Cry Me A River

This post has nothing to do with this movie

I'm a crier. I always have been. It doesn't matter if I'm angry, happy, or sad, my default emotional release is crying.

Have you seen THIS video? She's so overwhelmed by her feelings, that she just can't help by cry. I would have been this little girl.

It used to be way, way worse. The littlest things would push me over the edge and I be bawling. If something disappointed or upset me, I would cry. I just felt things very strongly, I guess. I wasn't trying to be manipulative, I simply couldn't help it.

I remember on more than one occasion being too hot, and just breaking down into tears. Huge crocodile tears. I literally couldn't pull myself together. Living in San Diego meant it happened quite a few times each the summer. One vacation to New Mexico I ended up completely breaking down in a Walmart parking lot because I was so physically overwhelmed by the heat. Instead of just expressing my frustrations with words, all I could do was cry. I was 12, not 2.

Getting hormones totally killed me. I would be completely fine one moment and a wreck the next, for no explainable reason. I literally had to learn how to control my emotional response to situations. How did I learn how to do this? I don't really remember. I do know that I was very annoyed with myself for being so emotionally wacky, and one day just decided to figure it out. I'm sure some things my parents did helped, but I honestly couldn't point to any one thing. I probably was sent to my room a few times, not out of anger, but more just to "have some space." Or maybe I wasn't sent to my room. Maybe I sent myself, knowing I needed some space.

Now that I'm 22, I am much better at keeping my emotions in check. Too much heat makes me cranky, but the water works stay safely stored. I am able to face stressful situations without a shedding a single tear, at least until I'm in the safety of my own home. I am able to determine when I need some space and make a point to escape from the situation for a few moments, or at least mentally check out until I can pull myself together. Aunt Flo still gets the best of me sometimes, and I cry fairly easy when it comes to sappy movies at any time of the month. I also tend to cry when Jake and I are hashing things out. I swear it's not because I'm trying to be manipulative. I really try to hold back the tears. As I said at the beginning, crying is my emotional default.

I'm saying all that for the benefit of people who are not criers. I understand some are not. My mom doesn't cry as much as me. Most of my friends don't cry as easily as I do. Some people just cry. I totally acknowledge that there are people who cry with the purpose of manipulation, but not everyone who cries is trying to get something from you. Some people just haven't figured out how to manage their own emotions yet.

Especially certain 12 year old girls.

Let's talk about body image

When was the first time you felt bad about your body?

I was 12 or 13 years old. It was summer time. My brother and I were swimming in our pool in the back yard. I hopped out of the pool for a moment and my brother started laughing and shouted "Hey, your butt jiggles!" I laughed it off and we kept playing in the pool.

That night I when I went into my room to change out of my bathing suit I stood naked in front of my full length mirror. I carefully examined my body from head to toe. I jumped up and down a few times. My butt jiggled. My thighs jiggled. Everything seemed to jiggle. I also noticed that I had stretch marks scattered from my belly button to my knees. My breasts didn't have any stretch marks because there weren't hardly any breasts there to stretch. I noticed that the acne on my face had spread to my upper back.

I was devastated. I didn't see any beauty. All I saw were those stretch marks. The harder I looked, the longer they grew. I was 5'4" and around 105lbs, long blond hair and tanned from the summer sun, but all I saw was imperfection. I was all knobby knees and gangling arms, and a jiggly butt to boot. After a time of self pity, I pulled myself together, put on some clothes and went out to join my family for dinner. My brother mentioned my jiggly rear once more. This time each word hit me like a ton of bricks.

Your. Butt. Jiggles.

My dad quickly told him that it wasn't ok to tease me and he needed to apologize. He did, but it was obvious that I was upset. After dinner my parents talked with me for a long time. I told them how much I hated the way I looked. I wished I didn't jiggle. I wanted to get rid of the stretch marks. What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I perfect?

After assuring me that I was indeed beautiful and God made me special and almost everyone gets stretch marks, including boys, Daddy told me something that night that probably took a whole lot of daddy courage. It also was exactly what I needed to hear and it stuck with me. He said "Someday in the future there will be a man who appreciates that butt more than you could even imagine."

That may sound like rather odd advice, especially coming from a father of a 13 year old girl, but that short phrase summed up the whole situation for me. I was growing into a woman. A woman who would one day be desired. I wasn't going to look like all the other women. There would be things about myself that I loathed and wished would change, but someone would love those things I thought were faults.

Have you talked with your daughter about how she feels about her body? Has she tried to talk with you about it at all? I believe it's something that parents need to discuss with their daughters, and if at all possible I think that fathers need to be involved in the conversations. (there will likely be more than one conversation, so be prepared) Having my father involved in at least some of the conversations about "my changing body" (not the period part, just the stretch marks part) showed me that my father loved me for who I was. It cemented in my mind that there would be a guy out there who would love me too.

I have since grown a bit taller and filled out a bit more. I definitely still carry my junk in the trunk, and Jake goes crazy for it. That wasn't the only conversation we had about how I looked or how I felt about how I looked. I still call my mom to talk about my insecurities from time to time and I'm married and moved out. I am not always completely comfortable in my own skin, but I have a bit more self confidence to go along with it, so the issues don't always seem so big. I also can carry on a conversation for more than 15 seconds with a guy without him bouncing his eyes off my chest, and I know that I still have his attention as I walk away.

BTW, my brother never mentioned my butt again, unless he was complaining about how his guy friends were teasing him about how hot I was.

The Frog: Part Deux

When we left off, The Prince and The Princess were falling madly in love. Or at least that's what The Princess thought. Please play THIS music whilst reading.

After about three weeks of bliss The Prince stopped talking with The Princess. To be fair, they would communicate verbally about where they would dine or when they would go to the lake, but all conversation was shallow and non-committal. Things were really awful at home and The Prince completely closed up. The Princess asked and even pleaded with him to tell her what she could do to help. He just told her he'd be fine. She resorted to figuring it out herself. She tried talking with him, she tried being quiet. She tried giving him space and being around all the time. Nothing helped. He was pulling away and she felt like her world was coming to an end. She would have given up right then except that at the beginning of their relationship he had told her that he felt that everyone in his life had given up on him at some point. He felt alone, especially now that the small town had taken sides in his parents’ divorce. The Princess refused to give up on him now. He needed her more now than ever, even if he didn’t know it. Unfortunately, all that ended up happening was The Princess ended up heartbroken night after night when he didn’t call or did call but didn’t talk. She cried a lot. The Queen and The Best Friend comforted The Princess the best they could and listened late into the nights.

What had she done? What had she not done? How could this have happened? He had said he wanted to be with her. Why was it all falling apart?

One evening towards the end of summer a mutual friend of theirs, The Actor, was performing in a local theater production. The Prince and The Princess went to see the play with The Best Friend and another mutual friend...who happened to be The Ex-girlfriend of The Actor. The Actor had dumped The Ex for the female lead in the play. To say the show was awkward would have been an understatement, but the Ex insisted on coming, and assured everyone that she and The Actor were on good terms. However, by the end of the evening The Ex was more than upset. The Prince, being the dashing hero that he was, quickly swept The Ex away to his empty castle—empty of parents that is—without so much as a goodnight to The Princess, leaving her and The Best Friend to fend for themselves for the evening. The Princess stood with a blank stare for some time as The Trusty Jeep dove off into the distance before The Best Friend exclaimed a royal “WTF?"

The Princess and The Best Friend returned to The Princess’ castle, and were quickly sent back out by The Queen to drive by The Prince’s castle to determine what was going on. Nothing was found out because The Princess was too much a chicken to actually go bang down the drawbridge like she should have, and she and The Best Friend ended up crying on the side of some dirt road listening to sad songs on Ye Olde iPod.

Want to know what was even worse? The play they had gone to see was Grease. Yes. The irony was not lost on The Princess. If prom was her Grease moment, then why the hell was summer ending this way?! Danny and Sandy were supposed to end up together in the end. Not Danny and Danny’s alter ego’s ex girlfriend.

The Princess lay in bed for what felt like two years, but only amounted to two days. The Queen and The Best Friend took turns sitting with her, trying to feed her, and holding her while she cried. Why was this happening? She had done everything right. Before they had started dating The King had threatened The Prince’s life in the appropriate fatherly way (with the help of the trusty Fire Breathing German Shepherd who, although he'd never admit it, scared the crapeth out of The Prince). She hadn’t let The Prince get the milk for free. She had been praying for him. And she wanted to be with him. The Princess was devastated. She could shake the negative talk going on inside her head. "He never loved you." "He never meant anything he said." "The Ex had been planning this all along." "He wants her more he wants you." She also was angry. Angry at him for going off with this The Ex. Angry at herself for letting it happen. Angry that The Prince hadn't called. Angry that she’d let herself be vulnerable with him. Angry that everyone else being right. Maybe he was a lost cause. Would she ever find her prince? 

 She didn't realize it at the time but he wasn't The Prince anymore. He hadn't been for some time. He was The Prince who, after being kissed, had in fact turned into The Frog.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I am The Princess.

I broke up with The Prince after those two days. I tried to stay positive and keep moving, but every night I ended up in my room crying or numb. If you seen or read Twilight's New Moon (don't judge), remember when Bella is sitting in her room after Edward breaks up with her and the months are just passing? It felt just like that. Except it was my own fault, because I'd broken up with him. There was no comforting me. My parents tried. My best friend tried. I needed to feel bad. When I started feeling better I'd watch depressing movies. If I didn't feel bad, then it had all been a lie. He'd never really meant those things he'd said. He'd never really cared. Nothing anyone said really made any difference.

As I mentioned when I was talking about The Crush, I had a thing for guys with issues. I knew intellectually that as a general rule they would be nothing but trouble, but it took a long time and a couple broken hearts to really know.  

It took me a long time to get over The Prince. We dated for 7 or 8 weeks and I mourned him for close to six months. Seems silly, doesn't it?  In my defense, I had had a crush on him for at least a year prior to us dating, and since I was such a good emotional manipulator (of my own emotions I mean) it really felt like we had been dating that whole year. It had been the real for me. I assumed that because he said "you're the type of woman I want to marry" he meant "you're the woman I want to marry." Anyone else might have been able to see he wasn't ready, but I couldn't. I didn't want to. We were supposed to live happily ever after. But we didn't.

Sorry to leave you on such a morose note. Here's something funny to lighten the mood.

Before The Prince and I started dating, my mom and I were shopping at Rite-Aid. She gently suggested that I think carefully about pursuing a relationship with The Prince because there was a very good chance I could end up very hurt at the end. We were leaving the store and I told her (and I quote) "Mom, I need to make some mistakes in my life. I need to get out there and spread my wings!" after which I walked smack into the closed "Enter" door at Rite-Aid. Not even kidding. I guess that should have been a sign. Except I couldn't have read it anyways because it was backward.

The Crush

In light of a couple conversations I've had with women IRL about their teenage daughters and the fact that I think mostly mom's of preteen and teenage daughters read this blog, I thought that it might be of benefit to talk about my years as a hormonal teenage girl. We'll start with boys, since that seems to be a big deal right now.


When I was younger, I had this...fantasy, I guess you would call it, that a "bad boy" would discover me, turn from his ways of wandering, fall in love with me and we'd live happily ever after. That's what happens in the movies. That's what happened to some people I knew in real life. I thought it would happen to me. I wanted it to happen to me. I thought it was horribly romantic.

I wanted to live that fantasy so badly and was convinced that it was the reason God had made me so innocent and pure--which really turned out to be ignorance and pride--that I started throwing myself at any bad boy who I thought fit the bill. Not physically throwing myself (because I was so pure, remember) but I would let myself and even encourage myself to become completely emotionally involved with a guy before he had even given me the time of day! Blame it on Hollywood or blame it on the hormones, I was crazy.

At an awfully young age (sometime between 9 and 12, I honestly don't remember): I met the love of my life. At least I was convinced he would be. We'll call him The Crush. He was everything I could have wanted: He was cute, older than me, a singer and musician, a Christian, and above all else, he had a dark side. He was mysterious. He was troubled. Lots of other girls liked him. I was certain that we were meant to be together, even though he didn't show much interest in me. The Crush went to my church and our sets of parents were friends so we saw each other fairly often. Each time we did I fell more and more in love. (I use that term pretty loosely.) I spent many nights (I'm not exaggerating when I say over 200) over the years crying in my mom's lap because he didn't notice me. I mean, he knew who I was, and probably even knew I was gaga over him, but he was just. not. interested. I prayed with all the sincerity in my heart that he would finally love me back. Most of the time was dating other girls.

Why wasn't he dating me? What was wrong with me? I even knew that he wasn't best for me. My parents had told me. A girlfriend of mine who was his age and was friends with him had told me. I saw it for myself in his attitude and character. It didn't matter. Every time I thought I had gotten over him he'd do something cute or funny or just look at me with his clear blue eyes and I'd fall head over heels again. I had the songs picked out for our wedding. I got dressed each Sunday in hopes of catching his attention. I joined the youth group worship team to spend time with him. I jumped at any chance I had to be around him.

I was obsessed with The Crush until I was 16 and living on the opposite side of the state. Why, even after years of rejection and advice to just move on, why couldn't I do it? I still don't really know how to explain it. The whole situation was so ridiculous I'm embarrassed to even think about it. I was focused on "The Story" we would have. I grew up in a home with both my parents. They loved each other. My brother and I got along better than any of my friends and their siblings. We had enough food to eat. As I got older I didn't sleep around or even kiss. I didn't have the amazing, tear-jerking testimony. The kind that all the popular speakers had. This was going to be my story. He was going to be able to get over all his issues because of his love for me. And I was serious.

What did my parents do? Let me talk about it. For days. For months. For years. I know they were sick of hearing about it. They helped me process it. They talked to me about why he was the way he was and why it was a good thing we weren't dating. They let me cry. A lot. They didn't try and force me to get over him, or just ignore me. I felt real feelings, no matter how misguided they were, and my parents were willing to address those feelings.

How did I finally move on? Well my family moved more than 700 miles away, and I met someone new. Someone darker. Someone taller. Someone who seemed to be even more screwed up. Oh goody. I was just what he needed. Click here to read about The Frog.

BTW, I did finally get my revenge on The Crush. At least that's what I call it. A year and a half after we moved, my family went back to San Diego to see family and friends and get out of the snow for a week. Some friends hosted a party for us and The Crush was there. I knew he would be, and, to be honest, I planned to blow him away. I was completely focused on The Frog, but that didn't mean I was going to pass up a chance to get attention from The Crush. I got all pretty-fied and went to the party. I still have a the picture in my mind of his face. I was cool and casual, chatting with other people, and he stood off to the side of the room just staring at me. I was no longer an awkward teenager. I looked much more like a woman, and insisted on carrying myself like one, at least while he was looking. Yes. It felt good. I'm not even afraid to admit it. :D