y’know. A lot has changed since last year. I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about it recently but it’s been on my mind. I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress with being happier with myself in some ways, in other ways I feel like I’ve regressed even further which doesn’t really make much sense but here we are. I’ve stopped wondering about what would happen if I died, how I assumed no one would miss me and they’d all just easily move on. I know around this time last year I stopped berating myself for being “ugly” and “awkward looking” I mean I guess I still think that sometimes but bad days are just bad days. I’ve also gotten a lot less shy over the past couple years, which is an accomplishment to me because I’ve been so shy my entire life. I am, however, still pretty incapable of normal social interactions. Probably due to the fact I hate eye contact and small talk, both of which seem to be necessary to ~broaden your horizons~ bleh. I’m also not as judgmental as I used to be. And even then I wasn’t like, overtly judgmental I usually kept it to myself. I do still suck at not dwelling on the past, and getting annoyed at little things that I should really just overlook. I think too much about people who really don’t actually matter to me anymore and don’t care about me either. I think too much in general though.

I’m getting there I guess. Wherever “there” is.

     Two weekends ago I got the opportunity to participate in a 5K called Color Me Rad, that took place throughout a course set up in Kings Dominion. The Color Me Rad 5K raises money for the Special Olympics, so I say it's well worth getting pelted with colored corn starch and sprayed with cold, colored water.
       Although I was expecting much more when I got to the race, it was still a lot of fun. There were three checkpoints of "color bombing" and the last one was the finish line where you were bombed the most with color. After the races they have "color throws" where everyone gathers in front of the stage and they throw little bags of colored corn starch and at the count of three you open them up and throw the powder up in the air. It's almost impossible to breathe afterwards but you come out looking cool, plastered in color.

     With Halloween around the corner, I stumbled upon this awesome video of a Poetry Slam done by female youths in Washington DC. This video highlights exactly the problems in society when women are faced with purchasing costumes when one wants to participate in Halloween festivities. This year I made my own costume, and I have in the past few years because the costumes targeted at my general age group are skimpy and that's basically ALL you can ever find. Not to mention that those cheaply made, small garments of polyester satin and whatever else, are ridiculously over-priced and it's kind of really an injustice.
       The point is not to shame girls who are comfortable enough to dress in "slutty" Halloween costumes because it's counter-productive and harmful and slut shaming is stupid. It is, however, that women shouldn't only have overly sexualized costumes available to them if they aren't creative or willing enough to make something of their own that isn't so... HEY LOOK AT MY TITTIES, to put it bluntly. If you want to dress up as Hermione Granger with a shirt unbuttoned to your bra and a skirt that just covers your butt cheeks because it makes you feel confident and it's your Halloween costume, GREAT. It's your choice! But it shouldn't be the only choice for every other girl who wanted to dress up as Hermione Granger.

       Oh wow, oops I did it already, I forgot about this weekly blog post thing... better late than never, right? Well on this weeks episode of what Kaitlyn decides to talk about from English class: The Yellow Wallpaper. I've picked this particular story because it was the most interesting one because it kind of was so weird it didn't make sense but still addressed things that interest the raging feminist inside me. Let's pretend that made some sense.

My theory is that the woman who is the narrator isn't really crazy, or really wasn't enough to get shut up in a house for three months. I think her husband was so ashamed of having such a wife with a.... brain?! Heaven forbid a female of the time period be capable of thought and creativity. After being shut up for a while due to her supposed "nervous depression" or whatever it's called, she probably did go a little insane, as would any other human being.