Life after fairy tales

"I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit - but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled. I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place. I found that it was useless to look for kindred souls in the multitude; one might stumble on such here and there, but as a rule it seemed to me that the majority of people lived for the things of time and sense alone and could not understand my other life. So I piped and danced to other people's piping - and held fast to my own soul as best I could."
-L.M. Montgomery

"Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return."
-Haruki Mirakami

I have the cutest nephews ever, not braggin, just sayin.

"I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible..."

–Prozac Nation

"And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on.

And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it." - Elizabeth Wurtzel

"Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all." –Emily Giffin

 

I found three of my old journals while I have been home, and I am looking forward to going through and reading them. Perhaps redicovering just how annoying I was as a tween-teen.

The Environmental Working Group wrote the Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change and Health. It concluded that if every American avoided eating cheese and meat one day a week, emissions would be lowered as much as they would be by removing 7.6 million cars from the roads. This is the kind of incremental shift I urge you to specialize in during 2012, Sagittarius -- whether it's in your contribution to alleviating the environmental crisis or your approach to dealing with more personal problems. Commit yourself to making little changes that will add up to major improvements over the long haul.

This horoscope is most definetly referring to my unhealthy, unactive lifestyle. Which I plan on making major improvements upon in the coming year. I have always sworn that I would not become one of those women who let themselves go as they get older. Yet, that is what I have become. I am now the heaviest I have ever been (I don't care to disclose the actual numbers), I smoke, and I havent had a consistent workout routine since I moved to Arizona. This has got to stop. Seriously.

 Food makes me happy, but fitting into my jeans comfortably makes me more happy.

That's a pretty good depiction of me.

I am currently in love with the photos in this blog. They are from Dina Goldstein's "Fallen Princess" series.

 Since I love fairy tales, but beleive that they have such an impact on young girls who end up in believing in "happily ever after", I think these photos really capture a realistic interpretation of life after fairy tales.

 

"I can’t quite shake this feeling that we live in a world gone wrong, that there are all these feelings you’re not supposed to have because there’s no reason to anymore. But still they’re there, stuck somewhere, a flaw that evolution hasn’t managed to eliminate yet, like tonsils or an appendix. Deceit and treachery in both romantic and political relationships is nothing new, but at one time, it was bad, callous, and cold to hurt somebody. Now it’s just the way things go, part of the growth process. Really nothing is surprising. After a while, meaning and implication detach themselves from everything.  Pretty soon, it seems unreasonable to be bothered or outraged by much of anything because, well, what did you expect?"  -Prozac Nation

"That's the problem with reality, that's the fallacy of therapy: It assumes that you will have a series of revelations, or even just one little one, and that these various truths will come to you and will change your life completely. It assumes that insight alone is a transformative force. But the truth is, it doesn't work that way. In real life, every day you might come to some new conclusion about yourself and about the reasoning behind your behavior, and you can tell yourself that this knowledge will make all the difference. But in all likelihood, you're going to keep on doing the same old things. You'll still be the same person. You'll still cling to your destructive, debilitating habits because you emotional tie to them is so strong that the stupid things you are really the only things you've got that keep you centered and connected. They are the only things about you that make you you."
-Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)               

To see more of Dina Goldstein's work visit http://www.dinagoldstein.com/