Being a female sports fan

Why do guys seem to think females watch sports for attention or to “fit in?”

I don't know about you, but I would not watch my beloved team lose game 7 of the Western Conference Final just to impress a guy. I would not watch them miss playoffs by a single win just to fit in. I would not put my self through the heartbreak of a shootout loss just to stroke your ego. I could not stand watching them slip down in points to the point of never having a chance at playoffs just for the off chance you might be decent in bed.

Guys need to understand that sports were not created just for them.

Why men think they're the only person in this world who can sit on the internet all day and tweet about whatever game you're watching is beyond me. But oh no, god forbid a knowledgeable female sportsfan tweet about it. Obviously “they sound stupid and know nothing.” The only reason a woman would make any sort of post about a sport is to try to garner attention for our fake sports knowledge. Hate to break it to you guys, but we don't watch sports to impress you. We have much better things to do. Like watching sports. Because we love them. And not giving a fuck about what you think about it!

How dare you think I only watch things and find an interest in anything just for you? Do you really think I keep up with the Corsi and the Art Ross for your benefit? Does hockey honestly mean so little to you that it is nothing more than an easy way to get laid? Do you really think I keep tabs on these children in the AHL for your benefit? Would I keep a constant watch on teams I loathe and hope they win just for the slim chance my team could finally make playoffs just to impress you? Isn't it possible I follow offseason trades and free agency for my own enjoyment (also read, heartbreak)?

Are you planning on staying up and keeping tabs with the newest upcoming trends when New York Fashion Week rolls around? Do you plan on going through the latest Spring lines for Marc Jacobs and Jimmy Choo with me to make sure we're still classy and stylish? Does being with me mean that you're going to take up a keen interest in Ansel Adams? Have you suddenly developed a sudden desire to travel through time and space in THE blue box? Are we going to have heartfelt debates about the injustice towards Slytherins?

No? So what makes you think I'll rearrange my interests to cater to you? If I, the girl that honestly thought someone had scored a touchdown at a baseball game, am interested in a sport, could it possibly be because I'm actually interested in a sport? Maybe, just possibly, I actually do know just as much, or possibly, the horror, maybe more than you.

The number of times when I’ve surprised guys with my knowledge of sports is insane. Whether it’s hockey or soccer I’m perfectly capable of holding a conversation about my teams. I'm more than willing to even rip someone a new one when they dis my sport.

These men are always shocked that I, a girl, am so into hockey and actually knowledgeable about it. These men are just dumbfounded that I have no interest in them, Who knew,

And god save any person, woman or man, that feels they can insult my Stars.

I want to be your number one

I want to be somebody’s number one. I want to have that one person I can guarantee will always be there for me, will always rub my scalp when I’m sick and tickle my back, will shack up with me during a natural disaster, will carry me through glass (metaphorically speaking, of course) whenever I’m feeling depressed and don’t want to get out of bed. There’ll be no worry if I’m going to brave things alone. I’ll have a teammate, a partner to cushion the blow.

I’m beginning to see the point of having a relationship. More and more, it seems like their purpose is not to necessarily provide you with love but to keep you far away from hate. As you get older, life begins to show you its true colors and sometimes those colors look like shit. That’s why it’s important to have someone by your side who always reminds you of beauty. No matter how dreary things get, you’re never far away from seeing something exquisite.

You start to feel your soul wither if you don’t have love around you. It’s a subtle decay but it’s there. People have so much of it to give and if they aren’t given an outlet, it becomes locked inside of you and suffocates the heart. You need a release. You need to put this love away somewhere. I can feel it aging me, making me bitter. Please someone take it from me. Quick.

I want to go to a party with someone I love and know that we’re going to go home together at the end of the night with our limbs stretched out in the backseat of some cab. We’d nod off with the streetlights reflecting on the window and wake up when we arrived home — the place we share together. The place where we cast spells with our love and cook dinner together and build forts in the living room and listen to music and drink too much wine and fall into bed with contentment. Yes, that’d be a nice place to go home to.

I’m not the young ripe thing I once was and I’m beginning to understand that this world was not meant to be experienced alone. Someday I won’t have my looks, someday I will get sick, someday I will die, and I just hope that I can leave this world knowing that I made someone’s heart go pitter-patter. I changed someone’s life, I was their “in case of emergency” contact. I was the person they thought of when they went to bed and the first person they thought to call in the morning. I want to know that I was loved by someone so passionately, that I shook them to their core and made them happy to be alive.

Someone will have noticed me.

I want to write in colors that don’t exist

I was asked what I wanted to write about.

I stared into the clouds before I mumbled, “I want to write defiant novels in colors that don’t exist.”

I want to write words that heal the messy pains of human hearts, the pains that still linger through your system, the pains that have engraved their unspoken tales in the dilated pupils of even the darkest eyes. It is not simple, it not logical even perhaps, but I feel that if I am able to heal even one lost heart through my words, my soul will happily flee this world when death comes to collect what it is owed.

Human souls are just as weak as they are unbelievably strong. Words healed me, and led me to a Beloved-filled outlook arranged as if I was hearing an Austrian symphony.

The floodgates opened for Middle Eastern Literature. Poets stormed in named Hafiz, Saadi, Attar, and Khalil Gibran. The void in my spirit was no longer restless due to the help of enchanted writings from a different land and time. What would have happened if I never found that book of poems as silly as it seems? I have no doubt taken comfort in drinking, and pills, and drugs, and perhaps even empty love. I’ve seen it over and over again with girls who feel unloved, it is within our human nature. That is why you will hear this story again and again.

They don’t warn you though that drugs and intoxicants can make you feel the illusion of being whole as well. They will allow you to temporarily escape reality, but the scary part they have the potential to possess your entire reality. Just like a demon or spirit, this will follow you, and beckon your name. Do not mistake this earthly possession for freedom. Whether it is heroin or any other poison, ask the one who follows this path about former dreams. Watch closely, as he looks at you with the longing face of a jailed man asking about the color of the autumn trees.

Take note of your pain, it a sign that your soul is longing for something you cannot see.

I want to write tales this generation can relate to, and let them know they are loved, and whole, and chemical, and eternal, and cosmic, and divine, and most importantly free.

I want to remind women they are not the flaws the television convinces them they have, and that their soul does not have a dress size, and that they don’t need the love of a man to validate the love of themselves. I want to articulate to people this amber filled way I see things through a lens of poetry and paragraphs. I will not to convert them into different walks of faith, but simply to show them a color they perhaps have yet to see. I want to paint god’s presence on my pages with a thousand acrylic drops of paint, without ever writing his name.

In this world that wants to destroy us all, what could be a greater act of rebellion than choosing to help build one another up instead?

I want to write to make people question what reality is, and why it is. I want to show people there are paths beyond those within the borders of their countries. I want to show them the lines on their terrains do not define them anymore more than the lines on their hands. I want to write to remind my fellow lost souls, that every human they meet has the potential to become their kin — as we are of the same blood, rather than their enemies, or competition.

I want to remind people they have feet, because I am tired of seeing free birds who are afraid to even move, let alone terrified of taking flight.

I want to write the way a Stanley Cup athlete leaps into the air. Jumping with full force into the next dominion, with reckless trust, and a determined stare.

I want to write with the foolish dream that I may one day help to empower and strengthen every woman of pure heart who has ever fell asleep crying into her pillow, because she believed she was not “enough.” Stop crying, my love, you are beautiful.

When this shameless realm wants to destroy you, and there is no one to hold your hand, remember you were created unlike any other. You are a jewel, don’t let them cover your dazzling shine with their common sand.

That is all, I’m afraid. This is your answer. This is all my soul longs to write: The colors that don’t exist. 

Letting go of love

I can lie to myself as I twist the story in my mind, exploiting the ambiguity of the details. I can’t lie to the pages anymore. It feels wrong, like my fingertips are betraying my heart and my mind, just like my heart betrayed my mind in it’s blatant denial of all logic.

It’s been noted on multiple occasions that I’m not good at everyday things. I have no common sense, I’m impulsive, I’m clumsy, I ramble, tangle sentences, I forget things, I’m lazy, always too early and relentlessly unforgiving towards myself.

Perhaps my greatest downfall is my abstract mind; repeatedly a traitor, leading me astray. I’m always falling into the traps set by my clumsy heart.

I loved you. I can say that in the past tense because in the moment it was love as I knew it. My definition of love is malleable, forever changing in the midst of my experience and introspection but in the moments of knowing you, it was love to the best of my knowledge. It was the truest form of love that I have to offer.

It was love because a weight lifted in your presence. I was lighter than air, my filter evaporated and I was liberated. I couldn’t think straight but I was free and I didn’t care because freedom was infinitely better than the suffocating in the haze of my thoughts.

I let myself believe for a moment too long that you could feel the same. Not that you did, that you could and that was enough to send me over the edge into a void where my sanity was detached and I was an endless stream of thoughts and emotions that came in waves but never saw pauses or endings.

Maybe was my demise. There was no black or white. I was stuck in the grey, the mid tones that formed the overall picture. If I cropped it just so they showed me the picture I wanted to see. A picture where you wanted me as I’d wanted you; caught up in a balancing act of restraint where neither of us could move in fear of toppling the whole structure.

For so long, you were my everything, my inspiration, the force that drove me further in my everyday pursuits. All of the potential energy locked up in an ‘us’ daring to be released. I could write about you for hours on end, I could play music that made my heart shiver, I could make art that made sense of the moment. It was driving me mad but I fell in love with the madness. The curse and I formed a symbiotic relationship as we grew to a formidable size. I was unstoppable.

I wanted to be for you what you were to me. I wanted to inspire you, be your passion because I forgot I was cursed. I thought I owed it to you to in return. The universe does not work in terms of equal exchange though and I am infinitely grateful for that.

I’m not over you yet, because it’s hard and the curse is so intricately tangled into my being that I can’t be rid of it without destroying myself a little in the process. I’m afraid, after being overwhelmed with such passion that I might never love again in the same way. I’m afraid it’ll always be you, and every lover I have will fall short.

How could they possibly live up to what we could’ve been? But that’s all we ever were… a maybe. A possibility, a theory, an alternate universe.

I thought I was never going to be okay again. Thought I’d never think with clarity again because everything reminded me of you, no matter how distantly linked there was always something.

Now it’s a  quiet night, I’m all alone, I’ve got a cozy hoody on and I look up at the sky. I’m mesmerized by it’s beauty and my own insignificance in it’s wake. I stand there, minutes slip. I don’t want to leave because in this moment I’ve realized that I’m not afraid of the dark anymore. The maybes that might lurk in the dark can’t touch me whilst they hide in the shadows. Schrödinger’s cat can’t pounce whilst it’s still in the box. It’s heads and tails until the coin drops. It’s in this moment that I realize that love can’t flourish in the realm of perhaps. The possibilities and mysteries of you and I are endless. But that’s all they are, possibilities. That’s all they’ll ever be. Anything and everything is possible until proven impossible, but I can’t waste my life chasing the limit of possibility.

I won’t waste my life chasing love. Not a love like that. 

To those I've casually dated:

I would ask how it’s going, but I already know. I know because I’m not afraid to look you up, or say hi, or meet you for drinks. I know because keeping up with you doesn’t torment me. I’m glad to know you’re doing well; I’m glad you’re there to retweet my tweets. I’m glad we never made it to the point of no return. I'm glad that even when we did, we managed to circle back to civility and friendship.

What we had wasn’t epic, and it certainly wasn’t eternal – but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t special. We swapped stories and spit; most times, we shared more than that. Beds. Meals. Toothbrushes. Homes. We met each other’s friends, and sometimes even each other’s families. That was good enough, wasn’t it? Great, even. We devoured each other’s details; we ate up the minutiae like every date was Christmas. My mind felt more full when I left you; it was overflowing with wonder. You never gave yourself away and I’d think, “As it should be.”

Of course, it was far from perfect. You’d hurt me once in a while; maybe you’d neglect my birthday or our rendezvous would become infrequent; then nonexistent. We became too indifferent to argue about anything. I wanted to hate you, but I’d have to love you first – and maybe I never quite got there, did I? What a relief.

Don’t get me wrong. I considered it in the most casual way possible. I really Liked You. But saying, “I Love You,” and meaning it, that’s heavy. We were too fun for that. We Liked Each Other Too Much. Seems silly, seems almost childish, but we couldn’t love each other because we liked each other. ‘Like’ is a pompom, it’s a firework. It’s celebratory and exciting. But love? Love is a tattoo. Love is a 16-car pileup. Love is a scar. Permanent; crippling; ugly.

We never made it there, but that’s okay. We made it to other places. We made it to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dallas, but never to our final plans in Chicago. We made it to my bedroom, where you made me watch Pawn Stars for the first time. We made it to unmarked bars, to outdoor campfires by the lake, to the beach. We made it to the underside of bridges. We played poker, we played phone tag. We made out in the rain and in the middle of sidewalks for so long that it went from clichéd to avant-garde and then back again. We got kicked out of places together; we got locked out of places together. That certainly counts for something.

You taught me what People I Loved couldn’t – that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. That I don’t have to regret my choices. Sometimes, I made pretty good ones – like dating you. I learned that dating should feel good. It shouldn’t cause your teeth to gnash; it shouldn’t wrack you with anxiety. It didn't have to be all or nothing. You taught me that the default after the regression of a relationship isn’t complete and utter destruction. It can be a friendly text, a retweet, a thumbs up when one of us accomplishes something we’ve been working at for years.

Thanks for giving me memories, giving me your friendship, giving me hope. I’m always rooting for you.

XO (Drinks soon?)