Love Letters to Yourself! (Inspired by Veronica Varlow)

Okay, so I've literally been working on this for a week. Video editing makes me want to throw things. Lots of things.

Anyway, so I did the "How to Write the Sexiest, Most Passionate Love Letter...to YOURSELF" from VeVa's blog-o-rific How-To-Tuesday of last week in video form! I really enjoyed it. I wrote a pretty nice letter to myself, I think. I love her blog a lot because it's interactive and fun and hopefully people will read my blog (as it gets better) and say the same thing. She's just really good at life and I love her for sharing it with us. So here we go!

First off, the video!

This chronicles my whole process, following step by step the How-To and there are some Bloopa-doops at the end!

Next, my letter. Get ready for some sappy-sap-sap.

Dear {Monti},

Remember the name you have given the people who are closest to you fair access to; people who love you. It's sacred and real, powerful and purposeful, and you have made it so. I, if no one else, know you the best. I've been with you and I know you from experience.

You are this beautiful woman. At 18, you hold yourself with grace and poise and you don't let it falter. I am amazed at your accomplishments, what you've overcome. Believe it from yourself, you are blessed. God has put it an anointing on you, don't you ever forget it. What you are is someone to envy. There are angels singing your praises, watching over you, and they have stayed with you. You are taking your path. Be you an actress, a director, a soldier, an activist, or all of them, you will do it with the gifts you have been blessed with.

You are what I want to be when I grow up. I love you.

Love, Monti

So there it is! I really enjoyed this. Go forth and conquer.

It's Cyclical.

So what I've been thinking about all day has been how songs go with moods or get connotations from the mood you're in when you listen to them. Like, today, I've listened to Emilie Autumn's Opheliac album and Sarah Jaffe's Glorified High. Glorified High has given me a really nice mood, I always feel good with that song and today just solidified that. It just feels like the right song.

The Opheliac album is an interesting thing, though. For a really long time I had a lot of anxiety when it came to that album. A lot. The age of 15 was a weird time for me, I had a lot of bad memories connected to it, and one day I just stopped listening to it. I really steered away from EA all together. All through Freshman year of high school, I was just rough. Real rough and Opheliac was the most prominent thing of that time in my life so, naturally, it would bear the brunt of the anxiety. Around half way through my 15th year on this fabulous Earth, I weened off of it, slowly and surely, and once off, anytime I went back I got this "ughhhhhh" feeling in the pit of my stomach, so I ultimately left it all. And then I began to leave twitter, forums, and all the like in concert to EA. Even keeping in touch with VeVa, which was a whole other pit of anxiety (that I haven't fully recovered from). The last email I sent her at that time was just...cfbewuklvfkyeah. I'd check things from time to time, but not too often. Now, in the last month, with the new album and finally seeing her in concert again, I've gone backwards. I listened to the new album sparsely, went to the concert, rekindled all my asylum fire and this passed week, I've been getting back into Opheliac and it's really been a good feeling, a liberating feeling. It's helped me put a cap on things that are coming back together in my life. I can finally listen to it again, so I am growing up and out. I like that feeling. I'm just starting to appreciate things in life rather than dwell on their bad sides. I'm kind of loving it.

It's cyclical. Life is. The fact that I came into high school with EA, now I'm leaving with a whole new, better appreciation for her, with a new album and all, I just find it cool and, well, telling. I'm changed. My world is changed. I'm just really proud.

You + Time

There has been a lot of "believe in yourself" talk. I mean, that's a really shitty description of the beautiful ways people have said it, but that's basically the gyst.

I am heavily about the confidence. Women, men, genderqueer, trans*, cyborgs, everything. Believe in your beauty, believe in your decisions, believe in all that makes you you. This post is gonna be my addition to the speil because I feel like there are very few teens talking about this in a peer way.

We are what everyone's talking about. They keep telling us, "get it now" like we'll never have the chance to have it if we don't figure our shit out immediately! Confidence is something you build. Something you get in your own time. It's like an addiction, some people can quit cold turkey, others have to give themselves time. You can be seriously addicted to downing yourself, poking holes in every compliment, making life harder for yourself constantly when it's not even that deep, but in your mind, even in your heart, it can most certainly be that deep. You need real time to figure what is going down up top and inside before you do anything else about what you exude on the outside. 

Nowadays, we have a lot more vices available to us, too. Really. I mean, we have fucking songs about popping MDMA. Songs. Multiple. It's crazy. We can get things easier, we say yes to things because they are so available and we think why the hell not and then we get into these crazy head spaces and those things become dangerous. It's not a fun fucking time. As youth, teens, whatever they call us now, we have a real struggle that I think people overlook. You can't just talk about things, you can't just come out and say them. People can encourage us through videos, blogs, PSAs, all things that reach only on a very topical level, there are very few real safe places we feel able to talk. Some of us have friends but some of us are very inwards. There are plenty of things I haven't said out loud because I've just not had that place. You really have to build yourself up to a place where the consequences do not matter because there are, there are consequences. Any force that is put out has a very equal and opposite force to match. You have to look at the worse that can happen and accept it. That's a very important part. Acceptance. If you do not accept it, it does not work. I have tried to move beyond the acceptance step without truly executing it, but it backfires. It really does. There's a regression that happens.

An example, I have tried multiple times to get passed a certain person in my life without accepting that I would very sincerely have to care less about them and more about my well-being. It has been, literally, 3 years in a battle for my own head-space. It's fucking challenging. It is fucking painful. It is fucking difficult.

I battled depression. To keep yourself in any kind of legitimate happiness is difficult. I had to accept that help was a good thing and that whatever was going on in myself was worth talking about. I had to get passed my insecurity of sounding like a stereotypical teenager who had a bad day. I needed to accept that this would be something I would need to say out loud and take whatever judgement that came with it, not accepting that the first time created a very bad backlash for me and I just ended covering up a festering wound. I have now, in these past couple years really accepted the kind of person I am in that regard and let myself let go of the judgement and the depression.

But this all, as you can see, takes time. A very serious journey that takes not only that nudge, that may very well come from a PSA or video, or blog, but also from within you. It is a commitment to get yourself better and it is time consuming. All things like this blog, that blog, that artist, that friend, that video, thisthusandthat can give you are the stories, the personal tools, but you've gotta be ready to use them. It's okay to not use them now if you're not ready, time is what you've got, use it. It can't be stressed enough.

I truly am extending a hand; you need it, I've got it. Talk to me. Tell me what you need to say. Use it. There are roads in every journey, you've just gotta keep on traveling down it. Keep going. Long or short.

You take as much time as you need.

My contribution to being in "The Moment"

I don't know if any one reads Darren Lynn Bousman's (director of Repo! The Genetic Opera and The Devil's Carnival) blog here, but there was a post, I think his most recent post still, about doing everything without distraction, truly being in the moment. Well, I've been trying to do that since I've read his blog. Some days I've succeeded, other days I haven't, but I'm getting better. So I'm gonna tell you about the success.

One thing about being all in, you understand things better and the memories turn out better, believe it or not. Like, Valentine's day. After school, a friend and I decided to chill and we went over to the mall. Now, in the car, she was driving and I was riding shot gun. I proceeded to pull out my phone which in any case hinders conversation, let's be real. I was checking out twitter, facebook, and then got to Danger Dame Diary (Veronica Varlow's, Burlesque Dancer and Bloody Crumpet, online blog), which I was totally prepared to stall conversation for this when I heard -- well, read -- a passage in the back of my head: "Whatever you do today, be all there." or, you know, the last line of Bousman's blog. I knew it better at that time because had read it the day before so it was still pretty fresh. And in that very moment, like reflex, I pressed the "Home" button on my phone, locked it, and put it in my purse and continued to talk and listen to the radio with a good friend of mine. We were listening to The Gorillaz. We talked about how we wanted to know who the real guys were behind the animation. We discussed Noodle, robot and "human" alike. I confirmed their names and faces with her. It was a good conversation. We laughed. We continued on down the road and our shared fascination with Most Popular Girls in School shown.

We reached the mall and we continued our fabulous trip around, neither of really looking at our phone and te time. We did girl stuff, stopped at Hot Topic, Teavan, Icing, Forever 21, Starbucks, LoveCulture, and then ended the day with Starbucks again (because you can get refills if you register your gift cards, WHO KNEW.) It was a fucking good Valentine hang out. We talked through school, Adventure Time, He grandpa, and just a ton of other things WITHOUT EVER STOPPING TO TEXT OR NETWORK. It was beautiful.

You guys should definitely try this all in thing. It's pretty serious. Pretty cool. Pretty legit.

This is my first post...maybe I'll make days or something like Danger Dame Diary...I don't fucking know, we'll see how this goes. But I hope you enjoyed this first one! And a link to Bousman's blog for those of you interested in reading it instead of my random ass description.

Have a lovely rest of your Sunday!