77 Ways I Failed All the Internet Lists

Yesterday every blog post and Facebook status I came across seemed to marvel and mourn over the passage of time. Tempus fugit. The time, it is flying. Look out.

Thinking that every moment is immeasurably precious and irreplaceable is way too much pressure.

I also stumbled over Forbes' ten most important things that 20-somethings should know. And Forbes' twenty things that 20-somethings don't get. In two months, I'll be twenty-eight. Judging from my life so far, despite being more than halfway through my 20's, it seems I don't get or know any of the most important things. I have not devoted myself to a lucrative career or made a very decisive choice about what the fuck I want to do with my life. I have not fretted over my waning fertility. I have tried to calculate my hours of expertise in various things and I am nowhere near 10 000 hours in anything.* Before moving in with the Boatman, I did not vacillate over the implications of co-habitation. After one month of skyping and phone calls and one weekend visit, the Boatman said I could come stay with him as long as I want, and (I wanted to fuck his soul) so I did. More than two years later, we are still together, co-habitating and living in sin. But according to Forbes' ten most important things list, I may have made a huge mistake.

I am failing all the internet lists.

Hate that.

I need to read lists about things that I never fucked up. Things that I will never fuck up.

"50 reasons I regret starring in bestiality porn."

"33 unusual things I wished I'd known before I opened my cocaine business."

I can read these lists and feel no regrets.

Success.

I've mentioned this before but every month just as my vagina is ceasing to bleed, I feel overcome by all the babies I never gave birth to. All the books I never wrote. All the ten thousand hours I never put in.

This is something I call the Vag Time Death.

It is the One Thing I Invented During My Twenties.

The End.

(*For yoga, I have somewhere between 4000-5000 hours depending on whether or not you count meditation, teaching, reading, and geeking out on Youtube and other parts of the internet. Since it has been scientifically proven that getting up a 4 a.m. for a two-hour plus practice results in me lashing out irrationally at other sentient beings, I must reconcile myself to a maximum of 1.5 hours of relatively daily practice. Which leaves me with 12-15 years before I become a 10 000 hour expert... Oh well.)  



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I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

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Chuckie the Horse and the Day Jack Layton Died

Jack Layton died two years ago today. August 22^nd, 2011. He was the leader of the New Democratic Party. One of the reasons I like him was because he ate granola and blueberries for breakfast. Stephen Harper the conservative prime minister apparently eats something much grosser. Despite the blueberries, Jack Layton died of prostate cancer. On August 22^nd, 2011, I had been living with the Boatman for just over a month. During the afternoons, I often got drunk, tired of pretending I had something meaningful to do before the Boatman came home from work. The day Jack Layton died, I got drunk on gin and diet soda and I thought about Jack Layton and I thought about writing another book.



Jack Layton, our optimistic NDP leader. Source.

 Jack Layton wrote a letter to Canadians and he told them to be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. Filled with gin and other carcinogens, I hardly felt any of these things. I felt mild despair. But Jack Layton said that optimism is better than despair. I should try to be optimistic. And change the world.

So I tried. I tried to write this story about Chuckie the Horse and the Day that Princess Diana died.

The first time I ever saw a horse’s dick was the day Princess Diana died. It was an enlarged version of my father’s and about one and a half times the size of the wooden rulers we used in math class. I was at the Perth fair, watching the equestrian competition with my friend Janine. Janine had long, thick blonde hair that went down to her waist. She’d gotten a ninety-nine percent average in grade seven and she was so good at the piano that she’d been the pianist in the school’s performance of The Pirates of Penzance. Janine used to ride horses too. She knew all the horses in the Perth Fair and we were allowed to go back into the stables to pat their heads and brush them with a shell-shaped comb. The horse show was two days before our first day of grade eight. I was eleven and Janine was twelve.

Chuckie was the horse’s name. Maybe he was a thoroughbread. His hair was dark brown and his back legs looked like enormous chicken drumsticks. I didn’t know much about horses because my family lived in town. Janine and I squeezed into either side of his stall.



Chuckie the Horse and his long dick looked something like this.  Source

 “Yes, Chuckie, yes,” Janine cooed, stroking his nose. It was my turn to use the shell-shaped comb to brush his mane.

“I heard Princess Diana puked up her food,” I said.

“That’s revolting,” said Janine. Chuckie snorted. Janine's always said that her stomach stuck out more than mine did, and that it was softer. I said that she was smart and beautiful she had long perfect blonde hair and so she beat me.

“I think Princess Diana was beautiful.” I sucked in my stomach and rubbed Chuckie`s neck. During the school year, I swam two hours a day with the Perth swim team. In the summers, there was a break and I became intensely afraid of gaining weight. I spent my days walking our family dog around Perth’s perimeters, counting my steps and making sure I made it to at least 6000, or else I did not deserve lunch. While I stood still, I clenched and unclenched my buttocks, in the hopes that it would remain firm. Every night before bed, I performed 1000 abdominal exercises. I looked forward to the fall when swim practices would resume and someone else would have the responsibility of inflicting weight-management strategies upon me.

“I miss riding you, Chuckie,” said Janine. “Good luck.” We walked toward the end of Chuckie’s stall to comb his belly. That’s when his dick went down. Or up, I suppose. I knew very little about dicks at the time. Chuckie’s dick was long. Wide for its length, but still wide. In nine years, a sixty-eight year old intellectually disabled Polish woman named Jadwiga would ask me, “Erica, why men have the long thing?” Alas, I never had no satisfactory response for Jadwiga. Or for me.

“That’s really gross,” I said to Janine when I saw Chuckie the Horse’s dick. Grosser than Diana puking up her food. Much Grosser. Way Grosser. When Janine and I sat down on the bleachers, there were sixteen hours left if we wanted to die on the same day as Princess Diana. There were seven and a half years before I would touch a real cock. Eleven years, eight months until I would touch and suck and vaginally penetrate Simon’s.

The special thing about Simon’s dick was that he could cum from a blowjob and remain hard for a full blown session of intercourse. Shorter than Chuckie the Horse’s, but harder. Hard as wood. I was never thrilled about giving extensive blowjobs before sex. It took too long and by the time he came, I wouldn’t be in the mood anymore.
That’s as far as I got. I didn`t know what else to say. I wasn't in the mood anymore.
The End.



Oh, and here's Princess Diana. Source.
She died before Twitter even started.

Jack Layton's inspiring letter to Canadians

Exuberant Bodhisattva on FacebookTwitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

What the fuck should I do with my life, Part Two
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How I am violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

 

 

 

 

 

What the fuck should I do with my life? Part Two

Part Two: Becoming A Princess and/or Having Children 
I could become a princess or a duchess and give birth to my prince and walk out to the world with an uncontracted uterus. 
 
When you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, all the little girls I work with have princess wrapped into some part of their desired occupation.

I want to be a princess chef.

A princess busdriver.
 
A princess policeman.

A doctor and a princess.

 

Little girls see these princesses on their diapers and their wallpaper, and they want to be them

Little girls see these princesses on their diapers and their wallpaper, and they want to be them

This is old news, but over the last couple of weeks, everyone was talking about Kate Middleton's uncontracted uterus. About the nerve she was sporting her "baby belly" to the whole world. Some people judged. Other marvelled at how brave she was. As though the scariest thing in the world is to reveal your uncontracted uterus.

Kate and her princes

I can relate. I fear the uncontracted uterus.
 
From a young age, my deepest fears included getting a double chin and having my stomach stick out more than my boobs. My boobs have always been tiny and so it wouldn't take much for my stomach to extend beyond them. To prevent the double chin, I used to read books and do my homework with my chin propped a pillow. To prevent the protruding abdomen, I was constantly doing crunches and sit-ups.
 
My stomach got hard and and chiselled. It's not that sad a story except once an osteopath told me that if I got pregnant, I would probably have a hard time. My abdominals would split in half and sag forever.
 
I'm ashamed that this terrifies me so much.

I'm ashamed that this is one of the main reasons I am terrified of having children.

One of the other reasons is that someone told me that since having kids, she can't use tampons anymore. They just slide out. As for the diva cup, alas, it leaks.

Apparently this is not that common.

Usually the vag recovers quite well.
 
If not, we all have high vaginas that will never ever desert us.

My High Vagina. Me and Keira Knightley both have one.

Once I wrote that birth was a Hideous Annihilation for someone else.
 
At the time, I think I was drinking too much.

Now I am thinking, What the fuck should I do with my life?

Despite my sit-up frenzies and pillow facelifts, I used to think that I would grow up and become a wonderful mother. I babysat like crazy and imagined that I would be like all my favourite moms, making whole grain banana bread, reading to my children, and having a job that allowed me to be around when they came home from school for lunch.
 
Now I am afraid of a saggy belly?

The saggy stomach, the tamponless vagina, probably these are terrible reasons not to have children. What are the good reasons?

Overpopulation. Climate change. Having children during a tornado or during the end of the world is impractical.
 
A couple of weeks ago I sent myself the following email:

Don't ever have children. No children for you. You are hysterical. Chill the fuck out.

I had just had a mammoth tantrum over whether or not to have a smoothie for breakfast, or oatmeal, or both. It was pathetic. 

27-year-old tantrums may be a good reason not to have children.
 
The other reason is, the kid may end up being just like you.

Fuck.

My friend Fern likes animals signficantly more than people, and children.

I was with her when she learned that someone who she didn't particularly like had given birth.

"Why the fuck did she have a kid? She barely has her shit together herself. What is it that makes people arrogant enough to believe that they are worthy of reproduction?"
 
She went on a rant about people passing on shitty genes and suffering and babies being bad for the environment. Her rant left me somewhat offended and taken aback. At the time, I had just begun to reconcile myself to contaminating the gene pool with my own hideous annihilation. This was before I got my job at the Montessori school.
 
Children are delightful for varying amounts of time. I might never be able to forgive my child if my stomach expanded and then never came back down to the same flat, hard formation ever again. What a horrible burden for the child to bear. It would have to spend its whole life making up for my sad saggy stomach. I tell myself that I would also resent a child if it wrecked my yoga practice, and that probably it would. But then I think, what is a better thing to do, to press into your hands and lift yourself off the ground with one leg behind your head and the other up your ass, or to make a real live person who in twenty years will probably be better at everything you’ve ever tried in your life?

Hard to say.

I guess we'll see how effective the withdrawal method turns out to be and then we'll find out, or we won't.  

The End.

What the fuck should I do with my life? Part One

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What the fuck should I do with my life? (Part One)

27 years + 1 human gestational period plus a couple of days ago, I was born. An enormous baby. 10 pounds and a couple of ounces. They cut me out of my tiny mother's tiny tummy. My feet were pointed towards her vagina. It's not the normal way people are supposed to be born. For years, I was terrified of going upside down.

Now I call out to my mother during sex.

My mother seems to get tinier every time I see her. She is 5 ft 3 and seems half the size of me. I am consistently baffled that I ever made it out of her vagina. Then I remember that I didn’t make it out. She got cut open. I tower over her, and feel twice as wide as she is, despite everyone's assurance that I am not an enormous person. Has my mother always been so tiny? Is she shrinking?

The children I work with, they call out for their mothers when they're sad or when they're scared. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. "I need Mommy," one of them says.

One day, a new child arrived. He called out for both of his parents at once. "Mommy-Daddy-Mommy-Daddy." It was all one word. All day, he called out one big long never-ending word." All the other kids started to call for both of their parents at a time too.

"Mommy-Daddy-Mommy-Daddy..."

During sex, I started saying it too.

"Mommy-Daddy-Mommy-Daddy."

Probably the Boatman is a saint.

The first time I mentioned my mother during sex, he was licking my vagina. Usually this feels very good. The Boatman adores licking pussy. He learned how from an early girlfriend who found out she was a lesbian. I think that learning from a lesbian is a good strategy. Also, the Boatman played the saxophone during middle school.
Anyways, he was down there, and it felt pretty good, but I could feel the tears coming. Tears happened all the time. This time was different though, because the tears came with an embarrassing thought.

I miss my Mom.

The Boatman says that during sex I can yell and scream and cry and say whatever I want.

Once I asked my mother if she'd ever had an orgasm. I shouldn't have asked her, but I was having trouble in that regard, and I was curious. Was it genetic? Had she experienced an Orgasm?

"Oh yah," she replied. "But it wasn't very good."

I think that's a really clear answer.

Every time I visit my mother, my sex life is destroyed for weeks afterwards.

Last spring I went to Ontario for five or six days. The Boatman and I loved and missed each other. All the stories in our heads made our love feel so beautiful and perfect. When the visit was over, the Boatman picked me up at the Halifax airport. He picked me up at the airport at 11 o’clock at night. We were back in the freshness and the air and the inspiration. Back in the love.

The first night we were too tired for sex. That was one of our excuses. The other excuse was that I could still feel my mother there with me. My tiny cut open mother.

On the next night, I had trouble concentrating. I couldn’t feel anything, as though my vagina was turned off, or dead. “Relax,” I said to myself. “Just relax. See what happens.”

The Boatman started fucking me a little harder. He was on top.

“Mommy, Mommy,” I called out a couple times. He kept fucking.

“She hates me,” I said suddenly. My words were loud and clear and decisive.

The Boatman stopped and looked at me. “You okay, babe?”

“Yes.” He kept going.

“I hate her,” I said a little later. 

The next day we fucked on the couch. Same thing with not being able to feel anything or concentrate. We tried a couple different positions. The Boatman came and afterwards I put my crotch on his thigh and humped him.

“She’s dead,” I said, a couple minutes into it. We both laughed. There was nothing left to worry about.

We kept fucking almost every day.  I started feeling my vagina again. It started to feel different. My whole vagina started changing, expanding. Then one evening, I was humping the Boatman's leg and Mommy came back.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” I called out. I paused and looked right at the Boatman who had his arms wrapped around me.

“She's orange,” I said.

The Boatman laughed.

I am lucky he likes to have sex with me even though I say weird things.

I say some things during sex, and some things during sleep.

A couple weeks ago, the Boatman lay next to me in bed. I had already been sleeping for over an hour. I rolled over, my eyes closed.

“Mommy-daddy-mommy-daddy,” I murmured. “It is hard for Mommy to be born. Very hard.”

The Boatman laughed and spooned me.

Now my mother and I are visiting again and nobody has had sex for a very long time.

It is too hard.

Very hard.

The End.

There was a picture of my tiny mother, and tiny sister, and me.

Nobody was orange, or dead. But I decided to take it out.

This post was inspired by/adapted from a section in Volume Two of The Little Savage and the Hermit. Volume One used to be online but then I took it down. The Hermit used to be alive, but now he's dead.

Pondicherry, January, 2016

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

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