



Tonight I watched a film. The quick Netflix blurb seemed like it could have easily been written about me: On a yearlong break between high school and college, a teenager writes an anonymous but highly revealing blog chronicling her sex life. If this sounds like a good movie to you, Ask Me Anything was the name. Through the course of the film I could not help but notice all the similarities Katie and I have. She begins the movie by saying she is going to tell you something she has never told anyone before, throughout the course of this post, I will do the same. There is no timeline to this, and as you know names are always changed. So why did a film that got three stars on IMBD speak so much to me?

Katie begins blogging when she takes a year off between high school and college. I began blogging after taking sometime after college to discover my true passion. Katie writes a blog that is sexual driven. I write a blog that is sexually driven. All the surface level stuff is easy, and anyone watching the movie could have seen that. The takeaways I had came from a much deeper level.

There is a scene in the movie where Katie's boyfriend confronts her about cheating. He gets physical with her. While that scene doesn't escalate too far, it shows her boyfriend's temper and ability to hit her. Something all of you may not know about me is my last two boyfriends have been abusive. Both of them were abusive when confronting me about possible cheating. One of them was right, the other was wrong. Another parallel between Katie and I is we both have sex with our boyfriends/exboyfriends after they hit us. I can't speak for her, she is just a character in a movie I watched, but if she is anything like me, when you get caught cheating and that's why your boyfriend hits you often wonder if you deserve it. I can't be the only one who has ever thought this way. It took me years, and two abusive relationships to see that no guy, no matter what you did has the right to hit you.

The guy Katie cheats with is much older than she. He is also in a relationship at the time. This is where we get to my secrets. The things I have never let anyone hear, until now. (While I'm sure there are many points in my life I could have chosen this related to, this is the moment for me that clicked) I went on a break with my boyfriend. I've been on many breaks in my life, but this one was not my choice. It also was different. He wanted a break to see I only wanted him. I thought I only wanted him. Not even a day passed and I was hitting the bars celebrating my freedom with some friends. Almost everyone had left except "Jordan" and me. I had known Jordan for sometime. He worked with my boyfriend exboyfriend whatever he was being called, and his girlfriend was someone that I thought was pretty cool. I did not understand them as a couple, but I thought she was a great girl. I guess neither of those things were enough to stop me though. We went to an after party together. I remember being very drunk, but cooking orange chocolate pancakes in the house of someone I did not know (Bisquick, orange juice instead of water, and Chocolate Muscle Milk instead of real milk. Sounds weird, but they were great). I also remember a group of four girls trying to pull me into their orgy. No guys were allowed, but they wanted me. I took a quick look. I definitely did not want to join in the "fun", but I do remember hearing all the sounds as I was leaving the apartment with Jordan. This was one of those times in my life I did not want to have sex with the guy, but did anyway. I don't even really remember how it happened, it just did. I remember an odd assortment of details from the night that I don't think I want to go into. As I went to leave his apartment in that morning, we vowed never to talk about it. There were so many moving parts this was just for the best, and I agreed. I naively thought we would be friends though. That is my one true one night stand, and I regret every minute of it.

In the movie Katie become pregnant. I've never been pregnant, but there have been times I thought I might be. In those times, or at least some of those times I have been where she was. Unsure who to turn to, and unsure of who the father was. The idea of asking two people to take a paternity test makes me cringe, especially when one is your boyfriend whom you are supposedly faithful too, and the other some random you have no feelings for.

The movie ends with Katie's mom writing an appeal to her blog readers. Katie is abducted (?) when she receives a call late night to leave her house. I feel I make my own mother worry about such things more often than she needs to. I live on the edge of my seat. A symptom of that is I trust too easily and accept help from strangers. The way that I live is fun and adventurous, but puts myself in harms way far too often. Being wreckless with myself is one thing, but when other people's emotions are also on the line I think that's taking it a step too far. Often times I live in my own world, and I forget there are people who care about me and who worry when I act without cation.

At the end of Katie's Mom's plea her mother says "I have read all the emails and all the comments my daughter has received, even the nasty ones." Last week I was talking to my own mother about my blog, which despite me begging her not to read it, she does. If she only read what I said that would be one thing, but she, like Katie's Mom, reads the comments. I only know this because during that conversation she said something to the affect of what blog are you talking about? The one with all the nasty comments? My heart sank. I don't care what anonymous users write about me online, but I do care what my mom has to read people saying about me. Does that mean I should stop blogging to spare her the trolls? I haven't decided yet.

This movie was by no means great. It was however great for me. It was like watching someone else spiral out of control, and yelling at them for being stupid, but then you realize the person you're yelling at is you.