shitty neighbourhood. It just hit me. New Kids were shit. It was crappy formulaic pop music and it just kind of… sucked. I mean they were hot and sure they could sing but like, that’s not fucking satisfying me like Nothing Compares (2U) by Sinead O’Conner was. Hallelujah right?

Except at this point being a New Kids super fan was a huge part of my identity and I fretted over how to let my parents know I was undergoing such a big change. Looking back I’m not sure what I was afraid of, that they might be upset with me for suddenly taking down all of my posters and various shrines? That they might criticize me for being so fickle? Either way I was nervous about breaking it to them. Which is fucking adorable right? 9-and-three-quarters me sat my parents down with my most sombre tone and dropped the bomb, “I just wanted you to know, I don’t like the New Kids anymore.” I exhaled a deep breath, my anxiety cresting like a wave now that I’d gotten this off of my chest…

Now this is funnier if you know my parents, who are bonafide hippies and put on such supportive faces while they cringed through *3 albums* at that point of my obsessive pop-tart dance-routine-making hair-brush-microphone livingroom concerts. (My Mama loved Donny Osmond as a kiddo so she understood.) But the bottom line is they didn’t give a fuck! Of course, as parents, they knew my teeny-bop admiration was just a phase. I guess in retrospect I was worried they might not accept me as I grew and changed my mind.

They stifled giggles and assured my furrowed brow that it was okay to change my tastes, and that my tastes would change a hundred more times before I was through.

I remember fighting back tears of relief, because it was okay.

It’s taken a lot of years and a lot of work for me to not feel I have to ask permission to change. To be flexible with myself and my desires. To find partners and friends who can transition through different phases of life with me and appreciate that evolution. To really understand that growth and change and ebb and flow are the only real things you can count on. Nothing lasts forever, thank god.

Art: Romantic Anatomy by Lisa Perrin
Words by Heart

Almost two years ago, at my twenty-second birthday party, one of my good friends tied this piece of string around my wrist. I’d worn these kind of wish bracelets before and expected it to fall off in a couple of months or so.

It stayed on for almost two years. I’d worn it doubled around my wrist for two years. It got thinner, it wore in some places. I got used to fidgeting with it. I got used to it.

Arbitrarily, with nothing provoking it, it fell off of my wrist yesterday. I was in total shock. I had kind of resigned myself to thinking that it would just stay on there at this point.

It’s silly and petty, but it reminds me that I don’t like change. And it reminds me that I look for meaning in everything. My wrist still has a little line on it from where it was, but it’s fading fast.

Of course, I can’t even bring myself to throw it out yet. This stupid little piece of string. I am so terrible at letting go.

Thoughts (Not Sexy Ones)

So, I had a good cry today.

I’m not really much of a crier. It takes a hell of a lot to get tears out of me. Sometimes, I actually want the relief of crying and the tears just don’t come.

But, I cried today – a real, heavy, fully realized cry – for the first time since I moved here.

It was brought on by the fact that the bus that I was trying to take to the gym wound up taking me five miles away from my place and nowhere even close to my gym. By the time I realized that this bus had taken the wonkiest route ever, completely ignoring the schedule listed on the transit website, I was somewhere fairly foreign. Right after I was able to vaguely figure out how to get home on my phone, my cell promptly died.

The walk was long and, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t seem to find a bus headed in the opposite direction. Everything is so spread out here and I’m not used to that yet. Being without a car here, while at first glance seemed manageable, makes stuff difficult.

When I got in the door, I started crying. Not because of the silly erratic bus schedule, that has already let me down twice since Monday. For the first time, I acknowledged how far away from home I am. I’ve never lived this far from everything I’ve known. Before this, almost my entire life could be contained in a two and a half hour radius, give or take.

Now, I’m out here. And I’m happy to be here, I’m having an amazing time. But, I’m far away from my family, my friends, my boyfriend, a public transit system I knew like the back of my hand. For as much as I’m enjoying myself, I haven’t really stopped to take my entire situation in and acknowledge that this has been a big change and I am allowed to have feelings about it.

So, I let it out of my system today and I’m proud of myself. I’m usually one to say I’m not allowed to feel like A because B is going so well.

Afterwards, I washed off the mascara from my face and gave myself a brutal workout at home, which helped blow off the rest of the steam (and got even more makeup running down my face – yuck).

I’ve mentioned this blog is my only journal. So, consider this one of those lame diary entries you have to sift through to find the good stuff. But, it was good stuff for me.

Here’s to acknowledging change.

Petition to have CNN Apologize on Air for Sympathizing with the Steubenville Rapists

Hi followers,

I know I’ve been a bit quiet lately.

But do me a solid on this one.

Or, you know, just sign this because it should fucking matter to all of you.

<3, Ivy

I got together with an ex the other night as friends. At first, the entire get-together seemed just fine. We shared some laughs, we caught each other up, we really just enjoyed each other’s company on a purely platonic level. We got high and I was seriously feeling great until I realized that there seemed to be an expectation for something physical lingering in the air. And it was terribly uncomfortable.

In the past, I’ve created a lot of problems for myself in blurring the lines between friend and something else. I had made a pact with myself to really exercise more caution when getting to that level with friends and to, unless the case was very promising, keep things platonic.

Not to mention this person is my ex. I was really, really hurt on repeated occasions and I really fought to try to keep interaction peaceful and platonic, both of which were made nearly impossible for me by the other party. This situation is just one of many. And then it’s almost always turned back to me and made to feel like my fault.

This time, I rejected the advances and I was almost automatically shut out. Not physically, but certainly on every other level. Things got terribly uncomfortable. I kept asking if I should leave and got defensive responses each time. I was dropped off at my house soon after in near-complete silence. I felt awful.

I’m proud of myself for the decision I made and the restraint I exercised. But, by the same token, I realize how easy the other choice could have been and how much instant gratification I could get out of it. But, I am really trying to change the ways I make choices about certain people and situations, however difficult it proves to be.