Just yesterday, I journaled something for myself, and then this morning, I woke up, went to our boards, and more than one of our users seemed to be in a headspace like I was before I wrote it. And that's not at all unusual around here, or for a lot of young people right now, period. The pressures young people feel now, and often have in generations of yore, to get everything right can be immense and really overwhelming. And it can be easy to get the idea that those pressures are right or healthy when, in fact, they're not in a lot of ways. We're all just people here: we are not perfect, and we are going to mess up sometimes, or not hit our high bars. It's an integral part of the human condition. And it really is okay, I swear.
So, I'm going to share in the hopes that my process in this might help you out.
Your humble host here, as you may have picked up on from time to time, is a bit of an overachiever, and has been since she was a young person. One of my big challenges in life has long been that I have a very hard time when I mess things up or I don't do well, even though, intellectually, I know that's bollocks, and that it's okay to mess up sometimes. It's something I tell young people I work with and for all the time, and I mean what I say, even if I, too, get that it can be really tough to feel that. Even if I, too, am not usually totally there in really accepting that.
Growing up, one of my favorite things to do with my Dad was to go to Cubs games. Not just because it meant hanging out with my Dad, and also in spite of the fact that when they played the Phillies, my father rooted for them instead, which resulted in things being thrown at us. Literally, not metaphorically. (Beer and soda are freaking cold, smelly and sticky, my friends.) I can’t decide if I liked going to the games with him in spite of or because of the time when I was thisclose to catching a ball, some dude behind us grabbed it from me, and my father went into an invective that seemed to last for DAYS about what kind of putz someone was for taking a fly ball from a little girl. Probably both.
Even though I left Chicago over a decade ago now, I remain, and always will, a diehard Cubs fan.
If you assume I care at all about baseball, or even understand how the game is supposed to be played, you may be wondering why anyone would continue any fealty to the worst team in baseball.
I have my reasons, but one of them is that the Cubs provided me — and provide me still — an amazing lesson in owning your suckitude. The Cubs never really acted like they sucked as much as they do, nor did we or any of their other fans. Sometimes it was fun just to see what new, creative way they’d blow a game: they have never seemed to run out of ways to do that, which strikes me as its own special genius, really.
Every now and then, the Cubs would actually win or at least actually play well. That was awesome, I guess. Bizarre, and something you never really believed wasn't a gag of some kind, but awesome, sure. However, I feel like the times when that happened we were all so busy looking for pigs flying overhead or the four horsemen of the apocalypse that we confused Cubs fans were always distracted enough to miss full impact of the amazing and unusual lack of total failure.
The Cubs, especially to me as a kid, made sucking actually seem cool. Like a rebellion, in some ways — Oh, winning. That is so last year. And the year before. For everyone else, anyway. It’s cheap to be a winner: we aim to LOSE, because we are THAT MUCH COOLER THAN YOU. — but mostly they sucked, but then the next game, every next game, they got right back out there and they kept playing (and usually sucking at it). And that’s been how it’s been for the whole of my life. Players keep actually joining the team and always seem to be excited about it. Fans still fill Wrigley, and the jeers and cheers are full of equal amounts of love. The Cubs seem to basically give suckitude a hug, a kiss, slap it on the backside then have a chummy beer together. I think that’s pretty super-amazing.
I’ve been thinking about the Cubs lately, because I feel like I forgot these lessons in the yay of failure they taught me so generously. When I was younger, I think they informed a lot of what I did. I think, because of the Cubs, no lie, I was a lot more fearless than I would have been otherwise, and a lot less afraid to try things I might lose, fail or just plain suck at. Because of the Cubs, I feel like there were things I tried I knew from the get-go I wouldn't be any good at, but wanted to try anyway, and felt like I could without worrying too much about it. Like the time I saw the girls in gym doing aerial cartwheels, for instance, and it seemed to me it looked like you just ran and then hurled yourself into the air. Of course, that's not how you did it, something I figured out even before I was laying on my back with the wind knocked out of me. Or the time I went ahead and endlessly prepped and then tried for an audition and a scholarship at a school I did not feel I was likely able to get into: that went a lot better than the cartwheel, as I did get in. And I would have been gutted if I hadn't, but I also would have been okay. I probably wouldn't have gone ahead and risked having my heart broken as often as I did, which sometimes resulted in the best stuff ever and sometimes resulted in lots of tears, the hanging of my head with shame, and the wearing out of yet one more Joy Division LP.
Lately, I feel like I have been failing a lot. Heck, last week, I had a much-needed break from work planned, and I even managed to louse that up. One assumes there are no grades given for recess because no one could possibly fail recess. Clearly, those school systems have not met me. I totally failed recess last week.
I keep feeling like I’m watching some people around me excel at things I have tried and tried to do well, but either failed at or... well, failed by my ridiculously high standards. Mind, some of these things are things where I just wouldn’t be down with, or have time or energy for, doing the same things to reach that same level of achievement. Others are things where someone else is simply more invested in winning or succeeding at them than I am. But with other things, those conditions don’t apply. Some of these things are things I have very much wanted to do very well with, or well with consistently, and have tried the same things but got different, less awesome results.
My partner, because my partner is awesome and loves me, says I’m being too hard on myself. That may well be, of course: I’ve a bit of a lifelong reputation for that sort of thing. A couple friends of mine I've whined at about all of this rolled their eyes, and with love, not malice or dismissal.
At the same time, my standards are my standards, and sometimes they aren’t actually higher than other people’s standards. By whatever yardstick we’re using, I feel like I keep failing a lot and have failed a lot in the last year or two with a lot of things.
What I want, though, is to be able to allow for that. I want to have it be truly okay -- and to truly feel okay -- for me to fail sometimes, even a lot. After all, I try a lot of things, constantly, unceasingly, so it’s not like I can be amazing at all of them or amazing at them all the time, nor should I have to be. It needs to be okay — with anyone, but most of all, with me — for me to suck. Ideally, I’d like to get to a place where it’s not only okay, but I can have a Cubbish sort of Zen about it and actually embrace sucking.
I mean, it’s not like messing up, or not hitting the highest bar or just being meh at anything doesn’t have its benefits or offers us nothing. It offers us plenty: humility, patience for ourselves and others, compassion, humanity, humor, and the ability to have a life that is about something more than achievement or whatever we count as success. It keeps us playing the game, as it were, just to play the game; to be in and enjoy the process, not just the product. I’m sure it offers more than that, those things are just off the top of my head, and I’m not where I’d like to be with it yet, remember. I feel confident that when I get to that enlightened place where feeling like a failure is nothing close to the end of the world, a place of butt-slapping comfort, good cheer and one more reason to just keep going back out on that field, picking up that bat, and trying again, I’ll have a lot more benefits to report.
But in the meantime, I kind of suck. Maybe you do, too. But darnit, I am going to get okay with that being the case sometimes, even if I’ve got to fly to those now-unaffordable bleacher seats and make myself sick on cotton candy and completely misplaced optimism towards a team doing well that never has to make it happen and seems to care a lot less about it than the rest of us do.
I've been dating my boyfriend for 6 months now. He is my first long-term boyfriend and I really do love him. He is 3 years older than me and has had a 3 year relationship with another girl before me. After 3 months we decided to have sex. I was a virgin and this was a really big deal to me but he was not a virgin and had been with 2 girls before me. I don't regret being with him, I knew I was ready. But I get really upset about him not losing his virginity to me. Is it normal to be so upset about his past and past relationships? I have tried to just forget it all but I almost feel cheated. I gave my virginity to him and I didn't get anything in return. I felt like it wasn't as special to him as it was to me. How can I get over this?
I've been in a relationship with my current boyfriend for a year now, and we've been having sexual intercourse for around 8 months. Throughout this time, I have NEVER reached an orgasm through sex, but because I thought I was the weird abnormal one, and was afraid of how my boyfriend may react, I since have faked it every single time which we have had sex. Sex is alright, but I now just want to tell him. But how do I explain to him that this isn't his fault without him being hurt and upset? Please help me because I really don't know what to do!
I want to begin taking the birth control pill for the first time. Is it possible for me to start taking my first birth control pill on the SECOND day of my period? I won't be having unprotected sex. But if I start taking the birth control pill on the 2nd day is it less affective? And also after taking the birth control control pill for a series of time, when is it 95% affective? It obviously doesn't begin on the first day I start right?
On top of doing what I do here at Scarleteen (and everything else I do), I also do some outreach sexuality and sexual rights education for a youth homeless shelter here in Seattle. My partner also now works full-time at that shelter, and when he came home last night and filled me in on some things that had gone on that day, I got struck very hard in the gut with some feelings I hadn't fully realized for myself until then, both about that work and the young people there, but also about some of my experiences with some of the users at Scarleteen.
So, I wrote the residents there a letter this morning that I'd also like to share with you, because the way I feel about them is also the way I feel about plenty of you. Because most of Scarleteen happens online, very few of our users are currently homeless or transient, but some have been or will be. In addition, plenty over the years have shared similar struggles, either being in the foster care system or in unsafe homes, surviving loss, assault or abuse, having with disability or mental illness, dealing with racism, sexism, sizeism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia or any other number of really tough challenges, especially when you're young. So, what I'm saying to them, and what they have done for me, very much applies to many of you.
Some of you know me, others of you don't, but I'm an outreach worker who has provided sex education at the shelter for the last couple of years. Some of you who do know me may also know that when I was younger, I went through some really rough stuff, including abuse, really devastating loss, depression, sexual assault and also not having a safe place or home to go to sometimes. In other words, some of you know I have been where you're at, and I know how hard it can be and how very much it hurts.
Because I make part of my living both writing about my own life, and also providing education for young people, I'm pretty in touch with my own teen years. I don't have the opportunity to forget them because of that work and the way I do it and process it. But you probably know for yourself that it's common for any of us to put the toughest of our memories or experiences out-of-mind sometimes, or to try and forget them so that they're less painful.
I was thinking about all of you a lot last night, and was feeling something about you I realize I've never had the chance to share. When I'm working with you, while I always leave wishing for much better things for all of you, I also leave always feeling very inspired by you, and reminded of good things about myself when I was your age I often do forget and really shouldn't, and which I also really didn't know back then.
The biggest thing I get reminded of in talking with and watching you is how incredibly strong all of us are or were who have been in the spot you're in. I forget that teenage-me was able to handle and survive some things, things many of you have, that a lot of people who are older and who are much better supported couldn't handle. I forget that the fact that I came through all of that and made a good life for myself and became the kind of person I wanted to be is a major achievement. I forget that the fact that I was able then to still be kind to other people despite how hurt, scared and angry I was and could be made me an incredible person. I forget that being able to be without some of the most basic things I needed, including care from some of the people who were supposed to care for me most, and to try and do things, mess up, but keep trying again and again to get it right until I did was a really big deal. I forget how hard it was to shake off how bitter I often felt seeing other kids who took what they had and I didn't for granted.
I also forget how little credit I usually gave myself, how hard I was on myself for the times I really couldn't handle everything, even though what I was being asked to handle was more than anyone should ever be asked to.
One of the amazing things that all of you do for me when I come in to see you and work with you is to remind me of all of that. Because I can see how strong you are, I'm reminded of how strong I am and have been. Because I can see the way you can care about each other even when it feels like so many people aren't caring for you, I'm reminded of how I was able to do that. Because I see you struggling but still surviving and trying so hard, I'm reminded of my own struggle and survival, but also of how, however awful and unfair it all was, it's such a huge part of the person I grew to be. Yes, the work I do for and with you is about you, not about me, but that doesn't mean I don't benefit from it, too.
I want to make sure you know that for me -- and I know I'm not alone in this -- you're my heroes and sheroes. I think all of you are absolutely amazing, and if you don't know it now, I want to assure you that you are until you can feel and know that for yourselves. I don't know about you, but the people I tend to look up to most in my life, who I'm most inspired by, are not the people who had it easy. They're people who had to work harder than other people, who had more challenges to surpass, and yet, who did more than most people do, despite having less to start with or having to work twice as hard to get there. That's you: that's who you are and will be. You have the capacity to grow into being everyone's heroes. I have no doubt that you will do exactly that.
Of course, because I see how hard you can be on yourselves, I'm reminded of that, too. Because I see how often some of you don't forgive yourselves for your own mistakes, I'm reminded of how many times I didn't do that for myself. Those are tough mirrors to look into: I should have been a lot nicer to me and a lot less hard on myself. So, I also want to remind you that it's so important you cut yourselves a lot of slack and respect yourself for the awesome person you are. You are not an error, a mistake or a failure; you are not the people screwing up your world or anyone else's. You're the people who are unjustly hit hard with other people's mistakes, screw-ups and failings, the people who are doing the very best you can to deal with that injustice. None of that is your fault or your doing: your doing, what you're responsible for, is what you choose to make of yourself with what you've got and how you take care of yourself or don't.
So, please take care of you and be kind to you. If and when you make your own mistakes, don't beat up on yourselves; be forgiving of you. Everyone makes mistakes: it's one of the most basic ways we learn everything and anything. If it takes you a little longer to figure some things out that it might others with less challenges, know that not only is that okay, but that it will probably mean you'll also wind up understanding things more deeply and clearly than others will.
Thank you for being who you are and for -- whether you meant to or not -- reminding me so often of who I am. Even if you don't think you're inspiring to anyone, know that you probably are. You most certainly are to me.
I am in my early 20s and recently had to stop taking the contraceptive pill because of a medical reason. Now that I am medically ok again, I planned to re-start the pill at some point this week. However, me and my BF of 2 yrs got drunk last night at a party and stupidly had unprotected sex. I am too embarrassed to go to a doctor and ask for a Plan B pill I have heard that if I take two contraceptive pills now (or asap) then it acts in the same way a morning after pill does...is this true?
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