Bible Studies With Mary Ploppins: Numbers

I FINALLY finished my review of Numbers, uggh.  That one took a while to read, and then it took another LONG while to write and finish the review.  Part of that was just me being busy, but another part was that I was finding it really hard to get through the review.

Details here: http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/numbers/

Update: Yvette Nicole Brown Cares About Her Fans

So, I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty bummed last night about all that twitter stuff that happened with Yvette Nicole Brown.   It was so random and weird and it really made me wish to the dear Lord above that I had never ever checked Twitter when I did.  I was really kicking myself for that, and I was then also kicking myself for even being bummed about it in the first place.  It had me seriously asking the following questions of myself:

• HOW the EFF did I get myself into a frakking Twitter war about a TV GUIDE CONTEST!!??  WHAT the hell is wrong with me??  Is there something wrong with the way I’m living my life that I even got myself into this situation to begin with??  I mean look, for Yvette, it’s a totally different story – this is her JOB.  She’s trying to drum up publicity for Community because she is a castmember and she wants her show to succeed.  So of course it makes perfect sense for someone like her to be spending time on this.  But me??  Why the hell would I get myself into a situation where I’m having twitter discussions and fights about this TV Guide contest??  I don’t even work in the entertainment industry, for crap’s sake, and I haven’t gotten an issue of TV Guide for over a decade!!  So am I spending way too much time and energy into watching and discussing my favorite t.v. shows and movies??  Do I seriously need to get a life?
• Am I an attention whore??  I’ve never thought of myself as such … I mean I like to get a laugh, or tell someone an enjoyable story, definitely.  But don’t we all seek attention from our friends and fam when we tell a really cool story, tell a funny joke, post a facebook status, post a tweet, etc.?  I don't think I fall outside "normal" range here.
• Why am I even bummed about this and putting this much thought into at all??  There must be something wrong with me if I even care enough to be bummed in the first place.  And being bummed that I was bummed was just making me MORE. DAMN. BUMMED.

Today Twitter Taught me that I am a Terrible Person

This evening, I had a completely random chance exchange on Twitter with a star of one of my favorite t.v. shows.  It was something I stumbled upon when checking Twitter really quick right as I was about to shut down my laptop before leaving work for the day.  And within minutes of the convo, I sorely regretted ever checking Twitter at all, let alone getting into this conversation.  I've had my Twitter account for a couple years now, and I follow exactly 70 twitter feeds.  They consist of the following:

There is Hope

We watched a movie this past weekend that made me realize that it is actually possible to make a PG-13 movie without watering it down in terms of "edgy-ness" (edginess?)  While this movie was definitely a case of a certain level of style over substance, (it was a bit lacking in terms of storyline), it was still very cool, very entertaining, very shocking in various ways, and seemingly quite violent.  The movie was Hanna:

You may wonder why I care whether it's possible to make a PG-13 movie that is "edgy".  The reason is that my beloved Hunger Games novels are currently in the process of being made into movies ... movies that will most definitely have to be rated PG-13 in order to appeal to younger teens (the books are "YA" novels, after all).  The problem is that the books are pretty disturbing and violent ... and I have not been able to figure out how that can be properly conveyed via PG-13 movies.  And any level of watering something down always makes me sad.

Well, Hanna, shows how it can be done without watering it down.  Here is what the two stories have in common, in terms of what needs to be "policed" by the MPAA:

• Both Hanna and The Hunger Games have disturbing themes, plus a generous helping of violence.
• Neither of the two stories have much of anything in terms of sex.  There is some very innocent kissing in each, but that's as far as they go.  So that earns them brownie points from the MPAA.
• As far as I can recall, neither of the stories have much in the way of swearing either.  I think there may have been a little bit in Hanna here and there, and just maybe a few very mild swear words (probably uttered by Haymitch?) in Hunger Games, but that is it.
• A decent amount of the violence in Hanna is actually done indirectly and symbolically, in the form of hunting/killing animals for food.  It works great to really get you on edge, and helps to give you that constant feeling that the characters are never safe, wherever they go.  And I'm wondering if maybe you can get away with more of that type of violence with the MPAA than you can the human kind of violence.  Hunting is the entire running them of the Hunger Games, so they could really take advantage of this.
• Hanna is violent in a way that does not involve a ton of blood and guts and gory stuff.  The Hunger Games, on the other hand ... starts off this way as well ... but as the books go on, I recall there being more of the gory type of violence (especially in the third book).  But there are ways they can convey this without actually SHOWING the blood and guts.  Harry Potter did a great job of this in Deathly Hallows pt. 2.

So yeah ... we'll see.  The fact that it is possible to do this does NOT in any way mean it's easy to do it, or that the filmmakers will be willing to take these risks.  It's still going to be very tough to pull off.  Fingers crossed, but still keeping my hopes low.  :-P

Bible Studies With Mary Ploppins: Leviticus

Here's my review of Leviticus:

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/leviticus/

Bible Studies With Mary Ploppins: Exodus

So, I ended up starting a new blog that is meant specifically for my bible review posts, to keep things more organized.  Oh wait, I just realized that I already said that in my previous post haha.  Oh well I mainly wanted to post the link to my next review here - Exodus:

http://biblereviews.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/exodus/

The batshit craziness that goes down in Exodus actually puts Genesis to shame (which I didn't think was possible), so that review ended up being even longer.  I am really hoping that the Leviticus review is significantly shorter (it's a shorter book at least)!!

Anyway for blog posts about randomness I'll probably still use this blog.

New Bible Reviews Blog

O.k. so I did end up creating a new blog for my "Bible Reviews", just so that I could have a blog with a particular theme to it.  I ended up starting it on WordPress instead of blogger (sorry blogger) because blogger's lack of some basic functionality in certain areas was annoying me.  Here's the new blog; I moved (copied) the Genesis review over there too:

Bible Reviews Blog

Bible Studies with Mary Ploppins: Genesis

This is my first "book review" blog post for my bible-reading project.  I started off, of course, "in the beginning," with Genesis.  This is a LONG-ass book.  50 chapters ... from what I can tell it's one of the longer books in the bible (I think Psalms is gonna kill me).  That's just from spot-checking though, maybe I'm wrong.  But this review is going to be long because there's a LOT to cover.  Though I suspect these reviews will probably get shorter as I go on, because I only have so much energy hahaah.  And I gotta hit a lot of really basic stuff in my first review that I probably won't need to re-hash in later reviews.

Anyway, let me start off by listing the good points and the bad points of this book, and in the end I'll give it an overall rating number.  I think I need to list my pros and cons before I can figure out exactly what that number is.  First, some overall thoughts:

This book by definition is meant to be a background book to kinda get us started on everything and give the backstory, as far as I understand.  It's likely for that reason that I didn't find it to be very fulfilling in terms of learning any actual LESSONS or getting to the point of a lot of these stories (it's engaging on a general entertainment level but I'm looking for something deeper from The Bible).  ;-)  It seems that the book is more focused on backstory than it is on lessons.  Presumably we'll get to those later on in the bible right?  I sure hope so.  Here is what I liked, and what I didn't like:

Bible Studies with Mary Ploppins

O.k. so … after my last couple blog posts where I blabbed about my thoughts on religion … I decided that I really need to FINALLY get to one of the tasks that I’ve been saying I am going to do (and procrastinating) for the past 15 years plus.  And that is to read The Bible.  The whole bible … cover to cover.  A majority of Christians have not done this from what I’ve observed … and when I was Christian I never did it either.  I just took in whatever pieces of it that my Sunday School and Christian School classes wanted to give me.  So everything I ever got was through the filter of someone else.

I made the decision around the age of 18 or so that religion no longer made sense to me.  But I’m thinking that to make a fully informed decision one way or the other, I should ACTUALLY read the bible.  So I’m finally doing it now.  I’ve got the King James version on my Kindle, and I am also using the “New International Version” on the bible.cc website along with that to help me translate the more undecipherable verses in the King James version (I’m actually reading them both simultaneously to make sure I’m not missing anything).

In a sense I think it’s almost a good thing that I was SO terrible at paying attention to the bible stories I was taught when I was a kid, because I can somewhat be a clean slate (and maybe a bit more objective) while reading it now, ha ha.  I mean not entirely of course, I remember the basics of the major stories, but I am finding that there are a ton of gory details that they don’t give you in Sunday School, now that I am reading it for myself.  And of course I can’t really be objective because obviously I’m coming from one particular point of view going into this.  But my lack of memory on the details definitely helps me to be more objective than I could be otherwise.

I’m thinking it would be kinda fun to do a book review of every book of the bible, as if it is a regular New York Times bestseller or something.  So far I have read Genesis (hot damn that is a LONG-ass book, 50 chapters).  So I’ll do a post of that review first (in a separate post from this one).  I’m almost wondering if I should start a separate blog for this, but I can’t yet guarantee how far I’ll get on this little project of mine, so let me start it off on this blog for now, heheh.  Since no one reads this blog (other than my husband and I’m already talking to him about this stuff in person), I’m mainly posting this stuff at this point for my own memory.  The bible is LONG and by the time I get a few books in, I’m gonna forget half the stuff that happened earlier if I don’t write this stuff down.

Do the Right Thing

This is kind of a continuation of my "Faith vs. Ambiguity" post from earlier; I decided to split it up into a couple posts because it was just way too much information to convey all at once.  So if you want an intro to how I got to this topic, read the Faith vs. Ambiguity post first.  That is, of course, an instruction to all zero people who read this blog ha ha.  Oh wait, except my husband who just this past weekend told me that he has been reading it.  So I guess it's an instruction to all one person who reads this blog.  Anyway, onto the topic at hand ...

I wish I could remember the details of the conversation, but one of my Christianity discussions with my aunt a few months ago did involve the aspect of morality.  I forget exactly what was discussed, but the overall jist of it was related to the idea that one of the main virtues of religion is that it is meant as a moral guide.  But my question to the believer on that topic would be:

Faith vs. Ambiguity

I sure have been posting a lot on this blog lately, especially considering the fact that no one is reading it, haha.  I am just blabbing on and on to no one at all, except myself.  Which is kind of nice in a sense, though I'm still trying to be careful of what I say on here, because lord only knows who could stumble across it at any point in time.  It doesn't show up in a google search of my name (I didn't use my full name on this account), but a search of my internet "alias" brings it right up.  So you don't have to do much detective work to find it.

Anyway, I digress.  I do actually have a subject for this post, so let me get to it.  Here it goes:  I just got back from the yearly summer vacay that I take with my family (including my aunt/uncle/cousins from Florida).  The Florida fam flies out to Cali and we drive down to some various lovely places ... some years spending a weekend in Oakhurst first (which is what we did this year).  Oakhurst is the town that my other aunt, Amy's family lives.  If you read any of my first few blog posts you'll know who that is.  My aunt who comes out from Florida is Sue.

To take a couple steps back and give a little background - this side of my family (my mom's side) is quite religious.  Not in a "weird" sense, but I only say "quite religious" in the sense that they are very dedicated.  They were raised Methodist, as was I, and they have all remained with the Christian faith throughout their lives, and remain with it to this day.  They are still very active in their respective churches, and one of them owns a Christian preschool (as my Grandma did as well before she retired in the mid '90's).  My younger cousins (the ones who are age 20 and younger) are all very active in their youth groups as well.

However there are about three of us older cousins (ages 28 and up) who have fallen out of Christianity and religion altogether once we became adults.  For me, it happened around age 18.  I was baptized in the Methodist church as a baby and went through the whole confirmation thing at age 13.  I went to Christian school from preschool through 6th grade.  I then went to public school for jr. high and high school, but still remained Christian through those years as well, and still went to church fairly regularly (though I was never hardcore enough to do youth group or anything like that).

When I turned 18 and started college ... I started to get more outside perspectives on religion and life in general from both friends/peers and my college studies.  My family to this day apparently still blames my "fall" from Christianity on the guy I dated from my senior year of high school through college, but this really is not correct.  He was not raised religious and I admit that he was indeed the first person I was close to who offered the non-religious perspective to me, BUT if it hadn't've been him it most certainly would have been someone else.  ANYONE else.  I was 18 and I was just starting to expand my views on life, so it really didn't take much at all to plant a seed in my head to take a step back and look at life from other perspectives.  I mean hell, if I'm really thinking back on this, my family should probably be pointing the finger at Howard Stern, because this was the same year I discovered him, and I listened to his show every day during my commutes to and from school.  He probably planted a LOT more seeds in my head at that time than the ex-bf did.  But more importantly, at the same time, I was also taking physical anthropology in college, which was the key thing that gave me the concrete and detailed information to further explore (not that I didn't learn that stuff in jr. high and high school, but at the college level they tend to give you this information in a much more objective and detailed fashion, without trying to baby you and shield you by being overly sensitive to whatever your religious beliefs are).  So it basically started from there, and over the next year or so my views on the matter started to change.

So ... fast forward to present day - Myself and my other two cousins could somewhat be considered as "black sheep" in the family due to our lack of faith and religion (NOT in the sense that our family shuns us or treats us badly thank goodness, just in the sense that they are probably disappointed and wish they could convince us otherwise).  And for some reason ... it seems as if I catch way more grief about this than the other two do.  ;-)  I'm not entirely sure why, but it may be that I'm simply the one who is most willing to discuss it.  I don't mind discussing and debating it and I kind of enjoy it in a sense ... I can't entirely explain why but maybe it's just because it keeps my mental gears moving.  And each year when we take our summer vacation with Sue and her fam (along with any other mid-year vacays we might take in between), we wind up in the discussion/debate again.  My 17 year old cousin (Sue's daughter) Taylor gets quite exasperated with me because she simply cannot comprehend why I am not religious.  And ultimately, I also wind up feeling a bit frustrated that I can't properly communicate why I am not religious.  I wish there was a better way to convey these types of thoughts between people of different beliefs, but if there was ... then a lot of the world's problems would be much more easily resolved ... everyone would get along and hold hands, and we'd suddenly have world peace.  ;-)

The biggest problem with these types of debates, of course, is that religious people and non-religious people use entirely different forms of logic when coming to their conclusions about life.  I see the logic that religious people use as basically a LACK of logic (or at least a partial lack of it).  Religious people look at me, in turn, as having a complete lack of the all important thing called FAITH.  But arguing faith against logic simply doesn't work ... it's like comparing apples and oranges.  It's like pitting two debaters against each other who speak completely different languages.  If one debater only speaks Chinese and the other one only speaks Spanish, their debate ain't gonna get too far.  You might as well just repeatedly slam your head against a brick wall and then be done with it.

Another problem I run into in these discussions with my family is that I actually find myself holding back a little bit.  I hate that I do that because I don't think it's fair to them ... as they are asking me to give my full opinions ... and I am not entirely giving them what they're asking of me.  Why do I do this?  I think it's two things: a) Religion is a comforting thing to have ... it makes people feel warm and fuzzy ... and frankly I don't want to try to take this away from anyone.  It must be a great thing to be certain that there is a higher purpose to all this, and that all our friends and family who have died over the years are having a big party together in heaven, rather than just each being individually dead and completely gone.  I'd feel like kind of a dick attempting to take this away from anyone.  It's a very miniscule chance that I could ever actually sway someone over to my point of view, but you never know.  And b) Taylor is almost the exact same age I was when I started exploring other perspectives, so I think I'm a little afraid to even plant any seeds.  But Taylor is also in a very different place than I was at her age, so the seed would probably ricochet off a force field anyway.  She's way more active in her church and youth group than I ever even came close to being, and she is likely going to attend a Christian college.  Her studies there will likely be different than what I got at the college and university that I attended.  So yeah, maybe I should just simply be honest with my family when we have these discussions instead of holding back due to fear of their reactions.

In any case, after last summer's vacation and discussions with Sue, Elias sent me a video he found on YouTube called "My Spirituality as an Atheist", because he thought that it gave the message of the non-faith person's point of view pretty well.  Now, I should say that I have never identified myself as "atheist", because it is much more of a firm stance that God DEFINITELY does NOT exist (as far as I understand it).  Where as my point of view is simply that I don't KNOW if God exists, so I can't declare one way or the other (or something else that no one has thought of).  I don't KNOW if any of the world's religions are correct.  My strong suspicion is that none of them are, but I don't KNOW that.  So I've always identified myself as Agnostic instead.  But the point of view of the atheist is still definitely one I relate to much more than the "theist" view at this point, so I find myself agreeing with the overall sentiments in the video.  I didn't send this video to Sue last year mainly because I guess I didn't see much point in it, and didn't want to offend her.  But this year when we got back from the vacay, I found myself digging through my old emails to find the link to it again.  I found it, and then I went a step further this time and explored video maker's whole YouTube channel, and got pretty engrossed.  He is an interesting guy ... and he has some funny videos too.  Here is the original video that Elias sent me:

He doesn't state everything in the exact way I would state it, and his wording when describing religion is strong enough to probably offend any Christian watching it (something I would try to avoid).  ;-)  But what I like about it is that within the first minute and a half, he does captures one of the exact major conclusions I came to when I did my re-examinations of religion at age 18.  And that is that NO ONE knows what the hell this damn universe is about, where it came from, or what the meaning of life is.  NO ONE.  Man is the only creature on Earth with the capability to even question it, so that is what we have always done.  The various religions that exist around the world are humans' attempts at an explanation.  That's IT.  They are stories and explanations made up by humans.  Humans are FLAWED... as we have proven over and over again throughout the history of this world (and as is also well documented in the Bible itself).  Human life on Earth presumably began with people simply existing, and not knowing why.  Humans used the limited tools they had at the time to attempt to explain our existence, and religion was born as a result.  We now have a good amount more scientific knowledge than we had a few thousand years ago ... BUT it's still just a drop in the bucket compared to everything we DON'T know of the universe.

What the hell about all the other galaxies that exist out there?  Where does the universe end and where does it begin?  Coincidentally, the other day Elias was watching some random show on the Science Channel or one of those channels, about this topic.  Consider these facts and tell me if it doesn't blow your mind at least a little bit: So, as we know, the planets in our solar system revolve around the sun.  Our sun/solar system also revolves around the center of our galaxy (The Milky Way of course).  It takes 250 MILLION years for our solar system to make just ONE circuit of our galaxy.  You know what that means?  It means that in the entire history of the human race, we've traveled less than one 10th of 1% of that orbit.  !!!!  And when I say "the entire history of the human race," I mean the entire 200k or so years that we have evidence of our existence (rather than the 5k or 6k or whatever it is that the bible talks about).  O.k. here is another fact: Our sun is just one of 200 billion stars in our galaxy.  200 BILLION!!  And, our galaxy is just one of 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  !!  i.e. That's just as far as we can see.  That is INSANE to me.  What other life exists out there in other galaxies, if any?  What other life exists on the as-yet undiscovered planets in our OWN galaxy, if any?  Do other universes exist or is this the only one?  We have no idea.  For the most part religion doesn't even TOUCH on any of this because humans had no idea that all this other stuff existed at the time they created and documented it.  Space is referred to as "the heavens" because it's the perspective of a human looking up at the sky from our little planet and seeing the sun, the moon and the stars (and maybe they had identified the planets visible to the naked eye by that point, not sure the exact timing, but they certainly wouldn't have understood much about exactly what they were).  I'd be shocked if humans are able to figure out even a miniscule fraction of the mysteries of the universe prior to completely nuking ourselves into destruction.

So the point of all this is that all our religions consider Earth and humans to be the most important thing in the entire universe.  To me this seems incredibly narrow-minded, given how indescribably IMMENSE the universe is and given the fact that there is still so much we DON'T know about what else is out there.

Elias brought up another important point on the larger topic when we were talking about it the other day as well.  If someone is, let's say, Catholic, how would they answer the question "Why are you Catholic instead of something else, like Baptist?"  Would they be able to give a good reason for that?  Chances are, they would say, "Because I was raised that way."  Well, then what if you were born in Utah?  Would you be Mormon?  What if you were born in Iran?  Would you be Muslim?  What if you were born in India?  Hindu?  Probably.  Why is your religion better than all the others?  Let's say you're one of those less common people who have actually studied several of the major religions and then picked one for themselves based on what they learned.  Well in that case I would still ask, how do you know that's the right one?  Are you really the authority on this matter?  How can you even say?  Again it goes back to my feeling that to pick one religion and immerse myself only in that feels very narrow-minded.

This is another video by the same dude I mentioned earlier (AHughman08), which I think, even better than the earlier video, captures the mind-expanding realizations that I had when I was 18:

Again it's not perfect in every way but it still captures the essence of my experience and life views quite well. With the main point being: Nobody knows.  No one.  If someone tells you they know, they are either mistaken or lying.  Accepting this fact was actually a more freeing experience than anything.  It is honestly a kind of a relief to no longer have to constantly attempt to fit every life experience in with my religious beliefs, and to try to force the ones that don't fit, to fit.  To squeeze the square pegs into the round holes.  It's like a weight or a cage being lifted away.  Once you do that, you can simply ... live.  And keep wondering and learning without any sorts of limits or perimeters.

I've got other thoughts on this topic but this damn thing has gotten so long that it's starting to turn from a blog entry to a dissertation.  I'll put my other thoughts into a later entry.  ;-)

p.s. Thanks to AHughman08 and his YouTube channel for the videos, which are entertaining and helped me to organize my thoughts.

A Caged Animal

Uggh ... I am feeling quite trapped lately by certain aspects of my life ... a bit like an animal in a cage.  I might start throwing my poo at the spectators soon if I can't get myself free.  Heh.  But as of yet I haven't found a way to free myself.  I've been desperately searching for the key but I can't find it.  I think I need to devote more time to this, but I'm not exactly sure how to go about it.

I second guess myself a lot for feeling this way.  Especially when other people make comments like, "Well you should feel lucky just to <fill in the blank here (not getting specific)>."  It's not that this comment isn't true, because it is true.  The problems I have are first world problems, for sure.  I'm not starving in a third world country or being violently oppressed in some other country that's ruled based on some shitty idiotic religion.  So I second guess myself quite often ... because maybe I'm just acting like a spoiled brat for not being satisfied with certain aspects of my life.

But then on the other hand, I kind of want to tell the people who make these kinds of "you should just feel lucky to ..." comments to fuck off.  Because what if everyone thought this way?  What if everyone stopped themselves from wanting to try something different by saying, "Ehh, I should just feel lucky to be where I am and have what I have."  If that was the case, then NO ONE in the goddamn world would ever do anything interesting.  We'd all just toil away in some factory our whole lives and have 2.5 children and be really lame and boring.  Who the hell wants that?

But yeah ... it still comes back to the fact that I don't know what I can do ... how I can free myself from this crappy cage.  There is no obvious answer.  But I gotta figure something out, and beyond figuring something out, I need to have the balls to actually try it if I can ever figure it out.  Uggh.  If I look at this post again in 6 months and nothing has changed, I'll know that I'm really failing miserably.

The Inevitable Phone Call

I was just surfing around my usual celebrity gossip websites right now, and I came across a blog post that Russell Brand had done for Amy Winehouse (who just died over the weekend, most likely of a drug overdose). Apparently he knew her, but even more importantly, he used to be an alcoholic and/or drug addict himself before getting sober in his late 20's, so he has a lot of experience in the area of addiction.

I admit that Amy Winehouse is not someone I've ever paid much attention to outside of following her insane drug-addled escapades over the past few years on the celebrity gossip sites. Her death over the weekend was not the least bit surprising, but still quite sad nonetheless.  It brings to mind all the people I've known closely, and also just known about (friends of friends, other celebs, etc.), who have followed this exact same downward spiral.

Anywho I stumbled across Russell's blog via a different article I was reading; here's the blog post: http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/07/for-amy/  He isn't the best writer in the sense of proper grammar usage and punctuation, but he gets his point across pretty well nonetheless.  The part of the blog post that really stuck out to me was the first part:

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"When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone."

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Man, SO true.  I can most definitely relate to this, as unfortunately MANY other people out there can as well.  Probably a majority of the general population can relate to this to some extent, from one or more people they've been close to in their lives.  For us - It was Teresa in 1997.  Arden in 2006.  Carole in 2007.  Pat in 2009 (his may have been suicide, but it was certainly a direct result of his hopelessly debilitating and relentless drug addiction).

And sadly, I'm sure we'll experience a few more before our lives are through.  I'm hard pressed to think of any so far that have involved the "happy" phone call and happy ending.  Maybe a couple which were friends of friends, but it seems like our close family members and close friends with drug addictions have all ended in the worst possible way so far (with the inevitable call you always dread).  You spend years trying to help the person ... staging interventions ... trying every tactic in the book ... but ultimately you are completely powerless in the entire situation.  It's only the addict himself/herself who can control how it ends up. 

And eventually, you WILL wind up on the other end of that phone call ... you better just hope that by some miracle it's the happy one and not the dreaded one.

May the Odds Be Ever Your Favor

O.k. this is frakking AWESOME.  (click to see it after the jump).

Stupid Girls

In my last post I bagged on Twilight a bit, and I hate to bag on it even more now, but there were a couple new things that popped up in the past week that have inspired me to do just that haha.  Although I guess a better way of describing it is that I am feeling extra appreciation for certain other things in comparison.  ;-)  This popped up because I was re-watching Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 last weekend, and there is a scene in that movie where the main three characters are running as fast as they can through a forest (trying to get away from the bad guys).  It reminded me of a scene in ... I think it's the second Twilight movie?  New Moon ... I think it's that one ... where the main characters are also running through a forest (also in a fight with the "bad" vampires if I recall).

But more than remind me of New Moon, the Deathly Hallows scene just made me think about the ENORMOUS difference in quality between the two film series.  Harry Potter is just in a completely different universe than Twilight when it comes to quality - not just in movie-making but in storytelling as well.  I will admit that I haven't read the HP books, and I only started watching the movies because my cousin Katie forced me to go with her to see the first few back when they first came out (she was a huge fan of the books).  I've always found the movies entertaining, but I think I'm gaining much more appreciation for them in these last two or three films.  I think it's partly because the themes are a bit more "adult" as the characters get older ... so the movies go from being "cute" to actually being compelling on a more general level.  I haven't seen HP7.5 yet but it's out now and I plan to see it next week.  HP7.0 was great and it really got me wanting to see the next (and last) one.  And maybe after this I'll finally get around to reading the books. ;-)

I also have to admit that I haven't read the Twilight books either, and those I don't plan to read because I've seen the movies and they are just ... lame.  It goes back to my complaint in my last blog entry about Bella Swan being the weakest lead character I have ever seen.  Now again, my not having read the books means that whatever I say here has to be taken with a few grains of salt.  Katie has read the books and she did enjoy the first couple, so they can't be THAT terrible.  A book allows you to get into the lead character's head and really feel their thoughts and motivations behind everything they do, which would probably allow me to find Bella Swan at least a little bit more relatable.  Maybe ... I dunno.  But I suspect that to some extent, the movies may be exposing the weaknesses in the overall story that are not so apparent when you read the books, because the movies to some extent have to strip the books down to their basics.  Otherwise you'd wind up with like a 6 hour movie for each book.  That's just my theory though.

Anyway the second thing that I saw which triggered me to post this entry was a quote by Stephen King that showed up in my Twitter feed today.  At first I wasn't sure if the quote was real, but I googled it and from what I could tell ... it seems to be a real Stephen King quote.  It goes like this:

"Harry Potter is about doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend." -Stephen King

Dude.  So true.  I mean look, I love a good romance story as much as the next girl, but what turns me off about Twilight is that I think that's ALL the entire series is about.  It's the center of the story.  And to make matters worse, Bella is a character who spends her entire life just waiting for some guy to save her.  She can't do anything for herself; she needs the guy to do all the brave/hard stuff.  That's what drives me nuts.

Hahah I mean look at her in the above picture ... she's just like, "AAHH Oh Edward save me, I so scurrrred!!  What do I do!?  Fly me to your vampire paradise Eddie!!  EEEEK!!"  I can't respect this chick for that.  And I think I tend to prefer books/tv shows/movies that are about something compelling, with the romance piece as a subplot that grows out of the circumstances that the characters are put in.

The funny thing is that if there's anything that the HP movies don't do well, it's the romance part haha ... there are romances in them, but the movies don't do a great job of making you care much about them.  I think it's because they have so much story to fit into the movies from the books that it's hard to squeeze a ton of the romance stuff in there too.  But the point is that I don't even mind that, for two reasons:

a) The theme/story is very compelling in its own right
b) I really like the characters.  They're not perfect because humans are not perfect, but I can have respect for each of them for their good qualities (same way it is in real life).  One thing I find is that I tend to be more interested in character development than the actual storyline sometimes in the entertainment I watch/read.  ;-)

I dunno, these characters just seem to have SO much more depth to them ... or maybe the bottom line is that I've always been kind of a geek and these characters are also fairly geeky, so maybe I just identify with them more.  ;-)  I also love that so many of the supporting characters are so great too.  I mean who the hell would have thought that I ever would've cared about Dobby??  He was a little bit on the Jar-Jar Binks level in Chamber of Secrets, but when he came back in Deathly Hallows pt. 1, I loved him.  He even got me choked up, and the character is entirely CGI!! 

Anywho, thanks Harry Potter, for providing quality entertainment for the masses.  :)  Can't wait to see Deathly Hallows pt. 2 as soon as I get a chance.

Fangirl

So, I tend to start a new obsession with something (a movie/book/tv show type of thing) every few years.  I wasn't always this way and it doesn't happen to me often, but occasionally I will admit, it happens.  It never happened to me till I was in my 20s either, but I honestly think that may just be because nothing popped up that was all that compelling to me until then haha.  My childhood/teenage best friend used to constantly have at least 4 or 5 obsessions at a time, and since I didn't have any of my own, I would always simply wind up getting sucked into hers.  I even wound up at a Star Trek convention once, because she was obsessed with Star Trek: TNG (and more specifically, the character of "Data", oddly enough).  I thought it was kind of strange that she would get THAT obsessed over these things ...  I could never imagine how it could happen.  That is until it finally happened to me, which was not until many years after our friendship was over.  Now that I'm in my 30s, I will have to admit that if I had kids, I would have MUCH less time or capacity to get obsessed with anything hahaha.  But I don't have kids and I have a job that I find mostly mind-numbing (a bad combo of difficult/challenging, all-consuming, mentally taxing, and yet still mind-numbingly boring), so this is how I wind up in these situations.

Here are my previous obsessions:

1) 2001: I got obsessed with the t.v. show Alias.  Sydney Bristow kicked all kinds of ass all over the world and got to do all this crazy fun stuff, and she became someone I lived vicariously through in my own little fantasy world haha.  I started reading spoilers online, chatted with people on message boards, sometimes even on IM.  That lasted about 2-ish years cause the show started to suck after that haha.  But oddly enough, to this day I still have two "internet friends" from way back in my Alias obsession days.

2) 2009: Wow, was it really that long between obsessions?  I think I had lesser obsessions in between, but the next big obsession I remember getting is the t.v. show Chuck.  A very similar show to Alias, except the lead character is a nerdy guy instead.  A comedy or actually a dramedy version of Alias.  And like Alias, Chuck has awesome characters, who I can live vicariously through.  Chuck is still on the air and I still love it, but its last season (season 5) is starting in the fall and the quality of the show has never quite been up to what it was in the season I first started watching it (season 2).  So I still enjoy it but the "obsession" part of it has died down.

3) 2011: I think I now officially have a new obsession and I have to admit it's a LITTLE embarrassing - The Hunger Games book series, which is currently in the process of being made into a movie series (first movie due out in 2012).  I'm kind of ashamed to admit it because it's technically a "young adult" series, much like Twilight (blech) and Harry Potter (fun movies but I haven't read the books).  But all I can say is, I REALLY wish this book series had been around when I was a teeny bopper.  I am certain I would have become completely obsessed then if it had existed.  ;-)  The books are certainly not perfect; they have their flaws and I had some frustrations with the final book in the series, but they were still damn good entertainment overall.  And this is one of those "YA" book series that is getting adults all over the world obsessed with it, so I don't feel too bad that I got sucked in as well.  ;-)

It's not hard for me to tell what it is that draws me to these obsessions.  There are several elements at play, but the biggest one is that they always have a strong female protagonist (or prominent co-lead character in the case of Chuck) that I can live vicariously through while she gets to do many exciting things that us "normal" people don't get to do in real life.  :)  Someone who can basically get to have all the fun that the guy character normally gets to have in like 90% of all entertainment out there, lol.  I may be exaggerating there with the 90% number, but I do find it pretty rare to find a strong female lead in most movies/t.v. shows/books.  Especially the ones that have a theme where the main character gets to kick ass (action/spy/adventure/sci-fi type stuff).

The lead character in The Hunger Games is named Katniss (strange name) and to say that she has "fun" is extremely wrong because these books are about a future dystopian society where 24 teenagers are forced into an "arena" every year to fight to the death ... heheh.  Soooo ... yeah ... "fun" is really NOT the correct word in this case.  BUT, with Twilight being the reigning teeny-bopper book/movie series in the past few years, I just found this book series SO refreshing in that it had such a strong female lead character.  Bella Swan is seriously the weakest lead character I've ever seen and it absolutely drives me up the wall.  Thank goodness that characters like Katniss Everdeen exist out there for teenage girls to look up to instead.  And I know the theme of the series is somewhat of a "copycat" of Battle Royale and The Running Man ... what book/t.v./movie these days isn't at least partially derivative of something that came before it?  It certainly didn't stop me from getting sucked in to this one nonetheless hahah.

Anyway these three books are in the midst of being turned into a movie series, and I am extremely worried that the movie series will ruin the whole thing.  Partially because, well, that's pretty much what ALWAYS happens when books are made into movies.  But also because they are shooting for a PG-13 rating for a set of books that starts off quite dark and only gets MUCH darker from there.  By the end of the third book I felt like I needed therapy ... how the hell can they make this PG-13 without stripping it down??  I don't think they can.  So ... yeah I'm pretty sure the movies will ruin it.

On the bright side, I do think they made a really good casting choice on the actress who is playing Katniss though - Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Ree Dolly in Winter's Bone last year.  She was great in that role and Katniss is practically the exact same character in many ways, so that works well.

I think they also made a great choice with Woody Harrelson as Haymitch.  There are two male love interests and I'm not super confident in the casting choices for those though.  We'll see.  The director is Gary Ross, who has not directed anything remotely like this before.  His previous movies are Seabiscuit, Dave, Pleasantville, and ... Lassie??  Yikes.  I mean I know the first three are good movies but they are NOTHING like this one.  Please don't screw this up, movie people.  I know you're going to.

Dread

These days when Sunday rolls around and I start thinking about the coming work week, my mind fills with an overwhelming sense of dread and bitterness.  Something tells me that is not a good thing.

Disappointment, and Why I Might Be an Asshole

A little over a month ago I wrote most of a long-ass post and then never finished it.  But I'm gonna scrap that one, for various reasons ... I think I was just trying to put too much detail in there.  I did want to update this blog though, because the whole of it thus far is two posts about one particular horrifying subject that leave me and the story in a place (about 3 1/2 months ago) that is a very different place than I'm in now.  Plus I don't want the subject of this entire blog to be about that, because ... well ... fuck that.  One person's bad decision doesn't rule the rest of our damn lives.  And I had a couple other topics I wanted to blab about, but felt this one wasn't quite finished off.  So I'll post one more on that subject just to give an update and close it out, and then move onto other stuff.  Not saying that I'll never post about it again because it's still something I and many others will have to deal with throughout the rest of our lives, but for now I'm moving on.

So, a few days after my last entry, the memorial service was held.  Here is the recap of that:

- It was huge; she had tons and tons of friends from her church and from around town.  I'm pretty sure it's the biggest memorial service I've ever been to.
- It was a very nice service of course (makes me feel like I'm talking about the old lady down the street or something), but mentally torturous for me.  Because I was still in denial and it forced me to start believing that shit was real.  And my mind had to be dragged there kicking and screaming.
- There was a pic/music montage video which was very nice but also torturous for me to watch.  I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready for the typical "bittersweet" feeling you get from watching those videos, in this case.  It's not the same situation as when several of my grandparents died of natural causes a couple years ago.  In those situations you're reflecting back on a long happy life.  In this case it's a life cut short under bad circumstances, so looking at these pictures only feels like salt in the wound to me right now because the situation still feels so wrong.
- Tons of people got up and spoke with very nice stories of her.  Hearing stories that you never knew of a person is always interesting, fun and even helps you understand the person better.  In a sense it made me wish that, at least for that day, I could have been one of those people who knew her in the capacity that doesn't involve all the relationship complexities that exist when you're tied by blood to someone for your entire 34 years of life.  I dunno if that's a weird statement but it's not something that is easy to explain without writing an entire essay on that subject alone.
- After the service was over, we went back to the house we were staying in (a vacation rental loaned by some very generous members of Amy's church) and attempted to numb ourselves with alcohol and fatty foods.

So that was that and I think that's the last family gathering or Amy-related gathering that happened.  

So ... let's jump ahead to a few weeks after the memorial now.  Well first I should preface this by saying that up through the memorial weekend, I had had this really heavy pit in my stomach that would never totally leave, and it would flare up every time my mind would turn to Amy.  It was a pit of devastation, shock, sadness, anger, and denial.  Then a couple/few weeks after the memorial service, one day, I realized it was gone.  Or at least mostly gone, or much lighter than it had been.  Why is that?  I'm not entirely sure, but my theory is that I can attribute it to a few things: new pieces of info and clues that we slowly gather in the aftermath of these things, the passing of time, getting wrapped up in work crap that turns my attention back to daily life again, slowly accepting that the whole thing really happened, etc. etc.  But for whatever reason, all these reasons, and maybe others I don't know about, the pit had been mostly lifted away.  I certainly never had any kind of mental or emotional epiphany that I can trace it back to, that's for sure.

But, I then had to think ... well if the big pit is mostly gone, what's left now?  There's gotta be something.  I pretty quickly realized there was mostly just one major thing left.  And that was - a very broad and general sense of disappointment.  I mean the type you get when you examine a situation from the 50,000 foot level, and over the span of decades and generations.  When you compare where something started off a very long time ago with where it is now.  What happened to the Meredith family?  It's ironic, because it was this family in particular that always made me feel the MOST safe and secure when I was a kid.  I always felt like I could count on them as much as I could count on the ground under my feet.  Where did that go?  The Meredith Family of 1976, 1980, '85, '90 ... long long gone.  I don't know if the family changed or if it's all just my perception as I've become an adult and started to see things for what they truly are ... but I believe it's a bit of both.  I think even the folks who were adults when I was a kid (and therefore have much broader perspective than I) are quite shocked that we've ended up where we are now.

There is a family pic that we had professionally done in 1992 with my grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins, and looking at that pic today is a pretty fucked up experience.  I counted and figured out that 42% of the people in the pic are gone now ... most of them dead, just two of them still alive but no longer part of the family due to divorce.  42%.  That is getting dangerously close to half.

How the hell did we end up here?  There is no obvious explanation.  By all accounts, Nancy and Bob certainly raised their kids well, as a very normal all-American family.  There was no abuse of any kind, no neglect.  No drug use, no alcoholism, no divorce, nothing like that.  So then what is it?  Is it a curse?  Is it bad luck?  Or is it something worse ... self destruction?  If there is any "Meredith Family Legacy" ... is that what it is?  Self destruction?  I mean, we didn't ALL go down this road, Michael certainly didn't.  What happened to him was just pure shit luck.  But to be fair, he married into this family rather than being a product of it.

If we had a family motto, what would it be?  Would it be, "I can't take it anymore, tap out"??  Is it, "Life is too much to handle" ?  I don't know, but I'm almost starting to feel like that's what it would be.  I may or may not be an asshole for thinking along these lines.  Someone who is an expert on Bipolar Disorder ... if they read this, probably thinks I'm an asshole.  I just know that this is where my asshole brain has taken me, and I'm writing it down, for probably no one to read (hopefully).  I've got my own mental problems anyway, like the ones that make me start thinking I've cursed myself for even making these statements.

I mean I do sit and look at the other side of this and say, "What would be the situations that would bring me to suicide, if any?"  I can think of precisely one type of situation: I get some sort of terminal/debilitating illness or I get paralyzed from the neck down or something, i.e. any situation that would cause me to just be a burden on my family and also live a really shitty quality of life.  That's when I'd consider it.  Too bad Jack Kevorkian died a couple weeks ago.  But yeah that's pretty much all I can think of.  And then I think, well it's entirely possible that Amy saw her situation exactly like this.  Even though to the outside world she seemed relatively fine, without any physical ailments or anything of that sort.  But it's likely that she saw her mental ailment to be dire enough to put her in that situation.

So one could argue that the "self destruction" theme is not entirely right, or maybe it's just not properly descriptive enough.  But then regardless ... it still doesn't change my feeling of disappointment at the overall family situation, does it?  It's still completely screwed no matter which way you slice it.  But I mean ... yeah.  Fuck it, what can I do?  Just keep on moving.

And don't look back.  Heh, yeah right.  Easier said than done.

Oh btw I happened to watch this video shortly after I posted this blog post and the song seemed strangely appropriate to the Amy situation in more ways than one, so I'm adding it here.

For Us, It Isn't Over.

Just a preface to this post - It was actually written on February 23rd, but I got too busy with all the wedding stuff to finish it.  So I went back and edited and posted it just now.  But the real date should be:

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
-----------------------------------------

Divorce vs. Death: What's worse?  Ridiculous comparison to even try to make?  Probably, but just go with me on this for a minute, I have a point.  Each of those scenarios has its uniquely terrible aspects.  When your spouse or close family member dies tragically, you never get to see or talk to them again.  Depending on the situation, you may not have even had a chance to tell them goodbye or have any prior warning at all that this was going to happen (if it's something such as a car accident instead of something like a terminal illness).  They are just suddenly ripped away from you forever and ever.  On the other hand, with divorce, you've got the element of maybe some bad feelings involved between you, being forced to see the other person traipsing around town rubbing their "I'm so happy now" shit in your face, you've got the element of choice of the parties involved, one party may end up feeling "dumped" depending on the situation, etc. etc.

I'll get back to this comparison in a minute and eventually tell you my point, but first let me just explain how I even started thinking about this.  One night last week after work, I was doing some surfing around on my usual gossip blogs, and on one blog, they had a youtube video of that singer Adele's performance on the Brit Awards.  I have heard of this chick several times before but never paid attention or heard any of her music.  So because they were raving about her, I clicked on the video out of curiosity, to see what she's all about.  The song is a post break-up song which discusses some of the divorce/break-up aspects I mentioned earlier.

Earlier on the same day that I was clicking "play" on the video, someone created the following memorial page for my aunt Amy on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Meredith-SmithMemorial/179770075398873.  My other aunt linked me and the rest of my fam to it right after it was created, but I couldn't look much at it at work cause it was making me too sad.  So I decided to wait until I got home to take a closer look.  I just so happened to end up clicking on the memorial page while the Adele song was playing on another tab of my browser, and I was only kind of half paying attention to the song.  Here's the song, check it out:

So, the song is playing on my browser on the other tab, and meanwhile I'm looking at all the pictures and posts on Amy's memorial page at the same time ...and it's odd, because I suddenly realize, "WHY the hell does this song seem to be so well-suited as some sort of soundtrack for me viewing Amy's memorial page??"  That doesn't make sense, because the song is very specific in its lyrics that it's about a woman being upset that her ex boyfriend is now happy with his new girlfriend/wife, and meanwhile, the singer feels that she isn't over the relationship or the breakup.  That's clearly not the situation with Amy at all.  But if you take the theme of the song at a more general level, along with some of the lyrics: "I hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded that for me, it isn't over," ... "Nevermind I'll find someone like you," ... "I wish nothing but the best for you," ... "only yesterday was the time of our lives," "sometimes it lasts in love and sometimes it hurts instead", etc., then the overall theme kind of starts to apply.

So that's when the thought suddenly formed in my head: Suicide of a loved one is somewhat like experiencing a tragic death AND a divorce or break-up at the same time.  Sure, you don't have the aspect of seeing the person traipsing around town being happy with someone else, so there's that.  But you still have the aspect of  choice.  Now, I know NOTHING about suicide, as this is the first suicide of this closeness and magnitude that I've ever experienced.  But it seems like the family must always feel like not only have they tragically lost their spouse/parent/sibling/daughter/son/aunt/uncle/best friend/what have you, but don't they kinda feel "dumped" as well?  Like, how could you choose death over US, the people who loved you??  Were we not "good enough"?  What did we do or say to lead you to this choice??  I'm definitely sure that a psychologist would say, that's NOT how the thought process goes of the person committing suicide; you can't think of it that way at all.  They probably just get so lost and caught up in their own head and their own pain that they just can't even take anyone else into account at all.  I know I've seen that advice on t.v. before ... Oprah, Dr. Phil, what have you.  And I know it's true, and it also most definitely helps greatly to have this understanding, but I don't think it totally makes that gut reaction of the close family and friends completely go away; you can't stop or change a gut reaction, that's just the nature of it.

Also with Amy as it probably is with most suicides, mental illness was involved.  That means rational thought was not happening when her choice was made.  It's NOT as if it's a situation where she was doing totally fine with complete mental health, and then something bad happened like the loss of a job or major marital troubles or something, and she just suddenly decided that she couldn't deal.  So the family and friends can't logically say, "she dumped us," because we can be pretty sure that that is not what her thought process was like.  BUT, it's still a decision that's hard for most people to comprehend using logic and rational thought, so I think the gut reaction still goes there.  And point being, it just makes me feel even that much more for Jim/Scott/Sam to think of this as a tragic death and a divorce double-whammy at the same time.  Hopefully hopefully hopefully their first-hand knowledge of the bipolar illness and its symptoms helps their understanding of it though, so they may be able to avoid that gut reaction somewhat.

But regardless of all the cold hard logic that you find out from the leading experts on these matters, sometimes you just have these experiences where you have a moment caused by a conversation or a song or a movie or whatever, and it takes your brain to a certain place.  This is where that song took my brain in that moment:

Amy made a decision, that, while we can't exactly call it "quick" or rash because we know she planned it at least a couple days in advance and had definitely contemplated it in the past, we can certainly say that the end result was a quick end to her pain.  Albeit, pain that, as she has described, had lasted her whole life up until that point.  But the end was quick and it's all over now.  She decided she wanted something and now she has it.

But for the rest of us, it isn't over.  It'll never be over for the rest of our lives.  She moved on and wiped her hands clean of it all.  We can't do that, the figurative blood spatter is all over us now, and it is a stain that can't simply be wiped clean.  We never will be able to fully scrub it away.  Yes of course, everyone's lives will continue, it's not as if we are stopping in place and eventually turning into petrified wood or something.  Sam and Scott will graduate college and high school and date people and eventually get married and probably have kids.  I know Jim feels like he's in a complete tailspin right now, but I still have confidence that he will persevere and eventually find happiness again, in whatever way makes sense for him.  Everyone else's lives will continue to progress as well.  We all keep moving.  But mentally, the Amy situation will never just be "over" for us.  How could it be??  Her life ended mid-sentence.  Even her damn suicide note draft basically ended mid-sentence ... painfully incomplete.  It's a cliffhanger that will never be continued or properly concluded.  Scott and Sam aren't going to just get a new mom to share their future life journeys with.  That's not the way it works.  This vast space of absence will be felt for the rest of our lives, along with the wondering - How much of this aftermath did she contemplate beforehand?  How much did she visualize what the repercussions would be like for Scott/Sam/Jim, to live the rest of their lives with this void and all the complications and awful pain that it brings?  I mean, she couldn't have fully played that out in her head then then still made this decision ... right?  Clearly the bipolar disorder must have simply been blocking these thoughts out?  It had to have ... yeah?  We'll just wonder and wonder.

Could she ever somehow "see our faces and be reminded that for us, it isn't over," as the song says?  Well, that doesn't work for suicide the same way it does for a break-up.  I guess suicide is like a break-up of the most extreme, cruel and permanent kind.

The Pros and Cons of the Suicide Note

There's something to be said for a good suicide note.  This wasn't a subject I had contemplated much until about three weeks ago, when I was sort of forced into it by circumstances beyond my control.  More on that in a minute, but first, this:  We had a friend who committed suicide about two years ago.  His name was Pat, and because of a falling out about a year prior, we were actually not on speaking terms with him at the time he made the decision to write his suicide note and put the gun to his head.  I was still angry at him at the time it happened because of the circumstances of the prior falling out, but when I read his suicide note, I had to admit that it was oddly kind of nice and eloquent.  Pat's note reads as follows:

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Friends and Family,

I have no regrets.  I have lived a life filled with fantastic highs and lows.  I have experienced incredible things few people have in a single lifetime.  I have had the opportunity to share love, and to love passionately.  For this I am grateful, for both the good and the bad.

But as the saying goes, "The candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast."  I have cheated death many times.  So please have no grief or sadness.  I never expected to live this long even as a child.  I leave this life with a clear and calm mind free of attachment.  This is a quality of life decision, my decision.

"Share a little joke with the world."

Au Revoir,
Patrick

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Everything in the note is entirely true.  Pat was a pretty wild and crazy motherfucker.  He lived a fun, wild and exciting life in his youth from what I understand ... and I know that he cheated death many times with severe addictions to illicit drugs in his youth and severe addictions to prescription drugs in his later years (I think he was about 58 when he committed suicide), and from lord only knows what other crazy stuff he engaged in when he was young.  And the key is that he did leave his life with very few attachments.  He had no kids, and his wife had died of an accidental prescription drug overdose a couple years prior (which was a major part of the impetus for his decision to put the gun to his head to begin with).

I hadn't thought much about that note in the two years since it happened, but something happened just three weeks ago that forced it back into my mind.  Something that violently tore the guts out of my entire family and many other people:  My Aunt Amy, my mom's youngest sister, who was only 10 years older than me (9.5 to be exact), committed suicide at the age of 44.  She was bipolar, and she was very vocal about her disorder and the problems that it regularly caused in her life.  We all knew in the back of our minds that this was not completely outside the realm of possibility, but I don't think many of us ever allowed ourselves to go there mentally.  I think we all thought that as long as her life (marriage, kids, job) remained fairly stable, that she would always be able to carry on and endure.  I am now realizing that her husband and kids, though, had attempted to mentally prepare themselves for this much more than the rest of us had, because they saw her day in and day out and they saw every issue that she had as a result of the disorder on a daily basis.

My reactions to this from the time I first heard the news up until this moment have of course ranged from one end of the spectrum to the other - extreme anger, frustration, devastation, disbelief, denial, gutwrenching sadness, and on and on.  One thing I'm realizing is that I'm probably subconsciously turning back to frustration/anger pretty regularly because I just can't fucking stand the bottomless abyss of sadness and emptiness at the whole situation ... those are too much to bear all the time ... and frustration and anger are way easier (at least for me they are because I am very talented at being pissed).  :-P  Oh and not to mention denial, which I still have a LOT of right now.  My brain can't comprehend that this isn't just a long nightmare that I'll eventually wake up from.

And I'm not sure if this is weird, but one particular thing that I've found extremely frustrating is that she did not leave a note.  Well, she started to write like two sentences of a note in her email and then abandoned it, and instead posted a Facebook status that said something to the effect of, "Sometimes words are just not enough."  And all I kept thinking was ... she made the decision to completely and royally screw over her teenage children and husband, and she didn't even have the decency to leave a damn note for them!?  She even deleted her damn facebook account after posting that status, so that every comment she ever posted on anyone's pics or statuses or walls has been completely wiped out.  Sounds weird to even be talking about Facebook in this situation, but it's SUCH an ingrained form of communication these days that there were a lot of nice and fun memories and conversations on there that I would have liked to have still been able to see and remember.  And hell, the closest thing she did leave to a suicide note was that cryptic Facebook status ... as well as her final "statement" to the world, which was to wipe out her FB account.  Ahh, the age of modern technology.  I guess the pre-internet-age version of this action would be to take every photograph and other documentation of yourself that you can find and burn them or something.  It's either an "I'm not worthy of even existing" or a final "fuck you" to everyone that loved you, or a little of both.

In the midst of all this, I ended up looking back on the Pat situation from a couple years prior and almost appreciating it in an odd way.  Even though I was SOO angry at him both before he did it and after, I found myself looking back and almost wanting to thank him for leaving such an eloquent note.  So I went back and re-read his note again for the first time in two years (it was printed on a pamphlet thing from his memorial).  I wasn't sure what the hell re-reading it was going to do for me, but I think somehow I thought it would help me mentally ... I'm not sure how.

It didn't help one bit though, it simply illustrated the enormous differences in the two situations.  They couldn't be further apart.  He had no wife or kids and therefore not many attachments; she had a husband and two teenage kids, and several sisters and brothers in law and nieces and nephews and very close church friends and so on, who she was very close to.  Lots and lots of attachments that are now suddenly ripped apart like limbs torn off.  He felt like he didn't have much left to live for (and given the fact that he spent most of his time in a complete drugged out stupor, those feelings were not entirely unfounded), and she had a TON to live for.  Like SO SO SO fucking much to live for.  She had a GREAT family and an AMAZING husband and two AWESOME kids with limitless potential, and all of us in the rest of her family who loved her, along with many great friends.  He felt like he had already accomplished all he needed to in life, and I really can't see where Amy would have felt that way (goes back to the having so much to live for thing).  But the problem with Amy is that she had a lot of anguish bottled up and swirling around in her own head that most other people never saw ... so I suppose she was having many of the same feelings that Pat did, but no one else could really understand why (even she couldn't understand why).

So then if she HAD left a note, what would it have said??  I can't imagine how the hell she could give any decent explanation for peacing out on her husband in the prime of life and ditching her kids at such a young age.  And her son, who is clearly wiser than the rest of us, pointed out that any note she would have left would not have been at all helpful, because it would have simply been the bipolar disorder talking and not "healthy Amy".  I still keep thinking that I would have wanted to read it anyway just to see what WAS going through her head during that planning process, even if it was only part of a brain malfunction caused by this disorder.  But I know it would only confuse or frustrate me more, given that situation.  Since it would have been the bipolar talking, there's a chance that it would have actually hurt more than it helped.  So she may have actually been doing us all a favor.

So what the hell is my point??  I'm not entirely sure, but I suppose it's something like this:  There is something to be said for a good suicide note, but not every suicide situation is the same or even very comparable at all.  In Amy's situation the note would not have helped, and may have even caused more harm than good.  It certainly would not have solved anything or brought her back.  Yet, that does not take away the fact that I (and probably many of those who loved her) will now spend the rest of my (our) life with an insatiable longing to just figure out exactly why ... to find out what was the thought process behind the final decision ... to just one time ask her what it was on that particular week that made her turn to this, vs. all the other weeks in the past where she had gone through those similar types of feelings due to the bipolar disorder.  But that is a need and a hunger that will never be satiated.  Not now, not a few years from now, not 30 years from now, not ever. The only time that conversation will ever happen is in my dreams, and the only answers I'll ever get will be generated from my own imagination.

R.I.P. Amy ... I hope you have found peace from this decision, as I do (or at least am really trying to) understand the fact that your disorder caused you unbearable pain and irrational thoughts, otherwise you would never have done it.  But you are gone now, which means that there's something much more important at this point.  And that is the hope that Jim and the kids will eventually find peace with this.  Is it at all possible for them to ever find it?  I don't know, maybe it will be easier for them in a way because they witnessed more of your pain than anyone else did, as you normally put on the braver face for the rest of us?  The only thing I do know is that I'm pretty damn sure that I will never find peace with it.  But I'm not the one who matters, I'm just the whiny bitch writing this blog.

Tahoe July 2010

Tahoe July 2010

Tahoe, July 2010

With my brother, 1979-ish

This Blog

Anyway, I created this blog because I'm feeling the need to vent frustrations about certain things and I can't do that on Facebook because every damn person I know and their mother is on there and will see everything I write.  I need some place that no one knows about.  So here it is.  Hello, no one.

Someone Stole My Name

Some asshole already has maryploppins.blogspot.com.  Am I the asshole?  It says that the page was created in 2006 and there's no posts on it.  Was it me a long time ago and I forgot?  But this website seems to require a gmail account and I've only ever had one account ... I'm assuming it wouldn't let me create two blogs on the same account.  Goddamn.

Testing

Test blog