Are you from Tennessee?

A friend of mine used to have a shirt that read "Are you from Tennessee? Cause you're the only ten I see." It made me crack up every time I saw it and I don't care if admitting that makes me sound corny. Of course I always thought of men like Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt (pre-Angelina) when I saw this. You know what I mean, a certain type of ruggedly handsome manly man.

I never pictured Jay Baruchel, the star of She's Out of My League which my sister and I saw today.

Would have pictured a scrawny kid like him (pictured above)? Probably not. The determining factor in the rating and dating system -- a concept we've discussed in my sociology class -- is outward appearance. How fucked is that?

I am not the most beautiful woman on earth. I'm certainly not as beautiful or well-built as actress Alice Eve, Baruchel's gorgeous love interest in League (also in the picture above). But does that make me any less than "a hard ten"? No. It doesn't.

Caring, smart, funny and there's very little I wouldn't do for someone I loved. These are the things that matter. These are each worth at least two points so that makes me a ten if not a 20.

Watching League made me think of O.U.A.T.B. I firmly believe one of the reasons we didn't work out was because he didn't expect us to. I think he thought I was too good for him.

What I hope he and the rest of us realize is we are all tens in another pair of eyes. We are all beautiful and worthy of love.

I know it in my heart.

My week of blindness

So nothing that important happened this week. Not a single moment felt life-changing in its ramifications.

Same old shit, different days. Boring. Blah blah.

Hopefully my life will get interesting within the next week so that I'll actually feel like I have something to say or write here.

At the moment I'm simply questioning why I'm in school and what I'm learning from these god-awful classes that appear to have no consequence.

Go ahead, hate on me

Someone left a comment on my blog post "The world is your wonderbra!" that reads "News flash: You are not Carrie Bradshaw." Whoever it was that did that wasn't brave enough to share their name. This post is a love letter to him/her and the other haters.

Dear Anonymous Hater,

First of all: Because you so clearly have visited my blog and have left a comment, you are what Google Analytics would consider a reader. So thanks for being a reader, Anonymous Hater.

Eventually when I make the move to monetize my blog, you, added to the number of others who read (and enjoy) Vered's The Penny Jar, will just increase my appeal to advertisers. So thanks again, 'cause you're helping me make money in the long run!

Furthermore, I fully realize I am not Carrie Bradshaw. Sure, the fictional narrator and main character of the hit TV show and the movies is one of my influences but it's just that: an influence.

I am ROSELLA ELEANOR LaFEVRE and I know this. After all of the shit I've been through, I wouldn't want to be anyone else.

I do many original things in my blog, Anonymous Hater.

More than that, I am a whole lot more vulnerable in my blog than Bradshaw is in her columns. This is the place where I lay down on a table and open my chest to show you my heart and you have the cowardice to shit on it without even revealing your identity?

You are clearly someone who knows me well enough to know my influences. So I guess that means someone I have been kind to secretly despises me -- for whatever reason.

Unless, of course, you've been reading long enough to have seen some Carrie Bradshaw influence in my work. In that case, I don't need to illustrate the ways in which your original comment is undue. So thanks again for being a reader, Anonymous Hater.

Here's a question, Anonymous Hater: What, if anything, have you contributed to the creative landscape of the world?

While maybe you dislike or disagree with my writing, I have very clearly evoked some kind of strong feeling in you and that, my friend, is what good writing should do. I write and bare my soul and maybe I've touched upon a vein in you that makes you bitter.

And while I am fine with your opinion -- everyone is entitled to them -- I'd like to share a friendly warning: When you send negative vibes out into the world, you get them back tenfold.

Beyond that, please note that the post you commented on was one in which I wished for my readers to be happy and to feel supported, and you attempted to tear me down. Too bad, Anonymous Hater, that you didn't pick on a weaker person. You've become my fuel and I can't wait to watch you burn.

Whatever your wishes for me, I hope you have a good life.

Love,
Rosella Eleanor LaFevre

P.S. In the words of my Girls' High sister Jill Scott:

"In reality I'm gon' be who I be and I don't feel no faults... Hate on me, hater, now or later... 'Cause I'm gonna do me, you'll be mad, baby"

Lovely, lonely ladies

Last night I stood waiting for my friend Michele at her dorm building when I saw a beautiful young man approach, take out his earbuds and, after racing up the steps, scoop his petite lady love into an embrace. I may or may not be making this up, but I'm pretty sure he twirled her. This sickeningly syrupy-sweet sweep of public affection landed with a thud on my poorly constructed house of lies.

This house of lies provides shelter from my aching loneliness. The lies are: "I'm beautiful," "I'll find someone," "even if I never found someone who loved me that much, it'd be OK" and the biggest lie of all: "I am/this is enough for me."

More like a house of cards than a house of lies -- or maybe not. In essence both of those things are faulty, unstable structures.

Every conversation I've had with my girlfriends in the past couple of days have been about how lonely we are and how much we want boyfriends. I think each and every one of these beautiful young women feel the same emptiness without someone to hold our hands and kiss our foreheads.

Some of us, especially me, spend too much time in our own heads and are convinced -- whether this is right or wrong -- that the right guy would be able to get us out of our heads and living in the moment.

We listen to love songs and cry because we feel so lonely.

Now that the weather has warmed up, we see couples canoodling all over campus and we know that even while some of us make the moves, guys are drawn elsewhere -- moths to candles not our own.

So we say "I love you" to each other in the hopes that the love of our friends is all we need, only we continue to cry at love songs and to want to claw at the throats of happy, boy-loved girls everywhere.

Still, we continue to wonder what makes some girls worthy of the "hey, beautiful" catcall and big, swooping hugs and forehead kisses and hand-holding? We wonder why some girls get all the attention when great girls -- ones who are beautiful, smart, funny, giving, loving and possibly even a little kinky -- stand by unnoticed?

We sit around, waiting for answers and hope that someday God will remind the male species that we're here, waiting to love and be loved.

The world is your wonderbra!

Something I tend to think a lot about and write a lot about is support. Mostly my need for it...

This morning I was reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and came across this quote:

"[W]e should notice that we are already supported every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support. There is the sunlight coming through the window and the silence of the morning. Begin from these."

It reminds of Josh Kelley's song "You Are a Part of Everything," a song I play on repeat when I'm feeling particularly down or worthless. He sings:

"The worst mistake is giving up and pulling back when you've had too much of not knowing where you belong. The one thing I am certain of is time will change each one of us. Before this you're not on your own. So open your voice and be strong. You are not alone; you are what you believe. You are not alone; you're a part of everything. When life gets you down, just set your soul at ease. You are not alone, you're a part of everything."

I hope you feel wonderfully supported and a part of everything today. If the former is something you struggle with, maybe you need a new bra! The latter -- well that's just a matter of listening to more Josh Kelley! ;)

Body love

With spring's arrival, girls everywhere are stripping down to their bones. While most of us love the chance to show some skin and dress a little more flirty than frigid temperatures allow, the warming air sometimes makes us all the more aware of our bulging bits and cottage cheese.

Sitting here in the aching body of a newly-working girl (I am now employed in the newspaper department of the Free Library of Philadelphia), I am aware of the jiggly fat on my inner thighs and the small ham hocks that are my biceps (you'd be surprised how strong I really am). I am aware and, yes, a tad self-conscious, but then I remember one thing.

That one thing is this: My body is what gets me through the day, what carries me to and from my classes and my dorm and now work. Without this body, I'd be just a spirit and a brain. And while those two things are beautiful and very important, so is my body.

I am tired of hating the skin (and bones and fat) I'm in.

Is it just me or do I hear a chorus of "Amen, sister"?

Spring Break Post #8

"Sometimes everything is just the worst." - Tina Fey on 30 Rock (pictured above with co-star Alec Baldwin)

Spring Break Post #7

Sometimes I feel I've seen everything. Then something reminds me that I haven't seen anything.

(The above is a picture I took from the 40-something floor of the Comcast Building in Center City Philadelphia.)

Spring Break Post #6

Getting my read on. Here's one I coulda told you: "Finally, these dares one made oneself commit didn't change a thing." - Birds of America, Lorrie Moore

Spring Break Post #5

The theme of my converstions lately: this is not the life I imagined for myself. It's nothing like what I dreamed as a girl.

Spring Break Post #4

"There was nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being." - Birds of America, Lorrie Moore

Spring Break Post #3

Grammy's watching The Celtic Thunder. They're singing "I still haven't found what I'm looking for," a surprisingly apt description of my current state of mind.

Spring Break Post #2

Cried to Liz Phair love song tonight. Wish I'd been born the kind of woman that drove men crazy. Sometimes I think love is the only thing worth living for.

Spring Break Post #1

Yesterday, I made frequent eye contact with a very cute patron at Perkins. Through the entire meal, I lived a lifetime in those cursory glances. I felt hope.

Sprung

Spring break has sprung and sometime tomorrow, I will be escaping this godforsaken city of brotherly angst and hate for the sweet bliss of a week with my GrammyGrams. This woman, who is exactly 59 years and 364 days my senior, is my hero. She's survived breast cancer and colon cancer and a divorce. She's my best friend and my soul sister.

God, I cannot wait!

Yes, not only has spring sprung, but I have sprung from the prison America calls college. Honestly, I have come to realize the only place on earth I feel whole and happy is at my Grammy's house and I have been looking forward to spending my break there for months.

I won't be posting much this week, although I'll try to text in a few 160-character posts whenever something really important comes up.

In my somewhat absence, I urge you to have fun. Get out there and enjoy your spring break or your work/school week or whatever the case may be. For now, I'm going to dream of a Coffee Shop Intellectual (one of the guy archetypes in February 2010's Cosmopolitan, from which the above image of 26-year-old actor Sebastian Stan comes -- yes, I'm catching up on some very important reading) and enjoy some home-cooking in the Lehigh Valley.

Smooches, pooches!

Shipwreck

Yesterday, before I could talk myself out of it, I bombarded the cute guy in the class before my creative writing class and gave him my phone number. He looked at me like I was strange the entire time. The look on his face is burned into my memory.

It is that look which signifies just what kind of reaction I seem to get in everyone. I think I tend to horrify people. Or maybe I am horrified of other people. I do not know which it is anymore.

I feel like I'm always on -- or that I'm so lost that I don't even know what I am like when I am "off."

Today in my sociology class, we touched again on this concept of front and backstage behavior that we seem to always talk about. And it just makes me sad to think that there is no one outside of my own family with whom I am backstage.

I wish I had the energy to delve into this further, but I do not. I am terribly sorry I have been so short of shrift of late. I really just need to try and find my footing.

I can feel the world, my life, flow in and out around my feet, washing away the sand on which I stand. I am sinking slowly but surely. And I feel I have nothing to hold onto.

A hundred years

Today I feel weary.

Walking from the central library here in Philly to the subway, I felt like sitting down and crying. My feet hurt, my back ached. I was (and am still) so tired. My brain hurt too.

Like it's a suitcase I've overpacked. It's ready to burst at the seams at any given moment.

I feel like I'm not really learning anything useful but my head is being crammed full of useless information and it gives me headaches.

I need to sleep for a hundred years. Even then, I'm sure I'd still be tired.

A heart wrapped in cotton candy

Earlier today, before I gained full consciousness, I was happy.

Utterly, unmistakably, over-the-moon happy.

All because of a dream. I can only remember one detail of my dream: I was dating Mr. Athlete and it quite possibly could have been a sex dream -- well not in the case that that's all I dreamt of. There were other things. I feel like there were sun and blue skies in my dream. Whatever exactly went down between myself and my dream guy, I was the happiest I've ever felt.

Except possibly when I dream about being pregnant.

The point is I would sleep forever if I could keep having those dreams that made me feel that way.

It's impossible to even convey in words just how happy I felt. It was like I was filled with hot air, but like a sweet hot air. It's like I was filled with cotton candy -- yes, like my heart had been wrapped in cotton candy.

There's hardly a thing I wouldn't do if it could make me feel that way all the time.

Then again, I know better than to believe that I could ever be that happy and not put an end to it myself if outside forces didn't conspire against my happiness. It's human nature. I think as much as I sometimes think others are out to make me miserable, the fact of the matter is, I am. Even if it's subconsciously.

Other than this dream, there's one other big thing on my mind. It's something I realized yesterday and which I think is a perfect example of something I've been thinking about for the past couple of days.

I'm not quite as unhappy when I'm by myself as I come off in conversations with others (even though I'm never as happy as when I'm dreaming). Honestly, I feel like the people I talk to the most are usually bitching about something -- I do not dare invalidate their anger or frustration but the problem is its affect on my mood. No matter how content or satisfied I may feel when I'm alone, there are certain people I can't talk to without complaining.

One of these people is my mother. I feel like 90% of what I share with her is my anger or frustration with something. And while she'll tell me I need to get happy, like today when I told her I've never felt happier than during that dream this morning, the times when I try to share something positive, she'll find something negative to say about it. Of course, an example escapes me at the moment.

But I'm really tired of this melodramatic crap that so many of us pull when attempting to socialize.

Why do these people do it? Why do I do it?

Is it because these people don't want to see me happy while they're upset or because I don't want to be happy when they're upset? Am I sacrificing my own inner peace in an attempt to lighten the emotional load of my companion? Is that really my job anyway?

Can it really be the case that we could all be happy if it weren't for others pulling -- or pushing -- us down?

I think the dream is the perfect proof that "yes" is the answer to this question. In my dreams, anything can make me happy whether or not others would deem in wrong in the real world.

Take my dreams about being pregnant for instance. For some reason, I've had a lot of dreams lately where I'm pregnant. And, next to the dream I had this morning, they're the happiest dreams I've ever had. If I were actually pregnant, the outside world would make me upset about being pregnant. I'd be told that at 18 I shouldn't have a kid, it'll ruin my life. But when I'm dreaming, no one can stop me.

Even when I told my mom about the kinds of dreams that make me happiest, she said "I worry about you."

Who the fuck are you to tell me what can and can't make me happy? Who am I to do that to you?

Well, all of this thinking is giving me a headache. I do declare it's bedtime for me.