Entry 3

Well, been a lil while since I made a blog post (not even sure anyone's even reading these but oh well) bc I've just been feeling like a damn zombie this whole week... well this whole month, lbr

But no, I will not make this another uhhh slightly depressing blog post again I swear! In fact, I'm gonna recap my fave things I've been getting up to while I'm combatting seasonal depression. Man, I hate my brain it's like... I love the cold and the snow but I still get depressed?? Why brain. Why.

Anyways... I finished "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jennette McCurdy-- yes that book I was raving about in my last blog post-- and I was surprised at how quickly it got delivered to me? Shortly after writing that post I said "fuck it" and went and put my book purchase on my credit card. I know I'm really not supposed to be spending money like this when Halloween Month is coming up so fast (literally where tf did the month go) and I'm still purchasing parts of my costume but I really couldn't resist, I mean it just felt like the universe was just chucking "Mommy Issues!!" straight at me from every angle. And I'm pleased to announce that ever since I finished that book that my feelings for the most part have subsided, but lbr... that's only temporary and it'll be back with a vengeance yet again.

For now, I just wanna say that the book is just as heartbreaking and funny as everyone says it is. I love Jennette's voice, how it shows up in her writing and her dry humor she uses to describe the insanity that is her life. It's basically just Millenial Doomer Humor all in one pretty yellow and pink book!

All hail the yellow and pink book! It's just as heartbreaking as I thought it would be, and like I suspected, I wouldn't be able to relate 1 to 1 with all of Jennette's experiences but it was still pretty cool to see how we kinda pulled similar conclusions based off of our different (but similar nonetheless) experiences. I'm not gonna spoil the book at all for anyone who hasn't read it yet (and honestly I think you should if you haven't bc even if you have a sparkling golden goody mom and a perfect disorder-free life I bet you watched iCarly at least once and some of the stuff she reveals while on set is... interesting) but as I was devouring the chapters I finally reached the end and that hit me the hardest. I even shared this page with my friend who considered getting it:

"Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can't we be honest about them? Especially moms. They're the most romanticized of anyone. Moms are saints. Angels by merely existing. NO ONE could possibly understand what it's like to be a mom. Men will never understand. Women with no children will never understand. No one but moms know the hardship of motherhood, and we non-moms must heap nothing but praise upon moms because we lowly, pitiful non-moms are mere peasants compared to the goddesses we call mothers."

"Maybe I feel this way because I viewed my mom that way for so long. I had her up on a pedestal, and I know how detrimental that pedestal was to my well-being and life."

HOO BOY. Well, if you know, you know. Yup. I read through about 20 years of Jennette's life in that book only to get smacked in the face by that page-- which ofc I didn't exactly share the entire page bc like I said, no spoilers-- but damn did that part get me good. I mused about why in the hell we do this as a society, uphold moms as these superheros (they're not) but then at the same time degrade them and deprive them of maternity leave and free childcare. We as a society (and by we I mostly mean the USA ofc) have the most fucked up and convoluted priorities, and it affects not just the mothers but also the entire household as well. Jennette's bombshell of a plot twist about her mom at the end truly put it perfectly into perspective: an unruly mother can have the entire household in a chokehold. She illustrated perfectly thru her words how a narcissist can wreak havoc basically everywhere, all children were affected, all bc of the ego and neediness of an emotionally immature mother.

How interesting that we put the mother at the head of the household, stack countless responsibilites on her shoulders, mount herculean expectations on this woman and then wonder how a human can just fuck it all up so badly. Do I hate my mom for my own personal reasons? Absolutely. Is that still the reason why I believe that mothers seriously should never ever be put on any kind of pedestal whatsoever? Uhm, yeah.

It's kind of a contradiction, especially because I myself hate child abusers with a passion. Of course, Jennette's mother never should have done the horrible things she did to her family. She was indeed an emotionally stunted narcissist who hurt children. However, it was so obvious to me that she was struggling under the weight of the crazy expectations she was met with just by "virtue" of being a mom. It was ridiculous, and so fucking obvious she should have never been a mother! She was never ready! And her children-- most of all, little Jennette-- suffered for it. What cruelty. I often wondered who my mom would be or what she would even be doing if she didn't have me. I feel like we would have both been better off if she just gave me up for adoption let's be quite honest here.

Anyways, let me not go down that road. The book is great, and I love how absolutely and totally separate Jennette is from her rambunctious character Sam, really goes to show what a great actress she was that she was balancing all of the weight of her disorders and her dysfunctional family behind the scenes, but then came out bright as the sun and ready to whip ass with a buttersock nonetheless. The way she described the despair happening off-camera in her life, only to totally contradict it with a sentence like "I was sobbing. Then they called me out to set. I was supposed to do a scene where I slapped someone with a ham sandwich." had me laughing out loud ngl! Paraphrasing ofc, I don't think she was actually sobbing her heart out before doing a scene in a silly kid's show but you know. It was funny. The formatting and all.

Well, anyways I gotta go. Hopefully my future blog posts will be less about me whining about my past! Ngl, kinda picked a bad time to start doing these things bc it's the transition of the seasons that has me all wonky, I just know it... hopefully I will be back to normal soon. Either way, I'm actually reaching a point where I'm kinda enjoying doing this and I'm even planning out future blog topics on my notes app while I'm listening to podcasts at work. So even if I do get angsty like this again maybe... maybe I'll ignore it and talk about like Bratz dolls and horror movies or something. And fashion! Omfg how did I not ever mention my sewing journey... should I even document that? I might? Idk we shall have to see?

I'm excited to start making my own clothing pieces from scratch that is for sure! I might even make a new tabs page that leads to my projects and It'll just be like a blog/portfolio of my progress on each clothing piece I make. That'll also help with holding me to it, and making sure that this isn't just some throw-away hobby I managed to pick up just bc I unearthed my sewing machine I got for cheap at a thrift store a few years earlier.

I really don't think so. I have been chomping at the bit to sew/alter my own clothes since high school, ever since I made my 1st skirt with a pattern for my elective class. And I think I've been into fashion for long enough that my passion for fashion Bratz! won't die any time soon. I've basically been handstitching and making small alterations to my clothes for like years now. I'm SUPER excited to step it up and go back to making my own clothes and this time... from SCRATCH!

Cue horror music?

Anyways, bye