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| Silent Communication
I just went through the most interesting sort of...courtship? I guess that's what one might call it. A friend of mine I knew had been interested in me for a while, and over the past month or so we'd been spending more time together. He's been a little shy about the whole idea of dating, cause just face it--a girl with a baby--kind of a scary situation for a guy to put himself into. But he couldn't help being interested in me regardless of the situation. So, over the last week or so, really just since friday I guess, he finally started actively showing interest. This, because of his slight shyness, was incredibly subtle. We were at our friends' house watching a movie. They're married, and had been trying to get us to date for a while now. But you just can't push that kind of thing, it has to happen on its own. Anyway, he finally actually put his arm around me and held me while we were watching this movie with our overly cuddling married friends, and it was funny, because none of us vocally acknowledged that anything was going on. And that's the way the whole thing progressed. Through looks and silences, basically conversations with the eyes, and small gestures like a hand on the shoulder, it came down to hand holding and then tonight I had gone into the kitchen to get something for my best friend because she, being married and pregnant was feeling pretty icky, and I turned around and there he was and I looked up at him and he put his arms around me and pulled me close, and he seemed unsure at first but then he kissed me. And so finally I had some proof that something really was happening between us. For the rest of the time we were there it was just kind of understood between us basically that we were together, but I needed to hear it out loud. So later after I went home and he went home, he called, and we chatted about various nonsense until finally I was like "so what's the deal?" And he said "what do you mean?" I said "us." And he was like, "well it would seem we're together." And I was like, "good. That's what I thought." And our married friends still haven't said anything about it, haha. There needs to be a girl talk session soon. I just think it's interesting how so much communication can go on between two people without words. It's amazing how expressive eyes really are. Strong eye contact. Or quick glances meant to go unnoticed. A touch of the shoulder here, a pat of the back there, a shy smile. Silent conversation. It was poetic really. A beautiful thing. People talk too much these days. So much noise makes it difficult to truly communicate. To know exactly what the other person is thinking without him ever explaining himself, and to know that he knows your thoughts just as well. It's really cool. I can't wait to talk to him again tomorrow. He's SO easy to talk to, about anything. Maybe it's got something to do with our approach to beginning a relationship. An interesting thought... Have any of you ever had entire conversations, or even days of conversations, that played out through silence? Or maybe there would be plenty of conversation going on, while in silence you were having a totally different one? | | |
| ...I can't do this anymore...I try to pretend it's not happening, even though I can watch it right before my eyes, and I had no idea my brother was really as ignorant about it as he is. My dad is dying. He has ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. It's the same disease Stephen Hawking has. (Incidentally, my dad's name is Steven.) It's a motor neuron disease that is irreversible, and eventually terminal. My mom doesn't talk a whole lot about the specifics of it unless I ask, so if they have an idea of how much longer he's got I don't know. I'm scared to ask. I'm also scared to look it up and find out. Basically, you gradually lose the use of your muscles until you just can't survive any longer. It can either start with trouble walking, or like in my dad's case, a subtle slurring of speech caused by the inability to control the muscles in the mouth and throat as easily. Whichever way it starts it eventually gets around to the other. They're really not even sure what causes it. He was diagnosed two years ago. He pretty much can't speak at all anymore. It terrifies me how fast this has gotten to this point. He's losing weight so rapidly, because it's just so difficult to eat. They had to put in a permanent feeding tube into his stomach that he has to hook up to a pump at night while he sleeps. Basically the same concept as an umbilical cord. He also wears a mask at night to help him breathe. A lot of times when he's napping on the couch or just sitting really still watching tv I find myself looking really closely to mke sure he's breathing. We were only just able to get the breathing machine, which he should've had ages ago, after I had to call 911 the other night while my mom was at work because he came downstairs and told me he couldn't breathe. He's 5'11'' and weighs 115. I'm a girl, 5'4'' and I've pretty much never been that light that I can remember, and I've never been a real heavy girl, except pregnant. You can count every rib, every vertebra, his hands look like basically bones with skin stretched over them. It used to be "Daddy can you open this jar for me?" Now I'm opening things for him. Sometimes I'm his interpreter when we're not at home. He writes things down usually, but he's also got this computer that speaks for him if he types in what he needs to say. Sometimes I know what he's saying anyway, just from listening, but it's very difficult. He always at least tries to speak on his own first, though most of the time we don't understand. Dads are supposed to be invincible. Yet I've watched mine go from invincible to frail and weak in just two years. I keep seeing things and thinking, every time my baby gains a new skill, my daddy seems to lose one or come closer to losing one. Really the only thing they can do for him is treat his symptoms as best they can, and try to slow the progression of the disease. Keep him as comfortable as possible. He can still walk, and I sometimes catch myself wondering when he'll need a chair, and if medicare will pay for it, and is this hereditary? I'm not sure they even know. I'm scared to find this out too. And something else I started thinking about a few weeks ago, I want to eventually get married, and I want my dad to take me down the aisle. My guess is he'll probably be in a chair by then, or at least using some kind of cane. And then I wondered about the giving away part where the father's supposed to say "her mother and I" will he use his machine to say it, or will he let my mom say it instead? I don't know. Anyway, we had some drama here at home tonight that my brother started, using that machine to make some really awful jokes about Stephen Hawking. He's 14, I don't think he really grasps the situation, but it really upset me and my mom. I don't know how dad felt about it, if he even heard it, but the rest of us were just torn up. And so Mama finally let him have it with the "Don't you get it your dad is dying" speech, and when she came downstairs crying and she told me what was wrong, I went up to his room without saying a word and, in his own words, "started whooping on" him. I'd've called it pummeling. Several punches to the shoulders and back and a slap across the shoulder blades. I know I shouldn't have, and it upset mom even more, but I just couldn't handle it anymore. Keeping all this in all the time, it builds up and builds up, it's been months since I last let myself really cry about my dad, and my brother's behavior was the trigger it took to make me snap. When I snap like that I get a little violent(usually this only involves throwing things and slamming doors), and it makes me feel terrible afterward. And I went back out on the porch and let myself cry, and I only just stopped a little while ago. I'm not sure I want to sleep tonight. I don't know, I'm just sick and tired of everything turning to crap. I just want something to get better for a change. I love my dad so much and I'm so scared... | | |
| I might just......change my name and picture. I've been on here a long time and they've been the same since the beginning. I don't like them so well now, though I thought they were brilliant at the time, haha. I have a couple ideas, although if anyone has a suggestion that would be great too. I'm not sure I want to use something I've used before on something else. I want this one to remain different. I'm not, however, getting rid of the mindblowingly eyeburning purple and lime green. I <3 it!!! <(^_^)> So anybody have any ideas? EDIT: A short post!?! ME? Whoever heard of such a thing??? | | |
| Oh, to have a pensieve...I've been given a lot to think about lately, and I'm not sure just how to digest it all. Some things sadden me, and others anger me. And then there are some that just plain confuse me. All I know is that life is not as simple as I once believed. It seems that progressively since my freshman year of high school things have been getting more and more complicated in huge leaps and bounds, rather than gradually. Over the past five years I have matured to a point as to be almost unrecognizable in personality. It hurts me to think I was that naive. And over the past couple of weeks I've begun maturing in a different way. A good way. But where I am right now, it's going to be difficult to continue the process. And that worries me. I don't want to slide backward as I've done so many times in the past. I don't want to be who I was just three months ago. And I certainly don't want to be who I was two years ago. I know this is all very cryptic, except to people who know me to my very core, who no longer get on here anymore and so won't read this, but I feel I must write it down anyway. Document it, something. I've begun recently to sing, out loud, something I've almost never done, except in cases of extreme joy and light heartedness. Or, at one point in time, in anger. It's a spur of the moment kind of thing, where, just a song comes on, and you know it well, and the next thing you know you're singing at the top of your lungs. I'm kind of an insomniac lately as well, but I've discovered that some of the things that have come along with the most recent change have made that easier. It's funny how, upon a few simple conversations with someone I will probably never meet, I feel so attached, and so worried about their well being. Many times when I'm thinking about this person I am overcome with a need to wrap my arms around them and give them a big sappy hug. I think about this person a lot now. The more I learn the more I feel a need to nurture. I guess that is my way. I'm in kind of a stuck place in my life right now, waiting to begin college in the spring semester. Day by day everything is the same. I don't see much of people beyond my immediate family, except on Sunday, and Sunday just doesn't feel like enough time out of the house. But in the past week or two, I've begun moving forward, slowly but surely, and hopefully I can find a way to speed up the process. I need to start with getting some work done. Around the house, on my novel, just various areas I need to catch up in. And I need to find a way to spend time with people more my age and such. I worry about the state of certain friendships, I've been neglecting them, and have paid for it. One friend won't even respond to an IM anymore, I fear I've lost her for good, and that's completely my own fault. Now I need to go, before I pass out on my keyboard. Maybe I'll add more in the morning. | | |
| Abortion and FundamentalistsSome comments I made that I think belong here. I was reading this post on revelife about a group of fundamentalist Christians who were displaying pictures of aborted babies at a function meant to be family friendly. It made me upset for several reasons. Here are my comments. First, I said: I have two points for each extreme. First, for the crazy fundamentalists: 1. I hate the image this gives non-Christians of the rest of us Christians, and I hate the image this gives "pro-choice" people of us non-violent pro-life people. Christians are supposed to love. EVERYONE. It's a difficult concept to grasp, I know, but this is the way it's supposed to be. Attacking people over their sins is not the right way. In God's eyes, sin is sin. Period. There is no degree of sin. Everyone sins, and just because you're a Christian and have taken the advantage of Jesus's gift for us all, doesn't make you better than anyone else. You must remember that you do not deserve salvation, it's a gift, from God, because He loves you. It's your choice to accept that gift, but you are not by any means earning it. "For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. " Ephesians 2:8-9 2. I would be devastated and revolted to see these things. It's not only women who've had abortions who would be upset by this. What about women who are or have been pregnant? What about women with their own babies? What about--and this is the kicker for me--women who've lost babies? Who've had miscarriages? What about them? What about the horror and misery these images would bring back for them? Women who were happily expecting a child only to have lost it for unknown NATURAL reasons? Or from abuse. It's a feeling that never totally goes away, and things like this would bring that back to the surface, and these women aren't even the targets for such a "ministry." It doesn't take much to bring it to my mind, though I now have a living child to love and adore. Second, for the pro-abortionists: 3. When it's often so difficult for women who want children to get pregnant and stay that way, who are you, blessed with a child, to throw that away? Why not pass your blessing on to someone who can't have their own child? Even a child of rape is still an innocent baby, it isn't the baby's fault you were in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone decided they wanted to do something terrible to you. I can understand not wanting to see the face of an attacker in your child every day, but you could still give the baby a loving home with someone who doesn't have that association with him/her. The baby is just as much a victim as you are and doesn't deserve to be punished for it. There are many people out there who would gladly adopt such a child. There is no such thing as an unwanted child. There is always someone willing to love them. And "pro-choice?" I think this term only applies to those who were raped. The rest of you made your choice when you decided to have unsafe sex if you didn't want a baby. I think the proper term should be "pro-abortion." You want the choice of what to do with your body, and you have that right; you've made that choice already, but you have no right over the body of the child inside you. That body belongs to that child, who should be allowed to make his/her own choices when the time comes. But so many never get the chance. 4. Every time a woman chooses to have an abortion, the world loses a child who could've been someone great. What if we've lost the mind who was destined to find the cure for cancer? What if Mary had had an abortion? Where would the world be then? Think of all the potential that's being killed off! What if there was only one chance for that cure for cancer to be found, but the one person who would've been in the right place at the right time to take advantage of that chance had been killed in the womb? Just a little food for thought. Ok, I think that's it. I'm done. <(^_^)^ And then walkingintotheseaaa made a good point: @PING_DA_ROBOT_GIRL@xanga - I do agree with you, pretty much completely. In fact, I agree with your views on every situation/idea you wrote about. But what about women who are told that they could die or be permantently greatly disabled during their pregnancy? Or that their babies will be stillborn? Or that they are for sure going to die immediately after birth due to a defect they can already spot? Should the woman be forced to carry that child to term, putting unbearable emotional and possibly physical stress on her? In these situations, I feel that abortion should at least be kept as an option. Maybe you feel that way, but you left that out. I just felt compelled to ask. I also worry that more coat hanger abortions and self-induced miscarriages will occur if abortion is outlawed, but that's another issue. And these are my opinions on that: @walkintotheseaaa@xanga - Those sorts of things don't happen as much anymore. In fact it's very rare for a woman to die in childbirth in a developed country these days. Though there's definitely a chance of complications during abortion, like a perforated uterus or infections, sterility, all kinds of complications during later pregnancies, increased risk of ectopic pregnancy, which can be fatal. There's also almost always damage to the cervix, which can cause a condition called incompetent cervix meaning it can't bear the weight of a child to full term, causing miscarriage or premature birth. And that's not even half of it. I wonder about all these complications and the fact that they can affect you the rest of your life, making it hard to have children once you want them, and just don't understand how someone could risk all of that, rather than let nature take its course. So it's not only affecting the child you're getting rid of, but yourself and any future children you may have. I still think it's wrong to kill a child, however I guess that's something you have to decide for yourself on an individual basis. If you have faith then I think you should take faith that what happens happens for a reason and just because the doctors say you'll die, doesn't mean you will. If you don't, well, then I don't know. I don't claim to have all the answers. I personally have never met a woman who had an abortion that didn't regret it, I do know that. I'm wondering if that feeling is worse than miscarriage since it was something you chose, when miscarriage is usually something you had no control over? I guess I'll never know.
As for stillbirth, that's completely different. That's not even really a part of the issue. The child is already dead, it's only safer for the mother if they remove it. And in the case of defects, I say the same as I did with danger to the mother, doctors have no way of knowing for sure. They're never a hundred percent positive. My brother was born at 26 and a half weeks. No baby had ever survived earlier than 26 weeks at the time he was born. They told my parents not to get attached, he would probably die, and if he lived he would be mentally retarded. He's fourteen now, and as indestructible as any teenage boy, and more intelligent than most of them. So I don't hold much stock in doctors' foretellings of doom. Once again it's a matter of faith or not. My aunt, when she was pregnant with one of her two youngest, was told that since she was as old as she was that she ought to have a test to see if he would have down syndrome. She refused, because the test could cause miscarriage, and she said they'd keep him and raise him as he needed even if he did have down syndrome so what was the point? And so she had him, and he's just as healthy and normal as all the rest of her five kids. I believe if there's even a chance at life (the child isn't already dead) then that chance should not be taken away. Coat hanger abortions and self induced miscarriages, well if a woman is stupid enough to do something like that to herself then she deserves whatever consequences come of it. Period. Right, well, these are my opinions on the subject, and I just thought it would make sense to put them here as well. | | |
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