the frisky african turtle isn't the important part of this post.

i was going to blog FOREVER ago. i really was.

but whenever i start a post out like that, you know what that means.

it means that it's going to be a huge conglomerate of stuff that i've gotten up to over the past two weeks and it's going to have fun headings.

let's just launch into it, yeah?

SO I DID THIS COOL THING CALLED TEARING MY MENISCUS

right. i should define the meniscus. from what i've gathered from various sources, most of them being IPHS majors that have taken human anatomy, the meniscus is a piece of cartilage in your knee that cushions the joint. so when that rubs away, you have arthritis.

i maybe sort of kind of... tore it.

how, you may ask?

here's the kicker: i was already on crutches.

remember that time i pulled my groin really bad and i iced my vagina with a veggie burger? yeahhh.

remember that time i pulled my groin again right before i left for florida? yeahhh.

remember that time i pulled my groin for the third time working out with barbara? yeahhh.

so i was already on crutches.

i was at a super top secret meeting off campus. and i was in a dress. always a good start. so i'm in this really small room full of tables and people's stuff is absolutely everywhere and i'm like, seriously guys i'm on crutches i cannot navigate this room at all because crutches take space and somebody called my name.

and i did this epic SOMEONE SAY MY NAME turn behind me.

and everything turned but my knee.

at the time i was like, huh. that felt weird. moving on with my super secret meeting.

at the end of the super secret meeting i was like, huh. my knee hurts. probably because it's the only one i've been using for two weeks. but you know what, my groin feels a lot better, i think i'm done with these crutches.

the next day, saturday, the twins came to visit me! woohoo! and i was like, look guys! no crutches! and we tromped all over campus. and had awesome stucchi's ice cream. and then i was on duty and we were watching perks of being a wallflower. and i was like, guys, my knee like, really hurts.

on sunday, after the twins left and we ran into my english professor at walgreens, i realized that i actually could not put weight on my knee. so i grabbed my crutches, my PMA brother colin, and we hightailed it to the emergency room.

this is how colin and i do hospital rooms.

after i got an x-ray and tried to steal the x-ray apron because it was lovely and heavy and the ER nurse asked me if i was random seizure girl from september (yes. i was.) they told me my knee was sprained and they gave me an ace bandage.

UH, NOPE. i knew straight off that wasn't okay.

i bought a knee brace and went to portland. but i already blogged about that.

when i got back from portland, i had an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon, who ordered an MRI because he was reasonably sure that my meniscus was torn. in the meantime, i needed to keep my weight off of it and wear this.

YEAH. HARDWARE.

the best part about that knee brace was that it kept my knee entirely immobilized.

the worst part was i had to take it off to pee.

after a fun jaunt in that knee brace, i got my MRI results, which showed a teeny weeny tear. and it was accompanied by the greatest four words i had ever heard.

1. you.

2. don't.

3. need.

4. surgery.

then my surgeon was like, i think you can start walking on it! and it was then that i realized that i hadn't walked without crutches in literally... two months. and when i did walk on it, holy crap did my knee swell up. and it turned purple.

i am now walking full time and i have this cool knee brace that's nowhere near as big. it lets my knee bend and it keeps my knee from dislocating. 

GO ME!

ALL THE COOL STUFF HAPPENED AT MY CARREL

it's been a rough year for me. i could list all the terrible shit that happened to me, but it would be depressing. eh. i'll list it anyway.

1. i was hospitalized for a week for seizures, which i had until december.

2. my boyfriend of two and a half years broke up with me.

3. my antidepressants gave me depression.

4. i tore my meniscus.

5. i strained my groin. three times.

6. my grandmother died.

let's just say i was ready for this year to be over.

the last two weeks of my semester was looking decently insurmountable. most of them do. but this year was looking extra sketchy, mostly because of my three ten page papers, my two finals, and my three education projects. on top of that, i had masterworks, which is this huge choir concert and i got all dressed up in this huge dress that was almost impossible to walk in with my crutches and i had to sit the entire concert behind the drums and nobody could see me. which was fine. i'm not that great to look at.

but anyway, i was totally living at my carrel.

here's a refresher of what my carrel looks like.

yep. my work station. with twitter open.

the biggest paper on my to-do list was my paper on john donne, 16th century metaphysical poet who may or may not have been gay, was a pirate, had a mistress, was a deacon in queen elizabeth's church, and was your run of the mill renaissance man and misogynist douchebag. i had procrastinated this paper quite heartily. i had specific books that i needed to check out for it and i couldn't carry any of them myself.

so i enlisted my new choir friend adam to help me. we wandered around and pulled all kinds of books off the shelves hoping that they would somehow help me write a ten page paper about a poem about john donne undressing his mistress.

the poem is disgusting, by the way. when he actually gets her naked? you don't wanna know.

i was already writing a ten page paper about frankenstein and a ten page paper about hair power (see previous post) so my carrel was absolutely covered in books.

alma college library policy dictates that all books not checked out must be reshelved within 24 hours. i had a stack of frankenstein books, a stack of john donne books, a stack of hair books, and a stack of feminist literature. i also couldn't return them without hands. 

so i wrote the library staff a really sweet and eloquent note that was this in a nutshell: yo. i'm on crutches. i need these books. don't reshelve them, pretty please?

i left it on the john donne stack and prayed when i left the library at one in the morning.

the next morning, the day before my john donne paper is due, i take the elevator up to my carrel, crutch my way over there, and i see that all of my books are gone. i start to panic. i'll have to facebook adam to have him help me get the books back. 

then i realize that someone had gone through and rearranged my carrel.

the note says, "Emily, in order to avoid troubles with the library bureaucracy, hide your books as demonstrated! Throw the white and pink slips away and carry on breaking carrel law. Good luck! Sincerely, The Library Defender of the Weak."

i made a new friend!

after starting on the paper and having books strewn absotively EVERYWHERE, i came back to find this note on my sticky-note to-do list.

my carrel is my life.

that fateful monday, i hardly left the library. i managed to get to class. i had lunch in the library. i almost had dinner there, but i wasn't sure about the to-go lunch policy for dinner. 

i finished the paper at one in the morning, right when the library closed.

ONE IN THE MORNING PAPER EUPHORIA.

the worst part about this whole paper ordeal was that i thought it was a damn good paper. i worked really hard on it. adam even drew me a little motivational cat and i taped it to my carrel.

it was a good paper.

apparently not. i got a big fat B on it with a note that said, "well, emily, it was a nice shot."

thaaaanks, professor.

the rest of the week was no different: two more papers and three education projects were had. and some serious finals studying for renaissance lit, which eventually culminated in me telling carrie that i color coded my life with black pen. black. like my heart.

she tweeted it.

BREAK WEEK IS ALWAYS FULL OF ANXIETY

skipping over the sob story of my older brother graduating from alma and how i cried halfway home after moving entirely out of my room with the help of adam, who i think scared my mother with his long hair and lip rings, i had a plan for break week.

1. unpack ALL THE THINGS!

2. do my shopping. preferably in one day.

3. say goodbye to the friends i had in fort wayne. sooo... the twins.

4. pack for england.

5. read my shakespeare plays.

it is ten o'clock the day before i leave for england and i haven't done much of that.

i did manage to go to target four times in five days. a new record. after searching every single target in fort wayne, they did not have rain boots in my size.

IT'S NOT MY FAULT I WAS BORN WITH BIG FEET, GUYS.

my cousin and i went shopping and i got a really cute infinity scarf, so that was fun. i then searched fruitlessly for someone to unlock the sim card in my phone so i could make it international.

after going to three stores and having my mother make about eight phone calls because i have too much anxiety to call businesses, we quickly realized that everybody has beef with virgin mobile.

no international phone for me!

on tuesday, i finally got around to unpacking. i left most of my stuff at school, but i still had a hefty amount of stuff in my room.

i have a lot of stuff.

once that was all unpacked, i was obviously going to read my shakespeare plays for spring term. you know, the ones in my stephen greenblatt annotated norton anthology of shakespeare's entire works that i got for ten dollars.

ha. haha. hahaa. HAHAHAHA. ha. 

i totally watched netflix. i also watched the lion king thirteen times in three days.

instead of packing, i found reasons to leave the house and to drive places. like going to target four times. having a sleepover with my cousin. going to the outlet mall. going to the library to check out a book i didn't have time to read. going to the bank.

i made the biggest cash withdrawal of my life, guys.

after i drove aaron across town to drop off a resume, we went to the pet store. you know, the one with the six foot long green moray eel. while i wistfully looked at tarantulas, i fell in love with the teeniest tiniest spur tortoise who took a nose dive into his water dish. SQUEE.

unfortunately, he was a hundred thirty dollars.

even more unfortunate, he was sold.

it was there that i saw the really frisky african turtle. from the title of this post. 

after all the breakdowns that i've had trying to get ready to go to england tomorrow, that frisky african tortoise has been one of the highlights of my week.

break down number one: emily tries to call radioshack and bursts into tears.

break down number two: emily tries to pack and realizes that she wants to take her entire wardrobe with her to england.

break down number three: emily loses her four hundred dollar brit rail passes.

yeah. i know.

i put them a super specific pocket of my backpack because i knew that it was going to be my carry-on and the perfect bag to take for my weekend in scotland.

they totally weren't there when i went through the backpack.

after lots of tears, anguish, self-loathing, and my dad calling my professor to alert him that i needed new tickets in stratford, i got my suitcase packed.

i am still completely lost as to what happened to those rail passes. but now i'm down four hundred bucks. 

i leave my house in twelve hours to head to the motherland for a whole month.

A WHOLE MONTH. IN ENGLAND.

today while i was doing laundry, i went out to talk to my dad about calling somone for me, since obviously calling businesses is a thing i can't do very well, and i stood on my driveway and i screamed and screamed and screamed.

then i thought to myself: i leave in one day. one. day. and i have been counting down for this moment since last year.

that's a long time, kids.

i'll be taking kip, my trusty dusty laptop with me. 

i have this idea in my head that i'm going to blog every day that i'm there. will that happen?

probs not.

but rest assured, i will return to america in one piece. if they don't drag me kicking and screaming home. 

WELL. I AM OFF TO THE MOTHERLAND! 

play nicely, kids. see you stateside in a month. :)

oh. this is me in my suitcase. obviously not packing for england. 

hair power.

i've been really angsty lately.

some of that could be my work load, which i'm totally ignoring right now. i'll probably blog about that later.

i have a lot of posts to crank out before i hop the pond and spend a blissful month in england where i won't return. at least not without a lot of kicking and screaming.

but as of late, i have been angsty.

this post is probably not going to be that funny. it's probably going to be full of angst, such as i am. it's also probably going to be vulgar. because you know what, sometimes i just have a lot of feelings and the only way that i can convey those with the emotion that i want is to just yell FUCK really loudly.

what have i been really angsty about?

hair culture.

this semester, i'm taking a women's studies class. WGS 101.01, to be exact. there are maybe... fifteen of us in the class. in the beginning, we all defined ourselves as feminists. two of us are guys. we spent most of the semester reading from this really big book called women's voices, feminist visions. it's full of articles about all kinds of stuff.

1. women's health.
2. reproductive rights.
3. sexual harassment.
4. women in the workplace.
5. women in literature.

stuff. about women. it's a women's studies class.

i love women. i'm a woman. i'm an angry feminist. this class has really helped solidify my hatred of patriarchal culture. and definitely opened to my eyes that postfeminism is definitely not a thing yet.

postfeminism: noun, the idea that feminism is dead or no longer needed.

i'm just going to say that THAT right there is bullshit.

so, for the end of the year (tomorrow is my last actual women's studies class) we have to write a research paper on a topic of our choosing. eight to ten pages. some form of issue in women's health, feminism, blah blah, whatever.

while in the course, i realized that there was a lot of talk about intersectionality, which basically means that feminism is about all women. ALL WOMEN. intersectionality includes poor women, black women, white women, old women, young women, poor women, rich women, women that live here, women that live there, women that speak english, women that don't speak at all. while i was reading about all of this wonderful intersectionality, i realized that mental health wasn't included in it. THAT is an entire blog post in and of itself, but i decided that i wanted to write my paper about how mental health is never mentioned.

eventually, my thesis got cut down to this basic premise: we live in a culture that sees hair as powerful. and for people with trichotillomania, like me, this is a BIG. FAT. PROBLEM.

if you don't know what trichotillomania is, click here and educate yourself.

to read about my struggle with trichotillomania, click here.

in my class, we read an article about hair as power. it was titled "what we do for love" and i didn't realize that it was going to be about hair. and suddenly i was headfirst into this five page article about hair and how women use it to do all kinds of fantastic things.

i was very uncomfortable with it.

mostly because it was absolutely and one hundred percent right. and now we get into the really angsty part of my post.

this is what it comes down to: hair. is. power.

in american society, women with long hair are more attractive to men. to test this theory, i asked a number of my guy friends if they preferred women with long or short hair. all of them said long, but they could find a few girls with short hair attractive if they could "pull it off".

men have hair color preferences, too. and hair color has ALWAYS had stereotypes, whether they're true or not. blondes have more fun. blondes are ditzier. women that have blonde hair are more likely to considered to be slutty. of the women that dye their hair, over fifty percent of them dye their hair blonde.

the rest dye their hair red, because apparently if you have red hair, you're wild, passionate, and intelligent.

the article didn't tell me about brown hair. i have brown hair that gets red highlights in the summer. i guess i'm boring and possibly passionate.

have you ever actually thought about how much power our hair has on us and other people? i mean, jeez, i spend time doing my hair every morning. i have a special hair stylist named cheryl, and she's super great. women dye their hair. they cut it, they mouse it, they braid it, they tease it, they frizz it, they do anything and everything on this green earth to their hair.

they do it for themselves and they do it for others.

haircuts totally change the way you see yourself and the way you see other people. one time my mom cut my bangs wrong and i thought i was going to die. granted, i was in eighth grade, but at the time, it was horrific. i don't leave my room unless my hair is done. some of my sorority sisters spend forever on their hair; blowing drying it, curling it, straightening it, puting it up, leaving it down, i mean, the possibilities are endless.

for girls with long hair.

if you have long hair, congratulations, you've followed society's standard for beautiful and feminizing hair.

it's no secret that society prefers women with long, lustrous hair. and if you don't have it, your femininty is put into question. the article talked about how professional athletes, the big bulky women that can bench like, five times as much as i weigh, they all have long, blonde hair to make up for the fact that their bodies are less feminine.

that makes me sad. and really angry.

when i was in kindergarten, i used to stare at this girl that stood in front of me in line. she was taller than me and she had long, brown hair that was about the same shade as mine. she'd wear it in a high ponytail and when we walked down the hall to go to art or gym or whatever, i'd watch her ponytail sway back and forth.

and i vividly remember wanting my hair to do that. i've always wanted to have hair that sways when i move.

when i was in first grade, my mom chopped all my hair off. granted, i wanted her to, but she went a little overboard. in first grade i played soccer (god help us all) with my brother and one time we went to pizza hut still in our soccer clothes. the waitress said, "oh, your two little boys are so cute."

also in first grade, while i was walking into my elementary school building one morning, a boy came up to my best friend and said, "why are you talking to a boy?"

i am obviously not a boy. nor do i see myself as a boy.

and yes, these two things actually happened.

this is about as long as my hair got in elementary school.
i'm cute, right?

now that i'm older and i obviously look like a girl, people are always telling me that my hair is oh-so-cute. and you know what, to be completely vain and self centered, hell yes, my hair is cute. i love my hair. i spend a lot of time on it. i put bows in it every day. i'm very proud of my hair.

but what people always tell me is this, oh emily, your hair is so cute, i wish i could pull off short hair. you do it so well.

what is this "pull off" bullshit? anybody can have short hair. women aren't born with naturally and lustrous long hair to please men and attract them with the "bend and snap". we don't all naturally have long and gorgeous hair to fit your societal standards.

my whole entire life i've wanted long hair. i've always wanted to put it back in a ponytail and actually do things with it, but my hair just doesn't grow long. it genetically doesn't work like that. so it's always going to be short.

i'm okay with having short hair. i've gotten over all that angst about never having long, wavy hair that men will run their fingers through. i'm never going to get to use my hair power to attract men or to feel good about myself. i've finally accepted the fact that my hair is just short.

and all through high school people thought that i was a lesbian and that was bullshit on two levels because:

1. there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a lesbian so why would you even think that that's demeaning, and

2. what the fuck does my hair have to do with my sexuality?

nothing. absolutely nothing.

just because i have short hair doesn't mean that suddenly i'm any less feminine. i could be completely bald and still be just as feminine.

i have a lot of repressed anger toward hair and hair power. A LOT. the only reason why i wanted long hair in the first place was because society told me that if i had long hair i'd be prettier and more feminine and boys would like me.

i don't care anymore. i'll never have long hair.

i'm sick of society telling me that i can "pull off short hair." fuck yes i can. but i don't need society to tell me that i'm one of those special people that can pull off short hair, like i was supposed to be born with long hair and i've just decided to ditch the status quo.

fuck society. i'm done with this partiarchal bullshit.

MY NAME IS EMILY. I HAVE AND WILL ALWAYS HAVE SHORT HAIR.

even before i had trichotillomania, i've had short hair. now that i have trichotillomania, i understand even more about hair power. i have all this power in my hair, which isn't even that powerful because it's naturally short. but now that power is completely stripped away because i pull out my own hair.

and i pull it out. i'm stripping away my own hair power. and society is always telling me how fucked up that is, how fucked up i am, and that i should love my hair and myself.

i do love my hair. and i love myself. and you know what, i love my short hair. society might not, but i love it. i absolutely love it. and whether or not you tell me that i can pull it off, i'm going to keep having it.

society, it's also really hard to love yourself and when you're telling me that i don't have the beauty hair ideal that i'm supposed to have.

but i'm done with that. i'm done being insecure about the length of my hair.

i will always be insecure with trichotillomania. it will always try to make me feel worthless. i will spend copious amounts of time hiding bald patches and hair loss. that's not going to change.

but i'm over this patriarchal bullshit.

i have short hair. and i have trichotillomania.

society tells me that that makes me worthless.

BUT I AM NOT WORTHLESS.

AND NEITHER ARE YOU.

here's a collage of the major hair points in my life.

short hair toddler.

short hair elementary school.

this is the longest my hair has ever been.
this is when i was thirteen right before my trich started.

high school hair. 

average college-length hair. 

i have learned to love my hair. i hope you can love yours too.