People always describe me as bitter and I am not ashamed of that. Bitterness is my motivation. When a person gets confronted by a difficult situation, they become dejected for a time; when they are constantly in this situation, they can become many things: depressed, angry, or shielded amongst others; and finally when one is consistently rejected when they try to fix this situation, then they become bitter. I know what bitterness is because I constantly am in this state. There are so many things in society that are harsh and I can’t ignore them, yet I can’t fix them.

This may sound like I hate it, but I like it. Being bitter makes me realize that society needs to be fixed, even though I can’t do it by myself. On the other hand, I don’t want someone to become who I have become. These two factors cause bitterness to be my motivation. I know that I must do something in order to improve how fucked up society can be. I work, even though I can’t improve my own situation, I work because I want to improve the situations of those that come after me. We currently walk on uneven ground and it is at our behest to look below us to see the path that the past has started for us. They worked hard for us to start this and we must work just as hard in order to improve it. We must stamp it out and flatten so that the ones after us don’t have to trip as hard or as often as we do. I’m not talking about one specific community here. All of us downtrodden and underprivileged should be doing this work. It can be hard and trying, but I don’t want to lead someone down a path that I refused to improve and if I must, I want to carry as many as possible as I can while I walk.

I see my friends in similar situations and I see their optimism and brightness. I not want them to fall and walk this path. I may be happy being bitter and making these improvements, but I know how much nicer it is to be oblivious of the harshness. I want them to be able to live their lives fully and I’m not sure I ever can with this rage that I have. I want to be bitter so that I can see what parts need to be levelled, but I don’t want other to have to experiences the lumps and the painful trips they cause. I have been lucky and my trips have been mostly soft, but even those have lasting effects. I do not want others to go through that, or, even worse, fall harder than I have. I want my friends to not have to walk on this exhausting path and I don’t want the people behind me to walk it either; I want to fix it as much as I can while I’m here.

For those who have already fallen to the path, please help lift up those we can protect and even out the ground for those that come after us. We can’t all do it right now, but at least make it easier and better. We can’t refuse this call to duty, lest we fail those that count on us the most. You can remain bitter and wear that as a badge of pride. Work with me and fix what we see needs to be fixed while we are here.

Language evolved as a tool. Like any tool, be it a hammer, a fork, or a pair of hands, language was a set of pieces that we assembled to serve us. Grunts and hand gestures became patterns and rhythms. These patterns became words and phrases like screws and bolts and washers that held together end products that we wished to give or portray to someone. The purpose of a tool is to make jobs and challenges we are often obligated to complete easier or simply possible to complete. However, it has become apparent in recent years that we have allowed our tools to run away from us, to grow lives of their own. Our words grow personalities or reputations and sometimes these are ugly personalities or reputations paired with sneering faces. We turn away from these words when we realize we’ve made monsters. We let our tools control us and we cringe at the sight of them. What I’m talking about are words that raise goosebumps and receive ample squabbling in academic arenas: words like homeless, gay, feminist, addict, and limitless others. What I’m suggesting is that we reign back in these tools, that we don’t turn away and abandon our creations. I propose that we don’t use discursive language and euphemize truth.

In the name of being politically correct, we are often led away (or turn away ourselves) from the truth that we invented our words to represent. We cringe at words that reveal a downfall in our society. We ignore “homeless” and instead replace it with “experiencing homelessness,” we replace “poor” with “experiencing economic difficulty,” we replace “addict” with “struggling with substance abuse.” What we achieve while striving for empathy and avoiding offense is telling a big, fat lie. When we steer from these words, we euphemize, we shallow, we disenfranchise the adversity people face. We are telling a lie when we ignore what someone without a home, without dinner, without a job is truly going through. We use discursive language to point at something without acknowledging the full implications of its context. Do we know why it stings to call a loved one an “addict” or our previous neighbor “homeless?” My argument is that because we know that when we watch loved ones–or simply other human beings–suffer, we feel pain too, we suffer with them and turn away from our language. We turn away from our coping tool. We turn away from the means by which we communicate the truth and the breadth of our lives.

So what is the solution? Perhaps there isn’t a plausible solution, but what I propose is that instead of talking around, talking in circles and code and euphemisms about the shadows lurking behind our happy fronts, we cast out the shadows. Why change the tool when the tool was meant to cut down the problem? Let us eliminate the reason we have to use these harsh words. Let’s work on eliminating homelessness, supporting those with an addiction, understanding and hearing out our feminist friends. Let’s get rid of the reason we have to use these pin-prick words. Let us use the tool to kill the predator.

The purpose of a tool is to make jobs and challenges we are often obligated to complete easier or simply possible to complete. With this in mind, I vow to use language as a tool to serve me in the job I am obligated to complete as a human being: love and care for other human beings. I vow to use my language for what it was invented for, to explain the circumstances that surround me–be them good or bad–and recognize the volume of darkness that lives with us. I vow to use my words to spread awareness, kindness, and support for those that have fallen victim to the words we turn away from.

I refuse, I refuse, to let my tools turn to demons and rule over me. I vow to reclaim my words, take responsibility for them and take responsibility for the world I live in.

If anyone ever, at any point, for any reason…ever, no matter who, or what, or why, for whatever reason whatsoever, needs proof that I am in fact a giant buffoon, I now have the perfect little tidbit for them. I’ve really tipped the scale with this one. Really outdone myself. I can’t even believe it myself, so I can’t fault you if you think I’m making this up, but I assure you that I am not.

I got lost in a parking structure. Now wait, I know what you’re thinking. Stop being dramatic, that’s not even a big deal, people do that all the time. But I’m not talking a wrong turn or getting off on the wrong level while for looking for my car. I’m talking 30 minutes of wandering (give or take 5 minutes, I think time moves differently in parking garages, I really do) trying to find a single door that would take me out of that dark and grime filled concrete box.

It started off innocently enough. I was on the third floor trying to find an exit. I even remembered that I had entered the parking structure from a higher floor and demonstrated enough critical thinking skills to use that information and head back up to where I started. Now listen, I don’t know if the door that I came in from just disappeared or what, but I swear I could not find an exit on that floor. Not one. Just a single staircase (which did not have an external door, I checked) and an elevator that led farther down into what was quickly becoming a pit of despair.

At this point, you may be asking yourself why I didn’t just look at a map of the garage, because surely they would have the exit marked on one of those nice little maps with the ‘you are here’ stickers. This parking structure was so above that. Like one of those people that purposely holds back nuggets of personal information to give an air of mystery and allure, this garage left a little bit to the imagination. As if the designers of the parking structure wanted to leave a few nice Easter eggs behind for an interesting user experience. Either that or they played one too many ‘Escape the Room’ games in their free time. (As it is, I did not find a random keypad or a paper clip or a torn up piece of paper with a coded message, so I think they fell short.)

This was the point when the situation started going to my head, if you can imagine. I somehow forgot that this was an underground garage, and thought it would be a good idea to go to level 1, because that’s where the exit always is. I would feel embarrassed by this, but at this point I’m pretty much maxed out. I realized the faulty logic before I made it all the way to the bottom floor, but at that point I was committed. This was also the point at which I decided to text my roommate and tell her that I am an idiot (she loves to hear about the stupid things I do, and if you can’t tell, this wasn’t an isolated incident), and when I realized that I had no service, so I couldn’t send out an SOS if I tried.

Parking structures always have emergency telephones, but if you think I was going to swallow my pride and call someone to come get me out, you’d be wrong. If you think I was going to call a parking attendant and ask them to please kindly guide me to the outside world, you’d be dead wrong. I saw approximately two other people through my entire quest for sunlight, but if you think I was going to go up to them and ask them what floor the exit was on…I’m pretty sure you get the gist by now.

I’m not sure if there is a happy ending to this story, because we’ve both learned a few interesting things about myself while on this journey, but I can tell you that we can satisfice to know I did make my way out. I went back up to the third floor and walked to the other side of the garage, where I found a door to a random building (a completely separate, nonrelated building. Go figure.) Luckily that building was pretty straightforward. I found a staircase, went up one floor, and found myself facing exit doors and the light of day. Here Comes the Sun played softly in the background as I walked out into the fresh air. This part may or may not have happened, but you can’t prove it didn’t. For all you know, I may never have made it out of that cold concrete death trap. I could just be a ghost typing this up, but that’s another story for another day.

I have to give credit where credit is due, so here and here are tv show quotes that I referenced, because both of these guys are funnier than me.

My generation has watched our favorite stars from Brittany Spears to Amanda Bynes to Lindsay Lohan, the ladies we grew up watching and admiring, completely self-destruct. Television stations and magazines, of course, eat it right up and, in a way, so do we by devouring each scandalous detail. Fame can be a really ugly thing, which we already know, but social media has allowed us to watch our favorite celebrities get psychologically abused by the media.

We often forget that underneath the talent, money and glamor, stars are just people. I was shocked when I started to notice the ways in which people engage with these starlets on social media. Miley Cyrus gets comments on her Instagram posts telling her to die and get cancer, and recently Iggy Azalea publicly removed herself from the twitter sphere because of the ways in which media and critics were treating her. Despite much criticism surrounding Azalea, one thing to be said is that she has an amazing way of engaging with her fans. Her twitter was a place in which she retweeted, and talked to her fans in a way that one of us might talk to our friends. She shared her personal thoughts and exuded a down to earth vibe, a rare trait for someone with her level of fame. Recently, she went on vacation and received harsh criticism of her body, which led to her ultimate decision to remove herself from twitter.

Whatever your opinion on Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea, or really anyone, this kind of public shaming can only be equated with bullying, something that our country has publicly denounced. We say “Hollywood destroys these young girls,” but I’d argue that we’re complicit in this destruction. We demand to see a certain body type, we greedily consume the tabloids created by those who virtually stalk and photograph these women, and even hack into their personal information to leak intimate details of their lives. In my opinion, a life filled with these pressures sounds far from glamorous.

I am a firm believer in freedom of speech, but using it to harm these young girls who could be our sisters, daughters, or friends is detrimental to each of them as well as to all of the women of our nation. Shaming Iggy for having cellulite just underscores a culture that tells women that they must be entirely free of imperfections. This is damaging to everyone involved both as perpetuators of bullying and as victims of this way of viewing women. No matter how much you hate/love/are fascinated by these people, let’s just lay off a bit. I think signing off twitter was a wise move for Iggy, but now it’s our turn to stop being complicit in harassment of any kind.

Today it was finally spring and after a long winter, the sun finally peaked out from behind the clouds. With open jackets and scarves stuffed into pockets, people lingered in the diag rather than rushing between heated buildings.

As I lingered, my mind wandered. These past few months have been hard – crutches in winter is never ideal – and the sunlight began to melt away the cabin fever which had encroached on my normally positive outlook.

My wandering mind began to focus on what I want and what I wish for. Since December, all I’ve wanted is to be able to walk: to regain the freedom which crutches stole from me and become Alexandria again – not the gimpy girl on crutches. Now that I can walk again all I want is to dance.

I began studying ballet when I was four years old. Maybe it was all the attention I got because I was slightly better than the rest of the girls, or maybe at age 4 I somehow realized a fraction of the power that the arts can have on the world – but whatever the reason I fell in love with ballet.

For 14 years ballet defined me. My ballet friends became my second family and I spent every waking moment at school or the studio. Yet the advantage which I had at age 4 had faded and by 18 I was a good, solid dancer but nothing exceptional. My quadruple pirouettes were inconsistent. My extension to the side never quite made it to my ear and because of this I would never be a Prima Ballerina with a professional company.

Giving up dance was one of the hardest decisions which I have ever made. While ballet defined me for years, endings are inevitable. Yet now, 2 years after giving up ballet and 2 months after crutches infected my life all I want is to dance: to feel the freedom and release of an arabesque turn or the power of a jeté. I have a few more months until that will be possible but I am looking forward to day.