I've Been Eating (For You.)

Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, and all the moments in between in which you find something for the two of you to swallow, your night ends in a sickly entanglement with the body of a nine year old boy.

Passing with a smirk, a desperate cry for attention and approval, yearning, a scream for help, but I can not silence such discomfort. Long ago have I tried to invent some sort of humanity for you, but your behavior leaves you completely unlovable. So damaged you remain, boys pass you around like a basketball, as Lana's "Carmen" churns in the broken record of my mind.

Perhaps an effort for power or mere terror in its purest form that serves as your inspiration, I'm so lost as to why you think you've gained something. Should I congratulate you on your meaningless drunk sex with an asshole? What's it like to be so sexually insecure that the contents of your veins must be diluted with liquor before your party dress cascades to the floor? So when you blow a .27, do you still swallow?

Standing in front of a mirror, your true self emerges: a shallow puddle containing just enough water to dribble what it is you are:

vap·id
adjective 1. offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging.

Perhaps you've found your match.

A Quick Word on Why Blogspot Matters.

It was senior year, I was slowly shutting the door to high school and tugging open a new one. I found myself anxiously burdened with the personal crisis cliche when "What do I want to do with my life?" transitions from a thought exercise in English class to a practical question. Bored, alienated, and craving an outlet, I convinced myself that the best way to answer that treacherous question was to go public about who I've been and who I now was. Shortly after, TheOnyxClam went public. Going public forced me to stop worrying, take a stand, and have a freaking opinion.

My writing for TheOnyxClam, not my Blue Ribbon wanna-be prep school background, taught me how to develop interesting angles for posts, emphasized the extent of my passion for writing, and proved I could follow topics with consistency and do my research. Most importantly, however, my blog writing, has taught me I am capable. It serves as my first glimmer of hope that the sum would be greater than its parts when I merge my writing skill and personal experiences with my political beliefs.

TheOnyxClam is the first public online space where I truly felt my opinion mattered. Before, I'd been one of two young women, either guilt-stricken and whimpering "Aw, I'm not smart like those women. I don't know enough about this" or, angsty and cynical with statements like, "Who the fuck cares what I think?" TheOnyxClam proves that I do know and people do care. Learning that has been more influential than anything else in regards to me becoming whole again. My blog strengthened my self-efficiency, serving as a springboard for the acquisition of resilience and courage.

Complete Agency: The Essential Rightness of Complimenting Skills & Talents in Others.

I've received quite a wide array of commentary in response to a post I wrote this summer about the destructive nature of complimenting physical appearances (reread here: The Essential Wrongness of Complimenting Physical Beauty). However, the most alarming response was the claim that people's strengths and talents are inherent and thus as essentially wrong to compliment as outward beauty.

To argue that people are born with talents that cannot be altered negates free will. Yes, it is true that some individuals are naturally stronger in a particular skill set than others. However, our decisions to cultivate particular skills and align ourselves with set interests and/or identities indicate our honest personalities and true selves. All of these things are within our power and control to develop. These are the behaviors we should encourage in one another.

I devoted time and effort to develops skills which sought my interest, skills in which I placed value in obtaining. When I was younger, I was pretty decent at basketball, not because I have any aptitude for athletics, but because I trapped myself within endless practices and training camps. Despite a clumsy shaky hand and a bizarrely inaccurate understanding of perspective, I'm gaining some skill in the application of eye make-up, but only due to a extensive process of trial and error and a deliberate effort to learn (Much thanks to the mastermind, Corinne!) I'm a pretty decent writer, because I spend time with my nose burrowed deep within classic literature, choose academic classes that emphasize writing skills, and carry a journal with me everywhere I stomp. When I am complimented on these skills, I feel especially proud because I made a conscious effort to develop talents that were not naturally granted to me and someone has not only recognized my efforts, but appreciated them. Who doesn't want to be complimented for their choices in life?

It is a conscious decision to pick up a paintbrush or rolling pin. One chooses to strap on a pair of rollerblades or pull on a pair of boxing gloves. It is a deliberate effort to strum a guitar or place a soccer ball at your feet. This pursuit to acquire such developments and the dedication to cultivate new skills is worthy of esteem and encouragement. Although it is important to recognize privilege and why one may not choose or have the opportunity to cultivate particular talents, unlike physical beauty, there is nothing detrimental about encouraging people in the development of their talents. Human beings have autonomy and control what it is they pursue and the time and manner in which they dedicate to it. With beauty, comparison often leads to unrealistic expectations and distaste for one's own appearance, whereas someone else's success in a particular skill can inspire one to develop such a talent further.

As a long-haired able-bodied size six Caucasian woman, I do not consider myself an underrepresented form of beauty. I will always feel uncomfortable about language that perpetuates body image issues women face and feel accepting compliments about how my mum and pop's genes happened to blend together is unjustifiable. Although one's intentions for complimenting another individual regarding their outward beauty may not be to perpetuate such negative feelings and unobtainable concepts of beauty, that is exactly what such compliments do.

Additionally vital to note, there is a HUGE difference between complimenting one's physical beauty and admiring the beauty of aesthetics. Make-up artists, fashion designers/stylists/bloggers, hairdressers/stylists, nail technicians, tattoo artists, and the like, are artists who learn to perfect their creative genius into skill from internships, apprenticeships, schools, books, family, friends, and lots and lots of practice. One's body is a blank canvas and how they choose to decorate it is a expression of their character. There's a difference between admiring one's skill in styling and praising their figure/facial structure.

May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon and we've moved on to the electric chair.

This whole notion that "punishment" soothes crime is illogical and remains unsupported. Actually, Sweden recently shut down four prisons as the nation's focus on rehabilitation has left the number of inmates plummeting. After announcing plans to shut down eight prisons in 2009 (for reasons similar to Sweden), The Netherlands added eleven prisons to that list in June of this year. Norway, home to Europe's prison with the lowest reoffending rate offers inmates education and vocational skill programs. The prison also utilizes a pod community system to combat the criminal prison subcultures that develop as a result of the traditional wing and landing model. Not to mention, Norway has neither the death penalty nor a life sentence (prisoners face a maximum of 21 years behind bars).

Any crime that's not a result of an unjust law (examples including everything from the sexist nature of many states public indecency laws to the Christian undertones of our nations sex work regulations to the xenophobic attitudes that dictate our immigration policies) results from economic inequity and/or mental illness. Economic inequity can be defined as need, rather real or perceived, founded on cultural cues that praise wealth while simultaneously making it more difficult for individuals to achieve upward mobility in any form. Quite maddening really.

Imprisonment and the death penalty solve neither mental illness or economic inequity. When society's peoples are committing crimes, our society needs to ask why. When the cause is economic, we can not blame individuals who are victim of an unjust social structure for their response to such injustice. Instead, blame the society that establishes and allows for these conditions, working from there to redistribute wealth and restructure our economy. Such crimes beg us to give attention to our nation's ever increasing income gap and rampant poverty rates and to examine how such truths leave individuals to believe that criminal activity is their most profitable path in achieving a comfortable lifestyle.

In the case of mental illness, that is excessive greed and/or psycho/sociopathic tendencies, imprisonment or the death penalty are far from rational responses. Although the ways we which we commonly categorize and define various mental illnesses are flawed and classist, the desire to harm others or the desire to fulfill one's own desires to the extent that it harms other individuals indicates something missing in terms of one's empathy and suggests that this lack of empathy is uncontrollable.

Medical professionals have the responsibility to address and/or treat such illnesses. It is not the job of police officers, judges, policy makers, etc., etc. That's not to say these individuals who are a threat to other's wellbeing and safety should remain in mainstream society, but their own lack of empathy does not grant us permission to abandon our own empathy. We who do not suffer from such mental health matters do have control over our own emotions and desires. Thus, we ought to act like it by providing safe and just living environments for individuals who do not share our luxury. It is our responsibility to create spaces, with the end goal being self-growth, where individuals can receive psychological evaluation. How hypocritical of us to look at these criminals in disgust, claiming we simply can not both be human, only to stow them away in inhuman facilities with inhuman conditions? Even if these facilities exist as the permanent homes for particular individuals, they must address the fact that these persons are people and ought to be treated as such. If the environments in which mentally ill criminals were consistent in their treatment, they could potentially teach us more about these types of behaviors and in turn, we could learn how to take preventative steps to reduce crime in the future.

Overall, the death penalty does not deter future criminal activity. Individuals who commit heinous crimes are not discouraged with the threat of ultimately receiving the death penalty, and those who do receive it, were never going to live in mainstream society again. Therefore, the death penalty does nothing to help solve the greater issue of crime as a whole. Not to mention, judicial systems are strongly biased and full of prejudice. People will be wrongfully convicted. Innocent people will fall victim to the death penalty.

When I find myself arguing my beliefs with some stubborn pain-in-the-ass, I resort to this statement: "Ghandi once said, 'An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.' You're not smarter than Ghandi, so shut up."