I miss you

You always seem to come to mind late at night. Always once the world is asleep and I'm left alone to think. I don't mind thinking of you, it just hurts sometimes. Its jolting to think how young I was when you went away, the emptiness in my chest feels so deep. I wonder what you'd be like today, seeing as you were so young yourself. Would you still be the same sarcastic person? Would you still love to play guitar, and wear your hair shaggy, and refuse to go anywhere clean-shaven? I wonder if you'd still be friends with Brandon...if Brandon would have still signed up and been sent over there, to that land of sand and rock, that sucked the joy and eventually the life out of him. Would you still care about me? Or would we have drifted apart the way childhood friends always do? As it was, we didn't see each other often. You never met my friends from school. That move your mom made...but all of that doesn't change much in the end.

I wonder sometimes, if I'm the way I am because of you. Because I loved you so much. Your heart, and your sarcasm, and your wit. I wonder if you brought the beginnings of that out of me. I can't remember your birthday anymore. I can't remember if you'd be 27 or 28 now. I can't even imagine your face anymore. That kind of thing scares me. I can remember your hair sometimes...if I don't end up blending your shaggy blond waves with Brandon's dark curls. But your face is so faded, I can't bring out the details. I can't remember if your eyes were green or blue. I can't remember if you had any scars. I can't even remember your middle name. I feel like you're fading out of my mind like a dream, and one day I'll wake up, and never think of you again.

I wish you could be here now. I wish you could meet my friends, and I could call on shitty days. I wish I could've watched you get married. Back then I don't really think I grasped what I was going to miss out on. You know, when I was little, I imagined you walking me down the aisle? I thought of that tonight. Of how the three men I ever imagined on that aisle are gone now.

There's this belief that time heals all wounds, but you won't forget someone that important to you. And its so untrue. I can feel memories fading away. Its gradual, and sometimes I don't realize that I'm losing something until I try to picture it. I feel guilty sometimes, when I realize how long its been since I thought of you. But then again, its life. Thinking of you every day would be painful. I wish that I at least had your family. But your brother has been gone for longer than you have...and Missy....man she got everything from your mother. God. I don't remember if your mother was even alive when I stopped checking in. But after Missy, there wasn't much point. Your mom wasn't a huge fan of anyone you knew. Not really sure why though.

In any case...this whole thing is just a long ass way of saying I miss you. Because really man, I do. Every day, even if I don't think of you. And for all I know, we woulda parted ways soon and never spoken again. But as it stands, you were torn from me way too early, and I want that time back. I hope you're happy and at peace wherever you are. You deserve it.

Rape

You can tell this is gunna be a happy post just from the title can't you? I know, I'm a bundle of joy.

I read a poem today about rape, and while the poem was very well done, the girl painted a bit too dark a picture and I wanted to vent. Since she has not been raped, and the poem was meant for righteous, kind reasons, I did not want to vent at her. Especially seeing as she has hundreds of comments already running the gamut from worshiping to deriding her. So thats what I have a blog for right?

Rape is one of those words that destroys a conversations pleasant tone. There is no lighthearted way to discuss it, and you are sure to shuffle your feet and stare at your hands as you try to construct a decent response to anything said. But, and this will sound bad, its not the end of the world. Its life changing, and incredibly destructive, but you can survive, and thrive.

I feel so disheartened to hear about families who treat the victim as if she were made of glass. I understand that you have no idea what to do, and its terrifying. I do. But to treat her as if she is fundamentally tainted or damaged can't possibly do anything to build her strength. As a survivor of sexual abuse, I can say that the years afterwards, when my mother coddled me, made me feel as if I was less of a person because of it. I don't hold it against her. I was her baby, and she was trying her best to keep me from any more pain. But I improved exponentially when she began to treat me as if nothing had happened again. We talked about it, and she was there for me, and protected me, but it was no longer a black cloud over our heads every day.

The writer ended her poem by saying that the victim would never have her prince charming, her wonderful life, her home, her kids, all the things she had dreamed of. She said her mother had forever lost her daughter, and her friends would never be able to be there for her. She would never have a boyfriend again.

I have a wonderful boyfriend, who loves me more than the sun and the stars. We may fight like any other couple, but I never doubt that I am one of the most important things in his life. And I love him more than words can express. He's one of the best things to ever happen to me, and I have NEVER looked at him and seen even a glimmer of the horror of my past. (I did not have a wonderful boyfriend. I had an abusive one. But its over, and its good that its over, and he doesn't matter anymore. He and I not working, and his removal from my life have no impact on the point I'm making.) I have amazing friends, that I love with all my heart. They could break me in an instant, they're so vital and close to me. But I entrust them with everything about my life, and make sure they know I will be there for them through anything they need. My mother did not lose her little girl. I may have had rough patches, but I had the support and love of an entire network of wonderful people. I've known several people from similar backgrounds to mine, and they've survived because of those same support systems.

I'm not saying that there aren't girls who never come back from something like rape. I'm not saying that it isn't hard. But its NOT your whole life. And the friends, family, and loved ones need to be there. Don't LET them pull away, don't let them close themselves off. It will be hard and it will take time, but this doesn't have to define you. The person who did that, that asshole who tried to degrade you and tear you down, does not deserve the power, the satisfaction of getting what he wants. You're better than that, and he knows it. Thats why he does it. He hates you, your strength, your beauty, your heart. He seeks to steal from you everything he doesn't have himself. DO NOT LET HIM. Shove in his face how weak he is, and cement your victory by growing into a beautiful, vibrant person.

A comment on the post said that the only ones who live happy lives, are the ones who close themselves off from everything. This is no true, and no one should ever allow themselves to go this far down. There will always be people who love and cherish you, no matter whats happened. Hold onto them, they won't fail you.

Disclaimer: I'm also not saying this doesn't happen to men or that rape is only committed by men. But as a female, its automatically easier in my head to empathize and speak about women, coming from that mindset. And having been abused by a male, that is also how I picture it. Both sexes are perfectly capable of being abusers/the abused. I just didn't want to spend an entire entry saying 'he/she' or 'him/her' as if this were legal paperwork.

Sorry about the downer entry on New Years Eve. Have a beautiful night.


<3
Panda Out

December 3, 2010

I love the new Linken Park album. But I can understand why some people hate it.

Its been a while since I really listened to music. I love music, and its always on. But, like most folks, I don't really sit and try to experience it. I just let it play in the background, the OST of my life. However, Linken Park's last album, Minutes to Midnight, was a thoughtful, amazing cd, and I wanted to see what they'd say with this one.

I downloaded A Thousand Suns, and let it play behind WoW as I played. I was torn on whether or not I liked it. It seemed to jump tracks like a derailing train, moving swiftly from driving bass to quiet, melancholy-laced ballads. I discussed it with a friend, and found myself defending it, but I'm pretty sure that was from a sense of loyalty to the band. I've been a fan of Linken Park since the beginning. But, as it turns out, I was simply listening to it wrong.

Yes, you can listen to a cd wrong....okay, maybe not Kanye, or Ke$ha, or Katy Perry, etc.

This CD is meant to move from song 1 to song 15 in order. Each song is like a note in an ever rising crescendo. And its meant to be paid attention to. I sat today, sound up in my headphones, and just listened. The thing brought me to tears. The chilling snippet of an interview with J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, was seen as filler by a critic. In reality, it set the tone for a dark series of songs that mirrored our violent nuclear past. The impassioned 'filler' pieces later on, by Mario Savio and Martin Luther King Jr., played like the desperate attempts of a man to stop a tidal wave. There are, in some songs, thumping beats that in the silence, sound like a terrified heartbeat. This is not a quiet, subtle attempt to comment on our society. Its a blatant condemnation of what we've done to each other; how we've corrupted science for our selfish, violent ends.

By the time I reached the song, Wisdom, Justice, and Love , I'd been rubbed raw by the emotion of the previous songs. King's words struck me, and brought tears to my eyes, as relevant now as they were then:

"A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love."

The quiet song that follows this excerpt mirrors its sadness, and feels like the hopelessness that would follow war, famine, or the mass devastation of a nuclear attack.

The cd wraps itself with an enraged, betrayed tone, coming full circle. Its a beautiful piece of work, and I'm not sure if anything short of classical music has moved me more.

As I said, I understand why some people hate it. Its not old school Linken Park. Its not a carefree album, that can be enjoyed at leisure, and its not an upbeat cd to throw in at a party. It has a way of bringing a dark feeling to the room, even if you aren't listening closely. The emotion is written right into the notes.

I love this album because its the work of artists. Not simply musicians and performers, but conscious artists, who see an album as a painting, or a story to be told. It goes against the grain of popular rock music today, but the band are unapologetic in their presentation. Even if I hadn't enjoyed the music so much, I'd have had to respect them for the vision. But, in the end, it made me cry. And, with the exception of songs that remind me of lost loved ones, music hasn't made me cry since I was a five year old girl watching Fantasia for the first time.

Bravo, guys.

I'm Out.

That last entry sat on my desktop for three hours, and took a guild convo for me to realize I hadn't published it. Congrats to me for having a re re moment!

Speaking of guilds, and by association WoW, this Shattering shit is awesomesauce. I usually hate starting new toons because the low level quests are ghey.....but this is the most fun I've had in a while. I have a spanking new 80 and I can't tear myself away from my new Druid and Pally.

My Pally's day in Azshara went something like this:

-Sign on

-Ride the rocket, screaming WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE to irritate locals.

-Disembark from rocket wonderland, go visit Subject Four, the Radar Dish sporting raptor that I have a love hate relationship with (I love it, it hates me)

-Hunt down Subject Nine (the less cool radar dish raptor), and agree to help him find some baby raptors.

-Transport baby raptors back to S9, by allowing them to cling to/gnaw on me for entire return trip (FUCK LEASHES, WE GO HARD)

-Try to give rock giant a laxative, cause greedy goblins want their glittery poo.

-This plan fails, so super smart goblins shrink me. I ride a rat in an epic attempt to scare giant. (WTF, is he Dumbo?)

-Pretty predictably, he stomps me instead of pooping. Dunno why they thought he'd do that anyway.

-Goblins give up, send me to island. Dude on island sends me to murloc.

-Murloc sends me to attack shit with a sponge. Hilariously, this works quite well.

-Murloc sends me to talk to folks. I ride a turtle. Hilarity ensues.

-Stupid folks give me a witches hat. I look ghey. Disguise somehow works, am given new jobs!

-I, the cow, go into epic (misunderstood) battle with a rock giant named Balboa (get it? Rocky?). I fail. Epicly.

Thats about where I am now. Fun shit. Go Azshara.

Panda Out.

Dear Apple,

FUCK YOU.

Seriously Steve Jobs. Really? Its not enough you're rich as shit, you've gotta put out shitty updates that FUCK UP MY PHONE?!

I hate how reliant I am on my phone to begin with. But it wasn't clear just how much of a strangehold you had on my imagined balls until my phone crashed after your little update today. I realized, I cannot talk to my friend in Japan, play WoW, get a hold of my mother, find a number, or kill vast quantities of time while its down. I use my phone for easy picture taking to....so there's that. For TEN HOURS, I reformated, restored, and redid my damn phone trying to fix issues. Finally, it decided it'd give me everything but the 50 fucking apps I had. So I got to spend about 45 minutes digging them all up and redownloading. Thanks douchebags.

So, in conclusion, if you didn't have apps I'd miss terribly, I'd fucking stab you and buy a droid....then end.

In the first post I ever made here, I wondered how in the world RPatts was seen as the best guy ever. But, truth be told, there is another boy, whose meteoric rise to stardom has left me even more bewildered. Michael fucking Cera.

My adding 'fucking' in there is probably the coolest/most badass he will ever be. And don't get me wrong. I have seen, and enjoyed, the majority of his films. Especially Scott Pilgrim. But he usually has nothing to do with WHY I enjoy his movies. For instance, I love Superbad because Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Emma Stone, and Bill Hader are in it. I love Scott Pilgrim for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and really, Kieran Culkin. Anna Kendrick as his level headed sister is pretty awesome too. Nick and Norah's infinite playlist? Kat Dennings and his entire gay entourage. The point is, he's not what keeps his shit afloat to me. In fact, he plays the same thing, every time. A soft voiced, self-doubting guy who somehow pulls the cutest girl he knows, who is so epically cool/geek-chic/fantastic, you can't imagine how she says yes. Even worse, he fucks up miserably, and then GETS THEM BACK. Because its not like its hard enough to get your girl back after hitting/cheating/lying to her when you're awesome.

I don't get the whole 'lovable' thing with him either. His voice annoys me enough that I don't care what he looks like, but its not like a deep phone-sex voice would help. He's thin, and willowy, and things generally attractive in girls. And really, when it comes down to it....he just irritates me more than arouses. Maybe its just me though, apparently girls think he's adorable. But then they think Pattinson is sexier than 90% of men.

Personally, I like Jesse Eisenburg for my geeky/hero needs. He was hilariously self-depreciating in Zombieland, and really, he's awkward enough to feel sympathy for him, but not so weak that I want to take the shotgun and shoot the zombie myself. Ironically, he pulled Emma Stone in it, like Cera did in Superbad. But there was a legitimate explanation of how someone so hopelessly geeky could pull a girl he'd normally be terrified of.

Alright, ranting finished. Thats just been bothering me lately.

I'm out.

I know this is kind of late in the day. I was running around a lot...

Nine years ago today, I was still settling into my first year of high school. Making friends, learning my way around the building, establishing myself as a young adult. I remember that my teachers looked strange that day, they would leave the class and came back, they seemed on edge, and they stayed away from the TV in each room.

My math teacher (whom I already wasn't fond of at this point), was handed a sheet of paper, and she stood at the head of the class, and preceded to read.

The World Trade Center had been hit by a pair of passenger planes. I don't remember if she mentioned the pentagon or Pennsylvania, or if they'd been hit yet. She wasn't supposed to tell us this. She was only supposed to tell us that because of 'unforeseen events', our school would be closing within 3 hours. She didn't even tell us which trade center had been hit. I understand that most adults, and maybe a good deal of kids, would have assumed New York. But as a 14 year old girl with a mother who worked at the trade center in downtown Baltimore, thats where my thoughts went. I spent that class, and the next, in a state of panic, and no one took the time to calm me down. My final class I remember that day, was fundamentals of art. Taught by the teacher that would become my favorite, throughout my high school career. I was freaking out by this point, and I sat down at my desk. Somehow or another, the kid across from me read my mood and, after determining why I was so upset, assured me that my mother was safe, the planes were in New York. That kid is now one of my best friends, and he's still a great person to go talk to.

One of the first things that made me love my art teacher. She treated us as adults. She came into the room, wheeling a TV. And she told us, we needed to witness this, because in a few years we'd be adults, and people needed to start acting that way. The images I saw are burned into the minds of most of the world, and it seemed unreal to see. Replays of the planes colliding with the buildings came every few moments, and crowd of screaming New Yorkers made it all sink in as a real thing. Those shots of a mass of people, clutching strangers and sobbing, all covered in the dust of an icon. Streaks of tears through the dirt on their cheeks, men and women collapsed on the curb, unable to support themselves in the face of such shock and tragedy. A macabre shot of a man jumping from an upper window of one of the towers became the face of my nightmares. This didn't even look like America anymore. And without the last nine years of war to envision, I couldn't readily think of what it DID look like.

I had a friend back then, Jon, who was a great support to me, one of the few people from my much younger years I still talked to. He'd gone on a trip to New York to visit his family, and his aunt had sent him to visit the trade center's observation deck. The deck opened too late for him to be up there when the plane hit, and he's never been listed on any of the lists of the dead, but we never saw him again. Jon was his mother's favorite child, a hard working, loving boy that would never have just up and left his life. In my heart, he's a victim of that tragedy, and my personal reminder of that heinous day.

I can't believe nine years has passed, and how different the world is because of that day. I can't believe how much I'VE changed in those nine years. How cynical that day made me, how much trust I lost in humanity. I've never blamed Islam for the attack, terrorists come in all shapes and sizes, but it really drilled into me that humanity is not one big circle of love. There are dangerous, deadly levels of hate in our world. That day, while disillusioning me, also made me work to bring less violence and hate into the world.