Friday, June 20, 2014

Being Able to Help Others Understand.

I probably would have taken more English in school if I had known that I might influence even a small portion of the population through writing. My mother had her Masters in English, and being the kind of English prodigy I was through elementary school, the skill quickly atrophied when I learned that I actually had to work at it to get any better. So I will fly in the face of literary and editorial snobs and use grammar and run-on sentences to please myself and to be able to get any effing idea across that I want. My circumlocution is certainly not deliberate, but it is the product of my laziness in the face of education. That being said, I do have a reason for this apology. I believe the subject that I am about to breach deserves more clarity and delicacy than I am able to communicate through this medium. THAT being said:


Women Ordination.


BOOM!

Ok, so you don't even know whether I'm for or against it and if you're anything like me, you're desperately hoping that I'm about to confirm and possibly develop new revelations for you that help you feel more secure in whichever opinion you hold. Obviously I want to keep your attention to the very end so maybe I won't reveal anything groundbreaking until the very end! No, I will not do this thing, because I feel that is very manipulative and even though I read all three books in the Maze Runner series, I still resent the fact that the author used this coercive device to get me to read the whole damn thing.

Ahem.

I am completely on the fence about the Women Ordination movement. Six months ago I knew where I stood. I was against it. I felt that a bunch of feminists wanted recognition and to win something so they got together and decided that if they finally were able to have the Priesthood, then they would feel like valid beings of the Mormon population. "What changed?" you might ask. First, let me drag you into one of my famous asides and explain the difference between something changing and something connecting.

So because I almost had enough credits from sewing classes to complete a 2nd Major in Home and Family Living, I decided to go for it. This lead me to take a child development class where I learned how the brain is basically a never ending puzzle/lego tower. Something is perceived (lego piece), a symbol is assigned to that perception(another lego piece), *click* they go together. So you kind of have all these little dual groupings of legos floating around your brain and then suddenly you see how one little dual grouping would actually fit pretty nice with another dual grouping. Well, new information keeps either adding onto that bigger group developing into your world view, or it just hangs out until it find something to latch onto. Once in awhile, you might realize that a piece that you thought fit perfectly before, actually fits better somewhere else, or that one piece isn't allowing you to add anything more to your lego-world-view-tower. That is unacceptable so you cast of the misfit information back into your brain soup and wait for it to become pertinent again.

I have recently become immediately conscious of large gap that I karate chopped out of my lego tower located in the "belief" sector of my world view. It really sucks because I had a lot of really nice fitting pieces all around that place, but there were concerns that were making me very unhappy; certain pieces weren't quite lining up.

A big issue that I am dealing with is the marginalization of women in the church. I don't care what you say, its true, its there and I will punch everyone in the face if they disagree with me (like if one person disagrees, everybody is getting punched. Do you really want to be the one who triggers that?). Of course there are certain levels of this, and at some point you can't always be focusing on this inequality because you have to like, keep living your life and your faith and stuff. But I have had seriously hurtful interactions with church leaders which I believe would have been different if I had been able to counsel with another woman.

Ryan, my husband, suggested that mothers are the male equivalent to the bishop's role as being a "Judge in Israel". Our mothers judge us, and rightly so. They judge how to teach and to guide us and try to discipline only in order to reach our full potential. Same responsibility that our bishops do. Only one catch, my mother is dead. And when it comes to questions about my role as a daughter of God and especially sexuality, why would I ever want to seek counsel from some middle-aged dude?

Do men truly understand body shaming through modestly talks? Do they truly understand the humiliation of talking about sexual sins or even the subject of chastity with a person of the opposite sex from a young age? I believe that this can and has traumatized many women leaving them guarded and programmed to believe that men have the power to condemn or liberate when it comes to sex.

And what happens when that great ability, the "Right to Bear Children", is not available? Although some men may be impotent, they would never be denied the Priesthood because it "wasn't available". And yes, Motherhood is more than just having kids, blah blah blah, but still, empathy goes a much further way with healing in these instances than does sympathy and a call for a can-do attitude.

So maybe I'm not asking for women to be ordained, but I think that maybe the home shouldn't be the only place that motherhood should have the power to judge, heal and lead. I want to feel some power or voice in the way that I am spiritually governed by mortals. If being able to give blessings or helping to make big decisions when it comes to the welfare of the churches female members means they must be allowed to hold and practice the priesthood, I would be ready for that change. Can the same be said for the male members if the Lord decided it was time to reinstate these practices?

I absolutely subscribe to the teaching that the Lord does everything in His own time and that we cannot always know the answers or we wouldn't require faith (see post "How to Stay Inside Your Own Head"). Perhaps we are the Hebrews come out of Egypt who are not ready for the higher law. I understand that, and I can be patient. But I am also sad. I feel separate because of my gender and I attribute many of these feelings to my cultural upbringing. I still hope to find answers and maybe writing about these things will resonate with someone else and we can work collectively to find them. I want to reconcile my hurt with the promise of happiness if I stay faithful to the church. I hope that I do not have to wait a lifetime.

But knowing my luck, I probably will.











Thursday, June 19, 2014

The Modern Day Woman

I wrote this back in December and just came upon it now at an important juncture in my life and my faith. I think I didn't post it then because I felt my thoughts weren't entirely formed and I obviously didn't have any answers. My next entry may...


December 29th, 2013:

I have problems. Mostly problems of conscience. I know many, many women have written about this subject and I doubt there's anything new that I could add to it. I do suppose, however, that nobody has my exact perspective maybe adding to the depth of the kinds of women who have this problem will be expanded...

A woman having it all sounds too good to be true. It is, only because anyone "having it all" is virtually impossible too, even men! Why can't we focus on people having enough, because having it all sounds so exhausting I just fell asleep at the keyboard....which I love to use 'cause of the click-click-clicking my fingers and fingernails make....I digress.

 If you are looking for citations you will not find them as I am in the opinion business and not the fact business so I'm sorry to those of you who cannot in good conscience quote my wise musings without a reference standing behind it. Here's the deal. I don't think women have always been subjugated. I remember growing up asking whether or not we had a Heavenly Mother as well and my parents teaching me that her name was kept sacred from us so that we would not use it in vain the way "Oh my g*d" is used like every ten seconds nowadays. I still struggle understanding why we can't know Her better to this day, I mean, it seemed to me then and sometimes still today that She is not important enough for us to know her.

When perusing FB earlier, I came upon an article discussing new evidence that Jesus had a wife. In the LDS church many of us believe that Christ was married in order to fulfill a covenant that we all must enter into in order to receive eternal exaltation. (Want more info about that? I can give your info to two teenagers in church gear.) But why are we just getting information about that now? Where did all that information go about the wife of Jesus? Again, it was probably lost and "forgotten" in order to guard her from negative attention. But it is difficult to feel important when one is not known.

I'm sure that Heavenly Father wants us all to feel important so that our thoughts will be validated and our actions hailed as awesome. It is SO hard not to want this thing. But let me tell you what, the women I most admire are the ones who are usually quiet and who endure. They don't care about how many hits they get on their blogosphere or how many hearts an instagram photo gets. They already know who they are and what they want. They are the ones who steadily push forward in pursuit of their passions and find meaning in what they do because their actions are meaningful.

Now lets talk about kids. I am actually slightly ambivalent about having them (not that I have a choice right now). I do want them, but then I go to church and others' noisy, sticky, homely children make me think again. BUT, then I hold a sleepy newborn and its like, yup, this is what I'm supposed to do. Here's the thing that terrifies me the most, I feel that women aren't striving to "have it all" I think they're demanded to "do it all" as in have every single responsibility ever. Breadwinner, baby oven, snot-nose cleaner, amazing blogress, fitness model, culinary artiste, creative genius, financial accountant....its totally obnoxious.

Women who are projected to have this lifestyle I don't believe in. Like Santa, this woman is a myth. There is NO WAY you have everything you want. I have seen (and judged!) women who seem to have this perfect life and I'm like, what is missing, what will the consequences be later on when the children realize they didn't get the same amount of attention that other kids did? On the flip side I've seen stay-at-home mothers who need to get a frickin' life and stop coddling their future off-spring into douches or helpless little beings that douches prey upon. There is a 3rd subset of women who are forced into one choice or the other (career or SAHM) out of economic necessity and the grass is certainly always greener on the other side.

So what's the solution?



Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Why I Came Back.

Recently I read an article on a Facebook friend of mine's newsfeed. I'll admit I did a naughty thing. I read the article which was somewhat, possibly, influentually, anti-mormon, then I posted a thoughtful rebuttal someone else did on that article and then immediately defriended that person.

Like a noble coward I fled!

I don't like disagreeing with people (I suppose people other than douches rarely do) and I couldn't take the inevitable backlash that could have resulted from defending my beliefs. I am very sensitive about my religion, dammit it hurts to not be taken seriously, or not thought intelligent because you believe in angels and God! But of course that's pride talking because I shouldn't care if others judge me. And I suppose to a certain extent I fear my faith being shaken. But here's the thing, there was a time in my life where I was shaken to the core and still lived. This is the miracle I choose to believe will carry me through even nasty Facebook comment battles and friendships where there are differences of opinion on the matter.

First of all, lets get one thing straight. There is such thing as Satan. And I believe there are such things as lies. I feel like everyone is welcome to their opinions, but to each child of God is the gift of discernment between good and evil. Without getting into any specifics, I also believe that each person has an inherent light of goodness in them, but that they can be influenced by evil. Again I'm not talking about specifics or people who are not me or people who are not part of my church! I have come to love more people outside of my religion than in, so please don't think I'm taking on a holier-than-thou attitude.

Second of all, here is the story of my descent into my own personal hell and how things happened that you may or may not think is a miracle and why I decided to come back:

A new apartment, new full-time job and a new boyfriend the fall after I graduated at BYU. My self-esteem sucked a lot (read my old blog entries, barf, and then you will understand) and I thought all of these things were exciting and good.  My mother had died about 3 years before and I considered the progress of my grief process to be coming along swimmingly. Soon, however, the job turned out to be extremely stressful as the recession hit. I was expected to produce things that were beyond my control and resented not being recognized for the truly amazing person I was. Then, my "boyfriend" decided that he just couldn't control his manly impulses for my ravishing beauty and intelligence and slowly lead me down the path of not-so-awesomeness. Around that time I also found out that my fat, lazy, tv-watching roommate was passive aggressive. Cool.

Depression engulfed me like the quick-sand did Buttercup in the Princess Bride. I held my breath and desperately searched for someone to help me out. I prayed for death in fear of the trauma of suffocating. I still tried to go to church, but I knew the others could smell my sins on me. Rejected on all sides (even that of my Bishop at one time...yeah, that didn't continue a complex in me....) I prayed one night to Heavenly Father that if He didn't send me a way out, that I would take another. It is still hard to this day looking back at my darkest hour without compassion for my little, scared, broken self.

The next morning I checked my 10-year-old hotmail account (which was very rare) to find an email from my college mentor telling me about an Assistantship in Costume Design that had just opened up at the University of Memphis. I applied and was offered the position only an hour after my phone interview with the entire faculty.

I'm sure you think you totally know how this all goes. I totally turned back to God and now I'm a good Mormon girl, thank goodness that's all over! Yeah right.

Memphis was a new world to me.  I had never felt such freedom to reinvent myself. The thing about Stapley/Bailey women is that they get better-looking with age and with my new confidence and refreshing naivete you better believe those Southern boys took notice. Old habits die hard though, and my ability to put myself into submissive/abusive relationships shone as I dirtied up the grad pool with my seduction and grudge holding.

Fail.

To a certain extent I felt that being Mormon thus far in my life hadn't helped me one bit. It had really only made me feel guilty and miserable. I new the things I was doing didn't follow everything I'd been taught, but I chose to continue and not care. My ideas changed though as angels in disguise came in the form of a few people. My roommates, V and M basically saved my life. I couldn't have had better or more wiser friends to guide me through my first year follies. Kind, generous, and though I know I drove them crazy, they were so patient in teaching me how good a person can be in their hearts no matter what they believed. Then there was Jenn. I know you're reading this, I will not forget the day you told me my skirt was cute and bustled your way into my life. You told me President Goodale was a good man. I decided to trust you and I owe you forever for guiding me to him. With my distrust of Church leaders even just talking to him was crossing a major hurdle. But he didn't speak to me like other leaders, he didn't try to bore into my soul and try to take what I was not willing to give. He listened and loved me. That's all I needed, what I had felt God had taken away when He took away my mother.

Then came my relationship with D. He wasn't really my type, he was really Southern...I will never forget during a fishing trip him shooting a shotgun with his shirt off....Anyway! He had been away from the church for 9 years! But he was making his way back. And as I built a relationship with him, we both decided that's what we wanted to do together. Though different things had taken us away from these things, I think we both remembered a sense of peace, or rather, Home-ness that the our beliefs in God provided.

Well, he broke up with me and when I got back to school you better believe I took it out on the grad pool yet again because I really, really, really liked drinking alcohol and making out with charming guys who thought I was pretty. But President Goodale knew that was me lashing out against pain. Its amazing how much strength a person acquires to get through a trial know that someone truly understands how you feel. So I stopped.  Then I met Ryan, we got married, we moved to Utah. I then began a whole different struggle, but at least this time I wasn't alone and I chose just the right one to help develop an eternal me.

Miracles are subtle and they are people. Sometimes people leave the church or God because it is too painful to believe that He would let us feel such pain or betrayal. But we feel! The very thing that shapes our thoughts and actions I believe was given to us to expand our compassion and see so much deeper into others in order to love them! I thought I would never heal from many of these experiences, but as I am patient (totally not perfect.) I start to see how the shape of my life has turned me in to a deeper soul. The more I see, the more I see, its incredible sometimes.

But then there are days that I don't see it and I have to try to remember all the while feeling slightly resentful that I've been blinded again. But time and time again the good things return. How could I deny that my soul is full?


Sunday, September 29, 2013

How to Stay Inside Your Own Head

Hope.

A four-letter word I am allowed to say, but can at times be just as distasteful to me as other choice words.

Hope can be a wonderful thing.  It pretty much applies to everything in life, whether you're religious or not, probably because the human condition dictates that we strive for better things when we are sad.  There is a beauty in polarities, a force that is vibrant and certainly real.  However, its not always the best feeling to have your hopes repaid in kind by the insidious, opposite disappointment.

In past years I've been hesitant to participate in things that require much risk.  I've felt that hope was a weapon Heavenly Father used on me to "make me stronger".  I didn't like it, so I veered away from those lessons.  This made me kind of a recluse.  I developed a more severe social anxiety and I pretty much hated anyone that was happy or comfortable with their life.  I know much of this started with a certain past relationship where I learned what happens when you hoped too high and risked too much. Finding my way back to friends and the Church has been a bumpy road to say the least, but these experiences have required me to be more introspective to survive emotionally.  My hope is that, like the delightful Bear Grylls, I can help even one other person navigate through total and utter despair.  Maybe come out of these dangerous emotional wildernesses still intact.

Lately I've had two chances to get my hopes up.  One is trying to have a baby.  Since I had to wait for the equivalent of forever to get married, I'm not completely surprised that the Lord is seeing fit to delay us having kids too.  That is only said with the tiniest bit of bitterness, but seriously, my mom had 8 kids, what's the hold up body?  Every month I've been getting my hopes up only to feel a sense of failure along with cramps and backaches. As if being sad weren't enough...being a girl sucks.  Just like getting married, I know that this is a righteous desire, heck its a commandment!  And yet I, along with countless other women over the millenia, have been stuck asking the question, "how am I supposed to do this thing You want me to do?"  Even though I am depressed for about a week, I can't help but start hoping for it to happen the next time. I've been hesitant until even now to tell people that we're trying because you can't really say anything to help somebody who has a perpetual disappointment that neither of them can control or change.  No need to make it awkward for everybody....

So along with the vacillation between hope and despair on the baby front, I recently auditioned for a play.  Oh, but Becca wait, aren't you a costume designer? Long ago in a place that was actually here, I once aspired to be an actress studying theatre at the prestigious BYU.  But 'twas not to be.  For many other reasons, I'm sure, besides my fragile self-esteem I was lead to a different career path.  One that I love of course, but having been onstage before, its hard to completely get the urge to do it again out of your system.  Well, during a break I happened to browse through facebook and saw that auditions were being held for The Rabbit Hole.  I decided right then that that was my chance to venture out and try to do something that had at one time made me happy.  Though having a rudimentary knowledge of the play I knew it was a subject matter close to my heart.  So I told no one (except one trustworthy friend) and I marched on down to do a cold reading since I obviously had no monologue prepared.  I was pretty surprised to even get a callback, but I was making sure to keep my hopes in check through the process.

It was interesting how the circumstances around those days led me to this thing at that moment.  When I got to callbacks I was surprised to feel no expectations about the outcome and was kind of thrilled/dreaded that I would get a chance to stretch my acting legs again in front of a group of people.  During the welcome speech, the director explained how she was going to switch us around for readings so "don't try to get inside [her] head." That struck me as the most valuable thing any director has said before an audition, because I realized how often that happens not only with auditions, but I pretty much have done that with God for like...probably my whole life?  I have to admit that I did get pretty bummed partway through the audition, realizing how out of my league I was and how terrible I thought I was doing.  I sat there trying to gauge her reaction and figure out who her favorites were.  Then I remembered that she told us not to do that exact thing!! It was SO hard to just chill out.  So I started trying to enjoy the company of the other actors, admiring their performances and thinking more about the rich subject matter of the play. It worked out, and although I won't have much to show on my resume for this experience, it got me contemplating the whole hope thing even more.

Because even though I actively tried to keep myself from hoping too much from the audition (being cast and being considered the most awesome ever, apparently...) it was still there.  That pesky little bugger that I knew would bring me pain in the end. "Why," I asked myself, "would God lead me to these decisions (I felt that way, ok?) if it was only going to make me sad??" Although I had exercised considerable control over my emotions, a HUGE benchmark in the course of my adult life, it all still ended with the same result; disappointment and a vague emptiness where my hope had been.

Well, perhaps this lesson was presented to me so that I can quit trying to get into God's head.  I worry about if this or that is a punishment because I think bad things or that I'm not good enough in general.  But having been on the other side of that director's table (as a techie) I've seen how hard it is to disappoint people, but also have that belief that you need certain people in a certain place for things to fit.  Its not about being good or bad, its just being the right player for the vision.

So how do you ease the transition from hope to emptiness?

It seems that the end of hopes and dreams have always been gouging out little caverns in my tender little heart.  Perhaps this is where a lot of my depression comes from, walking around with a half-empty heart.  Does the hope/despair pendulum really help me become a stronger person?  In response to this self-asked question the answer came in two answers.  Either I need to fill the gouges immediately with something else (think of how a dentist puts a filling into your tooth only minutes after he's drilled out the decay) or to not get gouged at all.  I love metaphors, obviously.

I tested this out. I'm not sure I will ever be a person who doesn't  let their heart get gouged.  I think that's a perspective thing that I am far from mastering.  I can say, however, that I've had some relief walking away from that audition immediately filling my heart with faith/hope that the director will orchestrate their vision to its potential.  This is made infinitely easier knowing and trusting the director in real life which means I won't be offended that I'm not chosen for one reason or another.

Trust is obviously still lacking in the "life events" arena in my life, so I believe its still going to be a struggle to fill those gouges with hope and faith to believe the Lord knows what He's doing.  I know I'm not a big help in figuring out how NOT to be disappointed in life, but its a start knowing where to start and how to try. Desire to desire to be good is a good place to start, right? I think if I keep trying to fill my life with more good things and reviving my faith in people is the tool to filling my vacant heart, I might actually go somewhere in my relationship with God.

Hope might not be so bad after all?






Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Olive Tree

I won't say I've come a long way from the young woman who decided to make up a blog about her family of one, but I've definitely been on some kind of path.  I remember when I started this that I was somewhat pessimistic about my marriage prospects and therefore may have been slightly derogatory to those who were married.  There is NO way I could have known what marriage was all really about, but after two years of living through it, I still think my earlier posts stand.  There are some really lame married people and I don't have to be one of them!

That being said, I'm guessing there are probably slews of blogs out there denouncing my particular opinions on basically everything, so I'm going to forge through and welcome those with a similar mindset to this one.

Marriage is hard.  That is an understatement.  So many people around me are ending there marriages so not even the stigma of being divorced is damming the temptation to just give this thing up.  There are so many enticing "freedoms" outside of the commitment and it is easy to let one's mind wander into these dangerous caverns.  Yesterday my facetious musings to the husband called Ryan that although polygamy was instituted as a means of procreating more efficiently and thus fulfilling His plan of creation, I argued that women should be allowed to have multiple husbands as it would fulfill it just as well since God's purpose is for His children to have joy!  More than one guy to take out the garbage, fix things, one to enjoy some interests, another others....I felt like my argument could be completely justified.

This is not the plan, and really that's ok.  In my mind polyandry would just be a detour of the inevitable growing pains a marriage goes through.  If you don't struggle in marriage from time to time, you're probably boring or passive aggressive; neither of these things interest me.  Today I thought, "well, I suppose this is supposed to be hard, but why? Wouldn't it be so much better if the person you married fit you like another puzzle piece.  I know some people brag about this being the case, but that's just sickening and untrue.  As my mind began to ponder on these things the allegory of The Olive Tree started creeping into my mind.

You're all like "but that's about missionary work, haven't you even ever heard that EFY song sung at someone's missionary farewell? You obviously don't know anything about stuff!"  Long ago I asked Ryan about allegories and metaphors, mostly could one story symbolize more than one thing?  He answered, yes of course, that everything on earth was symbolic and while we can't just go assigning our own meaning to everything willy nilly, that there are some truths that transfer from object to object.  So when I considered why this particular allegory washed through my mind, it slowly began to flesh itself out.

So the story starts out with the gardener wanting to keep this old tree.  In order to do this he has to graft it with a younger "wild" olive tree or it will wither away.  My first thought was that marriage is much like the grafting of two trees.  Now, I'm not going to say who is the old good tree and who is the young wild one in our relationship, but it is nonetheless imperative that these two trees be joined together or neither will be able to bring forth good fruit.  Here where it gets painful, that gardener has to prune and nourish that tree.  Ya'll know what pruning is, right?  That gardener goes in a chops of certain branches here and there in order to show that tree where to grow.  This way the nourishment gets to the most important and fruity branches instead of going everywhere and there not being enough for everybody (every branch...).  I'm not going to go much further into the allegory than the grafting/pruning part because these symbolic actions themselves are the most pertinent to what I want to convey today.

I supposed I haven't explained why its so hard being married to Ryan.  Its because we don't always want the same things.  He doesn't really like my music, tv, reading, theater, kind of a lot of things that I've come to identify myself with.  When he rejects them, it is like he is rejecting me!  I think this is when I first asked the Lord, "why would you lead me to this man and make me feel good about marrying him if we don't even like a lot of the same things about life?!"

To which he answered,"I'm pruning you."

Maybe sad songs, reality tv shows and bawdy theatre culture are the wild branches this natural woman wants to grow. With each rejection from my husband comes a cut.  I do less of that thing, I find less pleasure in it.  There comes a time of depression where I feel a real loss of what I used to be.  But then, from a chosen few around me, comes the nourishment.  A sudden project that ignites my passion for sewing and designing, finding pleasure in making a fancy meal and instagramming that shiz, maybe re-reading the entire Alvin Maker series written by the peerless Orson Scott Card!  Even revving up the ole' blog to express my feelings in hopes that any of my paltry insights could help anyone even if its from laughing how silly I am!

God is the gardener, Ryan is a tool.  Had to put that double entendre in there or I wouldn't be me ;)  It's ok, I'm pretty much a tool to Ryan too and as we grow together it is going to hurt like hell snipping and chopping each others' souls all over.  But eventually, all that careful shaping will guide our branches to bear fruit as we cultivate what is best that we both have most in common: The desire to be like our Heavenly Father and to love others.  Those are the strong branches that will have to win out for our joint grafted tree to be healthy and alive forever.

And that's all for today, but really, I hope I remember this perspective for at least a little while :)

Ok, I'll do this.

The Becca Family has officially become the Klepko family. Here's to the rest of my life people mispronouncing my last name and accusing me of being a compulsive thief or the first half of a pink stomach medicine. But really, considering that I married a really good one, his last name could have been Pooper-Scooper and I would be happy. I could even hyphenate to become Becca Bailey-Pooper-Scooper.

Funny to look back on all my little pity party posts and waves of genius poetry. I was really inspired as ya'll can tell (I'm a true mid-southerner now), and I now know not what I will use as fodder for future sonnets! But I suppose I will come up with something. I have been writing in my journal a little more lately, but its super personal so, STAY OUT! Jk, jk. Isn't that what blogs are all about, so other peeps can know you on a deeper level than the occasional Facebook post?

Sunday, August 15, 2010

When did I stop caring about my hair?

I haven't cut my hair for 8 months.

8.

Months.

I'm starting to not take care of my hair, this is bad. Part of it is having the luxury of pulling my hair back into a pony tail or a sleek chignon...part of it is giving up on life? I don't really know. I haven't had split-ends for years and now....

I don't even want to have long hair, it takes so much time to dooooo! I'm tired, I want to be a movie star and get extensions and have everyone else do my makeup. That's all.