Complicated.

Being a woman (see: girl, gay man), I have realized that I over complicate things. I think too much, I read into things. I have always been a rather curious and nosy human being. In fifth grade (random Jessica trivia here), I received the “Sally Jessy Raphael Award.” I got it for “always having my finger on the tip of what was happening.” I loved this award so much more than I loved winning the Spelling Bee the same year. Every girl has this tangled web in her life. I think most dudes do, too.

Bottom line: Girls talk. We talk a lot. So much so, that sometimes I have a hard time keeping facts straight. Who is sleeping with whom and who can and cannot know about it. Or who is fighting with whom and who is on whose side. SEE what I mean? Complicated! Hot, hot mess.

So, this got me to thinking, why do we complicate certain things? Why do we feel the need to share, yet feel the need to be so secretive about certain things? I guess it’s just one of the many human paradoxes. The question here is why?

The reason we are so outward with certain things and so inward with other aspects is because humans are judgmental and systematic. We all have our schemas. We label, place “item” in a box, and store it. Really, as crap-tastic as this system seems, it “un”complicates our lives. It simplifies things for us.

I guess what I am getting at here is that I want to simplify my life. In the grand scheme of things, everything boils down to be quite simple. We can say things are complicated, when really they aren’t. We say that phrase so we can spew off our list of justifications to make us feel better about certain situations.

To drive things home, I do several things that are therapeutic: Post Secret, Read, Glass of Wine, Masturbate, the usual… one of the things I love (and my buddy Lee introduced me to back in college) is Explodingdog.com. You send phrases to this guy and he illustrates them (in such a simple way might I add). I found this one, when my life felt complicated (by no fault other than my own).

I know it may seem corny, but this little illustration has made things so much simpler for me. It's the wall paper on my computer at work and at home. I hope some of y'all find comfort in it, too.

Things are not complicated. Just remember that things are only as big as you allow them to be. You are only so big in comparison to the universe. Our problems lie with in us, which makes them almost minuscule. Nothing is too big or so wrong that it cannot be fixed (sometimes with the help of band-aids and crazy glue)! We are all humans, which is a beautiful and disgusting thing!