It occurred to me at some point (when my friends pointed it out to me) that when I talk through my emotional shit, I swear. A lot. So much so that a group of friends gave me the nickname "Fucking Carrie". And you know what? I wear that shit proudly.

I was raised LDS and for most of my upbringing, swearing was not a part of it. You know what else wasn’t a part of that life?? Being able to express my emotions freely with out judgement, dismissal or punishment.

I cant really blame the Mormon church for that or my family or society…or maybe I fucking can. Nahhh…I'm the one responsible for taking that shit, going with it for most of my life and just shutting the fuck up. I'm the one who took that and decided that I was going to continue to play that game well into adulthood until I started to learn differently. oh wait…until I started to learn differently. So like…I didn’t actually know any better. But fuck the blame game because sometimes, that’s just the way that things fucking are and you honestly just don’t know any better. And that is fucking okay!

Now…you know me, I HATE when anyone says "that's just the way things are" because that’s just a shit way of sweeping everything under the rug that you don’t want to fucking look at. Sometimes though..sometimes..we actually aren't ready or able to look at that shit. AND, we are all on our own dang diddly time lines. So ya…there is an element of fucking truth to that. However, that never means that you have to settle for "the way things are". YOU get to make things the way they are.

For a long time, I have felt unable to really express myself for one reason or another, mostly out of fear of abandonment (I mean, who are we kidding? That’s pretty much the main fear we all have) and I have continued to go with that. That includes swearing. I'm even a fucking musician and I only just wrote my first song with a swear in it, six years ago (well into my 30's people!). I have since, very carefully, written a few more.

One could argue that if I really knew how to properly articulate myself, that I wouldn’t need to fucking swear. My respsonse to this is, fuck that! But seriously…when someone does something that bothers you in some way, the best way to express your shit to another human is actually without swears. In my experience, that has proven to be most effective on many levels. However, this is my goddamned blog and my shit emotional process. If I sensor myself in these environments, I'm in deep trouble. If I'm not allowed as many fucking F-bombs as I need, you can bet your sweet ass that I'm holding back other shit as well. Once I understand my shit and gather it all back together after vomiting it out into the air with a close friend or onto the page, I am very easily able to speak without one single fucking curse word.

And believe me, by the time you read one of my posts, I have edited out at least half the damn swears I originally typed (with the exception of this fucking post).

So I'm not sorry if my swearing offends you or makes you uncomfortable or perhaps it makes my content harder to fucking read and digest (I have actually been told that). Perhaps you need to push beyond that comfort zone? I don’t fucking know. That’s your fucking business and this is fucking mine. What I do know is that this shit is part of what makes the shit I write very vulnerably and unashamedly, me. So if I'm not weaving a tapestry of obscenities that, as far as we know, will still be hanging in space over Lake Michigan thirty years from now, you're probably not actually getting me. The real, fucking vulnerable and fragile me.