Archives for August 2015

Kittens Are Assholes

August 31, 2015 By Sarah Fader

I have three cats. I love them dearly. I’ve had two of them since they were kittens. Now that they adult felines, I love spending time with them, because they sleep for over 18 plus hours a day. On the rare occasion when I get to take a nap, they’re ready to join me.

When they were kittens, things were a little different around here.

I’ll set the scene for you- it’s 3am…I hear some rustling in the bathroom followed by meowing. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I want to be asleep. I go into the bathroom to find this:

He picked crazy o’clock in the morning to attack the toilet paper, which was clearly posing a serious threat to our household.

Kittens have no boundaries. They’ll jump on your face while you’re sound asleep, attack your eyeball and then be mystified when you don’t want to play with them. Can you imagine if I did that to you while you were sleeping? You would never invite me over again.

Kittens are fucking selfish. Anything you open in the kitchen might be for them. So they stand there just in case you could possibly be getting ready to feed them.

Are you kidding me, kitty? These tortilla chips do not remotely resemble chicken. Back off, okay?

Kittens are slobs. They poop and don’t even bother to cover it. Talk about lazy and ungrateful.

Thankfully, my cats are no longer narcissistic babies otherwise known as kittens. They are kind and loving citizens who cover their own poop. If you’re dealing with a kitten right now, I’m sorry your couch has been torn up and you haven’t slept for days. It’ll get better, I promise.

Why I Suck At Confrontation

August 28, 2015 By Sarah Fader

I suck at confrontation. When someone hurts my feelings or makes me angry, I want to tell them, I truly do. But most of the time, I internalize the pain and hide under my proverbial bed. From past experiences, when I tell a person that they hurt me, he/she becomes defensive or angry. It’s hard for me to stick with my own feelings when this happens. I feel off-balance. It’s as if I did something wrong by expressing myself. That’s when the anxious thoughts begin:

Maybe I shouldn’t have told them how I feel because by doing so I’ve made them angry.

I’m too sensitive.

I’m overreacting.

I don’t have a right to feel this way.

They’ve been such a good friend to me.

When someone I care about is upset with me, it is devastating. I empathize with them. I feel uncomfortable, because they are in pain. They hurt so I hurt. That is why it’s so hard to confront people when they hurt me. I can’t distinguish between their feelings and my own. I start to merge with their anger, hurt, confusion, sadness, and then it’s hard to remember why I was upset in the first place.

Then, the resentment comes. I feel upset that they don’t care about my feelings. They are so busy expressing how they feel that they’re neglecting to acknowledge my feelings. I can’t tell you how many boyfriends I’ve had this argument with. This might as well be my mantra:

You’re not acknowledging my feelings.

One of the things I value the most in a relationship is to be heard. When I find the nerve to confront someone close to me, it terrifies me. I am standing there shaking, hoping that the person will hear me. I’m praying that they will acknowledge my feelings. In my experience, there have been few occasions when I’ve confronted someone and felt like they truly heard me. This is why (healthy or not) I tend to keep my hurt feelings to myself.

I’m working on this issue. I don’t want to be like this forever. I struggle this core belief: I must have done something wrong for this person to hurt me.

Intellectually, I know this isn’t true. But it feels true.

I need to believe that my feelings matter. They are valid no matter what the other person says or does. If they acknowledge them, that’s great. If they dismiss them, I cannot control that. It’s so hard to express myself and take a gamble that the person hearing me might not react in the way I’d like them to. That’s part of the problem. I have a vision of what I’d like the person on the receiving end to say. It goes a little something like this:

I’m sorry I hurt you. I’ll try to be more sensitive next time.

In arguments, there is no script. You can’t tell the other person what to say or do.

Confrontation is challenging for me, but I’m not giving up. I’m learning to stand firmly on my own two emotional feet. I don’t need to cower just because someone disagrees with me. There is not right and wrong with feelings. I am allowed to feel however I want, and you have that same right. It’s a matter of attempting to acknowledge both sets of feelings equally and finding a balance so we are both heard.

Will Stewart//Unsplash

Dear @Victoria’sSecret: Stop Discriminating Against Big Boobs

August 24, 2015 By Sarah Fader

I have big boobs. I wear a 34DD. It is extremely challenging to find a bra that fits me, so when I walked into Victoria’s Secret and found this bra, I was psyched.

I know, I look like Madonna circa 1985 here. Anyway, it took the saleswoman a few tries to find my size.

“Is it a popular size?” I asked her.

“Oh yeah,” she said “They sell quickly. It’s actually my size too.”

That made me feel a little bit better. I am self-conscious about my chest, so hearing that she was the same size comforted me. Then came the difficult part. Bras are generally quite expensive so I asked her: “how much is this one?”

“39.50,” she replied.

Then I found the tag. It read 42.50.

I showed it to her and she replied (with a sigh) “Oh that’s right, it’s a double that’s why it’s three dollars extra.”

I stood there in shock for a moment.

“It’s not fair, they’re discriminating against us because we have big boobs.” She said with a small chuckle.

Though she was half-joking, the saleswoman was right. Are women with big breasts being singled out here? It can’t take that much extra fabric to make a DD bra than a regular D. Bras are expensive enough as it is. Do they really need to charge an extra three dollars because the cup size is slightly larger? It seems a bit unfair.

In the end, I bought the bra, but I still feel badly about it. It feels like I am supporting a theory that having big boobs should cost you more. I am paying more to have a curvy body. I don’t condone this and I think Victoria’s secret should make one style of bra the same price double cup or not.

Are you with me?

Not Everybody Likes Coffee Ice Cream and Writers

August 13, 2015 By Sarah Fader

I recently applied for a writing job, and I didn’t get it. I got a lovely email explaining that I wasn’t the right fit for the company. Naturally, I spent the next hour of my life having self-loathing thoughts and banging my proverbial head against the wall. I wondered why they didn’t love my writing. I’m a good writer, and in fact writing is one of the only things I know how to do fairly well. But alas, they rejected me. I felt like I had been dumped before we even went on a first date.

Unfortunately, writing is one of those fields that is highly competitive and there is loads of rejection involved. It is also highly subjective. You might adore one person’s style of writing, and another person might find that same piece of writing distasteful. I remember when I first wrote Three-Year-Olds Are A**holes some people loved my style while others were appalled by it.

Writers are like ice cream flavors. I am coffee ice cream. Some people love my flavor, while others find it unpalatable. You can’t make people like coffee ice cream. Either they like it or they don’t. If I spent my days being offended by every single person who didn’t like what I wrote, I would be curled up in a ball crying for hours. That doesn’t sound fun.

If they don’t like coffee ice cream, that’s okay by me. They can go out in search of some vanilla with rainbow sprinkles. I will find another cone somewhere where I am appreciated for the unique flavor that I am.