The Lingering Echoes Of What Was (And What I Could Hear)

Posted on January 11, 2016 by DMW

It’s been two years and six months since I last heard music.

My best friend, Crystal, was visiting me in Colorado. She was helping me proof pages for my husband’s first wedding anniversary gift (a big ass book all about him and why I love him) and we decided to listen to some music while we worked. I fetched our iHome and brought it downstairs. I plugged it in, made sure my iPod was good to go and selected some Destiny’s Child to listen to. And it came on, but I was working across the room, Crystal was closer. And I couldn’t hear it. I thought maybe the iPod had become dislodged so I went up to it and saw it was playing.

“Can you hear any music?” I asked Crystal.

“Mmhmm,” she replied without looking up.

She was helping me get the graphics of a page just right and was completely focused. But I knew that she could hear it because she told me what was playing, which was the same song my iPod claimed was playing. I remember frowning, and wondering why I couldn’t hear it. The iHome was at its regular volume, which was already on the loud side. Still I turned it up, until I could hear it. The volume read 49 instead of its usual 26. Crystal grimaced from the sound, which was probably an onslaught on any normal hearing person’s ears. But to me, it was barely a muffle. And I while I could hear the bass and the basic rhythm and I could hear the voices of Destiny’s Child singing, I couldn’t make out what the voices were saying. It was all just a bunch of noise.

I turned it back down to a more comfortable level for Crystal and just figured I was having an off hearing day. It was all a fluke. And I’d figure it out later. I never listened to music again after that day. Not for the lack of trying, I tried everything on every device, even having the sound go directly into my hearing aids and shutting off the room on this device, which means there could be an explosion right next to me and I would not hear it – think about the ultimate earplugs – and still the best I could do was hearing a voice (maybe) above the bass, but having no idea what that voice was saying or even how it sounded, as much as I simply knew it was there.

Continue reading →

Posted in Entertainment, Happy, Health, Journal, Life, Medical, music, Personal, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Will The Real Caitlyn Jenner Please Shut Up

Posted on January 9, 2016 by DMW

I’m not sure if I’m going to make a lot of people hate me, or gain some new fans, but when Caitlyn Jenner comes up you always get one or the other, or several of both. I for one am so over Caitlyn Jenner in so many ways, but not in the way I think a lot of people are used to (hearing about).

When Bruce (referring to who she was prior) announced that he was transgender and beginning to make the transition, I didn’t blink. I think a lot of people thought this was just another Kardashian ploy for attention, but I didn’t. I believed him. I took my cues from him and changed my pronouns when he did. When Bruce became Caitlyn, he became she and it didn’t faze me one bit. I didn’t have problems accepting her as a part of our community, and I never tripped over my pronouns. She was welcome at our table and I felt happy for her – that she could finally feel comfortable in her own skin, and proud of her because I’m sure that being a famous male athlete posed unique challenges when it came to announcing who she really was and beginning the journey of having her outside match her inside. I’m not trans, but I’m gay, and I have a lot of trans friends. I can’t understand what she is going through personally, but I can empathize and accept her. And I do.

I accept Caitlyn Jenner as a woman. I accept Caitlyn Jenner as a part of the LGBTQ community. But my acceptance pretty much stops there. I am tired of Caitlyn speaking for women, when she has been one for such a small amount of time (while she has always been Caitlyn on the inside, she has not been living as a woman for that long and has enjoyed male privilege until she came out) and her speaking for trans people and the LGBT community as a whole… shut the fuck up already!

Caitlyn 4

I’m not alone in my frustrations over statements she has made the past few months, or views she has shared. After being awarded as one of Glamour magazine’s “Women of the Year” she talked about how the hardest part of being a woman is deciding what to wear… and she wasn’t joking! I am not a woman, so I can’t speak for women, nor would I try, but I am a feminist, and I am bigendered (I embrace both masculine and feminine aspects of my person, and consider myself both) so I don’t exactly enjoy male privilege either. I was a Women’s Studies major (one of three majors, the first guy to ever major in that, so they later changed it to “Women and Gender Studies”) and I am a person who can try to understand and empathize. What about all of the double standards women face? What about the pay gap? What about body image and objectification and rape? I mean she has daughters for Christ sakes. When her daughters go out at night, which is scarier: that they may be assaulted or that their fashions might be last season? It is absolutely absurd.

Continue reading →

Posted in culture, Current Events, Equality, LGBT, lifestyle, media, Opinion, People, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Brand New Year

Posted on January 4, 2016 by DMW

Another year is upon us and I am genuinely excited for it. 2015 was a good enough year – actually it was the best out of the last three years. I grew. Roy (my husband) grew. Good things happened, we both reconnected with old friends, did some traveling, and nothing horrible happened. No death or crazy crisis that left us scrambling – I wouldn’t say no to another year like it.

In the past I have set several goals for myself that I track in Excel. I think one of the driving forces I am always feeling is “be better, do better” and I am always in competition with myself to do just that. Every year I would give myself more goals, and make them more challenging, because the previous year I either met my goals or felt I needed a bigger push. I would separate them into three categories and each category had ten goals. The categories were: Health, Personal, and Career. I did this because besides having these individual goals, I wanted to also promote balance in my life. I didn’t want to become a workaholic who worked 80+ hour weeks and couldn’t live without a laptop nearby (2011-2012) at the expense of my health or personal life. I didn’t want to focus so much on my health that I didn’t have a personal life or work slacked off (2010, but in all fairness I was still on chemo for most of it, but seriously, I drove myself crazy having it be all about the medical) and while one’s personal life is important (my goals including house and relationship goals on top of what I wanted to work on) it shouldn’t be the only thing, as it became in 2014 after a disastrous January kind of made our world implode (just a little).

Continue reading →

Posted in Events, Family, Health, home, Inspiration, Journal, Life, Medical, Personal, Relationships, Thoughts, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Year In Review

Posted on December 31, 2015 by DMW

I love New Year’s Eve. I’m not sure why, but I just want to party and have good food and be among friends and throw around a lot of confetti (which both makes a mess and is not animal-friendly). I think it’s to celebrate the closure of one more chapter in my life, before moving onto another. If the year has been great, I am grateful and I look to how the next year can be even better. I remember all of the great experiences and how I can replicate them and have new even greater experiences. If the year has been particularly shitty, then I look at the reasons why, and if they were in my control. If they were, I reflect on the lessons I need to learn so I can avoid any such repetitive badness. And if they were outside my control (medical anything, death, etc.) then I take stock at what is around me and what I have. I can’t do anything to prevent such things from happening again, so I just look at how I handled those things, because that I can control. Did I handle it the way I wanted to? Is there anything I would have done differently? I think about this, take note of what I need to, and then move on, hoping the next year will be better.

2015 was a mostly okay year; okay it was actually a pretty good year. There weren’t any major crises to attend to. And there were a lot of nice things and good things and even a few great things.

Some of the nice things included getting a new oven that we have needed since early 2013 (our old oven would cause fires or have multiple power failures, so it really was a need more than a want) and Roy (my husband) paid off pretty much all of his stuff (I am all paid off except for student loans, which after two degrees will be the death of me).

Continue reading →

Posted in Holidays, home, Life, Personal, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Very Merry Christmas This Year

Posted on December 28, 2015 by DMW

Another Christmas came and went and while it was wonderful, I feel like I need to sleep it off. It’s funny – I never really thought about how people need to recover from a good holiday, probably because the holidays are a harder-than-usual time for me. And then there is the holiday stress that seems unavoidable whether it revolves around hosting family or some unexpected drama, the holidays is a time when everything is heightened. I mean everything.

But this year was lacking in the drama department (that is not a complaint!) and while some of the regular stress was there such as kitchen nonsense or lack of sleep went down (seriously, I’m not sure the holiday season can exist without this) everything was great. But I am so flipping tired and run down and headachy I want to lock myself in a dark room and pass out, but since my body isn’t kind enough to let me, I am tempted to simply knock myself out. *I should also note that part of the “blah” this year was adjusting to new powerful hearing aids while in crowded conditions with kids (because kids are loud, again that is an expectation) which meant plenty of migraine-level headaches. Next time, I hope to not be adjusting to anything new and check those headaches at the door. I think that coupled with the sleep made me into a zombie those last few days.

My husband’s (Roy) family came out to visit us this year, so we hosted Christmas Eve while his brother hosted Christmas Day. I think it was the best Christmas I can remember in a long time. I had a great time with his family in 2011, but I was still getting to know them then. So that on top of wedding planning (got engaged less than a week before) and recovering from brain surgery (less than two weeks before) and the newness of it all – while it was wonderful, it also felt a little awkward (for me, as I internalize everything). In 2012 and 2014, we went to Florida and while we enjoyed ourselves both times, it’s not the same as having the holidays in your own home. I will not speak of 2013 (misunderstandings and hurt feelings all round it seemed, and I kind of wanted to lock myself in a bubble).

Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, Family, Holidays, home, Life, Love, Personal, Relationships, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment