So for my Rhetorics of Silence course, I've decided to examine the silences found within people's willingness or unwillingness to discuss sex. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've been sending a few informal questions around for people to answer, and I figured I'd post them here as well in case anyone would like to answer. You'll be kept strictly anonymous — only I can see your answers, and comments to this post are screened if you'd like to elaborate or comment further. Thanks for your help, everyone!

Poll #1793739 The Sex/Sexuality Conversation Survey
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 5

On a scale of 1 to 5, how comfortable would you say you are discussing sex and sexuality in casual conversation (with 1 being “not at all” and 5 being “very”)? If you feel comfortable, feel free to elaborate on your personal boundaries regarding sexual discussion.

Do you consider yourself a generally open and/or talkative person with other subjects?

Are you currently religious, or do you come from a strongly religious background?

Do you believe that sex and sexuality, regardless of explicitness, are appropriate topics for casual conversation? Why or why not?

Are you sexually active?

Okay, does anyone happen to have a spare fatted calf just lying around? Because we've clearly moved into animal sacrifice territory up here in the Northeast.


Now, I admit I was one of those people cracking wise about the earthquake we had — oh dear God, my desk shook a little. Yeah, I figured we'd all be okay.

Hurricanes are a different story — South Jersey is very heavily wooded, and high winds = tons of downed trees and power lines. I'm always a little on edge during bad storms, since our water table is so high and a lot of the swamp maples in our yard have shallow roots due to their characteristic horizontal spread. I'm always waiting for a tree to fall on the house. We've been lucky so far, but again: lots of trees, high winds.

It doesn't help that August has been one of the wettest months on record for the area, so the ground's already saturated, and we're still dealing with the fallout from the massive flooding we incurred two weeks ago when I was in Boston. James has already been tapped for storm work on Sunday, the shore's been evacuated, and my Facebook feed is full of people posting pictures and statuses about hours-long lines and massive inventory shortages at stores across the Delaware Valley. We're being told to brace for a good week without power. Everyone in the area is about two steps away from complete and utter panic.

Gotta love Mid-Atlantic weather. We can handle massive snowstorms... aaand that's about it. I had to laugh when I checked the university's emergency plans — the section on badass blizzards is very detailed and well-developed, but hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes just get little half-hearted blurbs, almost like whoever was writing them was like, "Honestly, we have no idea how to handle these. Um. Anyone here from out west have any ideas?"

I was going to head back up to the city to move back into my apartment (Car's been staying there over the summer), but with how bad things could potentially be, I've decided to stay in South Jersey for the weekend to help hold down the fort (it helps that Monday classes have been cancelled, with Tuesday still up in the air). My mother's become a lot more panicky in emergencies over the years, and Carly... is Carly. My job is to make sure everything's secure and we're good on supplies, and try to keep everyone moderately calm, because I like to pretend to be a grown-up.


All of you in the mid-Atlantic region/Northeast: please be careful, and make sure you have some form of emergency plan in effect. Be safe, guys.

An entry my mother wrote in my baby book:

May 24, 1989

"Today Carly really clunked Briana hard in the middle of the back, so Briana was screeching! Carly got put in the time-out chair for her four minutes and told why — Briana now stopped crying, ran over, stood next to Carly in the chair, held one of her hands, put her other arm around her and her head on her shoulder, and stood there with her while Carly worked her four minutes (and she'd been the one beaten on!)."

Ladies and gentlemen, my life in a nutshell.

Assistantship is go! I'm officially the Writing Studies program's resident multimedia guru/IT liasion/idea person. It'll probably only be 12 - 15 hours of work a week, but hey, it's something, and something I very genuinely enjoy doing at that. Besides, given how many times I was told that I really shouldn't hold my breath about getting an assistantship, I'm happy with whatever they give me.

Most importantly, though... stuff like this makes me feel like I have worth. I've kind of felt like I did in those first weeks back at St. Joe's after Ben left me, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing with my life, trying to reassemble the shattered pieces and keep looking for something meaningful in my life.

But now... it's like I'm back on my chosen path, after straying from it for a little while there. I should be finished my MA by this time next year, I'm well-known and respected in my department at St. Joe's (I'm going to a faculty meeting on August 22nd... should be fun!), and even though sometimes I freak out about turning 25 and think that I haven't accomplished a fraction of what I should have by now... overall, I think I'm doing okay.

I've spent so long digesting other people's poison that I've been losing my way. I'm not saying it's not going to happen again — I seem to have a knack for attracting people who mistreat me — but I'm getting back to myself, and I know I'm okay. I know I'm not stupid or crazy or ugly or worthless, no matter how many people have told me I am. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but somehow, I keep going. I don't know how, I don't know why, but I do. That's got to be worth something.

And you know? I'm beginning to think that I am, too. :)


ETA: Oh, and I got an A on that paper, and one of my professors is urging me to have it published.

Why, hello there, life. I like you.

Paper submitted. Fingers crossed for my professor giving me a decent grade on it.


Now, as I recover from my recent onslaught of work, a meme from the lovely yuenmei:


GUESS THAT SONG!


1.) Open your playlist and put it on random
2.) Write a couple lyrics from the first 15 songs that play (I did 30 because I like this meme — and so will I!)
3.) Have everyone guess the song!
4.) Cross songs out as they're guessed
5.) NO CHEATING AND GOOGLE SEARCHING LYRICS! :\


(Note: I skipped anything not in English and 99 percent of my weird/obscure metal collection. This... narrowed things a bit.)


( Let's play! )

Lately I've had this overwhelming urge to just grab life by the throat and scream something like "Jesus Christ would you please slow down".

Between the intensity of my summer class, meetings and preparation for my super-secret fall assignment, helping my family with tons of heavy lifting and such (since I'm home for the summer and arguably stronger than even the men in my family), and continuing to work through my own lingering wounds from earlier this year, I'm about 95 percent dead. Also, I am freaking right the fuck out about turning twenty-five because I feel like a total loser who hasn't accomplished a fraction of what she should have by this point. I'm surprised my hair hasn't started falling out (...seriously, it's done that before).

Thank God for mitigating factors. Like the reminders that M. didn't destroy my reputation at St. Joe's, and rather than being vilified and outcasted, I actually have quite a few people who like and respect me on that campus. I actually had dinner with one of my old theology professors on Friday (I took Gender & Christian Spirituality with her last fall — the class where I met M., as it happens), and we had a few hours of really, really deep and heartfelt discussion. She's no stranger to unhealthy/abusive relationships, and we've talked at length about the damage they cause and how you kind of have to dig your way out from under them (when I mentioned my self-doubts, she patted my hand and said the only thing I was guilty of was being deeply compassionate. That was quite nice).

I also have a meeting about my aforementioned super-secret assignment tomorrow afternoon, at which point it should be my confirmed/public assignment that I can proudly announce everywhere. And I'll actually have some details, which will be very nice.


Aaand I have a new cross-stitch project: something my fabulous friend Lauren said, because she is witty and gorgeous and wonderful: http://pics.livejournal.com/bri_ecrit/pic/000p70ew

(I designed the chart myself and everything. Success!)

Of course, at the rate I'm going, I probably won't be able to start it until I'm in the airport waiting to head to Boston, but still! Something to look forward to.


...I should really go work on the final draft of that project my professor didn't like, but I think I'm going to take a nap because I am lazy. Also because I still hate said project and it hates me.

I love grad school. Really. This is my happy face.

Workshopping last night was brutal — my professor didn't flat-out tell me that my draft was an unsalvageable mess, but it was heavily implied. I mean, I know I wrote it at the last minute (while I was in a seriously bad mood, no less), but now that she's said I have to rework the form, the narrative, pretty much everything, I just have no idea where to go with it, and the final version's due Tuesday.

(Basically, we had to pick a modern or historical example of voice, writing, and social justice and write a creative response — I, being the brilliant sort, decided to go with female-authored mystical texts of the Late Middle Ages as subverting the dominant male theological paradigm of the time. My professor did say it would be fabulous if I could pull it off, but where it is right now... yeah. It's just not working.)

It's a ridiculously gorgeous day here in the Delaware Valley, so I think I'm going to head off to campus in awhile — you know, kick back in the sun and do some free writing, see where it goes. I'm still building my confidence and courage back up a bit after the Ben/M. one-two punch of the past two years, and I'm sure getting out should help that.

(...I initially typed "getting old". Why yes, I am freaking out a bit about turning twenty-five. Thank you for asking.)


On the fun side of things, I should be in Boston with the completely and utterly fabulous yuenmei for a few days next month, which = YAY, I still have that super-secret thing in the fall to look forward to, and I'm steadily getting back to being happy in my life. I just have to keep on my toes and avoid dating assholes for a little while, and I should be grand.


Now to regain some semblance of writing confidence. At least it's a really nice day for it.

I've been reading a lot lately.

My theology professor from the course in which I met M. gave me two books to read, all about finding peace and acceptance after abusive relationships (she'd had one herself, and I still had some lingering wounds from Ben -- we talked a lot). But I've also been indulging in some leisure fiction reading, just to help pass the time.

As usual, my hero Juliet Marillier offers wisdom in prose:

"I was a different girl then," Creidhe said carefully. The next part of this was going to be very difficult to put into words.

"I thought I loved him. I thought that was what love was, caring so much that it didn't matter if he hurt me, if he ignored me, if he snapped at me. I thought it didn't matter if he placed no value on the things I cared about. My dreams told me of a time when that would change, when he would see me for what I really was, and we would lie under that blue blanket together, man and wife, as I always imagined it would be.

[...]

"I discovered I had been deluding myself as I sat at the loom dreaming my fair dreams of the future. You do not make a man, or a woman, into someone you can love; you do not adjust the other to fit your vision of the perfect mate, the one you would hold to you above all others. He is himself; he will not change at your will. He makes his own path. Over a long time I have come to recognize that this is so."


—Juliet Marillier, Foxmask

It's taken time, and a lot of tears, but I have, too.

Lauren: I hate teamwork and other people. Just let me do it myself in a corner, dammit.

Me: This is my new approach to relationships.

Went back up to the city for the first time since I last saw M. in person, the day of my graduation. It was... bittersweet, to say the least. I just sat on my balcony for awhile, looking over at the university and praying that I'm strong enough to deal with seeing him on-campus next semester. I can't help feeling like it's going to rip my heart out all over again. At least I never had to see Ben after that debacle.

I'm still holding on, thank God. Car's been talking me through a lot of it. The nice part about an often-bitchy sister like Car is that if I had done something to deserve this, if I'd been horrible or clingy or demanding, she'd be the first person to tell me to suck it up, get the fuck over it, it's all my fault. But even she's adamant that, no, M.'s an ass, and I really, really didn't deserve to be used and lied to like that.

Now I've just got to work on believing it, believing that I didn't deserve it, that it really is all M. and his issues, and that I deserve love and respect. God, if only he hadn't told me how much he "loved" me, how much he wanted me. It hurts so much worse to have all that taken away. Again.


I still haven't gotten back in with my counselor yet (still holding on until Monday...), but one thing she used to have me do when my thoughts were getting all jumbled up and I was starting to tear myself apart was to analyze how I was feeling, and what the actual facts are in a given situation.

...I've gotta say — it helped a little.

( Therapeutic/self-empowering stuff. Very skippable if you're so inclined. )