What Is This World Coming To?
I'm sorry, but President Bush needs to get the boot. What is it going to take for people to see how much damage he is doing to this country? What's worse, he refuses to be held accountable for it. Cindy Sheehan has every right to have a conversation with him. It was on his orders that her son was fighting a senseless war to begin with. Every person who has lost a loved one in Iraq should be allowed a few minutes of his time. He should be held accountable for this heinous decision he made. He called for a war, and ignored the UN, on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. Okay, so he was proven wrong. Why are our solders still there? They certainly aren't defending Americans. They are defending oil. The precious commodity of Texas.
To rub a little salt in the wound, another prominent Texan politician was indicted for fraudulently using campaign funds. Not only was he indicted, but so were two other Texans under his big belt buckle. This is just getting stupid. In the six years that Bush has been in office, what has gotten better in your life? What has improved? I can honestly say that in my life, there have been no changes for the better. What I see is this country going to hell in a handbasket, and fast. Frankly, it scares the shit out of me. It makes me fear bringing a child into this world. Just take a look at the huge mess we are leaving our future generations. It's a disgrace.
If only each individual out there who feels like they are helpless to remove Bush from office pulled together, I think we Americans might actually stand a chance. We as a country are bigger than Bush could ever hope to be. It's time we united and did what is right for us little people.
Life Goes On
I was rifling through a box of random stuff today, when I came across an old greeting card. It was a birthday card given to me on my 15th birthday. I opened the card to see who had given it to me. What I saw was foreign, unfamiliar handwriting. I realized that the handwriting had belonged to my mother. She gave me the card one month before she died. It's odd how time robs us of things that were once so trivial and familiar. It's been almost twenty years, and there are so many things that I have begun to forget. My mom's handwriting for example. I saw it everyday for fifteen years and would have known it anyway. The same can be said for the sound of her voice. However, I don't think I would recognize it if I were to hear it today. I want to hold on to these memories, to the things that connected me to her, but time continues to remove them from my memory. I think I'll start a journal of sorts and chronicle the memories I have of her before I forget those too. Time is a funny thing, isn't it?
Okay, So It's Not Just Me
My life has been full of epiphanies and light bulb moments lately. One of my more recent ones involve this guy that I've been going on about. It's been slowly hitting me for the last couple of months. I think the final straw was when he pushed me into driving home after I had been drinking. Granted, I wasn't wasted, but I definitely had a good buzz on. Now, I should tell you that drinking and driving is one of the things that angers me the most. And I swore I would never do it. The fact that he would endanger my life, as well as those around me, just destroyed whatever ounce of trust I had left.
Okay, so let me give you a run-down on the evolution of my feelings towards this guy. This guy was a college professor of mine. The first time I met with him, I felt this instant connection. It was a bizarre thing for me because I had never experienced that before. Well, apparently he felt it to. It wasn't long before he was IMing me and at some point the conversations stopped being clean. I was very confused by this because I knew it was totally unethical. Eventually, he invited me over, and one thing led to the other. After that, he started acting distant and cold towards me. I learned from him that he was attracted to his younger 19-year-old students, and has actually dated some of them. However, not while he was their professor. This was something that just disturbed me. Other events took place that I won't get into, but it did involve lying and deception on his part. We stopped talking for almost a year. In retrospect, I realized that this guy was completely emotionally inept. I have since reconnected with this person. Over the last year that we have been in contact, I naively felt that I could somehow help him. He is the type of person that totally controls his feelings. He only feels what he wants to and ignores everything else. This is probably how he can be so promiscuous and not care. He can decide he doesn't love or even like someone because their socio-economical or educational backgrounds don't match his. He decides he doesn't like someone because they are overweight. He is very shallow. I thought that maybe this is how some guys just are. I thought that I was just naive and maybe this type of is normal. I thought that if I stuck around, no matter how mean and disrespectful he was to me, I could somehow fix him; make him see the light. I realized how stupid that notion was. Even my friends and therapist told me that his behavior is not normal. People who truly feel things, can't control it. They can only control the way the react to feelings. They don't just decide who they love. The saying that you can't choose who you love is totally true. Either the connection is there or it isn't. He believes that he shouldn't have to work at a relationship. Any kind of relationship. He wants to only hang around people who are mirror images of himself. Nobody is allowed to disagree with him. At some point, I thought that maybe he really did care about me, or heaven forbid, maybe even love me. Perhaps he just doesn't know it yet. I thought that maybe if I went away, he would come running. Yeah right. If I left, he wouldn't even flinch. I have since realized that he doesn't know how to love. He has said so many terrible things to me that there is no way he could possibly care about me. Hell, he even flaked on my birthday and was so mean about it, I cried. Maybe there never was a connection at all.
I know now that he is a total narcissist. He only likes having people around who boost his ego. This guy is in his mid-thirties, but has the emotionally intelligence of a five-year-old. I wish I could warn every young girl out there to stay away from him. He will eventually hurt them. He'll get bored with them and move on. He is going to be alone for the rest of his life. I think part of the reason why he likes these young girls is because they are naive enough to put up with his shit. Anyone who is close to his age will call him on it, as I did. And look where that got me! Well, I know that it's his problem and not mine. I am not all of the things he has accused me of being. I am a good and caring person that he is missing out on. His loss.
I'm tempted to post his picture here, like a mug shot, so that women everywhere can be warned. I won't be that mean though! He claims he going to be "celibate" for now. That is the biggest joke I have ever heard. He is incapable of celibacy. I just hope he doesn't endanger anyone else. It was bad enough that he has endangered me more than once. I sincerely hope nobody has to pay for his lack of feeling. Okay, end of rant! :-)
A Major Breakthrough
Okay, so I've been absent for a while. I've been dealing with an ongoing medical issue for the last two plus years. It has been really frustrating, as I'm sure you all can imagine. Anyway, after seeing many, many doctors, the general consensus is that I have an autoimmune disorder, most likely lupus. It's not an easy disease to diagnose, so that's why it's only likely at this point. Regardless, I have been sicker than a dog. It has shut down most of my life. I've had to take a medical leave from work (which is actually good since that place is going to hell in a hand basket very quickly), so now I'm dealing with lovely financial strains as well. My insurance is crappy to begin with, and the largely reduced income doesn't help. What has this society come to when getting medical care becomes a burden. We pay taxes up the butt, and what do we really get in return? Ugh. Don't get me started. That's a rant for another post.
Anyway, I've been going to family therapy with my sisters for the last month or so because we seem to have a vicious communication issue that we haven't been able to change, and desperately need to. It's a long story, but I'll try to give you the short version since it directly applies to the aforementioned breakthrough.
See, my sisters are 10 and 13 years older than I am. When I was 15-years-old, my mother passed away. Shortly before her passing, my dad came to me and asked if we should leave my mom. She was a manic depressive who refused to get help. I think my dad got tired of dealing with it, so he went to me to find a way out. I felt that if we left her for a while, she would get help. I was a very sheltered 15-year-old, what the hell did I know? Anyway, I said yes, let's bolt. So he took me to my sisters house and said he'd come back for me. Next thing I know, he's shacking up with some tart and has completely forgotten about me and my mother. A few months later, my mom died. Well, that was pretty much the end of my relationship with my father. At that point I was more or less abandoned. My sisters had their own families, so they weren't much of a support system for me. So I just bucked up and plugged through the trails and tribulations of life the only way I knew how.
Well, in a therapy session today, I discovered that I never grieved for the loss of my mom, or my dad for that matter. I have a lot of built up anger and guilt that I have never expressed to anyone. I think that realizing this, and seeing the impact that all of this has had on who I have become, was a major epiphany. I can see how it relates to so many of the problems I have had in my life. It gives me hope that if I can work through the guilt and the anger, my life will improve. Maybe I can finally be confident enough to be successful. Maybe I'll be okay with being alone. I guess only time will tell, but here's hoping for a positive outcome!
Oh, and that guy that I've been ragging about, well there is also another epiphany there. I'll wait for tomorrow to post that gem. In the meantime, I'd also like to post a picture from the Walk America event. It was a nice day and a great walk. I was impressed with my fundraising, if I do say so myself. :-)
Happy Birthday To You!
I just want to give a shout out to my biggest sister
Suzie Q. Today she turns a whopping 45-years-old. She is the prettiest, most loving, and talented sister ever (well, she's tied with my other sister!). I am so blessed to have her as a sister. I'm sorry I'm not home to share the day with you! I'm sending you my love!
