Rules of Engagement: Common Sense Edition.

I'm resurrecting my dating/marriage/girl-boy-relations series, Rules of Engagement. I'm here to talk to you about a thing that many of us (including myself) lack while in the relationship market: common sense.

I know, I know, love isn't about logic, you get swept away, the feelings are so important, etc. I get it. It's no fun to be the Debbie Downer and be like "Um, he told you that girl in that picture is his cousin? She doesn't seem to know it, judging by the way her tongue is in his ear.." but don't worry, I'm super great at being a Debbie Downer. It was my nickname in high school (not even kidding. It was usually accompanied by the "wah wah waaaah" noise and a joke about cat AIDS. I'm sorry, I was very passionate about the environment and keeping my friends free of STDs.) so I've got this covered.

So, for when you forget that you're a person of value and deserve to be treated as such, here's a list of things you sometimes forget when a boy (or girl) says those magical three words: "You are hot." (or I love you, whatever)

Common Sense Things to Remember When Enamored or Romantically Entangled, an incomplete list:

They should never make you feel small. I mean, physically, yes, that's fine, but they should never make you feel like less of a person. If you leave their presence feeling crummy about yourself and you don't know why, that's probably a bad sign.

They shouldn't give you reasons to not trust yourself. I don't care how nice a boy is, if he's ever told you "You're overreacting" or "You're just being emotional" or anything else that insults your ability to be both logical and in full grasp of your emotional state at the same time, UGH. Get rid of him. Preferably with a line that goes like this: "I'll show YOU emotional! We. are. over." and a dramatic exit.

They should want to be with you. Now, this part is key, because sometimes we don't pick up on it. "But he called and wanted to hang out!" No, he called and wanted to make out. There's a difference. If you feel yourself constantly grabbing for his attention, time, and conversation, move on. Cause it's just not worth it to try and force someone to want to be with you when they're being lukewarm.

Remember: YOU. ARE. AWESOME. This is very important to keep in mind at all times during dating forays. You're cool. You're sweet. You're funny. They should want to be with you. If you're ever feeling like, "Oh my god, I can't believe this boy/girl actually wants to be with me, I am so lucky, I hope they don't leave me, why are they even dating me, any day now they'll walk away," you need to tape a sign to your forehead that says "REMIND ME I AM AWESOME" so that every person you see during the day will spot it and be like, "Hey girl, you pretty awesome" until you remember this. It's possible that this is a shame-based tactic to force you to acknowledge your own awesomeness, but whatever. I bet it works.

They shouldn't continuously disrespect you. Mocking you in public (in a cruel, laughing-at-not-with fashion). Telling you your ideas/thoughts/opinions are stupid. Not listening when you speak. Disregarding your opinions on things. Talking over you while you're talking to people. Insults that make you feel belittled (bonus points if after you confront them, they use "you're overreacting/emotional" in which case, see above). These things are things that would seem obvious, but I know SO. MANY. PEOPLE who just live through them, accepting it as though that's all they deserve.

Lines that should signal an automatic break-up [or at least give you some pause]:

• "I'll try not to sleep with other people. Sometimes I just can't help it, though. But I'll really try." --when you ask that they not, you know, cheat on you (may or may not have experienced this line in real life, may or may not have stuck around despite it, ohmygod).
• "Oh, there's no internet there...or phone service...or mail...or satellites..." --when you ask that they keep in touch while on their next trip to like, NYC. Yeah, that doesn't sound fishy.
• "It was only tongue." --when confronted on partying photos you found online.
• "Here's a photo of my poop." --are you a criminal, because you're DEFINITELY dating a twelve-year-old.
• "Let's just like, live in the present, you know?" --when you ask where they see this relationship going. Bonus zinger to respond with: "I'm sorry, since when are you a zen master?"
• "I really want to date you, I'm just so messed up." --when they are confessing they like-you-like-you (also may or may not have lived through this one IRL. like, at least my dating faux paus are here to help you learn to avoid them).
• "I really like you, I'm just...too afraid of your dad to date you." --I mean, maybe he's right. Maybe your dad is crazy. Or maybe he's just trying to convince you to make out with him in the back parking lot of the church.
• "It's complicated." --when you ask them why they're hitting on you when, last you heard, they were in a relationship.
• "Don't tell your parents." --two seconds after them asking you to be their girlfriend. 
• "Can we just keep it on the down-low? No one needs to know our private business." --they want you to be their SECRET GIRLFRIEND. Aka, they don't respect you enough to take your relationship public, so you shouldn't respect them enough to stay in the same car for longer than 5 seconds after this statement has been released from their mouth. Bonus points if you say "I'm no one's secret girlfriend, asshole!" and slam the door on your way out.
• "I don't really like to talk about my STD's." --........... I just.....do I even need to say anything more about this....
• "Girls are so annoying. All my exes were crazy." --when he's discussing past girlfriends. Yes, because I'm so sure that the problem was them, not you, in every single previous relationship.
• "I liked kissing you, it just didn't mean that much to me." Presented without comment.

Linkage Round-Up (& Bonus Vlog)!

Here are some posts I've been writing when I'm away at my other writing home, HelloGiggles.

Student Arrested for Science Experiment Gone Awry: "However, Kiera’s story is different. She did not bring a gun to school. She didn’t phone in a bomb threat. Kiera’s crime? Performing a science experiment in her school’s chemistry lab. She mixed a few household chemicals together in an 8 oz bottle, causing the top to blow off and produce some smoke. No one was injured, and no school property was damaged. The principal described it as an accident. But Kiera was still arrested, expelled and will now have to face a felony record for the rest of her life if convicted." Happy ending to this story, BTW - the charges were dropped.

The Art of Complaining: Could We Use a Break? 

10 Insects You Can Totally Eat: I am a SERIOUS JOURNALIST, people. I did legit RESEARCH for this. Leech pasty chips, nom!

8 Obnoxious Trends on Instagram: "Number 6: The moments in which the Kelvin filter can unironically be used are virtually non-existent. Tread carefully."

And now, as promised, bonus Vlog (video blog, ahem). A reader asked me to expound on why you oughtn't use the neglected Kelvin filter on instagram, and here is my response: "What's the number one name of sexual molester gym teachers across America? Probably Kelvin."

What to Expect When Writing on the Internet.

It always weirds me out when people email/tweet/FB me asking me for advice on how to "make it" as a blogger. My first reaction is to go, "Who, ME?" and look around to be sure they're actually talking about me, blogger me. My second is to laugh and be like, "Whoa, dudes, I'm not a big deal." But then I come back down to earth and realize that just because someone's asking me for advice on writing for the internet doesn't mean I'm all swanky or whatever. I also am reminded that several years ago, I was the person asking for advice from internet people more famous than I am/was.

It's not that I'm not flattered by the question. I totally am. It just took me a while to get used to the idea that I was actually worth the asking of it. I'm not a bigshot blogger, by any means, but I do have a small measure of success in writing for the internet world, and it's something I'm proud of, grateful for, and have worked really hard at. So if someone wants to ask me for my advice on the subject, advice about the field I've worked so hard to break into, I'm honored by that. And here's my answer.

What to Expect When Writing on the Internet: An Incomplete List.

--Success doesn't come easily. Until it does.
The game of who becomes a "successful" blogger and who does not really has no rules, no rhyme, no reason. You'll find some bloggers who make your jaw drop with how great they are, and they toil away in obscurity, noticed by none. You'll find others who are boring, bland, cliche, and non-original, regurgitating the same posts countless others have posted before them, yet they'll have millions of hits. You could be good, you could be dedicated, and you could still never "make it." Or you could be good, dedicated, and garner an almost instant-following the second you boot up a wordpress account. I've been blogging in complete and total obscurity for seven years, and I'm now in a place where I can be deemed "successful." It could take seven years for you, too. Or it could happen overnight. Or it could never happen. You won't know til you try.

--You will be misunderstood.
People will read your article headline, designed to be attention-grabbing, and assume that's your position/statement on the issue, when in fact the actual writing you wrote speaks to the complete opposite. People will read your blog post, and leave a comment claiming that you're wrong and you'll think, Waaaait, you're saying exactly what I was saying in paragraph three. What? Someone will take something you wrote as a light-hearted thing designed to make people laugh and attack your personality, completely misreading it as a serious post rather than a humorous one. You will be misunderstood.

--People will be people.
Commenters can be cruel. We all know this. It's a psychological fact that came with the advent of the anonymity of the internet age. People will say things to you on the internet that they'd have a much harder time saying to your face. The personal attacks I've had leveled against me would horrify you. People take offense at the slightest thing. Just today, an article I wrote for HelloGiggles about obnoxious habits of Instagram users garnered a lot of attention. One commenter told me to "grow the f**k up" because they took issue with my description of frog legs as "gross." It shouldn't hurt me to read that. I know the fickle nature of the beast. But it still stings. When I've written about gay marriage and the fight for gay rights from a Christian perspective, I cannot tell you how many people have said I'm not a "real" Christian, I'm going to hell, etc, etc, etc. Hurtful, mean, slanderous comments? They come with the territory.

--People will also be freaking amazing. 
I've made true, real-life friends as a result of my writing on the internet. It goes usually something like this: a reader comment, my response, a twitter interaction, some DM's, a gchat, and then the ultimate test of online friendship - the Facebook request. This happens because some people are genuinely wonderful, awesome human beings, and when they reach out to you (or you to them) it's like reaching half-way across the globe to find a new friend, a kindred spirit. And sometimes, people will just be really nice to you. Maybe you won't end up besties, but I've received numerous encouraging emails and comments and tweets from total strangers. I love my readers. Seriously. They make my life so much happier and they are constantly encouraging me. Whether it's one comment, a tweet, a fb share, or an email chain--people will be kind to you.

--This too, might pass (Do it Cause You Love It)
There's no stability in writing for an internet audience. There's no guaranteed book deal. Sometimes it feels like all we hear are these success stories, but they're not normative. Anyone, literally anyone, can start their own space on the internet. If you're in it to "go viral" and get a series book contract, tv show based off your tweets, and celebrity fans all dumped on your doorstep, get out. Seriously. The ups and downs of the blogging life aren't worth it. The percentage of the people that happens to is so inestimably small, it's like...it's just really small, okay?
 I can't tell you how many times I've been discouraged by lack of readership, by trickling blog stats, by feeling unnoticed and unwanted. A friend of mine, during one of my many, many slumps in which I was telling her "I'm gonna quit blogging FOREVER!" asked me why I was doing it. Was it to gain fame and notoriety and all its accoutrements? Or was it just because I loved doing it? Do this because you love it. That's all.

Brief Nuggets of Wisdom to Remember:

1. Be kind. Always be kind to people. Don't badmouth others, whether they be fellow bloggers or real-life humans. It just pays off to be kind.

2. There are no rules. People will tell you "write shorter!" "Write longer!" "You use too big of words!" "You don't use enough big words!" "Every post must have a picture!" "Your pictures are crap!" "Tweet the link 10 billion times!" "Never tweet the link!" Just ignore the noise. Blog how you blog. Write from your deepest self. The rest will come.

3. That being said, Don't be an Idiot. Just follow general online etiquette and courtesy. If you don't know what that is, observe the blogging community that you want to get involved with for a while. You'll figure it out.

And bonus numbers four and five: respond to emails. Unless they're from crazies, in which case, spam filterrrrr. Just keep in mind that it's professional to respond to emails in a good fashion. Be careful with location. It makes me nervous when people tag themselves in locations all the time. Crazies are out there, and they will use that. Seriously. You think it's a joke, until it happens to you. Be careful with giving out your locations.

Alright, that's all for now. Questions? Concerns? Thoughts on the state of modern-day dairy farming? Me too. 

The Floor.

I laid face-down in the grubby carpet, nose and cheeks all smushed and ingrained with the beige patterns.

photo: my own

I breathed in and out and in and out and told myself Okay, now. Now. Now. Get up...now. 

I didn't get up.

I was home alone this week, after classes, after chapel, after a test and turning in my senior thesis. I had to get up and go out the door and head to work at my second job, you know, the one I work most nights and every weekend.


There was just one problem: I didn't want to go.

I know, I know, most of us don't always want to go to work, right? But this was different. I had collapsed to the ground for the second time that day (the first being my epic trip/fall/tumble in the parking lot on the way to turn in my thesis, in which I yelled a variety of creative non-cuss words) and everything in me did not want to get up.

Can I just lay here forever? Would that be so bad?

I don't know if I can describe to you the utter exhaustion I have. It's lived with me so long, it seems like it's always been a part of me. Part of it is depression, sure. But I just have come to the end of my rope, and I guess what the end of the rope looks like is me, face-down in my carpet, not wanting to move anymore. It felt like my body would shatter into a million pieces and scatter all over this industrial, many-stained-college-dorm-style carpet if I tried to get up. It felt like I just couldn't. I just wouldn't. I wouldn't try anymore. I'd tried, and look where it'd gotten me. Working every single weekend, sometimes two and three shifts, never having a day off from work, school for twelve hours a day three times a week. Friendships? Hah. I stopped being able to maintain those to any satisfactory level long ago.

I bet if you asked my fellow English majors about me, this is what they'd be able to tell you:

1. She has pink hair.
2. She's a great writer.
3. She's a flake.

I'm not being all pretentious or whatever when I say that I am one of the best writers in my program. Classmates have told me that, professors have told me that, I've been published, I've won awards and cash prizes, I've been invited to public readings. My heart always swells a little when another English major tells me "I'm in awe of your writing" or "I can't even critique this, because you go beyond our skill level," or whenever a story or essay comes back with an "A" and the professor's comments of "Excellent." I am, as it were, a big fish in this collegiate pond.

But I'm never around. I'm hardly in class. I'm always flaking, always wishy-washy, always late. Whatever scrap of genius I might possess, it quickly pales in estimation when contrasted with my obvious issues. 

When I was laying face-down into the smelly carpet, this was partially the cause of it. A professor had emailed me, asking about my absences, worried because technically he could fail me for them. It doesn't matter that I've turned in my assignments and they have all been A's. I'm flunking the attendance policy. Probably in more than just that class, too.

It doesn't matter how well I write, how my work makes people laugh and then cry. It doesn't matter that on my days when I'm functional (oh, sweet, sweet functional days, how I love thee so) I can debate memoir tactics and authors and styles and feel energized and engaged in discussion.

What matters is that I show up.

Really, this is a handy thing to learn for all of life. Nobody cares what talent lies inside you, innate and untamed. They care if you show up.

I have a million reasons why I haven't been able to show up. I have been trying my very hardest, and that's the truth. But what's also the truth is that my very hardest, my best, isn't good enough. My best isn't the same level as my best from two years ago, back when I had a 3.7 GPA and the dean's list came easy. I don't know if I'll ever will be there again.

Trying hard, it seems, isn't enough.

So I laid there, pressed up against the carpet, crying, in what I'm sure would have been a very disturbing scene, should anyone have come across me in that moment. I laid on the carpet and wished I could just melt my body right through to the floor, meld with the concrete and drywall and never move again. I cried because I was confronted with the harsh reality that it doesn't matter how hard I've tried, it doesn't matter how much I've run myself down, all those nights and weekends don't count, because I could fail right at the finish line, and it'd be their right to do so, because I failed to show up.

I cried because I knew, then, more keenly than ever, that my best, my very hardest, wasn't good enough. My efforts to keep going didn't matter.

And I laid there crying and breathing and wishing until I remembered. I remembered this time, a little over a year ago, in which every single night I was crying on the bathroom floor and wishing to a different tune. A year ago, I wanted to die. I just wanted to never have to wake up again. I didn't care about classes, I didn't care about graduating, and I didn't care about living. Yet somehow, through some crazy hard-headedness, I set one foot down in front of the other each morning and I made it through that year.

And here I am now, a year later, crying on the floor, so tired all the time that all I can think about all the time is how tired I am. But the difference is, now? Now I want to live. I want it so bad and so desperately it hurts. I want to live. 

I thought about this, the journey of a year. And it occurred to me that if life and desire and happiness were a spectrum, last year I was on the farthest end away from it. It occurred to me that I had reached the middle ground, where things get even harder and where you want to give up even more, but the middle ground is where you start to want things, and the desire kicks in, and the desperate will to live and be happy is what keeps you grinding away, drillbits at cement, bricklayers in the summer heat, building a stone castle with bare hands.

And if here, here is the middle ground for me, the sticky molasses and the hardship and the struggle, the turning point of desire, of wanting to reach for it, for life and life abundantly, then --

In one year from now, what if I get to the opposite end of the spectrum? What if future me is really, truly, well and happy? What if my yet-to-be self is really going to live? 

How did I get from the bottom to the middle? I got up off the floor every morning. I kept showing up. So it stands to reason that the only way for me to get from here, the awful, exhausting middle, to the promised land, is to--

I stood up. I went out the door. I walked to work. I stopped crying. I emailed my professor.

And I got up off the floor.

Extras from My Interview with Laurie Halse Anderson for #Speak4RAINN

I recently had the opportunity to speak with New York Times bestselling-author Laurie Halse Anderson. We talked about rape culture, her book Speak, and her involvement with RAINN's #Speak4RAINN campaign. You can read all about that in my HelloGiggles column.

As a writer and aspiring novelist myself, I couldn't help but ask her a few writerly-related questions during our interview. Due to length constraints, these questions didn't make the cut on HG (especially because I wanted to really focus on our discussion of rape culture and what RAINN is doing to both combat that and help survivors). So I'm posting a few snippets of what Laurie had to say about writing, spirituality, a potential sequel to Speak, and the possible superfluousness of MFA programs. Read on to be inspired, and also to perhaps cringe a bit with me at my lapses into a fangirl.

Becca Rose: So, you’ve said before that you’re not entirely opposed to the idea of writing a sequel to Speak. Have you made any progress in that area, or are you still just kind of letting it, you know, rest?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well you know, I’ve been writing a lot of other books. I just finished one about a young girl who’s dad is a vet, and the family is struggling with his PTSD. And I do feel, you know, my dad’s a minister, and I’m a pretty spiritual person, and when I look back on the writing of SPEAK, I really feel like the story was given to me. The best kind of writing feels mystical. You know, cause whenever you’re really being creative I think you’re connecting to that larger creative spirit, however you choose to interpret that spirit. Um, and my concern about writing a sequel to speak is if I force it, it really won’t work. So I’m being patient, and if the story’s supposed to be told, I’ll figure it out. But I’m not gonna push it just because.

BR: And the book was published in 1999, wasn’t it?

LHA: Yes, it was.

BR: And it’s still got such a wide readership today, so I think that any time you choose to publish it it’ll be happily received.

LHA: (laughs) Thank you, I’ll take that under consideration.

BR: I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you what advice you’d give to aspiring writers today, as well as people who are trying to write about this topic.

LHA: Oh, thank you for that opportunity! I really appreciate it. I think that the best thing I could give to aspiring writers is perseverance. You know, it’s really tough to be a writer. I always encourage people to have that back-up day job because for as hard as it is to write, I tell young people that you should count on needing ten years of other kinds of work. It’s sort of like getting a PhD. You’re gonna work at another job for a decade while you’re building up your portfolio and working on your novel and becoming a better writer. But I truly believe that if you have the passion to write, you have the talent that’s necessary, so don’t ever doubt your talent. But what you have to do as a writer is develop your skill set. Every August on my blog I do a kind of write-fifteen minutes a day writing exercise that we’ve had a lot of fun with. The other thing I tell people to think about, I’m not a huge fan of MFA programs.

BR: Really?

LHA: Yeah, I think they can be wonderful if you go into them with the right intentions. I think too often in the United States we feel that, too many people that I know at least, feel that if they graduate with an MFA that that’s gonna make a difference to the publisher somehow. And The truth is, the publishers don’t care. They don’t even care if you went to college or not, they care about have you written a wonderful book. The secret is stay true to yourself, stay true to your story, and don’t give up.

I hope you enjoyed reading Laurie's insights, and please remember that RAINN is accepting donations throughout the month of April, to be matched by Macmillan up to $20,000. Donate now!

I Gave My All.

I've been stressing to the point of almost flinging all my belongings into the ocean lately. I'm leaving school in a matter of weeks, for the very last time. I've lived here for two years. This is the place I asserted my independence, the place where I ate pancakes for ten days straight because I had no money and a five-pound bag of mix at my disposal. It's where I learned to budget and bargain grocery shop and work three jobs at once while going to school full-time. Here, in this small corner of the universe, I staked my claim to my personhood and I stood firm and I tried so hard and I failed and I got up and tried again.

Here is where I gave my all. I have poured out absolutely everything inside of me to make it through 3.5 years of college at two different universities. I have taken out more money than I have ever been worth in loans, I have cried in financial aid offices, I have sweated through finals and tests and essays written at the midnight hour. I have failed classes, and retaken them. I've tested out of 31 units, which, in case you're counting, is an entire year's worth of schooling that I did in testing rooms. When I think back on the last two years especially, it seems like a feverish dream. I ran from classroom to work and back again, to a second job, to bed, wake up early and get some homework done, rinse, repeat.

You might be thinking, Is this girl for real? It's just college. Maybe you're right, for some. But for me, college has been a task of herculean proportions. I have been Sisyphus, rolling rocks up and back again, down the hill. I've paid for the entirety of my private university education by myself. I cannot express to you how much it has taken out of me to do this thing, to get my degree, to shape my brain and learn new things and figure out how to make it all work while dealing with personal problems of a monumental, catastrophic dimension, the kind of problems very few people ever have to face in their lives. I've lived the life of someone twice my age in the last two years.

I can tell you it grew me up, fast, and hard. It made me better, and it sucked the marrow from my bones. I come to the end of my time on campus feeling as though I have nothing left inside me to mine for, nothing to conquer with.

Here is where I gave my all. 

And now I'm leaving, and moving everything I own to a new place hundreds of miles away. I have a place to live and people who love me and that's it. I'm parachuting from a great height and hoping that when I hit the ground, I don't splatter. A friend told me the other day, "I think you're bold."

But I have been terrified. My long-suffering friends can attest to that, with every single text and phone call and email they've received in which I explain just how terrified I have been. What if I don't land on my feet? What if I don't know what I want? What if I don't get a source of income in the next month, because that's about when my measly savings will run dry? I want to bear the weight of my life on my own two feet. What if I can't do it?

So I've been praying. I've been pleading, begging with God to make something come through for me. I've been bargaining, threatening, colluding, trying all those tactics as if God, the infinite creator of the universe, were a four-year-old child I could convince to bend to my will. My BFF's have been patient, reminding me that God is good and God provides and I have nothing to worry about. I realized yesterday that my desperate need to have EVERYTHING WORK JUST. SO. & according to plan stems from my desperate need to control.

Ugh. Talk about stifling your very own life and brain and emotions.

Tonight I was standing in chapel, coming on up the very last time, and I was singing the words to "Be Thou My Vision."

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

I sang the words, and I felt the conviction, and I had that kind of epiphany, where you blink and start as if someone sort of poked you right in the forehead and announced, "Listen up, dummy!"

Instead of telling God where I want to be -
Instead of worrying about where I'll end up -
Instead of staying up sleepless nights turning the topic over and over in my brain until it wears thin -

I said to God, "Put me where you want me."

Where God wants me, where God wants me, where God has prepared a place for me, where God has gone before me and laid down a path and lit up the darkness surrounding my feet.

I have given my all, and I am laying myself down in the dust and asking God to place me where he will. That brings a safety, a soothing word, over my sore and worried heart. Where God wants me, not where I want myself. Where he will bring good to me, not where I wrench my way in and figure out later it wasn't to be. Where the Lord, the High King of Heaven, wants me. 

I'll let you know, once I find out wherever it is I've ended up.

An Open Letter to the Man in the Mustang.

Hi. You don't know me, but you yelled at me on the street today. Let me introduce myself: I'm Becca. I live in a not-super-nice-but-not-super-bad area of town. It's relatively safe, for the most part. Crime'n'stuff is an issue, but not a super terrible one. I don't own a car, so I walk a lot. I walk for fun, I walk to relieve stress, and I walk to get to work. My place of work is only a few blocks away, and I work weekends. So I'm walking a few blocks fairly regularly every weekend.

I encounter a lot of street harassment because of this. I'm usually walking in my work uniform. Almost all of my skin is covered. My hair's usually fairly conservative, if you ignore the pink streaks in it.

And yet, men comment almost every time I step out my door. When I walk across the street to go to the grocery store, an elderly man leans out his window and wolf-whistles in my direction. When I'm on the sidewalk looking at the trees swaying above my head, a homeless man on the sidewalk follows me on his bike, telling me I'm beautiful, I'm beautiful, do I know just how beautiful I am? I walk to my work, under the streetlamps, and a car full of boys screams cuss words out their window at me describing what they think of my anatomy. Honking horns, shrieks, whistling, laughter. I bet they're having fun.

So here's where you come in, Man in the Mustang. I was on my way to work, just, y'know, existing in the universe. You honked your horn and leaned out your window and yelled, "Yeahhhhh!" at me. I tried to figure out if I knew you, but I don't know any older bald white men who drive a Mustang. I sighed, and began to walk a little faster, hoping you wouldn't turn around. Once I got to work and texted a friend about it, she asked me to just take it as a compliment, because she didn't want me to be angry and bitter at all men. I told her I wasn't.

And I'm not. I'm not angry at you. I'm not angry at the elderly man who whistles when I cross the street. I'm not angry with the car of boys who are probably my age who think it's funny to call me a c*** just because I'm in their line of sight. I'm not even mad at the homeless man who followed me for three blocks on his bike.

The reason I'm not mad at you, Man in the Mustang, is because I think you just don't know that what you're doing is wrong. I think you probably don't think anything of it at all, or if you were to sit down and really think about it, you'd think I should take it as a compliment. You'd think I was an ice cold bitch not to. I'm not angry with you because you probably have no idea what it feels like to have the world of men comment on my body almost every single time my feet hit the sidewalk.

See, you can't know the way it makes me feel. You can't know how my heart rate automatically accelerates when I'm catcalled. You can't know how my mind immediately jumps back to that time not so long ago when I was crossing a street in front of a beat-up car that had two men in it, and when I did not respond to their leering calls the one on the passenger side leaned out and made a grab for my body as I stepped up to the curb. You can't know how it feels to have a stranger tell you he's going to "f*****g kill you, bitch" as he tries to get ahold of your clothing, all because you ignored his crude comments on your physique.

I could go into all the feminist theory and lecture you on how calling to me on the street objectifies me, takes away my personhood, is insulting to my intelligence and my worth, and is threatening. But I think instead, I'm just going to ask you this: Do you have any women in your life? Perhaps you have daughters. Maybe you're married. A sister, at least? Are there women in your workplace who you'd call your friends? Do you love any women, any at all?

I'm guessing you probably do. So, Man in the Mustang, let's think about your wife. While you so glibly scream at me as if I am a stripper on a pole, as if I am existing solely for your visual or sexual satisfaction, let's think about your wife. If she came home in tears like I did that day that the man in the car tried to grab me and told me he'd kill me, how would you feel? Would you be angry at that man, for making your wife feel unsafe? For making her feel like she was worth nothing as a human?

Maybe if you were a few feet behind your daughter on the sidewalk, and a car filled with teenage boys drove by and told her what they thought she was and described her in the crassest of terms, because they didn't see she was walking with you and under your perceived protection. I wonder if you'd fill up with rage towards those boys. I wonder if you'd turn as their golden SUV whizzed on by, and shake your fist and tell them what you think of them in a few coarse words of your own.

Or what if you were to see someone you know, maybe your niece, around my age, walking on the sidewalk, staring up at the waving trees, and an older adult man leaned out the window of his red mustang and yelled, "Yeeeeeaaaahhh, baby!" as if she had just done a twirl on a stage wearing nothing but glittering pasties.

You still wouldn't be able to understand what it feels like to be me when you yell that out your window. But I think you'd get it a little bit. I think you'd be upset that someone did that to a woman you know. I think you'd feel outraged that someone felt they could comment on your daughter's sexual activities just because they saw her walking on the sidewalk. I think you'd be furious if a strange man followed your daughter three blocks on his bike. I think if you witnessed an obviously older bald man yelling out the window of his mustang at your baby girl, you'd understand more of what I mean.

I would like to tell you two things, Man in the Mustang: One is that I am not angry with you. The second is that I, too, am somebody's daughter. I'm a human being. I'm a sister, a friend. I'm a daughter, too. 

Not only does it make me scared when a man does this, not only does it send my memory straight back to that day when the man tried to grab me from his passenger seat, not only does it make me wish I could shrink and disappear and be invisible--but it makes me feel less than human. It makes me feel like it doesn't matter that I'm a person, a sister, a daughter, and a friend. It makes me feel like you don't care about any of that, because you don't. And I get that it's not your job to care. You don't need to care that I am a writer, that I love the way my ukulele sounds when I play it outdoors, that I love laughter more than almost anything else, that I cut my knee on a large decorative rock when I was eleven and all my friends were so excited because it meant a handsome college boy carried me down the stairs. You don't have to care that I like that scar I have, where you can still see the faint marks of poorly applied stitches.

But I wish you would, Man in the Mustang. I wish you'd care about my humanness. Because I care about yours. I think you're better than this, MM. I think if you knew, if you really examined your behavior, you wouldn't think that it was your right to comment on my body any more than it is my right to comment on your bald head or your midlife crisis of a car. I think if you saw it happen to a woman you love, then maybe you'd be a little more hesitant to lean out the window of your red Mustang and say something in a salacious tone as you ride on by.

I have faith in humanity. I have faith in men. I think you can be better. I know you can be.

Sincerely,
Girl on the Sidewalk, Looking at the Waving Trees.