| I push him out of the tree and drop a beehive on him. |
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[29 May 2009|11:03pm] |
AMAZING.
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[15 Apr 2009|10:05am] |
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Comments are screened; tell me things? Confessions, movie recommendations, ideas, wishes, et cetera.
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| Embroider "Don't Date Broken People" onto a pillow and stay home tonight. |
[16 Mar 2009|10:15am] |
I miss having dependable, strong female friends. It's selfish of me, but I really miss having strong women near me. Most of my friends are either boys or girls who live far away. The healthiest girls I am friends with live the furthest away. I always miss Kristal and Allison Gee and Alison and Katie, but I've been missing them more than usual lately. I miss having girl friends. I miss having girl friends who don't consistently make dumb decisions because they are too lazy to change their situations. I miss having girl friends who don't say things like "I know, but I love him" or "I know, but you don't understand how we work" or "Things are really awesome unless __________________" or "Things were so good until __________________." "I know, and eventually I'll talk to him, but I can't right now." I miss having girl friends nearby who don't opt to sit and wait, miserable, for "the right time" to talk to someone or dump someone or find their own place or cut all ties with whatever - I miss having girl friends who know that it is better to deal with the big mess and huge empty-chest heartache feel right away than to sit and sigh, miserable and losing their sense of self. Dignity. Sanity. Self-respect. Whatever, all of the above.
I have run out of patience. I have absolutely no patience left for people who voluntarily stick around in shitty relationships or situations. I can't even be supportive and listen any more. I'm supportive to a fault. I am a motherfucking hug machine. I will listen to you when you're upset, I will let you come over to my apartment late at night and stay up talking with you even though I need to wake up for work in a few hours. I will let you sleep in my bed and I will tell you what I would do. I can even throw out the "Fuck him! What a douche"s and the "What the fuck?"s.
What I can't support is just this... submissive, sad-eyed acceptance. The "What are you going to do? It's just how things are" sighs. I can't support the trading in of spines for placating people who "have anger management issues -- which he's addressing," people who take advantage of other people, people who would let their partner lose her/his sense of self.
Things aren't going to get any better. There are people out there who will not scream at you and will not suck up all of your money. There are people who won't hit you.
You're not going to find them until you get your shit together, though.
No one is going to fix you. No one is going to come along and make everything amazing. No one is coming for you. You have to get your shit together and be okay with yourself, and then you get better at weeding out the bullshit. When you're able to weed out the bullshit, you're able to have healthier relationships. Also? Surprise! Healthy relationships? Usually happier.
Why does this happen to you and no one else? It happens because you're letting it happen. It doesn't happen to everyone else because everyone else figured out when to say "no." Everyone else figured out when to change their locks and their e-mail addresses, their telephone numbers.
Someone told me that it's easy to say this when you're in a disgustingly blissful, healthy relationship - and yeah, it is easier. When you're dating someone who wakes you up by touching your face and who has never done a mean or fucked up thing to you, it is easier to get upset at your friends who can't say "No" or "Get out" or "I'm calling the cops." I felt guilty for a split second until I realized that I'm in a disgustingly blissful, healthy relationship because I decided I'm not putting up with any more bullshit. This relationship didn't happen to me. (I believe that very few things "happen to you" in life. You let a lot of things happen. You do a lot of things.) My partner didn't just show up and make everything better. Things are amazing because we had our shit together before we started dating. I went on a few dates with Chiv in the late summer and was a dick and blew him off because I knew I didn't have my shit together yet, and I didn't want to be a mess. I didn't want another shitty relationship. I would be just as disappointed in my friends if I were single, if I was still getting drunk and kissing all of my friends and making poor decisions - I'd just be a little bit more understanding than I am right now. There'd be a little bit more patience.
If I stuck it out with people who made me unhappy or were emotionally draining, sadistic, or just plain ol' emotionally unavailable, then I would be smoking cigarette after cigarette in Cup a Joe and sitting on my balcony, staring at trees.
I don't understand this need to be with someone - anyone. I know things get lonely and I know orgasms aren't always as fun alone. I know what shitty relationships are like. I've stuck around when I shouldn't have. I've done all of the embarrassing, spineless things. I've done the whole "but I do love you!" to people who were being vicious to me, who probably knew I loved them but denied it so I'd get upset and coddle them calm again. Not sleeping and not eating for days because I'm too busy arguing and feeling like shit. Smoking pack after pack of cigarettes. Spending over one thousand dollars that I know I'm never going to get back. Resenting someone because I paid for rent and food and everything for the both of us for a few months. I've stayed with people because we used to be good, because I thought that that's just how things were after you've been dating for awhile. I've stayed with people because I was waiting for it to get magically better. Because I was waiting for them to have an epiphany. Because I knew they didn't want me to be upset, even though they constantly made me upset. Because I didn't have anywhere else to go or anything else to do. I've stuck with people who were mentally and emotionally abusive. I've tried to prove my love to people who didn't even deserve it in the first place. All of the shitty relationships I stayed in was because I couldn't imagine feeling the same sort of "connection" with someone else. I honestly thought that was it.
There is no "but I love him" or "but I can tell he really loves me" about it. We don't realize how many people there are on the planet. If the relationship you're in isn't fulfilling your needs, if you're afraid of stirring shit up, if you're biting your tongue or getting pushed around, if you talk to your partner and you are watching your words float out of his ears, if you dread your partner coming home because you're going to lose your sense of self for however long he or she is around -- goddamn it, just stop. We forget that it's okay to be alone. We forget how nice it is to have your own space and not have to check in with someone you don't even want to check in with anymore.
This isn't going to last forever. In all of the shitty relationships and situations I was in, I knew it wasn't going to last forever. All of the time you waste in your shitty relationship now, you're going to regret later. You're going to look back at however months or years you spent, and they're going to feel wasted.
Get your shit together. Stop waiting for "the right time," or for things to reach the bottom. Stop waiting, period. This is your motherfucking cue. Take care of yourselves already.
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[01 Mar 2009|07:05pm] |
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I am dating a boy who, when I asked him if when we move in together we could have a Catholic kitsch themed bathroom, replied "How about a Catholic kitsch kitchen? ... Catholic kitschin?" I feel like glitter and little hearts are coming out of my pores.
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| Be my motherfucking Valentine. |
[15 Feb 2009|11:37am] |
Oh! Yesterday was fun. Chiv made me this, which is amazing and adorable. We went to Charlotte (which is about a 2.5 hour drive from Chapel Hill) and poked around the art district and talked to artists and looked at amazing paintings and bought some prints and made plans to go to the next Gallery Crawl. We drove through the city. And we saw our friends at a party later that night, and then went home and promptly passed the fuck out. Today we are going to paint.
Flowers! Chiv's entire apartment smells like these flowers now.
( Pictures from Valentine's Day )
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| Reiteration: |
[25 Jan 2009|12:26am] |
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"Tears are easier to put up with than joy. Joy is destructive: it makes others uncomfortable. 'Weep and you weep alone' - what a lie that is! Weep and you will find a million crocodiles to weep with you. The world is forever weeping. The world is drenched in tears. Laughter, that's another thing. Laughter is momentary - it passes. Buy joy, joy is a kind of ecstatic bleeding, a disgraceful sort of supercontentment which overflows from every pore of your being. You can't make people joyous by being joyous yourself. Joy has to be generated by oneself: it is or it isn't. Joy is founded on something too profound to be understood and communicated. To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts."
-Henry Miller
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| Adios, 2008 |
[01 Jan 2009|12:36am] |
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mood |
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Drinky but so thankful. Happy. |
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This is the happiest I've been in... so long that I can't remember when. Years. This is what I wanted.
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[24 Dec 2008|07:41pm] |
I like that I am hanging out in my boyfriend's apartment, reading comic books and polishing off the rest of my mango and soy vanilla ice cream while he has left to go work out. I am the laziest person ever.
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[10 Dec 2008|05:47am] |
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When this semester/week is over, I am going to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep.
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[01 Dec 2008|12:12pm] |
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There are just not enough hours in the day.
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| Focus on the Family lays off 202 people after donating over $500,000 to support Prop. 8 |
[18 Nov 2008|02:59pm] |
I feel pretty awful for the families of people who are getting laid off right around the holidays, but man . . . in the effort to prevent gay people from having families that are given rights, they wound up fucking over their own? The families they are supposedly focused on? The schadenfreude in this is delicious.
... Is schadenfreude vegan?Focus on the Family announced this afternoon that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950.
Focus on the Family is poised to announce major layoffs to its Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire today. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California.
Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of the ministry.
“If I were their membership I would be appalled,” said Mark Lewis, a longtime Colorado Springs activist who helped organize a Proposition 8 protest in Colorado Springs on Saturday. “That [Focus on the Family] would spend any money on anything that’s obviously going to get blocked in the courts is just sad. [Prop. 8] is guaranteed to lose, in the long run it doesn’t have a chance — it’s just a waste of money.”
In all,Focus pumped $539,000 in cash and another $83,000 worth of non-monetary support into the measure to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in that state. The group was the seventh-largest donor to the effort in the country. The cash contributions are equal to the salaries of 19 Coloradans earning the 2008 per capita income of $29,133.
In addition Elsa Prince, the auto parts heiress and longtime funder of conservative social causes who sits on the Focus on the Family board, contributed another $450,000 to Prop. 8.
“They should do more with their half-million dollars than spending it to collect signatures to take the rights away from a class of people,” said Fred Karger, the founder of the anti-Prop 8 group Californians Against Hate. “I think it’s wrong and it’s hurtful to so many Americans.”
In addition to promoting socially conservative issues such opposition to abortion and gay rights, and supporting abstinence-only education, the evangelical Christian ministry is a purveyor of Christian books, CDs and DVDs. Two months ago, citing Wal-Mart and online retailers as having cut into its product market, Focus announced that 46 employees would be laid off from its distribution department. Late Friday, Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger confirmed that more layoffs are in store, but said the ministry will not release details until Monday afternoon. Schneeberger hinted that some programs may be eliminated entirely, but declined to elaborate.
“We’re going to need to talk to our own family first,” he said. “We need to respect the people who are affected.”
Schneeberger also refused to discuss the funding priorities that Focus made this fall, including pumping money and in-kind contributions into Proposition 8.
This is the third year that Focus has laid off employees due to budget cuts. In its heyday, the ministry, which relocated to Colorado Springs from Arcadia, Calif., in 1991, employed more than 1,500 people. Many of those employees worked in mailroom and line assembly jobs, processing so much incoming and outgoing correspondences that the U.S. Postal Service gave Focus its own ZIP code.
In September 2005, nearly 80 employees were reassigned or laid off in an effort to trim millions of dollars from its 2006 budget. In addition, 83 open positions were not filled in the layoff, which included eliminating some of the ministry’s programs. At the time, Focus employed 1,342 full-time employees.
“To the extent that we can place them within the ministry, we will try to do that,” said then-spokesman Paul Hetrick. “Most of them will not be able to be placed.”
In September 2007, amid a reported $8 million in budget shortfalls, Focus on the Family laid off another 30 employees; 15 more were reassigned within the company. Most of the layoffs were from Focus’ constituent response services department (i.e. the mailroom).
At the time, Schneeberger, who had replaced Hetrick, said that giving was actually up by $1 million during the fiscal year. However, a very “aggressive” budget goal of $150 million did not materialize.
In a statement issued this September, marking the end of the ministry’s fiscal year, Chief Operating Officer Glenn Williams weighed in on the additional layoffs of 46 people.
“It is certainly heartbreaking that in this case fulfilling that duty means having to say goodbye to some members of our Focus family, but industry realities really leave us no alternative,” he note in his statement. “We are accountable to our donors to spend their money in the most cost-effective and productive manner possible.”
But Lewis, the Colorado Springs activist, wonders whether the families who donate to the nonprofit ministry, realize where their funds really end up.
“Seriously, I would imagine their supporters have got to be asking the question about whether their church is really practicing their theology.”
For Lewis, who is straight, the issue boils down to the significance of targeting a class of citizens for exclusion, at the expense of the families that the ministry could be helping — in this case their own employees.
Lewis likened Proposition 8 to Colorado’s Amendment 2, the 1992 anti-gay measure that was designed to prohibit gays and lesbians from seeking legal protections. Colorado voters approved the measure, which was marketed by proponents, including Focus on the Family, as an effort to prohibit gays and lesbians from seeking “special rights.” The U.S. Supreme Court stuck down the measure as unconstitutional four years later.
“You can’t make homosexuals second class citizens — we’ve learned that already,” Lewis said. “People will look back on this and see how absurd it is.”
Days before this year’s election, Focus founder James Dobson appeared at a closing rally at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego to rally the anti-gay troops.
Karger of Californians Against Hate, termed the rally a “big bust.” Organizers promised that more than 70,000 supporters would show up; the final tally was close to 10,000, he said.
Yet three days later, California voters approved the measure with 52 percent of the vote. While the measure will certainly head back to court, California has become the 31st state in the country to pass measures that define marriage as being between a man and woman only. In all, Proposition 8 has proven to be the most expensive social issue in the country, with more than $73 million pumped into the cause from both sides. One of the larger contributors to the anti-Prop. 8 efforts was Colorado gay philanthropist Tim Gill, who contributed $720,000 to oppose the measure.
“I’m very disturbed by organizations from out of state like Focus on the Family,” Karger said. “They came in early to make sure the measure got on ballot; they’ve got muscle and they are out to hurt a lot of people and destroy a lot of lives.”
(The article)
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