"ZONK! ZONK! ZONK!" My alarm clock screams at me. OMG, it's 7:30AM already?! I'll hit the snooze button a couple of times and maybe I'll gather the strength to get out of bed. (Snooze button, one.) Nope, can't do it. I'm not there yet. Good, I actually drift back off to sleep. 
Sleep is not an easy task for me without Ambien or alcohol. "ZONK! ZONK! ZONK!" (Snooze button, two.) Still not there. I'm gonna lay here until I absolutely HAVE to get up. "ZONK! ZONK! ZONK!" (Snooze button, three.) Not quite there. I'll just stare at my ceiling until I can swing my legs over the side of the bed. Sis bursts into the room and tells me that with the icy streets, I better try to get out earlier today. She's right. I drag myself to the bathroom and slowly slide the toothpaste over my toothbrush. I go back to bed and I brush my teeth while sitting on the end of my bed. I'm not happy. I know it. But worse still, I know I'm the only one who can do anything about it. This is gonna be hard. I decide to start my "dietary lifestyle change" today instead of the first of the year. It'll be my Christmas gift to myself. Well, a gift to my pants, that top button has been working way too hard lately.
I gotta make a change, I have to do SOMETHING. I go back to the bathroom, rinse off my toothbrush and start the shower. Oh lawd, this'll be a hard day to get through. Sis reminds me to take my meds, offers me coffee, breakfast and to warm up the truck. 
How can I be so sad with a sister so lovely? 
She's really an angel that's ALWAYS so good to me but she senses that I'm sad and takes even more mercy on me this morning. 
I shower and attempt to get dressed. Ugh, nothing looks right on me. 
Oh well, I'll wear this...'comfort over cute' has been my motto lately, why stop now? 
Thanks to Sis, the truck's warm and I start my morning trek for a paycheck. 
Look at that jerk coming up so fast behind me! Hey, there's ice everywhere, dumbazz!!! If this jerk runs into the back of me, I'm gonna get out of this truck and beat the azz of whoever's behind the wheel and I don't care how big they are. 
Good, they turned off. I don't need to be fighting when I'm this stressed, I'm liable to kill. 
Especially when somebody changed my radio station from the classic rock station I'd been listening to for months but can't remember the station numbers to. 
Figures. 
Uh oh, I'm sad again. Though I'm peeved to be listening to a station I'm not familiar with, I hear a voice I'm familiar with and I begin to feel hopeful and sad at the same time. Oh no, here come the waterworks. Why am I crying? Oh, I dunno; this, that and the other. Sh!t, I hope I can see icy patches in the road through my tears. Suck it up girl! You're a woman. You're a strong, intelligent woman that just needs to man up! 
Wow, there's hardly anybody on the roads this morning. Good for me because Texans aren't the best drivers on icy streets. 
Oh look, there's so few people at work that I even get a parking place in the front of the building today. I'm not in the mood to work or see anyone but it's time for me to put on my workday game face and push myself through the day. I'll reserve falling apart for when I get back home, maybe. Or, maybe I won't need to fall apart at all. I can do this. I got this. Breathe. 
Okay, I think I can face the day...and I did.
It's now 1:27 AM, I'm STILL up and I have a few short hours to do this all over again, hopefully, better next time. Funny thing is, no matter how bad the day starts, no matter how bad it goes and no matter how bad it ends, I'll be blessed to have another one. I guess I should try to remember that. Yep, tomorrow will be a better day. Well, I'm certainly gonna try for one at least. You know I'll keep you posted. You're the only thing keeping me from strong anti-psychotic drugs and a long, extended stay at a mental hospital, so I'm afraid you're stuck with me. 
Originally posted on December 21, 2012
As a continue to struggle to carve a little piece of contentment out of life for myself, I slide deeper into a dark depression. 😔 Last year, I made a very deliberate choice to not start any new relationships. 😒 I knew I wouldn't have enough of myself to give to another person and people who already know me, know to leave me be when I'm feeling anti-social (and they aren't offended by it.) 😐 Staying away from romantic situations has been a lot easier than I thought it would. 😔 Though I must confess, watching an endless amount of gay porn helped for a while but eventually, I just got even MORE depressed because I'm not a buff, gay male porn star, so that ended up being a complete and utter bust. 😶
I thought giving myself a whole year of meaningful introspection, freeing myself of cynical self-deprivation and not having to shave my pits, legs or cha-cha would make me feel empowered...but it hasn't. 😟 In fact, the world's atrocities on the innocent over the last year or so, have me taking on worry I hadn't even seen coming. 😑 I never expected to take on some much pain, hurt and heartbreak that was not squarely mine. 💔 Speaking of cha-chas, my gynecologist, who is a very well-respected, published OB-GYN, told me many years ago that she didn't want kids. I thought to myself 'What a weird choice of occupation for someone that never wanted children'. When I asked her why she felt that way, she simply said, "Why would anyone want to bring children into a world like this one?" I saw her point but I thought she was absolutely crazy. 😳 I knew then, that MY offspring would change the world. 🌎 It was my duty to create perfect children meant to make society a better place. I felt like MY gene pool was the stuff of legends...it still might be but what kind of world would I be unleashing on my mini-me(s)? I just don't know and that makes me very sad. 😞 The tears I've shed for society as whole lately, has probably been more than any other time in my entire life. Mass killings, mutilations, torture and bare-boned evil committed against our fellow human beings is almost too much to bear. 😭
Like so many others, I've wept uncontrollably at the thought of those sweet, innocent Connecticut school children gunned down like opponents of war.
*It made me immeasurably sad to know that the parents of one of 'the lost' took comfort in knowing that their fallen angel died in the arms of his favorite teacher.* Other parents took solace in knowing that their children's teacher was found huddled over her students, in an unsuccessful attempt to shield them from a barrage of bullets bursting through door of the closet they were hiding in. *Within that one horrific day, there are so many tragic stories of heroism, love and appreciation for life.* But to what end? It's really hard to get my mind around.
*I was sadly stunned when I found out that New York nanny Yoselyn Ortega had stabbed to death Leo and Lucia Krim, aged 2 and 6.* She then placed their tiny, bloodied bodies in the bathtub and sat on the bathroom floor, waiting for the mother to come home (who'd taken her 3 year old to a swim lesson), to see her gruesome work. Marina Krim, the mother, knew this "woman" for years and had been recommended to her by a trusted family friend. The Krims had even taken a family vacation to meet Yoselyn's family in the Dominican Republic. This woman wasn't a spoiled New York housewife. She was an emotionally-present parent that dotted on her children. She even wrote in a daily blog about the immense joys of raising The Krim kids. After seeing her beautiful children's slaughtered bodies, she had to be taken away on a stretcher due to shock. How can one expect this level of inexplicable evil? How does one protect their families and themselves from this type altered reality? Is prevention of this type of event even possible? I don't see how. It's not just here in this country, it's everywhere. No place is safe and that's truly petrifying.
Then there's a brave 15 year old girl named Malala Yousufzai, who was shot in the head for openly blogging that girls in Pakistan deserved an education too. *Taliban gunmen stopped a school van driving her home, got on, asked which one was Malala and shot her in the head and neck at point-blank range.* The assailants got away but Malala survived. For her protection and pristine medical care, she was transferred to a hospital in the United Kingdom. No doubt, she will grow up to be a fearless leader that can effect real change. I have no doubt her future will be bright but I just don't understand how GROWN people can be so cowardly and cruel to children. How can some have such little value for life?
I cried openly when I read the story of a brave seven year old Bangladeshi boy named "Okkhoy", that was mutilated for refusing to beg. Child, forced-begging is a real problem in Bangladesh. The gang that openly perpetrates this crime has admitted to starving kids for days, keeping them in barrels at times, to make them weak and pliable for their forced task at hand. *In the case of Okkhoy, four men had surrounded him, bound his hands and feet, cracked open his head with a brick, held him down and took a switchblade to his throat.* These monsters then sliced his chest and belly in an upside down cross. And in a final act of perverse brutality, they chopped off his penis and his right testicle. He survived. Barely. His father sobbed convulsively as he screamed to the unconscious boy laying in his lap; "Listen to me! You cannot die!" His father cries and presses down on the boy's slashed-open stomach to keep the insides from spilling out, as the two ride on a rickshaw headed to a hospital in Dhaka. If you have time, you should really read his story because it is one of true triumph. Triumph aside, it's also so sad that someone so young should be tested with such grotesque evil.
There are literally dozens of other similar stories like these floating in my head. 
I guess I've decided to be an avid reader of current events, in a bad, bad world. 
Knowing this stuff gets me down but keeps me honest. I'm pretty intelligent but I just don't understand this world. Perhaps not knowing is protection from that which I cannot mentally handle. 
I keep saying to myself; "This all has to make sense somehow, it just has to but maybe I'm not emotionally equipped to know." Maybe my head would spontaneously explode if I suddenly understood everything there is to understand about the world. Not good. I mean, who would want to be pelted with my wet, sticky brain matter? 
Sometimes, the actions of mankind are elusive at best but maybe that's a good thing. One of the few things I find some comfort in, is that I believe that we are all connected, to each other and to The Universe. In some weird way, we're all one with every living thing in The Cosmos. 
Maybe the evil that men do is meant to teach us something powerful about each other. 
I believe in God, I believe in evil and absent of severe mental illness, I also believe in the power of free will. We can't intentionally make this world hell on earth and then ask God to pull us out of our self-created suffering, we should be responsible for doing that ourselves. I mean really, that's the very least we can do.
*Author's Note*: The blue sentences are live links to the stories above. I encourage you to put aside some time to read them and discuss them with a loved one. Our shared repsonsibilty as a society is being educated, aware and informed about those around us. After all, we are all connected. Remember?
