Ramblings of a Starbeam

 Do you find this image offensive? Maybe it's a little funny, sent to the right person. Context is important!  It isn't appropriate to send to me when I have no intention of sending you boob pictures and we do not have a relationship like that. In fact, it is very triggering for me. I woke up to this message from a man I used to work with. We don't hang out. We don't really talk. I am not going to say his name or anything like that. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he thought it was funny or maybe he thought I would think it is funny. He was probably drinking and thought, who might enjoy this meme. I am going to explain why YOU SHOULDN'T SEND ME THIS SHIT IF WE DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP. If we have that kind of relationship, please send me this lol. If you struggle to understand if we have that kind of relationship, then we definitely don't have that kind of relationship.  I was sexually assaulted twice this summer. If you want

First off, I just want to say thank you to so many people for checking on me. It makes me feel loved and not alone.  Second, I am doing better today. I am getting pretty good at bouncing back from the ongoing shit. I have had to do a lot of healing and releasing lately, which has been aggressive yet good. One of my techniques is to change the narrative. And thus, I write.  My first belief was that again I allowed someone close enough to hurt me. NEWSFLASH - People are going to hurt me, you, everyone, the world, etc. Life is pain. Suffering however is optional. Buddha talks about acceptance as a way to release suffering. Acceptance is tricky. It doesn't mean accepting and then staying in shitty situations. It means accepting shitty situations are going to happen and then acting accordingly. It means having your eyes open to reality, instead of what you want it to be.  This situation triggered some untrue beliefs. My initial response was to blame myself. I should have been smarter. I

 Damn, two in one summer. But this time it wasn't finished. This time I stopped it. Dating is dangerous.  Again, someone I thought I could trust. Someone I had dated. I told him that I would see him when he was around, but that I wouldn't date him because he is always traveling for work. I didn't want to have sex with him. I stopped him. I spoke up for myself.  He bought me dinner and paid for my drinks. Kept buying me patron shots. You know I can be a bit bouje. He wanted to get me drunk. I wanted to make sure he got home safe. He couldn't remember where his hotel was. Or he wouldn't tell me anyways. I was going to make sure that he got home to his hotel and then Lyft home. I let him come home with me. He has spent the night before so it should have been fine. It was a dumb move. I thought it would be innocent. I laid on the couch watching tv, hoping to fall asleep and not deal with him. He said, let's go to bed. I said fine. I went to bed. I pretended to be as

Covid has been leading to some rapid healing. The pains inside of me have been acting out because I am constantly under stress. It has been a time of massive healing. It is a period of intentional growth so I do not fall into these massive holes inside of me.  The latest script that has been called to attention is the way that I have allowed myself to be treated by people that supposedly cared about me. I have a lot of trauma of not feeling safe or secure. It has created these scripts inside of me that has attracted abusers. Being abused is the role that I have played. I have been a doormat to be "loved" and to be "accepted." What a pretty little rug to be admired and stomped on. I have allowed myself to be in this situation. I stayed and continued this pattern.  And I am not fucking doing it anymore. It took feeling like I gave the keys to the fox for the hen house to watch him destroy it. He is not a good person. He is not the person that he pretends to be. I allo

  I love the idea of manifesting money. I follow all these gurus who say just manifest money and get your vibe in alignment. As soon as your in alignment, BOOM, you’ll have everything you want. That’s a super nice ideal, but what about the thousands of migrants who die every year trying to get to the United States? Or the single mother busting ass to make a dime to support her family. Is she not vibing right, not working hard enough? I love the spiritual community. I follow and engage with it. However, there are some deep inequities that are not addressed. If you are able to manifest to have your needs met, you are PRIVILEGED. There are thousands starving throughout the world. They are so focused on food. There are addicts praying to find a way to get clean, as they slip into another high. It’s great to get your vibration right to manifest money and shit. But that’s a fucking privilege MILLIONS aren’t entitled to. Check your privilege. There are forces at play that are not going to sat

 Here I go again, talking about sexual consent. That's because it is fucking important.  Rape is such a limiting word. It doesn't speak to all of the differing levels of consent. It doesn't address when a girl doesn't say no; she just feels like she doesn't have a choice. She feels like she made a commitment that she now has to fulfill, so she sacrifices her body and her mind to fulfill her relationship duty. The consequences include suicidal ideation and blackout drunkness because she has given up her humanity for just a moment, to please another person she feels she is obligated to please, even though the timing and the location were not desired.  The boy doesn't get it. He doesn't fully understand consent either. He wasn't taught that you should make sure that a girl is actually into it, not just fulfilling an earlier commitment. He would be blindsided by the accusation that somehow this was sexual assault. He experienced the consequences though. He h

I am sad a lot. I feel like society tells me to just cover my sadness and not talk about it. But I am sad a lot. I cry. I’m very sensitive. There are lots of horrific things going on in the world and in life. I practice gratitude and I am happy for my life. But I am very regularly sad. I feel kinda embarrassed to admit it. I may have depression. It does run in my family. I have never been diagnosed with it but I match the criteria. I have had a doctor or two try to put me on antidepressants. I don’t know if they would be helpful but I am afraid of them. I have tried to cope in unhealthy ways to manage the feelings. Lately I have just been allowing myself to be sad. It’s hard. No one teaches you how to sit with this shit. Everyone teaches you to run away or cover it up. It doesn’t work. I have been running from it for too long. I am allowing myself to be with it more, and minimally cope enough that I don’t pretend like it isn’t there. I am sad. I am happy also. But I am sad also. And I

This is to my white folks. Reverse racism? Is it a thing? This is a term that people fight over. So I am not going to touch on this for a moment. Instead, I am going to start with the term prejudice. Is everyone prejudice? Yes. We evolved to quickly identify members of our ingroup and outgroup. Our tribe would protect us, where others would be a threat. Tribalism is deeply ingrained in our biology to help us survive. We are created to be prejudice to keep ourselves safe. All groups have stereotypes. White people's stereotype is that they are entitled and owed the world. We believe that everyone should cater to us. We are a people of conquering and we have conquered the world, other people, and our environment. Our culture is the dominant culture throughout the world. That is why there isn't a label of "white culture." If you have friends of other races, you will hear jokes such as "white people" and "white culture." White people don't r

I am 30 days sober! That's pretty amazing with everything going on. I decided to take a break from drinking because my mental health was struggling and I was overusing it to cope with everything including the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and each new worry we hear about. I have discovered a lot about myself. I have a lot of feelings that I don't like to deal with. I am a very sensitive person. I feel the emotions of others around me. I have this amazing capacity to be extremely joyful with people. It also allows me to feel extremely sad and worried about those who are suffering in this world. There is a lot of suffering in this world. It makes me want to hide from my feelings. Hiding wasn't going to help me. So alcohol wasn't contributing to a healthy life. It is actually a depressant. Your gut produces 90% of the serotonin that your brain uses.* When you are drinking, it messes up your gut. Ever have an alcohol poop? Yeah me neither because girls

Last night, a stranger sent me these messages. I am not in an exclusive relationship, but that is generally an easy deterrent when dealing with men. I do not understand why men think it is okay to treat women this way. It makes me feel unsafe. This is an unsafe feeling that I have had for a long time. There are things that I don't remember all of the details. But I am going to tell you what I do remember. I don't like to attract unwanted attention. It is one of the reasons that I am comfortable carrying a little extra weight. It is the reason I don't do myself up a lot. It is one reason that I enjoy kickboxing. I purposefully post a lot of other pictures on social media that aren't of me done up, because I don't want to be seen in a sexual object way. It is a reason I don't call too much attention to myself. I have had too many experiences where I have been treated like an object. In high school, I used to always do my makeup. There was a boy w

This is very anxiety producing to say the least. I am struggling to not be consumed by my anxiety. I am amping up my self care to counteract the anxiety. This morning, I went for a run to work out some of my anxiety. I am grateful that I live near the Jordan River, which enhanced my run. One of my biggest concerns has been my household. I want to make sure we are okay throughout this pandemic. My roomies are my family. If you have met them, you know how important they are to me. They have all been stressed out and worried. I am a little more prepared. I had an experience with a recession. I worked at DiscoverCard in collections from 2008 to 2012. I was able to see the impacts of this economic downturn. It taught me to save, save, save. I have been lucky enough to save money. I am lucky enough to have a savings account and have a job that I can pay my mortgage. I can take care of my little group of people. <3 Additionally, another concern has been the amount of information that i

I feel like that I have nothing valuable or different to say. I just say what other people say. I don't write because I am afraid it won't be any good. I am afraid it will be just average and average isn't good enough. I am an imposter. So I never take the risk to learn how to write. Writing is a skill. It requires practice and risk. If I would write only for myself, then I can judge my own work. There is this online environment where everything you do has to be something unique and beautiful. I don't know that I can really say something that hasn't been said. Maybe I can say something in a different way that might appeal to an audience. But then I ask myself, what is the purpose of me writing? Do I write for others, or do I write for myself? If I am honest with myself, I write because I have a voice that wants to be heard. If writing is about expressing myself, then I don't need an audience. If it is in the act of being heard, then it is depende

Everything going on has me thinking. There is the COVID-19 virus that has turned into a pandemic. Swarms of locust have infected Africa and the Middle East. And Utah decided to rumble. It is my belief that what we are seeing is a call to transformation. Humans have been poor stewards over the Earth. We have factory farmed sensitive creatures, raped the oceans of their wildlife, chopped down so many forests, murdered so many species of animals. The planet is crying. Some people have been acting like animals, reacting off their panic, and not stopping to contemplate their actions. The "us versus them" mindset has been magnified, where it is important that my family has all of the toilet paper, groceries, gas, etc. It's too bad if your family has none. Should have beat me to it. There is severe competition. Or, even those who have taken advantage of others' misfortune and proceeded to price gauge to benefit from others suffering. On the other hand, you have seen m

Anger has this bad rap as a bad emotion. Newsflash - Emotions are not bad - They are signals to us about what we need.  What can be negative is the way that we respond to anger. So many people are used to anger being used as a weapon. Anger can be a trigger for some, to past unresolved trauma, which is stuck inside the body and leads to a negative reaction. These triggers are ours to heal. Anger is not a bad thing; it is a tool. Anger can be productive. It can help us take action when we need to make a change. It can be used to create movement, where we have been stagnant. It is a call to action to get our shit together. When you are angry, allow yourself to feel your anger. You won't feel this way forever. You won't be trapped by the feeling. Sometimes emotions are overwhelming and it feels like forever. But emotions are waves, they ebb and they flow. There are so many things to be angry about. There is injustice in abundance throughout the world. Hurt peop