The Ugly Truth.

When I was in seventh grade, I was forced to sit through an excruciatingly awkward lecture on abstinence. No, I’m not being unfair. It was ridiculous. The speaker put on a pair of white gloves, said one glove was Ken and the other was Barbie, and then clapped his hands together, announcing to the humiliated room of adolescents that Ken and Barbie had just “performed intercourse.”

“Performed intercourse? What, is that a dance move I should know before I go to my first prom?”

As if the excitement of dollar store gloves performing intercourse wasn’t enough for our poor 12 and 13 year old souls to handle, we then got to draw cards to see who would catch herpes before our high school graduation.

“Yes! Party games! This is so much better than math class!”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, was the sex education I received from the Texas public school system, if you can even call it that.

Yet Texans wonders why their beloved state experiences well over a million teen pregnancies each year.

Let’s face facts. Here’s the hard, cold, ugly truth. Mom and Dad, cover your ears. Your teenagers are having sex. Protected or not, they’re doing it. Whether they share the same religion and beliefs as you do or their morals conflict, they’re out there, right now, doing the dirty, and they have no recollection of your firm reminder to not do it.

There. I said it. I’m the bad guy.

But so be it. Because all of the “good guys” are the ones who are turning out to be grandparents by age 40. And I’ll be damned if my 13 year old daughter gets knocked up and I have to start parenthood all over again.

I know. You’re thinking I’m a total tree-hugging, free love-supporting, feminazi. “Poor thing. Her parents must have dropped her on her head in their patchouli garden.”

Negative.

I grew up a strict southern Assembly of God family. If Christian denominations were houses, Assembly of God and Pentecostal would be pretty tight neighbors. Like, they’d celebrate holidays together and have big happy freaking gatherings with each other at least once a week. Get the picture? It was strict in my house. The bible was the law for my mother, which meant we were in service every Wednesday night, Sunday morning, and Sunday night.  

But it doesn’t take a doomed sinner to realize that kids are going to have sex.

My mother put me on the pill when I was in high school. Sweet Jesus, that thing was magical! It stopped my cramps. It cleared up my acne. I felt great! I could look PMS in the face and say, “Come at me, bro!”

She didn’t bat an eye about the decision to put me on the pill. She didn’t lose any sleep. She didn’t interrogate me at dinner to see if I was whoring around. She didn’t lose faith that I was still the same kind of nerdy 15 year old girl who had a lot going for her.

Her logic was simple. “This pill will help you out a lot. Take it every day. I hope it doesn’t encourage you to go out and start doing it, but if you do, I don’t want you to live with the consequences.”

The end. Nothing awkward. Since then I’ve jumped from contraceptive to contraceptive until I found the one that works for me. All together, I would say I’ve been on some form of birth control for going on five and a half years. And I can honestly say I’m so proud of my mother for being a parent and taking initiative to protect her daughter.

Because the other ugly truth is that as much as we hope they won’t, kids mess up. I’m no exception. We fall in love with the wrong person. We give them our hearts, our time, our everything. We sleep with them because it feels like the right thing to do. And no matter who tells us don’t, we’ll never understand it until they break our hearts.

And then we crumble. We mourn for the loss of the piece of ourselves we’ll never get back. We mourn because we won’t be able to give that to the person who will treat us right. But for the lucky few of us who had smart, understanding parents, we can look forward to meeting that person, because we have nothing that permanently holds us to Mr. Wrong. We get to move on with our lives, trading in our bruises and scars for wisdom we wouldn’t have gotten any other way. We learn.

I will be damned if my daughter, who I will carry for 9 months and know better than anyone else, will permanently suffer the consequences of dating the wrong guy. I’ll be damned if I see her get stuck in the relationship that I was fortunate enough to get out of.

What my mother did for me was an act of love. It was a chance at life. It was a guarantee that nothing would get in my way of college, a career, and the pursuit of happiness. I hope I can one day be half the mother to my daughters that my mother was to me.

Love always, Tiffany.

7, 123, 930, 993.

There are currently 7, 123, 930, 993 people in this world. 7, 123, 930, 993 beautifully crafted minds thinking 7, 123, 930, 993 different thoughts.

Some voted in the last election. Others did not. Some are cat people, while others prefer dogs. Some of them currently feel safe and loved, while others are wandering what they are doing and what will happen tomorrow. Some are presently protesting on street corners or in front of government buildings, using their words for change. Others are sitting at home discussing their opinions with one other person.

While these 7, 123, 930, 993 people can't all say they agree on everything, they do have one thing connecting them, a genetically inevitable organ that marks similarities among the human species. They have functioning brains, minds that pump out 70, 000 thoughts each day.

"You should vote for Obama! No woman's freedom to control her own body should ever be threatened!"

"You should vote for Romney, because there is no other way to save our economy!"

"Why wouldn't you vote for Nader!? You think you're better off without carbon and oxygen? There go those damn republicans cutting down our trees again!"

"Gay marriage is morally wrong. We can't exclude our founding religion from our governing system."

"How dare you look down on homosexual couples in disgust. Love is love and this is 2013, not 1950, you archaic bastard."

"Pooping in public is scary, you should hold it in until you're home."

"Pooping in public is awesome. If you don't do it, you're un-American."

"Green is the best color. All persons disagreeing should be deported."

"Green is the worst color. Let's pass a law to never use it again. Don't worry. We'll paint the grass pink."

7, 123, 930, 993 different people. 7, 123, 930, 993 different opining minds. You would think after all this time, just one of them would have learned to respect this fact.

I'm sorry I interrupted your FaceBook fight over politics and forced you to waste time reading this. Please, do continue to save society by passive-aggressively telling your "friend" how they are obviously wrong. Rest assured, starvation, poverty, trafficking, and disease will be put to a halt as soon as you click "Post."

If you want to see change in the world, then change it. But your hateful attitude towards those who don't see eye to eye with you is only hurting your cause.

"Didn't they realize that the only way to change things was to act?"
-Tamora Pierce

Get a clue.

Love always, Tiffany.

Life happens.

When we're children, our parents and older siblings set a pretty standard example of how a successful life should be lived.

1.) Make good grades.

2.) Get into a great college.

3.) Have the time of your life.

4.) Graduate in four years.

5.) Get a job that makes serious bank.

They work hard and do what it takes to get through this universally known life checklist. They warn us of the inevitably difficult things we'll face. College Applications. Pre-Calculus. Trig. Interviews. Getting the job. All subjects of discussion that we as humans are exposed to at an abnormally young age. 

The thing we aren't warned about, however, is the hardest thing we'll experience. There aren't any college courses offered about, and if there are, it's for majors that won't make us much of a living. Mom and Dad never talk about it because they don't want to scare us. Your older brother doesn't talk to you about it because you're too young, and there's no way you'd understand what he's going through. Life. That's what we're never prepared for. Not nearly enough.

"Life happens." A phrase we tend to hear more from our friends and colleagues as we get older. "I planned on going to college, but then life happened, and I had a baby and got married." "I tried to get my BA in business admin, but I partied way too much, and I failed my finals. I guess life happens." 

Or my personal favorite, and personal situation...

I planned on going to the school of my dreams and getting out of a small town. I got the grades. I landed internships. I volunteered a lot. But I still couldn't find happiness with where I was. I still missed my family like crazy. And now? I'm transferring back home. Something I said I would NEVER do. I guess sometimes, life just kind of happens.

I think most members of society have this irrational fear of what everyone will think of them. "Oh man, what will they say when I move back home? What will they say when they figure out I'm just going to be a teacher?"

Well. I don't know about anyone else, but living in the eyes of my quote/unquote peers has been far more stressful than growing a pair of lady balls and doing what I want. Which I did! And I'm continuing to do as of late.

I opened my eyes and said goodbye to a manipulative relationship. I took a chance and fell in love (again) with my high school crush. And somehow, I managed to make him do the same. :)

I let go of some people who were pretty toxic to my life. I took a leap of faith and changed majors in the MIDDLE of my junior year. 

I grew in my faith and learned to stop picking myself up, and to let God.

And finally, I swallowed my pride and said, "Holy cow, I want to go home," and sent out transfer applications.

Hello. My name is Tiffany, and I hardly know myself anymore. But as scary as that is, I kind of seriously love it. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is never be afraid to redefine who you are. Never think it's too late to start over. Living life as a foreign character in a rigidly scripted play is tough. We grow up our whole lives thinking that breaking character reflects emotional instability. Or even weakness. But the hard truth is it's easy to live a lie. Living how you'd like, how you'd actually like and not how you claim you'd like to live, takes bravery of a whole new different standard.

Here's to starting over. Cheers. Love Always, Tiffany.