Different Names for the Same Thing

Words are a funny thing period.

I went out with one of my best guy friends from college. He and his girlfriend and I went out including drinks, dinner and some dancing (quite the adventure). As I'm getting ready to leave he pulled me aside to get my thoughts on her and I poised the same question back to him. He immediately started  squirming and I could tell he wanted to say something.

He wiggled his way around telling me what he wanted about her using words to work around what he really wanted to say. It really made me think. As a lover of words, words are a funny thing. They have a power we don't always realize because once words leave our mouths, they become a real thing (it's true using it?). The right words from the right people can make your day, just as the wrong words from the right people can break your day.

Words can make us feel comfortable and they can either protect us (thus my sarcastic everyday dialogue) or they can make us feel vulnerable. One of the ways they make us feel comfortable is by allowing us to put different names to the same thing (sometimes in phrases and explanations). This way if we don't get the response we're looking for it's much easier to walk our way or explain our way out of it so we don't always have to really put ourselves out there.

This is our security blanket, because if we said what we really meant, we can't take the words back. They're out in the atmosphere and we have no control of other people's feelings or reactions to them. I also came to the conclusion that in some matters I do this as well. I stick a toe in to test the waters( work with the word play) , instead of just doing a cannonball ( saying exactly the things I want).  ( An interesting comparison for someone who can't swim, the irony is not lost on me).

Now for someone like me who says exactly what they're thinking 98% of the time this may be hard to believe but there's still that 2% where I safeguard myself as well.

I feel like I also need to take more of my own advice ....  As he was working his way around his words I looked him in the eye and said " today junior, you know what you want to say. What's the worst that could happen."

And it's true. If we're working our way around something we want to say, what good does that do us? We still want to say it, it just tiptoes around the topic.

Why not jump and say what you want. Call a spade a spade. As I told my friend last night (and as I
need to remember) ...


What is the worst that could happen?  If we don't say what we want how will we ever get it?

That's Not Fair...Life's Not Fair

When I was younger I used to respond to every "you can't do that" or "no" with "THAT'S NOT FAIR"

Unfailingly (my own terminology) my Mom responded with "Life's not fair honey." To preface this my mom was "the mom." The woman who would stay up until midnight with me because I had no ability to sew my home ec project and basically the reason I am today, so this response was about as blunt and (what I thought at the time) as rude of comment that ever left her lips. Until my junior year in highschool these responses somewhat made sense, why I couldn't go on a date with a guy two years my elder, or why my curfew was midnight not one o'clock like everyone else's.

Then she got sick. And suddenly, although she had told me a million times that life wasn't fair, it was what she wasn't telling me: Life's not only not fair, but it doesn't owe us anything and at times it doesn't make sense.

I remember that day like it was yesterday (cliche I know). My stepdad and mom sat me down and explained to me that my mom had cervical cancer and a large tumor and they were going to do everything to beat it. It all didn't seem real, like I had jumped into a Lifetime movie or teen melodrama.

And it continued to seem like a sick joke until the day my mom came home, still beautiful as ever, with a her clean shaven head and that symbol made everything sickeningly, punch to the stomach real. All I remember is crying and we looked at each other and said the same thing "Life's NOT fair"

My Mom and I