One Million Moms....w.o.w.

I wish I could say that I weren't shocked by the blatant hate exhibited on a website that was designed by spouting off Christian beliefs and ideals, but I am. I really really am shocked. It's utterly amazing to me that these people are actively fighting against organizations like Girl Scouts of America simply because they accepted a transgendered girl into their fold. First of all, bravo to GSA for making a decision that will go to help future girls with the same problems. Second, it's obvious to me that these women have perfect children, with no birth issues, coping issues or physical issues that require a little understanding. Either that or each and every one of these women have severe difficulties with reality and medication control.

Transgender and hermaphroditic children are not a product of a Godless family, a lack of prayer, or any other religious affiliation. It is Biology. And the more quickly that we can assist these children in learning to be who they are, not be ashamed, and not have to deal with the hatred brought on by holier-than-thou (literally) Christian...assholes. Believe me, their lives are going to be hard enough without adding to it.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that their idea to send letters to companies who are supporting teenage and children programming that involve a high amount of sexual or inappropriate content should be applauded. Keeping children children until they are no longer children should be the goal of every good parent, in my opinion. I, also, am all about having good Christian values. But my idea of good Christian values does NOT involve acts of hate for those who do NOT share those values. That, in point of fact, makes you a horrible Christian. That kind of hatred perpetuates hate crimes that go beyond words. That kind of hatred is contagious. It justifies your children growing up with hatred, instead of light.

I am not a mother. But I believe I can honestly say that my convictions and ideals about how human beings should treat each other, no matter how they personally believe, will not change should my becoming a mother ever become a reality.

To date, One Million Moms has taken issue with the following:
Polyamorous relationships
Gay rights
Girl Scouts of America (citing GSA's promotion of lesbianism)
Old Navy (for going gay)
Family Guy (which I sort of get from a mother's standpoint, but it's funny)
Disney (for allowing Gay Day to happen in their park)
Oprah (really?? For interviewing Jenna Jameson)
Armani Exchange (for the audacity to occasionally show models that are same-sex)
7-Eleven (for carrying the Playboy issue in which Marge Simpson posed....*blink*)
Avon
Home Depot
CBS
Good Morning America
...

And the list gone on...and on...and on.. What probably upsets me more than the random acts of pure unadulterated hatred is the fact that at the cool mention from a few zealots, many of the companies that they are so venomously bashing and harassing, are removing support and ad space from these issues.

Well, I think it's time to stand up for the other side. I would like to support the right to remove One Million Moms because it is doing nothing more than offending my very nature with its prejudice and hatred. I think we should all stand and take action now! Boycott them, their ideals and their lives. I also thing that we should remind them of the Joy part about the Christianity thing. Because coming from them, it sounds like a profanity. Oh....and I sincerely recommend therapy for the head "moms" for believe the way that they do. :)

Changes

I realize that our lives are forever changing. But when you are involved in the daily process, it's hard to notice the changes that happen over time. The big changes are more significant and that's where I am now. Change is something I have never been rightly comfortable with. I suppose most people I know are that way. I'm not good at the pain and all the negative things that tend to come with pain, although I am getting better at it. The idea doesn't seem as insurmountable as it once did.

I suppose the biggest change in the last year was the loss of my mother. It's been a very odd year. Most days are good and seem like everything is going well and the death of my mother, while ever present, doesn't seem like that big of a deal. I think it's all perspective, but that's not really the point. Of course, there are other days that I feel the pain of that huge loss very deeply and very acutely. It has helped tremendously in the last three months that I've met someone and already am feeling those touches of long-term love effects.

His name is Brandon. And he is good for me. He's made me realize that I can do all of these things I want to do and have been stalling about. He is actually a lot alike me in those ways and I believe that we can motivate each other forward to get some big life things accomplished. I admit that it makes me nervous to be in love with someone after such a short time, but not so much that it scares me away from the idea. I've been hesitant to talk about it up until now just in case it turns out bad. But after three months, I don't feel the need to kill him or harm him in some way. That, alone, speaks volumes about him and the way I feel about him because my level of intolerance for other people in my personal space is almost infamous and has been a source of amusement among my friends for many years. I am withholding all my professions of a life together, no matter how often he and I speak about it, until we have had our first big fight and have survived it. It doesn't even seem to be on the horizon and I'm not looking to cause it.

He is a good guy and comes from a good family. What family I've met so far I like and it seems that they like me. At least, they have no major objections to me so far. I'm happy about that. He has a very deep respect for his parents and I would very much like them to love me, in time. There were some initial tensions about how his family would feel about me. I am the first white girl he has ever dated. While he is not the first black guy that I've dated, knowing how that was for me, I was nervous at the reaction his family would have. They don't seem to care much about that as much as they are concerned that he will end up hurt. That makes me like them even more. I knew how my immediate family would react. Their only contention, for the years they've known that I am not the personality type to stay within one specific race, was that he is a good guy and that I'm happy. I love that my family raised me that way and feel that way as well. I'm still not sure how the rest of my family will react, but I'll be honest, I don't care. They are not involved in my relationship with him and won't be. However, it does say a lot about Brandon that I am looking forward to introducing him to my extended family so that they get to know him. He is one of the few I've ever brought home, of any race.

I am currently revising my resume and am ready to join the real world again. I thank the time I had here at Walmart to spend a year with minimal responsibility. Walmart also introduced me to the man I plan on spending many many more years with. So I'm not unhappy about the time I've spent there, but I am not a retail lifer. I can never be enough of a kiss-ass to middle-management to stay in retail. I'm more suited to a situation where I can speak my mind when I find problems and not be made into a bad seed because of it. I'm not saying that's what Walmart, specifically, is doing. It's just the magical world of retail, like it or not. Don't rock the boat. Don't tip that delicate balance of making more money than people should have while trying to pretend to care about the customer's needs. It's not me.

So, I am going to take some advice from my father and start sending out my resume looking for a researching job. Even if it's a crap job with a crap company to start, I need some job experience doing it. I have plenty of personal experience researching random information. I love it. And I think that over the last few years, between my genealogy and school, I've discovered a natural talent for it. My biggest problems in find a job doing that will be my lack of a degree in any related field and companies that may not have a need for it. I'm hoping that there are companies that have a need for it, but don't know it yet and are willing to give me a chance to prove myself. It's worth a shot. I can't keep doing what I'm doing. It doesn't pay my bills, almost at all, I'm not happy doing it and I feel like I'm too smart to keep doing what I'm doing. I refuse to stay in this rut. So I'm wishing myself luck and am going to attempt to get out of my comfort zone and try and imagine myself doing something I've never imaged before. It will be an interesting adventure.

Words

Words can do funny things to you. They can incite beauty, pain, memories, hatred, and a plethora of other emotions and actions. They get us motivated, whether for good or evil. I am greatly affected by words in my life. The simplest of them bring me great joy. From a man, all I need to hear is "mine" to make me soar.

It's easy to tell someone that words are just words. And sometimes they are. They are so often empty of any real emotion. It depends on the situations and circumstance.

I have always been a big reader. A careful compilation of words can totally immerse me into a new world and let me escape. And most importantly, to me, words allow me to express myself in ways that very little else does.

Unfortunately when you are so affected by words, they can cripple you just as easily as make your life more enriched. Last night some words were spoken to me in a drunken state that hurt me to my core. Rationally, I know that they weren't meant in the spirit of hatred that they were said. But that makes little difference when they are emotional in nature. They hit to the very core of what I sometimes already feel.

I love my family. I am a very firm believer in the fact that no matter what problems there mat be in your family, you should support them when they need it and knock them down when they need it. And they should do the same for you.

The words that hurt me last night will stay with me for a long time and it may be awhile before I can feel forgiveness for them. I don't need help in feeling guilty about my mother or bad about my seeming inability to have children. The fact that these reminders came from someone in my own family is what is making this so hard to deal with. I may overstep my bounds on occasion, but it doesn't matter. I'll be ok. I know that I'm a good person with a big heart and I'm not going to let these words affect me in the long term. But for now I need to feel this pain so that, eventually, I can forgive this pain.

Restless Thoughts

There are many words that I consider vulgar. None of those are any of the normal vulgarity referred to by the common public. Words that are vulgar to me are those associated with meanings or emotions I find to be particularly vulgar on a day-to-day basis. Vulnerability, loneliness, betrayal, infertile, and a host of other similar types of words are the worst ones you can use...

The worst word in that one is vulnerability. All of the other vulgarity involved in my word list tie into that one. I was vulnerable as a child because I was a child. I was naive to the world around me and I'm thankful that I was. There are so many worse options. I stayed vulnerable because I had compassion, tenderness and, unfortunately for me, I wore my heart on my shoulder. Many situations that took that vulnerability for granted caused me to harden up and become much harder to hurt (visibly). If you've ever read anything I've written, it's obvious that I still wear it on my sleeve, I've just put a thin protective covering over it.

I am still, consistently, shocked by the behavior of people. As much of the bad, sad, difficult, unimaginable (etc) that I've witnessed as there has been, and I find it amazing that my vulnerability is so fragile that I'm nearly devastated by the simple, hurtful acts that some people show towards others, animals, and themselves. I'm not talking about any particular thing that has happened recently. But rather, everything I witness that shocks me to my core, whether those around me realize it or not.

In no particular order, these are a few of the things I've witnessed recently that have caused my hair to stand on end and my heart to become a little sadder. A man stepped on a mouse and killed it because (he says) it was going to bite him. He was wearing boots and the mouse was on the ground; A woman blatantly talking about someone who was in earshot, making hurtful remarks about that person and then shrugging it off when noticed; the very recent shooting in Arizona of several people, killing and wounding many; one woman's negativity so affecting those around her that their negativity affects everyone like a wave; the wishing of people dead just because their views aren't shared...

A lot of the things I find shocking seem trivial on a broad scale, but they aren't to me. My brother once said that I was empathetic and at the time I just sort of rolled my eyes and chalked it up to everyone being able to put themselves in someone else's shoes. I have thought quite a bit about that in the years since he said it and I think that maybe he's right. There is a group of people in Slidell that I actually have quite a bit in common with socially. But I refuse to meet them and hang out with them when they are all together because I can feel the negativity and vampire-esq attitudes of those that attend. Individually I like them just fine, but as a group they leave the metaphorical metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

I realize that when I write, I write a lot of depressing and negative...prose? But I only write when I have things weighing my mind down. Sometimes it is about me and other times it isn't. Then again, there are times, like now, when it's a bit of both. I'm really not like this all the time. I LOVE to laugh. I love to look for the humor in all situations. I love to see beauty in anything from another person, to a sign on a building. I love to entertain and make people around me feel good. When you hear me making funny, sarcastic and dry comments and then turn around and be sugary sweet to someone I don't know, don't assume that I'm faking that change or the things I'm saying. I am genuinely happy to help in any way I can... and to anyone that needs it. The beauty in the human world, and most definitely outside of it, is so infinite and so (here's that word again) vulnerable that it hurts me to my core to see anything mess that up.

When I'm down and can't give you a reason as to why, just understand that it isn't going to last. I will find beauty again. You just have to give me time to work out my disappointment in whatever I've seen, done or heard.

Using This Thing For Good

I keep saying I'm going to write. I know that writing is cathartic and one of my few ways of really being able to get those things that bother me off my chest. The other major one is being ignored as deeply as writing is. I feel like I have all of this pent up energy built up inside me that is dying to get out and I can't seem to find the faucet. Either that or I'm afraid to find it because it's been rusted shut and I can't find the tools to fix it.

When I write, I try not to think about what I'm writing or the people that may/may not be reading it. Unfortunately, one of those two things seems to be getting in my way over the last two or three years. So my words have had very little flow. I think this all has to do with the same rut I've gotten myself stuck in. I told my best friend the other night that I feel like I'm continuously running myself into a wall. I can see that there are more than two ways to get around the wall, but I am running myself into it anyway. I'm not sure what is on the other side, but I would rather the comfortability of the same pain of having my nose smashed into the bricks over and over again than to try and figure out new ways of getting myself hurt. I just can't go on like this. If I do, I'll end up a severely tattooed, 60-yr old woman with cats and renting a crappy apartment in the middle of a nowhere town. No children, no prospects, no...anything. As long as I continue to sit on my ass, that is where I'm going to end up.

I would very much like to see myself doing some of the following: being more creative, actively finding a job that is more suitable to who I am, using this blog for something other than depressing rants, getting more involved with my photographs, finally design that wood carving I've been avoiding., etc. They are goals. Now I just need to see if I'm able to follow through with them.

**side note: I know you're watching, but I can't understand why you don't just speak to me. Even if it's to tell me what you *really* think of me. But the move is in your hands. It always has been. I'll love you for my whole life. Just so you know.**