rebuilding bridges

It has been years since I have voiced myself here. Interestingly enough, since it is here that I have always found myself welcome to speak the truth. In these past three years of crumbling friendships, new relationships and motherhood I have simply found that I miss this circle of my past, these people who gave themselves in frienship freely and openly. I hope they are doing well.

I'm Back Baby

So it has been a very long time since I've wrote, or even been able to think straight for that matter. There is too much to cover so if I jump subjects I apologize. So I have been back from the Army for 9 months now, due to a training injury that ended my short career.

Until just a few days ago, my life has been chaos since I left, and looking back, it was before I left as well. But keep in mind that this article is not a bitch fest. It just requires a great deal of explanation for it to make sense. Going back to the days of high school, as previously mentioned in a former article entitled "Role Models", also the point when my life started to spiral down, I was dating a girl my senior year, and we did everything together, things were going great. Then on that day, Dec 23rd 2006, we snuck off together. Apparently someone notified her parents, right wing baptists, and the authorities, and they pulled her out of school and did not allow her to leave the house. We stayed in contact via internet, but of course this only drove the knife in deeper. Five months of pain pass, and we ended up ending our relationship, in May of 2007. But by June I had my life back on track, doing what I always did, care free, going from one place to the next. In August I went to a party that she ended up being at. Of course as soon as I saw her it all came rushing back in an instant. We has a long fight, because she didnt tell me her parents let off, and that she found another boyfriend. At the time, this only enraged me. Because I knew her, and I said she would end up finding someone else and forget about me. The reason it made such a fight was because she told me right there that she still loved me but didnt want to risk all that again. We started talking again in September, but we still fought an awful lot. And what I said would happen did. She fell faster than I expected and she told me she was falling in love with someone else. So I gave her an ultimatum. She had until I signed the papers for the military to make a decision. If she chose me I wouldn't sign them. If she refused, then I would leave her life completely. She never answered, and as an absolutionist, I took it as she didn't choose me. Throughout this whole period of my life, I was constantly in confusion, and mental chaos. Maybe now the other girls I was with during that time after I was out of high school can understand why I felt so hurt when they left me even though it never lasted very long. It was like re-living it all over again.

So to the army I went. There is too much to be said about the army, but for this thread of thought, I let myself be brainwashed. I became a Soldier. A cold, heartless killer. No emotion, no remorse. After my injury my new way of life and thinking came crashing down. I was thrown back into civilian society.

So still in the mindset of a soldier, and also a very angry individual, I started taking verbal, and mental stabs at my friends. Also the chaos of my mind would not stop. I couldn't think straight, I no longer had my ability to coherently articulate my thoughts. So there was no way I could write anything of any value. Or even talk to a good friend. I also at one point attacked my brother. My Own Brother :( . I couldn't stop myself. I couldn't control myself. Then we lost our apartment because of financial difficulty and for three months afterword we weren't even sure we were going to be able to eat on any particular day, much less pay our rent or bills. I finally got a job, got a new apartment, and we started running pen and paper RPG's aging. I was still in the same angry, chaotic mindset. Not to mention the depression. So then a series of sensitive events happened, that I apologize, I cannot give the details, that brought all the pain of that original girlfriend back to life and in my mind. On the brink of suicide, I cried out for help. And infinite thanks to that person, you know who you are. I went back through my old writings, my old articles, and other things I wrote during the time of my life, when I was in control. I read them and remembered who I was, and why I was that person.

I was the stonewall that my friends leaned on, because nothing could break me. I was the person with all the answers, because the answer is always simpler than is expected. Being completely fearless in everything I did, because whatever is going to happen, will happen, and fear also keeps you from doing things that you want because you might not like the outcome. Whatever will happen is going to happen, so do it anyway. Or you can let the fear control you and you will never know what will happen. All it takes is just to follow another path when one is a dead end to get around it. The peacefulness of being where you are because any moment can be beautiful if you make it so. Pick out the little things in that moment that make you happy, and hold on to them. Harbor no hatred because it only makes you not see what is in front of you.

Looking at it now it is truly amazing how one person can have so much power over you. She has been gone from my life for so long, and I no longer have feeling for her, but the hatred, confusion, and depression stayed with me.

I finally remember, and I will not forget again.

Time flies

So I know that I haven't posted much lately. Life has been hectic. Red Death is at Army Basic training at the moment and it's tough not having him around. It's weird, but when you hang out with someone so much you just can't enjoy the things you did with them. We used to watch TV shows just to make fun of the actors, go to metal concerts together, and generally get ourselves into a lot of trouble. Now that he's gone I realize how much I miss him. Rumor has it that his unit will be shipping to Iraq after they complete their AIT. (Army Individual Training). I'm not a very religious person, but I pray for his safety.

Godspeed Red Death.

Insecurities, Braggin Rights, and everything in between

So in these past couple of days I find myself seeing myself in a whole new way. No longer the rose colored glasses, when I look in the mirror I see only the imperfections, I see only the ugly, and I wonder: Why is that? I used to see the beauty in myself, and I am talking physically here, not metaphorically people. I was never really overly vain, but I knew I was beautiful when I looked in the mirror. I know now that I am beautiful, but it's beauty tainted by my own lack of motivation. Where did my motivation to keep myself in shape go? When did I stop caring about my body? What does that reflect on my social and intellectual and emotional life? All these questions are playing dodge-ball brain, and I have no answers for when. But I do know what I am going to do about it. Starting at 7am Tuesday morning ( Novemebr 13th) I am cutting out all soda. No more of that, and cutting myself down to one candy bar a week. Period, and also, no food after 9pm. These will be big adjustments for me, as I've never really had to watch my diet before, but I believe firmly that it will be worth it.
The next thing is starting on Monday (novemeber 19th) I will begin doing an excerise program that my brother is going to design for me,. I'm tired of feeling fat and flabby, I want my body back, so I am tacking it back. No more does it get to run amok with me.

The other question playing around with me is this: Can you really miss someone you've never met? Never even talked to on the phone? Can a person who only exists in the typed and written word really have such a huge impact on the way you think, feel, and view things? How is it that someone who could be nothing but a liar can bring about such a shocking change? Is it even a real change? If it is, then how can something so profoundly good come from something that I have looked down on, and heard so many bad things about? What is that about?

These I have no answers too, and I think that is ok. Maybe the answers are not in the answers, but in the experiences. And maybe it's the suddenness of it all that has spurred me into finally taking action about the declining state of my physical health. Who knows.

All I know is that when something affects change for the good, it cannot truly be bad, and that not all opinions have to be set in stone, the beauty of a good opinion is that it is ever open to the possibility of fallacy, and is willing to make the proper changes.

Let's Talk PC

Yesterday in Psych, we started talking about PC (not personal computer: Political Correctness). The debate was whether or not being PC was a good thing, and was it a form of critical thinking. I would like to start out by saying in advance that I was just sure that my Professor would argue for PC, but I was wrong. First he asked me to define PC;

PC is the acceptable form of unoffensive terminology in society.

That is the general definition. He agreed, and we went on, by the end of his debating and asking questions he had made his point. He agreed with me that PC was totally crap, but he also pointed out just how dangerous it was. It was a new way of thinking for most people in the classroom to realize that your common sense and ability to logic can be overpowered by someones else's will to have things be the way they want.

For example: Just because things should be equal for men and women does not mean that they are. To use my teachers example, just because a man chooses to do his 3 mile run between the hours of midnight and three a.m. does not make it a good idea, it does not mean that woman can't run at that time, however history shows that if a woman were to go running at that time, she much more likely to be attacked and raped, or killed than a man is. SO logically it would be a bad idea for her to go running in the early hours of the day or the late hours of the night ( however you view that time slot). But the PC people will say that it should make no difference, and therefore it makes no difference if you are a man or a woman, and that the woman should also go running, just to prove that point. The fact that she will most likely be accosted in one way or another does not matter, because she should be able to run since that is fair. Well life isn't fair, and yes that is a rather extreme example but it doesn't change the fact that PC denies the fact that life isn't fair. Making it dangerous.

Here's another point: PC is supposed to be unoffensive, so I ran a poll. Yesterday we learned what the PC terms "Wife" and "Pregnancy" are. Since those two words are obviously offensive, I asked pregnant women, married women, gay women, strait women, women who had never had children, and women who had kids but weren't pregnant at the time, divorced women, and single women, and women who were going through divorce ( a total of 50) how they would preferred to be addressed. Which way is more offensive

Wife/ x-wife(normal)
Domestically incarcerated?Domestic Incarceration Survivor (PC term)

100% said they preferred the term wife or x-wife

Pregnant(normal)
Parasitically Oppressed (PC)

100% chose pregnant

All 50 women showed signs pf outrage when the PC term was presented to them, and well let's just say calling children a parasite is a really dangerous thing and will most likely cause you physical harm.

IF PC is supposed to be unoffensive: they failed. Giving in to extreme feminist and letting people be stupid but calling it "cerebraly challenged", doesn't make someone less stupid. Telling a child they "achieved a deficiency" doesn't change the fact that they failed at something.

We need to be teaching people how to strengthen themselves not making excuses for things and leaving people the state that they are in already. People need to learn, people learn through trial and error, or through failure, these are important lessons in life and the PC age is wrong. Period.

Political Correctness has definitely Achieved a Deficiency in making sense, but that's OK, because they can always just say they are "Cerebraly Challenged"

Lying to ourselves

Why do we humans lie, and more importantly, why do we lie to ourselves. This is the subject that has been bouncing around my skull all day while I go about my routine. I'm curious about people by nature. I like to learn their dreams and goals, I like to learn about them as a person. But the more I learn, the more I see a disturbing trend. They don't truly believe what they're telling me. Many times I have learned about someone only to see that what they want is right in front of them, but they won't take it. There's always reasons, some of them may seem logical to them. But if they would just stop and take the time to think about it, really think about it, they would see how their internalized rules and conditions that they impose on themselves prevent them from obtaining it. I think that's the main problem, people simply just don't stop and think. They don't spend any time simply allowing their brain to work without forcing it in one direction or the other. I have gotten into the habit of taking 30 minutes out of each day and just allowing my brain to work. No distractions. No music, no movies, and nobody around. Just simple peaceful quiet. The trick is that you can't force yourself to think in a certain direction, your brain is a marvel and it is more than capable of sorting your various thoughts and ideas into implementable actions. It cuts through the haze of everyday life like a knife. You will figure things out going on in your life or in others life and never know how you did it.

There's a series of articles on Sirlin.net called "Playing to Win". The series is a fascinating read, but I'm going to talk about one section called "Introducing...the Scrub" (http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/intermediates-guide/introducing-the-scrub/). I realize it's talking about game play, but it can also apply to real life. Sirlin describes a Scrub as someone who has built up a set of internalized rules on how they play. This of course prevents them from winning against higher level opponents because they refuse to use tactics that they have arbitrarily defined as "cheap". He doesn't really play to win because he has decided that these rules, which are not defined by the game he is playing, is the true way to play. Think about how that applies to your life. Do you have internalized rules about things you will or will not do in your career, love life, or home life? Do you have some rule that if your boss is an asshole on a paticular day that you're not going to work very well for him? Do you even know if you have it, or is it just automatic and you never really thought about it? Do you have set rules about who you will date and who you will not? What if you are a perfect personality match, get along great, and share many of the same ideas but she isn't perfect looking? Or will you not date them because you're too good of friends? What about your home life? Are there set boundaries on the things you can and cannot talk about with your family? Why? Families should be able to talk about anything, no matter how embarrassing the subject is to one party or the other. But we don't, even though we tell ourselves that's what families are for.

So the moral of this whole rant is, don't let your internalized regulations get in the way of something you truly want. If you stare at the few ugly trees long enough, you'll miss the beautiful forest that you could be living in.

PA Quotes

ME: People are like sheep

Si: Yeah, except you, you're like that black sheep

ME: Yeah, I don't baa, I BaH.

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ME: Dude, there are way too many kids.

Si: I love kids, you know in that dismissive, here you can have it back kinda of way....

ME: Yeah, me too, I love kids, you know, the same way I love malaria


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Bekah: It looks like it's crying

ME: yah, like black tears of emo

Bekah: yeah, except purple, and grape flavored..

Both: dude, what if emo kids tears were grape flavored....

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