“All or nothing,” I said as I gave him back the ring. In other words, we behave like a married couple and do all that the other wishes, everything that we can do, and not just everything that we must do, or we break up. Either this is the last honey-moon of our relationship, or this is just beginning our lifetimes together. Time will tell.
I forgot to take the Laundry out of the washer on Tuesday. Crusifer discovered this. I had completely forgotten. Since the washer and dryer is on the second floor, right beside my parent’s bedroom, on the other side of Mary’s apartment so that I have to go to the first floor to get to it... Usually my mom puts it in the dryer for me. I didn’t think I had to remember. Especially because I wouldn’t expect it to go on to other people’s laundry days without anyone saying so. Monday and Tuesday are my days to get my laundry done.
I called him to me, barely awake enough to know I was awake, wanting his affection. He replied with telling me I let the wash sit there and grow mildew because I was relying on my mom instead of doing it myself. I snapped awake. Not having anything but something like that to think about will wake anybody up and make them feel miserable, eh?
He was surprised when I began to cry. I wouldn’t have cried over it during the day or at night, but first thing in the morning...? That’s not the best time to slap somebody’s wrist... I likely won’t be able to think about anything else all day.
I hate that he’s at work. I won’t see him for eleven hours... He’ll spend all that time talking to people who... don’t give a shit about anything...
I feel so shitty and I only just got up.
Perhaps it’s not so unbelievable that the world is in shambles. In the generation of my grandparents (growing up in 1890 to 1940) being able to get an education at a large public facility was amazing. Imagine, your parents are farmers, but there is a community college in the nearest city, and you can scrape up enough money to go. Imagine that few people you know can read, and fewer still can write, and that you’ve grown up plowing fields and no you discover that you can earn a living using your brain. (I’m doing a lot of guessing here, so cut me some slack.)
Teenagers set out to do things differently than their parents, and usually end up falling in all the same ruts. But what happened between my mom’s generation and mine? When she was my age getting an education was a privilege, drugs didn’t make the world go round, and women we’re still becoming house wives. So why are girls my age dropping out of high-school to raise babies and work at the same time? What happened that people take marriage as seriously as they take... Anything else these days, right along with the flippant attitudes around sex, drugs, religion and careers.
I feel like nobody cares about anything. And the things people do care about is just disgusting... It’s hard for me to stop being down on the world sometimes. I feel like it’s not enough that I live a good life... Yet you ask me what I’m doing about anything? Signing petitions online... I suppose that’s about it... I just want to know what happened to the virtue of education... I feel like this city has forsaken it.
I have some speculations about love that I just must write down. These speculations were inspired by the following:
“Love,” says Dr. Erich Fromm, “is the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
And, from Paracelsus; “He who knows nothing, loves nothing. He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees... The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love... Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.”
Both are quite profound, and lead into things I already “know” or, more correctly, believe about the ever-illusive love.
I was thinking about these things, and also thinking about mankind, and our existence when it occurred to me that humankind is very without love as a whole. War is loveless. Weapons are loveless. Poverty is loveless. Lies are loveless. The battle of religions is so loveless that it’s plain hopeless. After all, every religion worth belonging to says that we should “love our neighbors” and to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us” and so forth, and yet we would rise up in crusades, torture, kill, taunt, and discriminate against others who have a variety of different beliefs.
Wouldn’t it be much more fruitful for everyone if all the religion stopped battling? Imagine if no one ever tried to convert you again, by force or by persuasion? Wouldn’t that make a dramatic improvement on the contentment of society and in the love of other beliefs? I have nothing against the bible, and am a believer in Jesus, and yet Christians drive me to distraction when they’re “sewing their seeds” by spreading “scripture.” If that’s all they really are out to do then they can sell their books silently! (And without the big signs indicating that we’re going to hell!)
If I believed in hell I’d say around eight-percent of us are headed their. We’re all jealous of someone, and short of that, we’ve all lied to someone out of guilt or anger or fear, and short of that we’ve stolen from somebody or taken revenge on someone, or been unfaithful or judgmental. And many of us are not repent-ful in the least. And if that was enough evidence to hell being overcrowded, how about the “fact” that only one religion (the right one!) and the right actions matched will get you a ticket into the white palace in the clouds among the saints.
What a load of rubbish.
If everyone was busy loving someone else (instead of looking for someone to love them) then the whole world might be a bit different. “Where is the love?” asked the black eyed peas. It’s a very good question. It’s certainly not in the government, and not in prisons, and not in schools, and not in churches, and not in many or most hospitals. Worse yet, it’s not even households anymore. Parents are divorced, and kids are growing up with one defect or another. If it’s not their health and weight and concepts about food and exercise (which is at least half of America’s children), then it’s due to drug abusing parents or friends, and short of that there is a lack of education, or an abusive parent or parents. And if you’re a really unlucky kid you could be victim to kidnaping or rape. What a beautiful world we’re raising kids in these days! And none of it sounds like love to me.
Now, this is going to sound really cruel, I’ll grant that. But hear me out. If you love your children more than anything and want them to not repeat your mistakes, wouldn’t you feed them the best foods, send them to the best schools, give them the attention they need, not spoil them, do the research to learn what’s best for them and sacrifice your own comfort to bring them up with a health mentality? I bet you’re saying “of course!” to these things, right?
If you know that coming to them every time they cry when they’re a baby immediately (after several months, not when they’re a newborn) is spoiling them, you’d hold back on your impulse and wait a few minutes of their tears, right? A lot of parents these days at least have gotten that far.
If you know that talking to them about sex and drugs is a good way to help show your kids your family values you’d shove down your discomfort and confront them on these issues before they’re horny and depressed teenagers, right? A lot of parents even get that right too, and this is also worthy of applause.
If you know the best way for your child to identify with male and female aspects of society is to have a mother and a father living at home, you’d try your best to work it out with your spouse or to find a suitable replacement if impossible, right? This one is a tougher one, and for the most part, where I live this is sadly lacking.
I’m not going to argue my case for home schooling, because for some families that can’t work and maybe isn’t even the best for the children in many cases. But my all-time pet-peeve?
If I told you that it’s a known fact that corn syrup (with high fructose or not) stays in the intestines relatively permanently, would you feed your children anything with high fructose corn syrup in it? And to set an example, wouldn’t it be best for you not to eat any of it as well so there wouldn’t be any hypocrisy and so that it wouldn’t be in the household?
If I told you that it’s a known fact (that is covered up as best as it can be) that refined sugar in general ruins your capillaries and increases the risk for virtually every disease under the sun especially diabetes, wouldn’t you then decide it was best to removed refined sugar from your household and especially from your child’s diet?
The sugar conspiracy makes me so angry that I could just scream. I keep seeing fat children! Children are supposed to have energy and happiness, not be tired after running half way across the room and be loaded with an extra thirty pounds and stuffing their face with candy every half hour. It’s just disgusting. ADD is a freaking lie. All that is wrong with the child is the amount of sugar he eats, and studies with hundreds of children (in independent non-government funded facilities that managed to not get paid off by the sugar industries) show this to be true. Even their hand-writing improved after changing their diet from candy, burgers, pasta and pop-tarts to whole foods like grass-fed meats cooked with long-grain brown rice or other fillers full of fiber, a large variety of vegetables, whole-grain breads, and fruits.
This all goes to show how little love is in the world. Parents aren’t even willing to change their life-styles for the little-ones they love the most. Perhaps they want to, or perhaps they are trying to, but as we all know, trying is just the non-existent moment between thinking about doing something and doing it. You might be trying to get a certain affect by doing something, but there is no “trying” to be accounted for without an action and a desired result.
Self-love is pretty much non-existent as well. While you have handful of the population who takes care of their health, mentally, emotionally and physically (and even spiritually), the majority of the population (from my perspective) is on a self-destructive path through one outlet or another. Perhaps their outlet is partying which they masquerade as “enjoying life.” Sadly and ironically enough, “enjoying life” seems to also be the same excuse used for lack of maintaining health.
I have a very sober question to ask. Are hospital bills enjoyable? What about hang-overs? What about waking up to somebody you don’t know? What about vomiting up half your stomach? Do you enjoy acid flux or constatation? Is withdrawal from drugs (legal or illegal) enjoyable? Is spending a good portion (or any portion) of your income on any form of drugs enjoyable? Is discovering that you’ve gained weight enjoyable? Is depression enjoyable?
Enjoying life means being healthy enough to enjoy it, and anyone who denies it is well... In denial. And as I’ve said before “denial leads to break-ups” and I don’t just mean in romantic relationships. It also breaks up relationships between you and your body, you and your job, and the relationship between you and your happiness.
Say you’re perfectly healthy. Say you do love yourself. But do you love your partner? Do you exercise with your partner? Do you encourage them to live your healthy life-style? Are you involved in their life? If you actually love yourself and your partner, and if you have kids and you take all the previously described steps to loving your children as well, then I fully commend you as a honor to society. But if you are indeed one of those people, then you’ll understand my distress. How few people have you met like yourself? How many others have you met who are interested in self-improvement and “brightening the corner where they are” and loving their significant other to the fullest?
What’s worse is that the few people out there like that are only the hardiest of us. Most of us had the chance to be loving creatures when we were small. But at one point in life or another something in us snapped. Was it the first-grade bullies or the high-school ones? Or did it take you until your first ass-hole boss to start to hate the world instead of love it? And how can we love the world when the world seems so determined to hate us!
I feel like I’m on that struggle right now in my life. I can take life and embrace it and love it and hold on to all of it’s beauty and pleasure, or I can let the oppressive hate in and become anther empty shell going about daily life...
Perhaps that’s the real reason why I’m so against getting a job. My frail immune system makes a great excuse, and so does wanting to be a stay-at-home wife, but more relevantly, I think a real day job would suck the life-force out of me. I might become “stronger” and I might be a bit “richer” but I might be in fact poorer and weaker on the inside, where it matters most. Day jobs are miserable. They kick you down, and then keep kicking you while you’re down. Sure, they don’t have to be like that, but from my perspective, most jobs (especially an no-experience entry-level) are heart-break, heart-burn, heart-bruise and burn until you’re a scarred mass who is open to nothing and no one.
I sigh. How can I not? I feel like my employment and my loss of spirit is inevitable. I’m fighting a battle inside myself to be self-motivated, self-inspired, self-satisfying, self-loving and to be loving to those around me. Fear is a big enemy to these ambitions, and yet I’m extremely afraid of all the technicalities in life preventing me from achieving these goals. The last thing I need is a worthless minimum-wage day job, or a heart-wrenching break-up.
I suppose I’m not really one to judge what’s best. I’m only nineteen after all, and the powers the be know that I’m reminded of that all too often. Were that I wasn’t nineteen. What age would I be? I’d be ageless, and name-less save that of love. You could call me chi for short, and beautiful when you try to seduce me.
Love is an art. It takes effort and practice. Falling in love is not an art, it just happens. Making it last is the important part.
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