The 11th Anniversary of My Plastic Surgeries

Please God make me pretty.

But God is for the poor. The rich can go to sleep and wake up pretty.

Rip
Cut
Suck
Tuck
Nip
Perk
Sew
Scar

And into little jars went the woman I was meant to be. 

Twenty-six thousand dollars worth of self-esteem plastered onto me forever, and no more t-shirts at the beach. No more hiding in the bathroom during pictures. No more getting asked out as a joke.

Drip
Drop
Splash
Shh


Eleven years later, I still taste like plastic.

Royal Wedding Chat

Conversation between a Teenage Girl and a Bubble Buster:


Teenage Girl: OMG! I'm soooo excited about the Royal Wedding!

Bubble Buster: Really?

TG: Totes! Kate is like our Diana!

BB: I sure hope not.

TG: Huh?

BB: You know Diana was bulimic and suicidal right? And that she, like, died.

TG: Whatevs! She was a princess, she was beautiful! Everyone loved her!

BB: Everyone except her husband and his whole family.

TG: Yeah but like, Will loves Kate, you can totes see it in their eyes.

BB: You can?

TG: Uh, yah.

BB: You know Kate will have to walk three steps behind Will when in public from now on, right? And she can't wear ankle boots or dark tights or too much make-up anymore?

TG: Who cares, she's going to be a princess!

BB: Clearly that's a bigger selling point for you than it is for me. We'll talk in ten years and see where we're at with all this, ok?

TG: (rolls eyes) Uh-huh.

BB: (rolls eyes) Enjoy the wedding.

TG: I will! (updates facebook status to: OMG, I never want to be old.)


image from here.

A Quickie: How to Win His Heart

When I was 12, I had a huge crush on this guy, whom I'll call Bonzo here. Clueless about seduction, I was desperate for advice on how to win his heart. Lo and behold, a teen magazine I read religiously at the time published an article titled, "How to Win His Heart". It gave me some very specific instructions, such as:

1. Write his name on a piece of paper, then put the piece of paper in a jar of honey, and store the jar under your bed.

2. Fake fainting around him. It'll give him a chance to take care of you and feel knight-like.

3. Buy a notebook that looks just like his, make sure your phone number is in it, and swap yours for his when he isn't looking.

4. Flirt with your teacher in front of him. Seeing you get attention from an older man will awaken his animalistic need to mark his territory.

5. Ask a friend to give you a hickey. He has to know you're not waiting for him to notice you.

So I followed the advice to boot and, as predicted, he fell madly in love with me and we had a beautiful love story.

NOT.

What really happened was:

1. I ended up with an ant infestation under my bed and had to explain to my mom why I had a jar of honey with the word BONZO in it.

2. I got sent to the nurse for "fainting", she thought I was skipping meals and sent me to the guidance counselor, who gave me a bunch of brochures on eating disorders.

3. I bought the damn notebook, swapped mine for Bonzo's, but he apparently never missed his notebook because he never called me or returned my notebook to me or tried to figure out where his notebook was.

4. My teacher stood stone-still when I hugged him. Awkward and, if I had lived in the U.S. at the time, probably would've gotten us both arrested. No one's animalistic need to mark their territory was awakened, as far as I could tell.

5. My mom saw my hickey and grounded me for, like, ever.

Bonzo soon started dating some girl and I cancelled my subscription to said teen magazine.

Conclusion:

Honey doesn't have magic powers.

Fainting isn't hot.

Notebook swapping isn't how Cupid communicates.

Don't hug your middle-school teachers.

Hickeys are just a bad idea, period.

And teen magazines are full of shit.

image from here.

Adulthood's Ugly Face

One day I woke up and watched myself shower, put on responsible-looking clothes, paint my face into a grown-up woman's complexion, drink my coffee, eat my poached egg on toast, pack my laptop into my bag, head off to work, sit in front of a computer all day, do tasks that neither interest nor fulfill me, watch the clock, wait for the day to end, come home too tired to socialize or blog or work out or return calls or respond to emails, eat something, and finally go back to sleep which was only comforting because it was not like the day it followed. And so I realized that I had finally met someone I'd observed from afar all my life, someone many people around me had known for a long time. That someone was called Adulthood.

Adulthood has taken over me for the past month or so, and I have slowly been introduced to responsibility, compromise, and a desire for independence. Perhaps for most people all this seems normal, or like "it's about time"- I'm 25 after all, but for me it has been completely jarring and, in many ways, really difficult and sad.

I've always had one goal. I've always known who I was. I've always made every decision based on how it would best serve the one thing I knew I was meant to do. For as long as I can remember, I have only ever lived to be an actress. Since my parents always had enough money and since I wasn't raised in a culture that encouraged financial independence at age 18, I figured I wouldn't ever have to compromise what I wanted to do, what I was meant to do, for the sake of a paycheck or stability. But I also thought I'd have it figured out by the time I was 25. That I'd have a path drawn out, that I'd be closer to success and recognition, that I'd be able to make a living with acting, or that I'd be able to make a living somehow and still act.

As it turns out, I'm 25 and I have a master's degree in what I love doing but I don't know how to do it for a living. I'm tired of being dependent, and the acting industry has completely burnt me out. Auditions make me feel like a puppet, rejections make me feel unworthy, and playing roles that don't mean anything to me leave me unfulfilled and wanting more. So I sought a more regular lifestyle, found it, and have slowly gravitated towards letting it take over my life. The less I think about acting and how little of it I'm doing, the less it can hurt me. And if I'm the one who shuts down my dream, then at least no one else can crush it.

But the result is that my heart is breaking every day, as though I'd just buried my Self and am in mourning. Going through the motions of adulthood exhaust me, pretending I can do it permanently nearly kills me. Not to mention how mad Little Larissa is at me. My 7-year-old self is scolding me, shaking her finger at me, "You can't just give up! How can you give up?? These are our dreams! We've wished them into fountains all our lives!" And I don't really know what to tell her. It's just time, I want to say, I have to do something else now, for a while, I have to figure out my life, I have to be responsible. But she wouldn't understand it. I hardly understand it myself.

Who I am is an actress, I know that like I know my name. But how long can a dream be sustained for when it exists only as something we wish upon a star? At some point it has to either materialize or be discarded, it seems. And I've been lost. I've been terrified of going through another year of the same bullshit auditions for unpaid projects that aren't even that good. I'm tired and I'm not happy. The idea of giving up on acting brings me even further down, but I can't keep doing it and not making a living either.

So here I am, staring at Adulthood but still clinging on to my dreams and idealizations of life, not quite ready to let go yet. Getting scolded by my inner child, but looking at my life as it is and knowing that something has to change.

I'm looking for signs, I'm waiting for clarity, I'm hoping for solutions.

I'm staring at myself and, for the first time in my whole life, I'm wondering who I am.

A Lesson in Self-Worth

There was a girl in my high-school, like there always is, who was the popular girl that all the boys I had a crush on wanted to date. For our purposes here today, let's call her Courtney. Blonde, hot, not tall enough to be threatening, thin, leggy, breasty, and enviably confident, Courtney was completely likable and completely hatable.

Courtney and I were friends. Kind of. We had some classes together, we hung out sometimes outside of school, and we seemed to get along. We could have been closer friends, if I didn't secretly hate her. I couldn't help but be incredibly jealous of her. She had a perfect smile, while I wore blue retainers. She had perfect straight blonde hair, while I had frizzy wavy untamable black hair that would never be blonde. She had clear smooth skin, while I took life-threatening anti-acne medication for years. She was athletic and always looked fit, while I was terrible at almost every sport and struggled to find jeans that could contain my love-handles. She dated all the cute boys, while I wrote poems about them in my journal and hoped they knew my name. Essentially, she was everything I wasn't, and she had everything I wanted. I was constantly haunted by my own comparisons to her and the consequent feelings of unworthiness they planted. She had what it took to be loved and happy, and I didn't.

But beauty can be bought and confidence can be faked, one learns, and ugly ducklings can become swans, with enough money, products, and therapy.

At 16, someone fell in love with me. He was in college and he was crazy about me. Suddenly, I felt like the most beautiful woman in the world. And I was happy. Sort of. I didn't love him like he loved me, but I loved how he made me feel. Courtney stopped being such a threat to me. I realized that we could both be happy, and we could both be beautiful- she just had it easier, perhaps, but I could have it too. She could have every guy in school at her feet; I had my guy, and he had picked me.

And then it all went to shit.

One day, he was picking me up from school and we were in the parking lot waiting for my brother. For some reason, we started talking about sports and how I didn't like doing anything athletic at all. He was a basketball player and he loved sports. I said something like, "Why do I need to do sports? I don't like them," and he said, "Well that's fine. But look at that girl. You'll never have her legs." I turned around to look at who he was referencing. And there she was. Of course. Courtney, walking out of volleyball practice. The meanness of his comment would have been enough to destroy me. Coupling it with a comparison to Courtney was like being told, flat out, "Don't entertain illusions about yourself. You're not good enough. You're not her. You'll never be that beautiful, you'll never be that happy."

I broke up with him that day. He realized what he had done and apologized a thousand times. Sent presents. Wrote letters. Declared his undying love over and over again. But it was done. I was scarred.

In retrospect, what hurt the most was that I had really thought that to this one man, I was more beautiful than Courtney, and falling from the only pedestal I'd ever been on ended up hurting more than if I'd never been on one to begin with. I thought if I could be perfect, to just one person, then I could start to see myself as worthy of love and happiness. I didn't see then that he loved me even though I wasn't perfect, and I certainly didn't understand the value of that. I saw only the fact that he had seen in Courtney something that was lacking in me, and I had trusted him to be the one to tell me nothing was lacking in me. I needed him to tell me I was just as good as she was and that I was worthy of love, because I couldn't do that for myself. I had placed on him the responsibility of making me feel lovable and beautiful, not knowing that no one could mend my self-esteem and worthiness issues but me.

What I've learned is that it's really hard to take responsibility for our own sense of worth rather than placing it on another person. It's even harder to accept being loved for our flaws and imperfections, and to love another for their humanness as well. It's hardest, perhaps, to love ourselves for our flaws and imperfections; for our humanness.

It's a lesson I battle with daily. But now there are no Courtney's. Just my own ghosts.

My sense of self still gets challenged. But every time, I see I am able to hold on to how I see myself and who I am with more strength and love.

My flaws are mine, as are my virtues, and if I don't accept them, who will?

Infidelity

A friend of mine recently sent me an email about cheating. She had just heard someone recount their stories of infidelity and was extremely upset by it, and was wondering why she was so upset, being that the infidelity did not even directly affect her. Although I am not innocent on the subject- or perhaps because I am not innocent on the subject- I knew how I felt about it and why she was probably so upset. Since other people have also asked me to write about this topic, here are some of my thoughts on cheating.

First of all, let me clarify how I define cheating. I think my friend Chris best described it when he said, "It's less about what actions are taken and more about how the other person will feel."

When two people have made an agreement to be exclusive and one person develops an interest in another and acts on it- be that kissing, dating, or having sex- without clearing it up with the person they are committed to, I call that cheating. If there was never an agreement made regarding exclusivity, then I don't call it cheating. Irresponsible and unkind behavior, maybe, but not cheating. Also, I don't consider looking at other people or fantasizing about people other than the person you're with cheating.

Someone recently said to me, "What they don't know can't hurt them."

To which I say, Bullshit.

In a nutshell, cheating is not cool because its essence is rooted in lying. And all lying does is limit space to grow, since a relationship post-cheating-and-not-telling-the-truth-about-it is then between two people who have two different ideas of what their relationship is. The party that's been cheated on is now living an illusion, and the cheater can only focus on keeping up that illusion.

If you're going to cheat, then at least be honest with yourself about what you're doing and the potential damage you might be causing.

I have taken part in an infidelity- big time, in a way that affected an innocent third party. I was in love, and I thought that justified my actions. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I was too blindly in love to really consider it. He was the one who had made a promise to someone else and he should have known better, but I was no child and certainly never entertained any illusions about just how much responsibility I was holding over someone else's feelings. I knew what I was doing. And when eventually we had to stop, not only was I heart-broken, but I was then haunted by my guilt. It took a lot of therapy, meditating, writing, yoga, crying, and creating to move past this huge disappointment and forgive myself. Although I learned and grew because of how much love existed between us, I would not do it again. I hurt someone, tremendously, and I hurt myself just as much in the end.

I also had a brief fling with a friend's ex-boyfriend. He was her first love, and although they had broken up three years prior to my hooking up with him, I knew it would hurt her. We thought about never telling her. She was a dear friend. But I didn't want her to have any illusions about what kind of a friend I am. That action made me a shitty, flawed friend, and I respected her enough to let her choose whether she wanted to forgive me and keep the friendship or not, so I told her. She was really hurt, and I am still recovering from it. She never spoke to me again. I would not do that again either. I had to do it, so that I could learn, and so that I could see that I am capable of majorly fucking up (I have this problem where I try to be the perfect friend/girlfriend/daughter/sister, etc. and it does nothing but destroy me). But it was a lesson that came at a very, very high cost.

I've actually never been cheated on, so to speak. I was in an open relationship for a while, so I couldn't call it cheating, but I remember really hating the fact that he slept with other women. I've also been led on about what a particular situation I was in was really about- one of those, "I wasn't lying, I just wasn't telling you the whole truth" kind of things. It hurt me deeply, and I learned that I don't think it's right to shut off the part of ourselves that wants to love someone so much that we won't be with anyone else, because the thought of that person getting hurt is not worth any fuck in the world.

I certainly believe that love can end and that people want and fall in love with other people, and that there's merit in honoring those feelings. I also think that different couples can have different arrangements, and that with honesty and awareness, it's possible to create a relationship with rules that suit both people's wants and do not necessarily follow society's morality rules. I'm an advocate for honesty, all around. I much rather hear, "What we have might not be working, because I'm developing an interest in someone else," than live in the illusion that everything is okay and we're still in love and loyal to each other so as to avoid a conversation about someone's potential infidelities. I also believe in forgiveness and compassion. I don't think someone who cheats is a bad person, incapable of truly loving someone, or inhumane. I don't think someone who forgives a cheater is weak. We are all capable of hurting each other, and we are all capable of realizing it and overcoming it.

Over the course of all these lessons and mistakes, I've learned how I aspire to live: If I'm in love, I don't cheat. If an agreement is made that says we are exclusive, I honor it. I value loyalty and respect, even though I do not believe human beings are 100% monogamous by nature. I think our inner animals want to fuck all the time, and not just be with one partner.

But we're not just animals. We are humans with consciences, and we must honor that part of ourselves too.

The most beautiful thing about being a human being, I think, is the ability to care for others. Care so much that we take in their feelings before acting upon our desires. Cheating, in that respect, is a violation of our humanity. It says, "I am going to pretend not to care about another person's feelings. I'm going to do this even though it will hurt someone else, and then I'm either going to feel guilty about it, or I'm going to justify it until I feel nothing." There's nothing sadder than shutting off a part of ourselves so as to get away with or go through with something.

As humans, our ability to care for each other and empathize is what sets us apart from other species. Our awareness of each other's pains and our power to cause it or prevent it gives us an understanding of infidelity and lying that other creatures don't have. To dishonor this is to hurt our humanity and limit the possibilities we have for love and respect.

Although I feel quite clear about this, people are constantly presenting me with scenarios that seem to challenge my thoughts. In the end, nothing is black and white, wrong or right. But if we can be honest with each other, then I think that's a good place to start.

What do you think?

A Romantic Finds Peace in Realism

I was a dangerously romantic child and teenager. I bought the whole "prince charming would sweep me off my feet one day and we'd live happily ever after" thing for a long time. All I wanted to do with my Barbies was make them marry the Ken's. I wrote love poems, I slept in long flowy nightgowns, I watched Dirty Dancing and Titanic until I knew them by heart, I liked to sit and stare at the rain, I never saw a flower I didn't like, I listened to James Taylor's songs obsessively, and, for a long time, I signed my name with a heart at the end of it. That's just who I was. Someone who wanted to love and who believed it could be pink and perfect when it happened.

Naturally, life happened, love visited me several times, and I eventually learned that those idealistic fantasies would never really come true and that being romantic set me up for great, painful falls. I was in college when I stopped writing poems, switched from long night gowns to pj's, stopped noticing the rain and the flowers, and found a new signature. "Men only want one thing from you," was drilled into me and I accepted reality: happily ever after was a load of shit.

I did what most young romantics do when they figure that out: had sex until I was immune to it, developed sarcasm, started drinking, and mastered the art (or should I say the tragedy?) of not letting my face give away how I actually felt. These "tools" served me well, and I survived the loss of my romantic self without making too much of a fuss over it.

Then, one day, as you may expect, I fell madly blindly in love with someone who was madly blindly in love with me too. And all the romantic dreams I had buried deep inside came rushing out, eager to participate in this love story. Poems and letters were written. There were sweep-me-off-my-feet hugs and passionate kisses in the rain. There were flowers and chocolates and three-hour-long phone conversations where we would just "hear each other breathe." It was quite beautiful at the time. I remember thinking, "This is what I've been waiting for. Someone to come along who could meet my romanticism and let me express myself completely." We were obsessively happy and life seemed to fall perfectly into place.

But.

It ended. The flame was too strong, too powerful, too fast, too hot, and it burnt out so quickly we were both left groundless- wondering where it went and why we couldn't get it back. I mourned the loss of the man I had loved, but I also mourned the loss of that romantic girl again, whom I thought had come back for good. She seemed to look at me accusingly, you didn't protect me. You let me out when it wasn't safe. I was heart-broken and desperately sad.

Some time passed, however, and once I had let go of him and who I was with him, I saw that I actually didn't want that. It was a fantasy, and we worshipped each other, which sounds nice, but I don't want a fantasy, nor do I want to be worshipped. A love that blinds me and puts me on a pedestal is actually not the kind of love I want, after all. I much rather have the kind of love I have to work for and earn, with someone whose flaws are very apparent to me, and with whom I feel at ease being just human.

I don't want a Prince. I'm not a Princess. I'm a woman. I'm a human being. I don't floss my teeth every day. I have scars. I eat too much chocolate. I'm a terrible singer who no one wants to take to karaoke. I can never throw anything away. I own shoes that cost enough to feed a starving colony. I like country music. I procrastinate. I sleep with a stuffed peter rabbit. And I have enough ex-boyfriends who could add to this list until it turned into a Russian novel.

You get the idea.

After finding the fairy-tale love story and then letting it go, I saw that it wasn't what I wanted. I want to be madly in love, yes, but with consciousness and choice. Believe it or not, I don't want to erase into someone else's being, become one, connect in a way that is inseparable. I rather create a story that has space for two individuals, who are together because they choose to be, not because they can't live without each other. Something about that is so much more valuable and healthy than indulging in the "star-crossed lovers" myth. Romeo and Juliet didn't exactly end with Happily Ever After either, lest we forget. My romantic self is still part of me, it really can't just be buried away, but it's learned to find peace with realism. I can love deeply, but I want to see who I'm loving for who they are, and be seen for who I am.

We all have a goddess within us. It makes sense to worship her. It's easy to love her.

I want to be loved for my humanity.

I want to find love, with sanity and sight.

I want romance, with realism.

The Hopeful Cool One

We've all heard, at some point, the famous (male) words: "Just don't expect too much of me," later echoed with, "What do you honestly expect from me?" Usually meaning, Don't develop feelings, don't start wanting a commitment, I'm warning you now so that I don't have to be held responsible for my actions later.

What we ought to respond is, "Well, you know that it's actually not possible for me to control what I feel and expect, so what you're actually asking from me is that I pretend that I don't feel anything for you or expect anything from you, even if I do, so that you don't feel bad about using me for sex and company."

But do we ever say that?

No.

Instead, we say, "Cool."

Because that's what we want to be. Cool. And you know what? It's fucking stupid. We know we're not cool at all. We play it up, act all detached, wait the obligatory four hours before answering a text, shrug when he asks if we mind if he goes to a party without us, pretend we're not the commitment-type, but inside- unless, and this is important to note, for there is an unless: we're in love with someone else, deeply heart-broken, or really jaded- we're not really cool with not developing feelings and not expecting anything from the men we date.

We all read or watched the movie "He's Just Not That Into You". We're too self-aware and too educated about men, at this point in Herstory, to fool ourselves about a guy's emotional availability. When our mothers were dating, they had to take a lot more risks. A guy could get away with a lot more. A girl could think, "Oh, he hasn't called me because he's visiting his Grandmother or, like, at war."

Nowadays, girlfriend, you know that if he didn't reply to your text within 45 minutes, he's probably not interested in more than your booty- people text during funerals now, no one is busy with something where they don't have access to their phones for over 45 minutes anymore. And we know that when a man says he doesn't want a relationship, we should take his word for it and, as Cassandra O'Keefe once said, "Run like the wind. You want to save something? Save a whale. Save the rainforest. Don't try to save a man."

So we have no excuse. And that's the most disturbing part. We, the most educated generation of women, are still choosing to lie to ourselves and play it "cool".

I can, of course, relate this to a recent event in my own dating life. I've been engaged in a text flirtation with a guy for about two weeks now, and he texts me extremely sporadically, and has already given me excuses like "I'm busy with work" and "I'm hanging out with friends", and I've already vowed to stop replying to his texts about 14 times, but every time he texts me I get super excited and wonder if he's finally going to ask me out. It's ridiculous! I want his attention simply because I don't have it. I've felt like I'm 12 and trying to get the most popular guy in middle school to notice me when he was already dating the popular blonde and only called me when he needed help with his homework (and by help I mean I would give him the answers to everything). I finally decided to do something about it today, and I texted him, "So you wanna meet up sometime or just text me for another 7 months?" To which he replied, "haha. I absolutely want to meet up with you. Tell me when and where." (You're probably thinking- as I was- oh, so he was interested all along! But not really. I mean, think about it, what else was he gonna say? Men don't tend to say "nah, I'll pass" when a woman asks them out. They usually figure that at the very least they'll get a boob.) We then proceeded to set a date. After the whole interaction had occurred, though, I sat thinking to myself, "So this guy has been kind of a jerk, I've been getting the wrong vibes all along, and my way of settling it was by asking him out? Golly Moses. Women are stupid."

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves, and can we stop?

As I write this, I think, I should text him and cancel the date so that I can end this blog post with my triumph over my stupid neediness and inspire other women. And, in my inability to do so, I am given the answer as to why we keep this up.

Hope.

I hope he won't be a jerk. I want to give him a chance, because the pay-off that could come from him actually being a great guy is worth the cost of a bad dating experience. I want to take the risk that maybe beyond his virtual actions, this guy might be really really nice, and we might like each other. Because at the end of the day, what I want most of all is to find someone to love who will love me in return, and that's really hard to find, so I gotta give some odd balls a chance, hope for a seemingly douchy guy to turn out rather sweet, take some risks, or I may miss my chance.

And you know what? I'm cool with that.

I accept comments on my new blog design too....

Dreams

I ran into someone from college today, a fellow actress, at an audition, and was stunned into sadness. This young woman, who had once been full of life and excitement about her prospective acting career, sat before me today looking like a zombie- jaded, angry, and unhappy. It's been four years since we graduated from college, she reminded me, and clearly she wasn't where she'd thought she would be by now. I see so many actors like her, who once had dreams and passions, but who have been beaten down by the industry, who are borderline crazy because of how limited they feel. She was still physically alive, of course. Her heart is still beating and all. But her dreams, what made her a beautiful human being, were almost gone. She was sitting at that audition for an unpaid part in a short film because after a while, after a lifetime of this, you just don't know what else to do.

As I looked at her picking the decoration off her phone as she waited her turn, I started thinking, since this business kills them, can we have a graveyard for our dreams? Every time we are treated like cattle, can we have an address, a physical place, where we can mourn them? Along with objectifying us and then coldly rejecting us, can we get the certainty, in the form of a legal document, that our dreams are dead now?

I have always known acting is a lonely battle against a soul-devouring business that seeks to profit from my dreams. I just always thought my passion was stronger than anything and anyone, and my need to do this would outweigh the disappointments. And it can be that way, but it requires a lot of work. Work that doesn't feel like work and that has no value to the outside world- such as decompressing after an audition by going for a walk, or writing about it, or crying about it, or listening to lots of good songs on your ipod, or eating some sweet potato fries, or all of the above, until you can get it all out of your system. It's a full-time job, staying strong enough to handle this business. I have to make time, every day, to nurture my creativity in some way. I have to force myself to have positive thoughts about myself as an actress. I have to protect myself from the often desperate energy at audition waiting rooms, and then from the often dismissive energy at the auditions themselves. I have to eat right and exercise, keep my body and mind working together so that they know I want them to be healthy for me. I have to keep my heart open and willing. I have to love deeply and daily. I have to create my own projects since the ones I audition for are rarely compatible with my interests as an artist. I have to look like the best version of myself, every day. And on top of all that, I have to find a way to support myself financially and emotionally while not being able to devote myself to a full-time day job and usually not being able to afford myself the time to fully prepare for or fully recover from the day-to-day life in this business.

It's a lot of what I call "invisible work". It's the work I have to do in order to still be a sensitive vessel for creativity and inspiration, and it's what I have to do to stay sane and not end up like the young woman I ran into today.

There are days when I wake up and I'm all about it, I'm ready to keep going, I'm in love with my life, I can't wait to start another day of submitting-auditioning-creating-preparing-nurturing-hoping-wanting-waiting-wishing-loving-needing. Then there are days when I don't want to get out of bed. When I consider going on craigslist and trying to find a regular 9-5 job that numbs my mind. That way, at least I'd be the one burying my dreams, rather than the industry.

And, to be honest, I do give in to the latter days every once in a while. I stay in bed till noon and when I do get up, it's just to eat something, mope, and then go on craigslist and look for a job as a secretary.

Luckily though, my heart will usually end up screaming, Don't give up yet, you can't. Don't go be someone's secretary. You have a masters degree. You're capable of doing what you dream of. Let's go!

It's a battle, really. It takes courage to stay in it, and it takes courage to get out of it. It's not easy to bury a dream, and it's not easy to keep it alive either.

I read something the other day that inspired me, and I've been trying to remember it on days like today. It went something like, "If you have a gift, it means you were chosen, and you are best living by expressing your gift."

I liked it. It made me feel like I actually have an obligation to keep trying and working, living and dreaming, because I didn't choose this, it chose me. Sometimes it's hard to be grateful about that, but I have to remember that that's what dreams are: precious gifts for me to unwrap daily, with love and care.

So then I start thinking, Never mind. I don't want a graveyard for my dreams. I'll hold on to them a little longer. Thank you, Universe.

And my dreams smile, relieved that they get to live a little longer.

Are you still dreaming?

Bringing Down Princess Days

I don't get the whole "TREAT" yourself to a salon day. The whole "Be a Princess For a Day": get waxed, get a mani-pedi, get your hair deep-conditioned for three hours, get your eyebrows tweezed, bond with your girlfriends over nail polish trends... all while reading useless gossip magazines, and all for only $200!

Seriously.

I've been doing all that stuff for over a decade now, and it has never felt like a treat nor did I ever feel like a princess. It felt more like an expected obligation and I felt more like a slave.

I tried to like it, I did. Because I felt I was supposed to. All the women around me were always looking forward to their vanity days, and women are expected to brag about how they like to "take care of themselves"- it's supposed to equal self-love, so I played along.

But there was something wrong with the picture.

I had one of these "salon days" today, for example. I avoid them nowadays, but eventually, if one wants to look *socially* acceptable at important social events, one has to go through the primping parade. As I lay on the waxing table with my right leg on my left shoulder and waited for my Iranian waxing lady to unkindly pour the hot wax on the back of my right thigh, holding my breath as I anticipated the next step, I thought, "Well. If this is a Princess' day, I don't ever want to get promoted to Queen status." After the never-comfortable-always-painful waxing session, I was nice and smooth, as is expected of women. I did, in fact, feel like I fit in to society just a little bit more, just by having less hair on my body. Great.

Next: mani-pedi. They make it sound like so much fun, "Oh! Get a bunch of your girlfriends and go get your nails done!" Because of course! That's the safest way to get women to bond! Keep them focused on their vanity. I personally always find it quite boring, to sit there and not move too much so as to not fuck anything up, reading about how Sandra Bullock is following Madonna's and Angelina's footsteps as she adopts a black baby post-getting-cheated-on, feeling rather elitist, while a lady- sometimes kind, sometimes miserable- digs out my cuticles and files my nails so that they all look the same and make everyone else feel more comfortable- another woman under control, mission accomplished. And why yes, I do start to feel like my inner animal is a little more tamed, like I probably won't yell at anyone today. I mean, how could a young woman, so nicely waxed, smooth, and with such well-behaved nails actually raise her voice or demand anything? No, no. This young woman that is coming forth speaks softly, smiles, flirts, and eats only lettuce.

I don't get my hair or eyebrows done anymore, but if I did, that would be approximately another four hours of Princess Time, of taming and controlling, of willing me into being a well-behaved girl- a role I know all too well.

I walk out fairly exhausted from all the primping and forced interactions, but looking like what I'm supposed to look like. That's what I went in there for, after all.

People ask me what I did today, and I tell them, and they're jealous of my Princess Day. I want to say, "This was a Princess Day? If I were a Princess I'd ban salons from my kingdom. I'd ban beauty standards. I'd rather spend my day fertilizing soil for corn to grow on."

You may have caught on to the fact that I'm a little bitter about all this. I'm bitter about all the money, time, and effort I spent in order to look like something I have been told to look like. I'm bitter about the fact that femininity looks like a tamed fragile delicate little hairless puppy.

And most of all, I'm bitter about the fact that I'm still doing all this stuff.

I realize I'm starting to sound like an angry feminist, but I'm really starting to think more women should be angry about this.

At one point, I just did all the vanity routine without questioning it. But NOW, I question it, I disagree with it, I am completely self-aware as I go through the motions, but I STILL do it.

Why?

Maybe because, let's face it, sometimes -most times- complying is just easier than rebelling. We all get tired, we all want to fit in and be told we're pretty, we all want love and intimacy, and having hairy legs and uneven nails doesn't really seem to do a damn thing except turn people off.

Decades of feminism and here we are, self-aware but doing the same things we've always done.

For a while, women defied the standards of beauty. Short hair, no bras, no waxing, and other such physical rebellions that paralleled the actual changes they fought for: equal pay, value for housework, fair divorce laws, protection against sexism and harassment, etc.

But it's a difficult a battle. How do we get Vogue do to a spreadsheet with women who have not waxed or gotten their nails done or plucked their eyebrows? We can't even get them to do a spreadsheet with women who are above a size -4. And how do we get men to understand the illusion they buy into when they prefer women to look/act like meek shaved lambs? We can't even get them to take responsibility for having sex with 13-year-olds.

It's hard and it's up to us and there's no formula for us to follow. As Naomi Wolf wrote in her book, The Beauty Myth, "A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. If we are to free ourselves of the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see."

And what is this new way to see?

I don't know, but maybe it starts with undoing the little myths, like the "salon day = princess day" myth, and the "femininity is soft and small" myth. So maybe we still get waxed and get our nails done, but let's be clear about why and what we're propelling by doing so. The wrong things have been on pedestals long enough. Let's bring some of them down.

Let's bring down Unhealthy Beauty Standards.

Let's bring down Days Lost to Vanity.

Let's bring down Women are Soft and Small.

Let's bring down Women Enjoy Suffering for Beauty.

And, please, let's bring down the damn Princess Days.

The Wicked Pattern

The first time I fell in love I was about 6. I went to visit my aunt in L.A. one summer, and she had a friend, and that friend had kids, and one of those kids was my age, and that kid who was my age was a boy, and that boy was the most beautiful perfect thing I had ever seen in my short life, and within instants I knew he would be my husband.

His name was Jamie.

Since the only training I had been given in regards to love came from disney movies, I was certain that the feeling would be mutual and that we would kiss and live happily ever after. I don't remember how long we played for or what games we even played before I declared my undying love to him. I proceeded to close my eyes like they did in the movies and wait for him to kiss me. Well, no such thing happened. Instead, he ran like the wind. I obviously had no idea what was happening, so I tried following him around for a while, but he just kept running away from me. Eventually he went away for good, my summer vacation ended, I went back home to Brazil, and for the next three years littered every single paper I could find with Larissa loves Jamie encompassed by red hearts.

Since that was my first experience with love, it became my definition of love. And once we define how we believe something to be, it tends to happen just that way, over and over again, until many years later we find that we're in therapy wondering, over and over again, why we keep declaring our love to men who then proceed to run away, and why we then obsess over it for the next three years. Fascinating, isn't it. One would think we'd catch on to it sooner- I mean, really, how many times do we have to do something before we realize it's a destructive pattern and we're bringing it on ourselves???

So here I am, 18 years after Little Jamie, and if we do the math (I literally just got out a calculator to do the math), it would mean I went through this 6 more times. Well, guess what. I made a list (yes, I did), and there were 6 post-Jamie's in the past 18 years. Not as neatly, some didn't take up three years of my life (thank god), and I was a normal high-schooler who had a new crush every week and dated guys I didn't like and all that, but in the end, the pattern of declaring my love (or what I understood to be love at any given time) to a boy/man, watching him run away from me, and holding on to him for much-longer-than-would-be-understandable-afterwards repeated itself exactly 6 times in 18 years.

Now, I'm pretty obsessed with myself and my life. I've kept diaries since before I could spell the word diary. I write down everything I do, feel, see, hear, and think. I love therapy. I love anything called self-help. I'm an actress. And look, I started a blog, which is basically a structured diary for the public with an added analysis of whatever I write about. I even called it "LARISSA THINKS A LOT." You get the idea.

And yet. Somehow, I have only realized all of this right now. All these years, instead of asking myself, "Why am I wasting my time with someone who doesn't want my love?" and "Why am I not the one who runs away when he doesn't return my love," I always, repeatedly, asked myself, "Why doesn't he love me?" and, worse even, "What can I change about me so that he will love me?"

It feels really sad and pathetic to look back on all the time and love I wasted on people who didn't want it. But it also feels good to "catch it". It always feels pretty good to catch a pattern, actually. Catching it means I'm conscious of it, and being conscious of it means I now have a choice about it. I may not have a choice over who I love, or even how their rejection affects me, but I do see that I may have a choice over how I go about dealing with the situation.

So Jamie and his clan didn't want me and I tried and tried and tried to win their hearts anyway. Okay. Clearly, that didn't work out too well. And it took me 18 years to learn from the same mistake. At least I'm 24, not 74. I actually have time to do something about it.

I don't have a nice conclusion for this post, yet, since it's a new discovery and all, but I do hope that in the future I can blog about this again, and it may include some experiences with mutual, respectful love. And I can say this for now: I'm kicking this wicked little pattern out, and my heart is really excited about the possibility of letting someone in who can return its devotion, and then letting go of those who can't.

Mary's Story

This was the very first poem I wrote in my very first poetry class in college, 6 years ago. I sat down and wrote it, and edited very little ever since. It is completely simple and yet I have always felt an attachment to it. It wasn't about me, I didn't actually know the circumstances of which the narrator in this poem speaks, but it seemed to all just come to me, like a fiction story that was somehow personal. And a couple of years later, I would play a character who went through these exact circumstances, and this same poem would surface again to help me find her heart. I share it here with you now.

Mary’s Story

So Mary came to me in a dream.
She told me how she lost her virginity.
You wouldn’t believe it unless you heard it.
She lost it to some guy, Doug,
who said she was a pretty girl.

He liked her lips.
She liked the way his hand felt on her cheek.
He said I love you baby.
She said Don’t you tell ok.
And then she was knocked up.
Mary wasn’t allowed to be knocked up you see,
and guess what, she went to
the same Doctor I went to!

But instead of digging into her and yanking it out,
Doctor said,
Mary I’ve got a brilliant idea.
Mary, legs spread open, naked and doped, couldn’t wait to hear this.
Doctor said,
I’m going to make you the mother of a prophet.
I’m going to give you an eternal virginity.
Mary, well she thought this sounded just swell.
But in my dream, just to me,
she confessed that maybe it wasn’t the best idea after all.

See, Doctor didn’t have any brilliant ideas for me.
He just shoved the whole world inside me it seemed,
and then I guess my vagina vomited it all out,
and somewhere in that mess was
my slaughtered baby.

Maybe he could’ve been a prophet too.

Love is Everything

While crying with a broken heart, I think, "I'd take a root canal while getting a brazilian wax on a cold day and then maybe even give birth with no drugs and fall inside a frozen pond naked- over this pain. I would take anything over this pain." And then my next thought, bumping in right behind that one, practically crashing with it, is, "No, no I wouldn't. This pain means I have a working loving open heart. This pain means I'm alive. The magnitude of this pain equals the magnitude of the love I lived. I'll take this over the alternative of never having lived through so much love." And I cry even harder.

And every time it's worse (or better?). Every time the love is greater, and the crashing pain of loss greater still. And what hurts, exactly? Pablo Neruda, that eternal romantic, wrote,

"We, we who were, we are the same no longer. ...

Love is so short and oblivion so long."

How many times have I gone through this? Apparently not enough times, because my heart is still perfectly willing to love, it is yearning to love again, it is ready to fall in love with the guy with long hair and a guitar in the subway. It is hoping to look at someone and see in their face all of humanity's perfections and all of humanity's imperfections and love them so much, so deeply, so entirely, so tremendously, that there is nothing to do but kiss them as passionately as possible, forever.

I'm bottomlessly romantic, boundlessly sensitive, overly poetic, and a tad bit dramatic, I know. But I can't help it! I love loving! And love loves finding me, it always has. No matter how much it hurts me, it seems love and I and have a life-long date this time around. Bring it on Cupid, this heart ain't done lovin' yet.

I remember when I was in the 9th grade, I was with a group of people chatting about what love is, and one girl said, "Romantic love is completely unnecessary and we can be perfectly fine without it." I responded immediately and viscerally- it's possible that I even jumped up to standing- I said, "How can you say that? How can you possibly say that? It's the whole point! There's nothing better! There's nothing greater! Love is everything!" I think she rolled her eyes at me, I don't really remember. But you see my point- even at 14, in the hell of high school, I already had the suspicion that love is life. And now, ten years later, with a desperate broken heart that has been mended over and over again, that is full of a kind of pain that is capable of taking over my whole being and paralyzing me for days, I believe that still.

But (ugly icky stubborn but), something has changed.

I know now that, in the same space that passionate crazy beautiful pure love inhabits, also lives the possibility of a deadly painful merciless end. In that first kiss where love plants its seeds it also plants the possibility that those two people may hurt each other brutally and irreparably. The greater the love, the greater the possibility of that pain. (I should say probability rather than possibility, because I have not yet lived a great love that was not accompanied by a hurricane of pain, but who knows- maybe it's out there.)

And because I know this, I understand something I absolutely rejected and ran away from for a long time. I understand now why people settle. I don't mean settle down, I mean settle for something that is less than what they wanted, settle for an adult life of "should's" and "at least's" and "good enough's". I understand choosing stability and companionship over passion and mind-blowing love. I understand choosing a life that minimizes the possibility of suffering a great loss.

I understand it so much that today I even said, "I could do it. I could settle." And I meant it. I started to think I could be ok with having just the certainty that the person I'm with will be there the next day over explosive, soul-connected, blinding love where no such certainty exists. Flames, by definition, burn out or fade away. So enough flames, I've been thinking, I'm done with flames. Let flames go to hell where they belong. Give me luke-warm. Give me boring. Give me less than I have always wanted.

Alas, says the romantic day-dreamer, such thoughts are real but fleeting. I no sooner have them than I am ready to fall madly in love again.

But, as a dear friend said to me today, I don't have to decide or choose anything right now, maybe even for a while. I can decide to not decide. It's every empowering, actually. I don't have to narrow down what I want right away- or ever. How great that I know love and love's pains, how great that I understand the sentiment behind settling, how great that I have no idea what will suit my life! I am ever-changing, ever-growing, and ever-learning. That is wonderful and I better get used to it because I can not control it. It just so happens that I can't click a switch in my heart and go, Ok, I'm done falling in love, now just give me something safe.

It is comforting to know that I am in pain, but I am not done loving yet.

As my 14-year-old self would say, I better not be done with love yet, because then really, what would be the point? Love is everything.

And isn't it?

Fairy Tale Lessons

I wrote this poem years ago and have edited it recently. Reading my cousin's blog today inspired me to post it.

Fairy Tale Lessons

there's only one woman who can be the fairest of them all. silly queen; she was already old.

fairy godmothers sometimes forget to tell you to leave something behind for the fella. so when in doubt, leave something that could only fit you. like a shoe.

if you never leave your tower, the love of your life will still find you.

dragons are easy to kill.

if you're kinda chubby you can be a fairy.

mothers are not necessary. in fact, it's best if they die at child-birth.

careers are also not necessary. in fact, it's best not to mention them.

when you're passive and unconscious you look really attractive.

hairy, violent, large men should be tolerated and appreciated. listen to your furniture.

homosexuality does not exist.

the less you talk, the more action you get.

love happens only once and it is instantaneous.

the circle of life means females have babies. it's painful, but hey, hakuna matata.

to be a princess you must be shorter than the prince.

old people don't fall in love.

"do you trust me" is always a trick question.

conclusion:

poor humble gorgeous girls get rich handsome princes to rescue them.

the reason they're so skinny is so the prince can carry them and look strong.

if you're one of those girls, don't try having girlfriends. they get jealous. and jealous women are vicious.

Luck

He was cute. I was tipsy. It was noisy. We started making out. It became a thing. We'd meet at parties and make out. Then we'd meet between classes and make out. I was young. I was sure it was just a matter of time before he introduced me to his friends as his girlfriend. I started drawing hearts in my notebooks. I started writing his last name after my first name, secretly, in my diary. I started staring out into space and smiling. I thought I was in love.

And then one day I baked him cookies and went to deliver them to him where he worked. He would undoubtedly fall in love with me after eating my cookies. He would say You're the best baby, let's go out to dinner tonight.

He was on a break, they told me, Outside somewhere. I went outside looking for him. But there was a strange feeling in my gut.

It's funny how we get a feeling before something happens- like we know we're about to see something that's going to scar us for life. Maybe that feeling comes from our heart and it's meant to protect us. Why don't we ever listen to it? I don't know.

There he was, with a busty blonde he worked with, their hips glued together, kissing as though they were long lost lovers. Every cliche I'd ever read suddenly made sense. My heart broke. My brain stopped. The ground beneath my feet disappeared. All of that.

He saw me and smiled, as though he were just playing chess with this girl and I had nothing to worry about. He called me over and introduced us, as if I were his friend and nothing more. Her name was Heather.

It's equally funny how we react in the most painful and traumatizing moments of our lives. I shook her hand. I froze my face into a smile. I knew if I stopped smiling the tears would gush down. I smiled as hard as I have ever smiled in my life. I said See ya later.

I walked away with my box of cookies. I walked until I was alone. I ate all the cookies I had baked for him to fall in love with me. Was I hungry? No, not at all. I was trying to get rid of the bitter taste in my mouth. I was chewing as hard as I could, because I couldn't smile anymore and I wasn't ready to cry yet.

I went home, crawled under my covers, and stayed in bed for two days. I didn't cry- I never cried- but I lay there, paralyzed.

I decided to confront him. I found him and asked him why he did that to me. He seemed calm. He said You didn't think we were exclusive did you? The words went from his mouth and straight into whatever it is in us that registers the great pains of our lives- the ones that even ten years later hurt us still. I said nothing. I walked away as fast as I could because I thought that maybe I could leave that moment there, maybe it wouldn't stay with me, maybe if I walked really really fast that pain wouldn't be able to follow me.

But it was too late. It had already happened. I would never trust a man so purely and innocently again. I decided right then and there that I had no luck whatsoever when it came to love.

The pain never left me, although the bitterness subsided. He even became a friend after a while. Several years later, in a drunken night, he apologized for treating me the way he did. It surprised me. I didn't know he knew he had hurt me. But he knew. I said Nonsense, we were kids, someone had to teach me that fairy tales aren't real. I laughed. But he didn't laugh with me. He said, Please, don't dismiss it, I know I hurt you, let yourself get upset. At that, I started to cry. The tears I had never let go of were still there, waiting right behind my cheeks, and they suddenly burst out of my eyes in relief. Hours went by, I thanked him for apologizing and for letting me cry on his shoulder about the wound he had caused himself. He thanked me for not hating him.

And then we lost touch completely. As though that was all we were meant to live through together. Our paths had crossed for just those reasons, so that we could each learn certain lessons, and then we each went our own way.

I never forgot him. Even as I write about him now, my heart feels both the pain he once caused me and the relief he later gave me. He lives there in the depths of my heart, and with him also lives the girl I used to be- the one who believed in Happily Ever After. And I like to see her every once in a while. She softens the guarded cynical woman I have a tendency to turn into.

She reminds me that I am capable of loving.

Lucky me.