Category: Misc.

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

I lived to see this day. Two final papers later, and my last fall semester as a graduate student is officially over! I won’t lie, this semester was rough for many reasons that are not school work or time-related. This semester, I took an independent study that would meet up for an hour every week, and a hybrid literature class that met up once every other week. I had time to knock out a lot of assignments, but my time management was not the greatest. Because I physically didn’t have to be at school some days, I would not take the work of that week seriously, and sometimes it left me hanging on submitting subpar work to my professors. On top of that, I did a lot of independent work that didn’t require submitting something until later on in the semester, and that’s when things got tough. I didn’t start my final papers until literally the last minute because I still had major projects due for my classes. Overall, it was rough because I felt like my mind was all over the place. I made it through, and now I hope I got myself some good grades!

Next year, I might just die. No literally, I might die over exhaustion or some crazy shit; I can feel it already. I have to take three courses next semester because my grad program screwed a lot of us over, but hey – it is what it is: an infancy master’s program. I am taking a renaissance literature as a pre-100 requirement with a professor I keep getting mixed feelings about, but hey – it is what it is. I am also taking another class with a professor I had already during my grad career, so I’m not really worried about her class. Finally, I am taking my thesis supervision course, which is basically me working on my MA Thesis until I’m burned out and submit it to my thesis advisor who will tell me to burn it some more and once it’s completely in ashes, I submit the paper to the graduate committee and see if it will pass, fail, or receive honors. I am a nervous wreck for next semester.

In the meantime, I am going to spend these next couple of days of 2017 relaxing and taking time to myself. Once the new year comes around, I’ll be back working on my thesis so that I don’t have to do that much work during a semester that is packed with reading and writing.

I’ve had my fair share of complaining this past year and a half, but I know that once it’s over, I’m going to miss it. I mean, that’ll be a whole post of its own, but for now, I can’t wait to graduate in six and a half months!

I hope everyone who finished their semesters of school is relaxing and enjoying their time off; you deserve it!

-Liz. (:

Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

Before we begin, can we just say how clickbait-y this title sounds? Trust me, I’m not trying to have you guys click this post and feel sorry for me, I just feel like this is something that most overachievers in their 20’s feel because of just how the world is nowadays.

I feel like there are two different types of 20-somethings in the world:

• The first type is those who use their 20’s to live life and explore the world. They go out on the weekends and party, they aren’t tied down to anyone because they enjoy being single, they are simply living for themselves and they are having fun along the way because they know this is the only time in their lives where living this way is acceptable and expected.
• The other type is those who grow up entirely too fast. They are thinking about 30 years ahead of their time, they want to begin having children, they get engaged and then married within years of each other, they fucking have life insurance despite how healthy they are, and they truly think that they are full-blown adults that should be acting like one.

I feel like I’m a combination of both. I feel like I want to be both types of 20-somethings because honestly, those who are the first type are people who probably were sheltered as teenagers and those who are the second type were probably teenagers who did all the partying and drinking already. I was definitely a late-bloomer, so I feel myself wanting to embrace my 20’s as a YOUNG adult (because that’s what I am) and have fun while I have these years. Yet, I also feel myself wanting to have that “picture-perfect” stable life where I have expectations of what my 20’s should be like. I told myself that by the time I am 26, I want to be engaged. People think I’m crazy, but I personally feel like 26 is a good age to finally start to wind down and make life decisions. This doesn’t mean I’m going to force myself to find a man to marry me at 26, it just means that I’m ready to settle down romantically. I don’t necessarily surround myself with people who are married (I mean, married 20-somethings in NYC don’t exist unless you were in the military or something because those are the only people in the world at my age getting married, again – no shade), but I do know people personally and socially that are in serious relationships, who live with their partners, who have little families already. Granted, I don’t want to have children (I mean, not yet), but I do want to be on the track of getting that “picture-perfect” life. I want to experience that and much more: a stable career, a stable lifestyle, a stable household; pretty much a stable life that many of us call ‘goals’ on social media.

Which brings me to my next point: we all want this type of lifestyle because 9 out of the 10 times we see it portrayed on social media. We see old schoolmates having kids, landing dream jobs, getting engaged, living in their own apartments, and we think that just because someone else in their 20-somethings is living life like that, you believe that the way you’re living your life is the wrong way. Everyone who feels this way knows it’s nonsensical and not true, yet we still feel like we aren’t living our best lives.

I know I am not wasting my life away. I know that I am on my own individual path of happiness and success and whether or not I get that “picture-perfect” life I envisioned myself having, I am going to have a good life regardless. It still doesn’t mean that I don’t feel these things. It’s merely the fact that when I see someone else living the life I thought I was going to have at my age, I get really discouraged. Just recently, a former schoolmate and her high-school sweetheart got engaged. I was happy for them because they’ve been with each other since high-school, but it did make me stare intently at my high-school sweetheart/now partner like “… when is that gonna be us, my dude?” 

But I digress.

I know that everything that I’m doing with my life at this very moment is helping me grow and move forward with it. I know getting through grad school and getting my master’s degree is going to pay off once it’s actually all done and over with. I know that the rocky parts of my life currently are going to help me make better decisions in the future. I know that everything happens for a reason, whether you like it or not.

As for now, live in the present.

Enjoy your 20’s for what they were meant to be. Find yourself, discover your passions, gain some life experience, be reckless, fearless, wild. Do everything you want to do before it’s too late. Be with yourself before you allow a significant other in your world, shit– before you allow a baby to come into your world. Life is different for everyone and just because you’re not where some other people are, doesn’t mean you can’t be happy and celebrate you and where YOU are.

Be 20-something, not 40-something.

-Liz. (:

Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

If I had a frequently asked questions section of my blog, I bet you one of the questions I would have to answer is the one I’ve been getting from people for the last couple of years:

Liz, why don’t you write poems anymore?

As I’m slowly trying to get myself back in writing creatively again, I remember the times that I sat for hours writing poetry in my notebook. There was a point in time that I wrote a new poem every other day, possibly writing and posting one on Facebook every week. I used to attend poetry workshops as a teenager and for a while, I began to see my poems becoming better, cleaner, and wittier. For a while, I was “Liz, the poet” more than “Liz, the writer” and I was fine with that. Poetry is what ultimately made me start writing and to start taking writing seriously.

Then, I stopped.

I stopped writing poetry at the end of 2013 mainly because I found myself being a much happier person. My poetry was at its greatest in 2012; the time when I was battling with depression and issues within myself. Yet, my poetry in that era was some of the cleanest, wittiest, and most put together pieces I ever wrote. I find myself reading back at those poems from time-to-time and I have to ask myself, where did all of this come from? I mean, surely my inspiration came from my depression and my issues, but the passion and the hurt behind it; how did I convey that through poetry?

But, I didn’t stop for only that reason. I stopped because I was a wuss. I had a friend at the time that would criticize my writing and my ability to write good poetry every single time I would share one. It was always something negative like “this was absolute trash” or “do better next time”. As a depressed 18-year-old girl, that was discouraging and slowly but surely I just stopped sharing altogether.

I didn’t realize this was my issue until I took a poetry class during my last year of undergrad. I had to be conferenced by my professor and I had to show her my portfolio of poems I’ve written in the last semester. She wasn’t the nicest professor at my college, but she knew what she was talking about, and I appreciated her critique because of that. She told me that I had a gift for contemporary poetry. She told me that I have such an urban lyric style to my poems that she never really saw in her students. She also said that I could do better. My poems were creative and they told stories, but I wasn’t confident enough to let my words speak for themselves. She then asked me if I had any background in writing poetry and I told her, but I also told her that I’ve gotten driven away from poetry by my peers. I told them that they made me feel like my poetry was amateur and not meant to be taken seriously; like my voice shouldn’t be taken seriously. I mean, my professor ultimately told me to tell them to go fuck themselves, but it was already too late: by that time, I lost my passion and my drive for poetry. I wasn’t in such a bad place anymore, and I overthink my poems because I get so nervous that they aren’t good enough.

Two years after that talk, I find myself wishing that I kept that side of my creative writing closer to me. I wish I was able to just ignore those around me and continued to write poetry to help heal me. Sitting down and writing one is easier said than done, and every time I do so, I end up scrapping it. I don’t know if there will be a time when I am able to just write a poem, but I really do miss it.

It really was a love-hate relationship when it came to poetry. Writing poetry made me have to get in touch with my feelings and how I felt about certain things. There would be times I would write a really dark piece, and even after I was done with it, the ambiance would still be around me. But, some of the greatest poems come from a place of hurt, and I wrote some of my best during this dark time in my life.

Maybe poetry was just a part of my past self, maybe I just let people’s comments win.

At the end of the day, I will always be a writer, no matter how many people want to tell me otherwise. My writing always speaks for itself, whether in stanzas or not.

-Liz. (:

Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

It’s literally been ages since I wrote a weekly update on TNTH, but ya girl has to fill up some space nevertheless for TNTHmas, so I figured I’d recap my week.

This week has been a really rough one. One of the toughest ones I had in a long time.

If you read Day One of TNTHmas, you guys will know that I’ve been dealing with an immense amount of anxiety and depression that has been building up in me for the last year, and this week I’ve been living in its puddle of shame and guiltiness for everything that’s been happening. Honestly, there’s just a lot of stuff going on that is overwhelming, and it made me shut down a couple of times before. But, I know once I hand in my final papers in a couple of days, I should feel more relaxed and straight-minded.

Speaking of school, my last day of class was on Tuesday and I can’t believe that I made it through another semester. I seriously have one more before I graduate and I am so not ready for the shit-ride next semester is going to put me through. It’s just going to feel good to know that this lifestyle I am living as a grad student will be over soon and I could say that I did that shit.

Lastly, I am wrapping up my papers so that in the break I have from now until the end of January, I can do some revaluation on myself and begin 2018 on a better note. These next couple of weeks I just want to take walks every single day and embrace everything around me. I want to set goals regarding my thesis so that by the end of January, my thesis is intact and just needs to be tweaked and polished up. I want to have my head on so tightly that nothing can bring me down. I am ready to press restart.

Anyway, I hope everyone is enjoying TNTHmas! There’s definitely a lot more to come; we still have an entire week left! See you tomorrow for day five!

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

We are literally twelve days away from possibly one of the biggest holidays in American culture (and I say that because Christmas has turned into the holiday of consumerism, and that’s what American culture practically is). In a more traditional perspective, it’s the time of year when families come together and spend time with one another, no matter how long it’s been since you’ve last seen them. The holiday season is the time of year I get to see my family the most; we always do this thing where we open gifts together at my aunt’s house and ever since I was a child, I looked forward to doing this with my family.

The last year, though, my family has had its ups and downs, and personally, it’s hard to get that “holiday spirit” because I don’t have that “connection” like I once did. I’ve learned a lot about my family in the last year, and although I love my family, there’s always someone or something dividing us: distance, people, the list can go on.

All and all, it’s sometimes hard to get into the holiday spirit when you know that the happiest time of year isn’t the happiest for you or your family. It seems like the holiday season can sometimes even bring out the worst in people, and it just sucks when it does the ladder.

I know I am not the only alone out there who feels this way, and this post is for those who feel alone.

Some people can’t go home for the holidays because their family doesn’t accept their lifestyle or their identities. Some people don’t have family left to go home to. Some people are in situations where they have to split up their holiday season because their families just function that way. There are a million reasons why the holiday season can be a rough one, and also one of the reasons why suicide is so high during these seasons.

This is the season where you have to be thankful for what you have, and throw away the idea of the things you don’t.

If you don’t have a family to go home to, I bet you there is a friend who will open their home to you during the holiday season. If you simply don’t have that family connectivity and feel more distant than loved, celebrate the holiday season with your friends. Celebrate Friendsmas or something. NO matter what the situation is, you have people who love and support you and will welcome you because it’s the holiday season and no one wants to see a person alone on the holidays. 

As for me, I am taking care of my mental health this holiday season. It’s so easy to think about the bad things that happened around this time of year, but I know I’m coming out stronger if I live these next few weeks thankful for those who love me, and those who I love back. In some strange way, I am letting the brokenness of this situation make me stronger as a person, and to enter 2018 on a positive note. I am allowing this to be an example for me so that when I get older and have a family of my own that no one will feel alone or distinct.

This holiday season, I matter to someone. Someone is thankful to have me in their lives. And the same thing goes for you.

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

When I was younger, I used to say that my favorite holiday was Christmas because of the presents, I mean what child doesn’t? Now that I’m older and “an adult” (let’s face it, I’m nowhere being one), I still say that Christmas is my favorite holiday, but definitely for different reasons. Christmas is my favorite holiday because I get to do all of the traditional stuff that either my family or I do! I’ve definitely created some of my own personal holiday traditions over the years, so here are some of the things I do every year during the holiday season:

• If I can, I put up all the Christmas house decorations and the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving or the weekend after. This year, I’ve managed to decorate my apartment with Christmas stuff, now I’m just waiting to have some time to put the actual tree up. (Edit: she’s up!)
•  For as long as I could remember, my extended family would come together for Christmas and exchange gifts either before or after Christmas (one year, we exchanged Christmas gifts January 31st… yeah). When I was younger, though, we used to do it before Christmas and whenever my grandparents came into town, they would drop off me and my sister’s gifts at my house, and then take us to my aunt’s house to open the other gifts. I used to hate it when my grandmother would tell my mom that we weren’t allowed to open them before Christmas, and my sister and I knew that my grandparents spoiled us rotten. We got amazing gifts as children. We still do get amazing gifts, but we get to open them the day we see them nowadays.
• My family and I open Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. There’s no special reason why; we were literally impatient as kids and now we’re impatient grown adults. Personally, I never liked opening gifts on Christmas morning. I feel like presents should be open at nighttime after dinner; who wants to be groggy and tired opening gifts the morning after?
• Speaking of Christmas Eve, I’ve spent every Christmas Eve with Obie for the last six years. At first, it was just coincidental that we would hang out on Christmas Eve, but after the 3rd year of doing so, I made it my mission to always see him that day: 1.) to keep the tradition going and 2.) to give him his Christmas present. Let’s hope we do it again this year!
• When my sister and I were kids, my parents made Santa’s arrival really dramatic. One year, the whole fire-escape window was wide open and things were knocked down; another year a big ass garbage bag of gifts were left on our front porch as if Santa was the fucking UPS Delivery man, it was fun and honestly, I didn’t stop believing in Santa until… I was legit 10 years old.
•  I guess I picked this up from my mother, but every Christmas I send out a couple of Christmas cards to some friends. I send cards to those people who I don’t really get to see anymore or anyone who lives far away now, but I always do it for the holiday spirit. I feel like people don’t send out cards anymore unless you’re that suburban family who lives in a wealthy neighborhood and buys every family member a different Hallmark card because they just got it like that. I felt like I just shook a whole community of people. I feel like some of my friends only get cards from me, and I really like to bring that aspect back into people’s lives again.

And that’s all of them! What are your Holiday Traditions?

-Liz. (:

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

I am happy to announce that for the next twelve days leading up to Christmas, I will be publishing a new post EVERY DAY until then! I wanted to do something special on the blog for the holidays (kind of like how YouTubers do “Vlogmas” every day), so I thought of creating my own little daily thing! I mean, it’s probably been done a million times already but what the hell!

The first official post will be TOMORROW, December 14th at 12 noon! I’ll see you guys until then!

-Liz. (:

Hey guys – welcome back to TNTH.

So, it’s November, and I sold myself short in October. I was able to put out a TNTH post every Tuesday and Saturday in the month of October after telling you guys that the blog would be going on hiatus.

While I wish I was able to do the same in November, I know that I can’t.

November is the time of the month where I begin the “work all day and night” portion of my semester. Final papers are due in December, and I have to begin getting ready for them.

I will try my best to keep you guys posted whenever I can.

See you guys soon!

-Liz (:

*disclaimer: this post discusses various NSFW topics*

Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

Let’s start this post with a bang: I’ve always been overweight. I have always been the fat girl in the group of skinny friends, also known as the fat girl who never had boys actually look at her as “attractive” or “sexy” or “beautiful”. Even though I was sucked into this mindset where “fat = ugly”, I still liked myself for who I was. I still do, but when it came to other people liking me romantically, I became insecure about my body and image.

When I finally had a man look at me and call me sexy, beautiful, funny, smart, etc – I was in shock, I can’t lie. I mean, what were the odds that the boy I liked would actually look at me the same way? I thought it was too good to be true, and when the years passed by and the same boy (now man) was still around for all of me, that’s when I realized that yeah, men are going to be attracted to girls, no matter what shape or size. But even then, I kept questioning my looks and my image next to my partner. I kept asking myself do I look good standing by his side? Is it weird for a skinny man to be with a fat girl? Do couples like us really exist without it being a “fat girl fetish” thing?

Every now and then, I feel insecure about my body and my image, even when there’s someone in my life who likes me for the way I am. What do you expect? We live in a world where #RelationshipGoals is a glorified trending tag on social media showing those how “real relationships” should be like. A fit couple working out in the gym? #RelationshipGoals. A couple with a newborn baby and the girlfriend is super snatched after giving birth? #RelationshipGoals. Interracial couples that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye? #RelationshipGoals. Everything is such a “relationship goal” that people begin to believe that what they offer in a relationship and how they physically look isn’t worthy or good enough. Anyone in the situation where their body is considered ugly is always left to wonder damn, where’s the relationship goal where a fat girl feels great in her body and the man loves her for your body and her confidence? Isn’t that a relationship goal?

To society, no.

For most of the time being with my partner, I’ve always brushed those thoughts away. I didn’t mind that what I have with my partner wasn’t a social media “relationship goal.” I was still very happy with what we have, what we share, and we always have fun being together. After trying to be unapologetic about my looks and image, I began realizing that most of my “me” problems stemmed from the fact that I still didn’t accept my body for what it is. Weight is weight, sure, but I still found it so hard to accept the skin that covers this meat on my bones. I guess I was sucked into this universe where I was so traumatized as a young teenager and being called fat and ugly and not good enough, that I always had that inner image of myself; I was never good enough for this fucked-up society.

Then, something funny happened.

As I was on Twitter earlier, someone tried to make a joke about this Twitter account promoting its pornography subscription. I mean, I’m a 23-year-old woman, when something like that pops up on my timeline, it sticks out as a sore thumb and I’m curious as fuck as to why it’s on my timeline. So this subscription porn site thing has real-life adult and consenting couples who decide to share their sex lives through this service. I mean, the person who retweeted this made some dumb joke about not wanting to see “normal people have sex” (???), but I wasn’t even paying attention to the response; I was more intrigued about the idea of this subscription site. There’s a whole industry of pornography where the “sexiest” men and women get all hot and worked up for pleasure; whatever, we all know the idea of porn, and the idea of a service being made about real-life couples wanting to show their sex lives on camera isn’t even what baffled me. It was the little advertising video attached to this damn tweet. These were regular ass people. These were different people with different interests, different attractions, different ideas of what sex should be, and most importantly, there were couples who were physically polar opposites or “non-traditional” couples. There were gay couples, lesbian couples, gothic couples, hippie couples, white couples, black couples, interracial couples, fat couples, and everything in between.

Now, you’re probably wondering like Liz, what the hell does this have to do with your self-confidence? And for the most part, it doesn’t. Sex is such a natural thing that that aspect of this tweet wasn’t even that much of a big deal. For the most part, this service exposes pornography and its unrealistic expectations of a sex life; that you have to be slamming hot and blonde and the man has to be athletic and fit and strong to have an amazing sex life, blah blah blah. Seeing some of these fat girls with their skinny partners explaining how amazing their partner makes them feel inside and outside the bedroom made me realize a very important thing: confidence doesn’t have a size.

These women who I immediately identified with allowed me to finally begin this process of accepting myself in my own skin. What’s truly beautiful is knowing that in real life, there are people who look just like me and just like you and even if they are polar opposites, something truly deep down connects them both. What’s beautiful is that this misconception of fat girls being “too ugly for relationships” is dying out in the real world. I mean, it’s always going to live on through the eyes of those who think life is just a fantasy land of one type of person, but at least we are making some progress and showing the world that confidence is not a size, but it’s a one size fits all ordeal.

-Liz. (: