To My Best Friend In Laws

                As we prance past our teen years and into the twenties, we encounter and mingle with people. Some skin will never again clasp together in passing to give us the ubiquitous, “High Five” as every person we interact with becomes a friend, or acquaintance, or the all ever present stranger.  Our twenties are filled with people, and as we mark our friends, as so we mark our family. The general idea of family is those related to you by blood or by marriage. However, as is my case, we leave out the stuffing to the Thanksgiving Feast of Family: The Friend Family.

                No, I am not talking about the group of people you hang out with and call “fam” who come in and out like fireflies to a lamppost, just looks for the next big thing.  I am speaking strictly of the friends who are so intertwined in with you that sometimes people cannot tell the two of you apart.

                In your twenties, you either marry or you friend. Most of those friends will be the ones aforementioned, but if you were as lucky as I was, you will get to pull the unicorn out of the hat and get a true and true Best Friend for Life, the real BFF. When you have an absolute best friend, the one who is actually there for every up and down; you live together, you eat together, you get terrible haircuts together, there is this inclusion and molding of two families exclusively thought to just derive through marriage. You exchange presents with each family on special occasions, you know their cousin’s birthdates, you’ve been to weddings and vacations so many times that you know what size clothes everyone wears.

                This, this type of friendship surpasses all inflections of just “friend” and moves into the category of family. It’s the J.D. and Turk effect when you found a lifetime friend. And, when you’ve found that friend, you’ve also found their family.

via GIPHY
                My best friend and I cemented our friendship on the mossy green lawn of a Fall Out Boy concert. We went through religious upheaval, spiritual awakenings, scientific findings, and became to one another the adventure seekers and dreamers needed to grow into somewhat adults through our twenties. During this time, we also both became acquainted and then known to one another’s family. I learned their hardships and they learned mine. We adopted each other as our own.  We became more than friend, we became kin.

                To me, they are my Best Friend In-Laws. Maybe not by virtue of actual “law” as with marriage, but by societal construct of what that term means. The Holidays are a big event of conjoined togetherness. And though it is hard to understand as a bystander, it is not hard to see that family is in itself a blossoming definition.

                So, thank you, Best Friend mother In- Law, for showing me to love another person and to endure with kindness above everything. Thank you, as well, Best Friend Father in law for loaning yourself to me as my father has now been placed back to the earth, and someday soon walking me down the aisle as we join our next set of family together as well.

               

                Thank you, Best Friend In-laws, for not only raising a daughter to whom I have shared the hardships of the catapult of fried cheese and responsibilities that is adulthood, but for also holding my hand through every fated event. I cannot thank you enough for being the chatty, lively, bunch of people I have grown to love.

                And for all Best Friend Families, carry on.

                

A Tale of Two Faces; Living with Social Anxiety

                “And then, there was a knock on the door…” a line that denotes the air of suspense among readers and viewers of the novel horror/mystery genre. The next part would read, “I wonder who that could be?” chimed Clementine (or some other absurdly dramatic name.) Or, in film, Clementine’s eyes would dart to the door as chilling music serenaded the audience onward into a fit of fear. Of course, these inflections are used by authors and film makers to incite that breath freezing, hair raising dread that instigates the shock factor needed to brew something scary.

                Living with social anxiety is much like living in a suspense story. When, “there is a knock on the door” regardless of if you were or weren’t expecting someone, the throat swells, and hair stands like needles. It doesn’t matter that no one is going to be saying, “Here’s Johnny!” or hacking in the door with a hammer. They’ve come, and the possibility of what could go utterly and terribly wrong during the opening up of the door to speak swarms around until you are breathless, and the screaming chasms in your brain are so overloaded you can’t hear or think straight.

                Today, it’s a knock on a door. Tomorrow, it’s a parking lot. Or a grocery. Or the gym. As a kid, I took solace in writing, using the pages of a notebook and a pen to masque the overbearing amount of pressure I felt being amongst my own age. In school, I hid in the library during lunch, reading or doing homework, as to not face the daunting task of finding a seat in the lunchroom. As an adult, I don’t eat around people I don’t know, and I use my phone as a buffer in new or uncomfortable social places. Even then, I hold myself in and completely controlled until I can muster enough strength despite myself to talk or run to the nearest exit to have a good home spun panic attack.

                I feel like, most of the time, I live with two faces. My first face is warped by an overwhelming fear and dread of people. When you meet that face, you might become suspicious or think I am hiding something. You might call me rude because I don’t engage the way society thinks we should all gather. You might call me controlling, because I keep everything in order to make sure that people don’t dislike me, even though that never seems to work. You probably, at this point, don’t really like me. To be fair, you aren’t meeting “me” at this point, the rude and controlled face you are meeting is that of Social Anxiety.

                Once that face can melt away, you get to see the real me. You get to see that I don’t want to live with two face, but I am forced to because of my own anxiety. You learn that there is a kind person that tries to overcome the clasp of the iron mask that is social anxiety, that keeps this face hidden. You might even realize how much effort I put into trying and failing to interact with people. But, all of that only comes after you learn to see past the first face.

                For the last time, I’m not shy. I’m really not shy. Is a crippled runner a couch potato? I can be bold, and adventurous, and even outgoing in right circumstances. And for the most part, most of those faced with living with social anxiety can be, too.

                I live my life trapped in two faces. All I, or anyone facing social anxiety, ask is that you understand. 

Keep On, Lovelies

                Loss. It’s a word that represents a deficit to something; a defeat. The letters assemble and at the sound of it we feel an emptiness swell at the pit of our inner being. Most individuals face a loss at one point or another, trickling down into the abyss of sadness that surrounds the very name. In the wake of seeing a loss in terms of a person, any and everything else seems tainted by mediocrity. We are the living, circumstances be damned.

                A dear person to my friend family lost the battle to depression.  He left to the world younger siblings and family members who are not quite able to fathom what this particular loss means. This isn’t an ailment or accident. It’s not something that comes with a cure. You can’t summarize the feeling in a chart or a graph. He was battling his mind, and it is the cruelest sickness of them all.

                As someone who has fought the battle with depression for almost fifteen years, I look at this young man and see valor in his fight. If you have never experienced a sadness in yourself so twisted, it alienates you from your own self into feeling like the true person you are, it is not easy to understand. The sadness can trample swiftly over the feelings of pleasure you once had. It clogs your very soul.

                One day, I hope we begin to treat depression like we do cancer. In today’s age, we still perceive it as mind over matter, when it is in fact yourself against your own self. You aren’t battling antibodies, you are battling brain wires that cannot be rewired alone. It is a war without an end date, and it is certainly not selfish when a person can no longer fight.

                So, today, if you are fighting, I urge you to, “Keep On.” Give it one more go. Write one more story. Paint one more picture. Talk to one more friend. See one more sunrise. And, if you can, if you need it; seek help.

                For those now grieving, remember the victory. Keep on with the memory of an individual who gave a valiant stride into this murky and dismal world. The loss is beyond any phrasing or words. 

Keep On, Lovelies, Keep on.

To The Church That Left Me Behind

                I boast that the years are behind me. That every last bitter tear has been swept into the hollow cubicle of emo pop punk and an assortment of eyeliner. Yet, in this moment as the grasp of the fickle reality of the pure hypocritical irony clouds the essence of mature forgiveness and retreats into the teenage mutant dream, clutching onto the Chuck Palahniuk novel and cowering to the floor, I become angered at the idea of a “new church”.

                After I write this and allow myself to regain the perspective I fought to achieve after years of study on various religions, I hope I won’t have to go back to this feeling. Yet, right now, in this flash of an instance, I’m petty, I’m jaded, and I’m mad.  The anger seizes me like the embrace of a scorned lover, heated for the cause.

                The news broke on the launch of a new name and new perspective, citing from the story that, “…[In the church] the music is “edgy.” Suits and ties have been traded for casual wear, and the congregation is dotted with piercings, tattoos, and “crazy” hair colors…”

                Mic drop.

                ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??????

                Clearly, people change. I did. But seriously? It took you a decade to figure out that this wasn’t your “sin”? That the characterization of clothing, makeup, adornments, and hair color are in and of themselves not innately evil? Where the fuck was that when I was being called “falling away” from God? Where were you when I was being told that my outer appearance wasn’t worthy?

                That’s right, you were questioning my bracelets and wondering if I was “giving myself” away to boys. That a man wouldn’t want me as a wife after that. This is what you said. You never noticed the actual scars from the knife on my arms after you said this. The fact that I had stopped eating indefinitely. You never thought about the fact that my dad was dying. Or that my sister was dealing with mental issues. You never stopped once to ask, honestly, how the fuck I was?

                You just kept telling me I was changing on the outside. Of course I was!

                I didn’t fall away. I was pushed/shoved/carried off the ledge with a band of people holding pitchforks and scoffing. I wasn’t allowed to figure things out. And when I did, my only realization was that a God of mercy wouldn’t allow his people to torment others at His name. At the hands of God’s people, I am an atheist. You could not have shown me the light more.

                Church was probably the worst break up I have ever been through. I was confused, hurt, and untrusting. After all, I believed in the cause. I fought for it with every breath. I did everything I was supposed to be considered, “good enough.” And I was left disgraced. It took years to build myself back up to a stronger person.  What doesn’t kill you makes you realize you have to learn to live again.
              It's a catastrophic conundrum when the church is the monster under your bed. When pews haunt your dreams of the condemnation stitched within the fabric. The shreds of myself that wanted a human race to understand grace replaces itself with that of grimace. This is the only sovereign thought I can offer myself to appease the ever enduring woe of being abandoned by a people who say they "are no respecter of persons."

                I will never enter heaven, if in the least likely scenario where it exists, and I’m at peace with that. It’s an unlikely percentile, but I would rather find an eternity of torture than endure another moment claiming myself to a lot who could treat people so poorly. I like to think this is the reason you changed. You won’t admit that Christianity is a never ending evolution of culture for people seeking to believe. Yet, this is entirely what it is.  Fit to a mold. A need to recapture those you’ve cast to the fires fueled this change of pace, and an embrace with the alternative.

                As a person who believes in freedom of choice in regards to theism, I hope for the best. My jaded heart will mend to the person I was a few articles ago. I wish you well on your endeavor for your cause. I have faith that this trend of openness will continue.

But as for me, in the true 2007 style, for this millenial…

It’s too late.

               

Information take from: http://kokomoperspective.com/kp/lifestyles/church-relaunches-with-new-name-vision/article_6309f10a-16c1-11e6-84e0-270883007f21.html

                

A Dead Man's Game

Racked and riddled

Engulfed and infectious

Leeches sputter and descend

Full of my own decay

Rot falls to a vulture’s feed

These maggots brace the light

A dismal diamond design

Hanging on my ends

I’m the corpse of my own shadow

The breath of a hitman at my bedpost

Betting on my mortality

Dice rolling on the beat of a throb

We all eat our own disease

The vice of a stranger

Cradling the weight of happiness

In the clutch of a dream

We are laughing insanity

Breaking bones on the backs of revolutions

We don’t cocoon to take flight

We bury the dead in closets

Our skeletons in sheath

We are cancer

Careening forward

The Joke is on Me...

            Every April fools I try to plan a cunning ruse to rope the gullible in a web of misinformation. I mean, it says “fool” for a reason, right? Parents set their children’s clock forward an hour so they appear late for school. We see false “pregnancy” in rows on social media.  So, of course, everyone would expect that on this day of jolly and jeer. So, I decided to make a head start on fooling everyone and post my bit three days before April 1^st. Jesus got three days before his big reveal, right?

            I roped my boyfriend to tag along in the event posting and let a few close relatives in on it before changing our relationship status. The glaring blue bold print switched on my Facebook feed, “Engaged: Krystin got engaged to Ryan” with the date. I giggled to myself at my own genius. I pegged a few people who would fall for it, maybe 10 or 11 likes and a handful of celebratory comments. However, within the first twenty-four hours I witnessed an outpouring of love and congratulations from all people, eclipsing my very predictions thrice fold.

            The anticipation of the reveal morphed from excitement into anxiety: What if I hurt these people I care for by telling them this was all for a prank? I might boast to have no soul but I’m not a cruel person.  These wonderful people wanted to see me spend years with this man. And the scarier thought dawned: So did I.

            Every time someone commented and I clicked to look and read I scrolled to the top and read, “Engaged” and smiled. Yet, I didn’t smile at the prospect of wedding or a marriage. I smiled at the thought behind the veil, “forever.” When someone is engaged, it symbolizes to them and everyone around them that these two people have decided to spend a lifetime with each other.  I felt that. I felt forever.  There is just no saying forever when you don’t want marriage.

From our initial coffee shop date nothing felt like the normal dating procedure. He and I both had our differing reasons for being skeptical on long term commitment. Yet, there was something different each time he held my hand: it just fit. We just fit.

I kept going back to the engaged post and counting the likes and reactions.  Each time, I envisioned the speech Turk gives Carla at their wedding reception, with a few minor changes: “When I see you. I see the future. I see dogs. I see a large car meant for traveling. I see my singlehood leaving. And you know what, the funny thing is that doesn’t scare me at all”

          

                I never asserted myself for a domestic life. Pots and pans were things to be strung to the wagon of my vagabond heart. Yet, I loved it. I enjoyed the meal prep and the nights in just reading while he played a video game. Because with him there were no boundaries or restrictions. I don’t have to “settle” into a livelihood that doesn’t accompany my own adventurous stride.  I can conquer the world, as it were, with him.

We say “We are in a relationship.” Period. Stop. Then we move on to the next status change. “Engaged.” “Married.” “Kids.” Stop. Stop. Stop.  Everything has a marker to define it by or an ending. Broken up. Single. Divorced. But what do you say when you see no end, but you also don’t want the stopping points? Are you constantly driving in a circle of boyfriend/girlfriend idioms with no climb?

The joke was on me, for through this it allowed me to accept things I was hiding from.

So perhaps we aren’t engaged. We don’t have a milestone to put at this point in our lives. Yet, we also aren’t “just dating” or “just in a relationship.” There isn’t a stopping point. We use periods to signal the end of a statement, but this has no ending. This is a three dot curser signaling to hold on for more to come.

This is Ryan & I…

           

Why I’ve Stopped Being Mad at Christians

           I spent my formidable early teenage years (the 2000s) clung to the end of a pew (or painfully butt numbing fold out metal chair.) My voice rang in with the choir of the praises of the Christian God and his side-kick and my main squeeze: Jesus.  Only listening to the tunes of my people (Christian Rock) and making sure every private inch of my changing body was covered, I appeased the people so much they began to make a pedestal in my honor.  No smoking, drugs, sex, or Satan’s rock and roll (even Myspace for a brief period before the Youth group itself made one the week after they preached on it’s inherit evil). However, residing in the tide of “Jesus is my homeboy” truth was a lot of hypocritical oaths. 

                At the end of my teens I began to delve into the idea of what religion meant to me outside of what was said under a steeple. I read countless books and articles on the subject while listening to the pop punk music strings that became anthems to my angst riddled teenage emo soul (this was 2007, after all).  In the short version of this almost two year long story, my expedition into knowledge and music caused for some very foul treatment on the end of well-meaning and ignorantly concerned brothers and sisters of Christ. I didn’t feel like Jesus would be home-boys with the masses who lied and gossiped about me, so I waved goodbye and said hello to Rock and Roll mixed Atheism.

                To brace myself from the pain of rejection associated with the Christian church, I placed a chip on my shoulder so rigid no kind soul could penetrate. Anything political immediately morphed into a Christian vs. Humanist revolt and I acclimated myself to be a stone in the arc, speaking only on the hatred side of the religious. Christians were mean, foaming at the mouth, condemning six eyed monsters who only used the Bible to hide from their own failures.

                At the mountain top of my twenties, the anger in me subsided and I began to re-examine Christians from a purely cultural and unbiased standpoint. I watched the fumes fester at the Gay Rights Activism, and though there were heretical zealots, there were also Christians on both ends who had kind hearts and open minds. I saw most people who made Jesus their homeboy actually stand in love.being less than charitable.         Though we find penny pinching Churches, there are an equal amount of churches giving to the hungry on the streets. Mega-Churches might have the problem of a society bent on the idea of persuasion by glitz and glamour, yet I see those beyond the steeples. Those with crosses on their necklace aren’t the only ones who need to be fighting homelessness.

                We’ve made a poster child out of Judas and marked all of religious society out as mutineers for humanity. That’s not the case. People give within their own heart, and some may or may not have a Bible attached.

                   Bigots exist within all facets of secular and religious scopes. Yes, Christianity has stole the monopoly on usurping other religions and morphing from cultural denial to cultural acceptance in it's own survival instinct. Yet, the prevalence of it's very existence in a rapidly liberal and constantly revolutionizing society such as America proves it's ability to change, and eventually become synced with the present age.
                    
                   I'm not changing a person's mind on belief, nor are they changing mine. I know I can walk in and out of a church congregation without being set ablaze, and engage with people who may hold an antiquated set of doctrine, but live and see in current times.  I've seen the church of my youth evolve from a place that shunned me, into one that may see a different side of grass, but still gleams with the green of good from the roots to sunshine. I hope they continue to grow. I hope I do, too.

  

                The world is crazy. People are crazy. Every side of humanity has it’s own egotistical viewpoint. However, that’s how we preserve ourselves in this spinning tide of the good, bad, and ugly. I’ve seen the worst in humanity, but there’s a beauty in people who love; no matter from what religious standpoint. I can’t be mad at humans, and I can’t be mad at those humans who are Christians either.

The Heart of a Gamer: An Outsider's Perspective

My yellow blanket bordered my body like a cape with a hood, while I criss-cross-apple-sauced my legs and hunkered over to watch my sister swing Aladdin to catch the digitalized apple on the screen.  As a kid in the nineties, Super Nintendo was a huge marker in childhood activities.  Though, even then, I merely watched my sister and parents play, keeping close so I could shout out all the memorized codes I recalled so they didn’t have to flip through their booklet. 

                I knew what video games were the way I understood what kosher meat meant; it was a name, but it didn’t really pertain to me. My stories were made for the stage of dolls I assembled on the floor while my sister beat Mario in under an hour. She conquered through a multitude of two dimensional games for the Super-Nintendo, and played a few on the N-64, but as her interest waned in the gaming form, so did my connection to it. I spent most of the new millennium oblivious to almost any and all forms of video-art (except for the Sims, I love those pants-peeing little bastards). Until I met the gamer who would turn out to be my lover and heart.

                When we met, he said he was a gamer working for a gaming charity. I immediately thought of the only games I knew from the past fifteen years of sprinkled headlines that seeped through the media and acquaintances. Halo was revered by kids from high school. Call of Duty, as one of the reasons a close couple friends of mine almost hit splits-vill. And lastly, Grand Theft Auto from being called a gateway to the center of the hell candy bar in my extremely Christian teenage years. I had no idea what surface I had just scratched.

                The first time I went to his house he showed me what video games really are in this new century. I sat against the black of the desk chair and began to watch him play as nostalgia of childhood danced in my head. However, this wasn’t the paper and tiny bit world of Aladdin. The man on the screen breathed, walked, and talked like an actor in an action movie. He flew from roof-top to roof-top to save the working children and win over the area. I could not believe what I saw in a game. Everything worked and entertained like Pixar’s more talented cousin. I had the preconceived notion that games were just a recreation like playing Clue or Monopoly. I was wrong and very wrong.

                 This is more than just a nighttime activity, or a visual entertainment. This is what pumps into the thumping ventricle that feeds life into their being. This is the heart of a gamer; their very soul. Each game plays a differentiated depth of story, enveloping a person into the world much like a well-written book does to a reader. However, alongside the engaging story, a player interacts with the oncoming obstacles, using a combination of syncing, speed, and strategy to defeat, collect, and ultimately win the game.

                Society places a stigma on gamers (and admittedly I did too) that the person is a lazy, inanimate, and thoughtless creature who prowls the graphic world instead of actively seeking human socialization. Media boasts articles that link video games to poor performance, ADHD, violence, and a gambit of other demonizing speculations to spin games and gamers into a negative connotation.  Though, with proper investigation, the witch hunt has ceased save for the few outbursts, The stereotype stuck: Video games and gamers are bad for society.

Before my own gamer, I’d hear the horrors relayed by my gal pals of what it was like to be in a relationship with a person who played.  She would always go to the whining tune of, “He loves video games more than me!” Who was I to say otherwise at that point? Maybe he did. Maybe she was an over-dramatic attention seeking insecure female who spent twelve hours shopping. Yet, I could not judge.

However, my own jury is in. (I will save the mush for another article) I can clearly say that the idea of a man hunched over with a liter of soda and cheese-puff dusted hands to be a myth. Any and all cheese-snacking is mere coincidence. People get invested in things they love, why can’t gamers?

As for the lazy and thoughtless aspect, that is another lie. The groups of gamers I have encountered through watching the Streams, or live gameplay that you can view, have been hard working individuals who raise money for charity, like Gamergiving. All of the individuals have jobs or attend school outside of running the charity.  They take time off of their own to use Stream as an entertaining platform to reach others to fund. This group of talented and often comedic players seeks to bring a community together for the benefit of those less fortunate or in need of special assistance.

If the cliché is you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, then you cannot judge a gamer by them playing a game. The heart of a gamer is not a tampered menace; it is just in a higher resolution than most. My love of stuffed crust oozing cheese pizza never gave back to humanity, but the love of a gamer can. And if you want to learn more, I’ll post the link at the bottom:

GamerGiving

www.gamergiving.org