| Open Letter |
[May. 17th, 2005|05:10 pm] |
Okay, you win. I liked doing this livejournal thing because I thought it would be a good way to keep people who care about me (few as they may be) up on what’s going on with me. But I don’t subscribe to that rule that says whenever someone asks you how you are, you must answer “good,” no matter how you actually feel. If someone cares enough to ask, I feel like they deserve an honest answer, and if they’re uncomfortable with that, they weren’t really interested and were only up for a superficial conversation, which is a strong indication of a superficial relationship. Evidently, most people are only up for the kind of news that goes along with the “I’m fine,” answer when you’re really not. They want to know about that awesome burrito you had for lunch and how excited you are for whatever event and how much you hate whatever class is keeping you up late. But no one wants to hear about real life, the hard stuff that hurts and makes you cry and want to throw things. No one wants to hear how you really feel about things, and they certainly don’t want other people to hear if they’re responsible for any of it.
I don’t want to censor myself to protect people from being uncomfortable, but honesty is always met with hostility and suspicion. It disturbs people’s ideas about propriety and what should be. It’s sad that people are happy being lied to, and they get downright indignant when anyone dares to tell them the truth.
I was never interested in this being a bulletin board where I simply list my activities from the day and confirm people’s shallow opinions of me. I naively thought that the people who would bother to read something like this would want to know what was really going on and how I really felt. I guess that’s self-indulgent, but at least it’s honest. At least when someone reads this or talks to me they know that they’re getting a real person, and not yet another layer of forced smiles in front of clenched teeth.
I’m not willing to follow suit and pretend to be something or somehow that I’m not so that people don’t have to deal with the discomfort of having someone actually be honest about something in any other situation than a quiet conversation in a dark room where some sense of anonymity can be maintained. It defeats the point. Or what I thought the point of something like this was.
If you want to know about me, call me or email me or come talk to me in person. But don’t bother if all you want to do is ask how I am and hear “fine.” I don’t like lying to people, and I won’t do it. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 16th, 2005|04:03 pm] |
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I guess this will just have to be one of those things where if nothing else, you learn a valuable life lesson, like that its not worth trusting anyone because they will inevitably find a way to hurt you. Hey all of you in relationships out there, get out of them now before you actually think you love them, and dear god get out before they say they love you, because if you believe their lies, you deserve whatever you get. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 16th, 2005|12:19 am] |
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I will write whatever I want to write here, I am sick of getting told that I shouldn't write things that make people look bad. If you don't want to look bad, don't do something that will make you look bad. It's not my responsibility to preserve your reputation if you are going to do stupid shit and hurt other people. Fuck you. I really mean it, fuck every single one of you back in San Francisco that thinks you can do whatever you want without regards to how it hurts someone else and then expects the person who is hurt to keep it quiet for you. Fuck that, I'm sick of not being able to talk about this shit with people because you might get hurt. Why should I care if you get hurt? You obviously never cared that I was and am being hurt. Now I've lost the most important thing in the world to me and you got your feelings hurt because I actually finally told people what you were doing? How dare you try to make me feel bad for telling people what you did. I should have told people a long time ago. |
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| frannie and steven : march 17 2002 - may 14 2005 |
[May. 14th, 2005|11:47 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  fuck you | ] |
Everyone make sure to congradulate Liz for finally getting what she's been working so hard on for the last 10 months or so. Congradulations on breaking me and Steven up. It took a lot of work, seeing as how we had been together for over 3 years, but with perserverance and dedication, you didn't let anything, even a promise to me to leave us alone forever, get in your way. I could go on for a bit, but it's just going to degenerate into profanities and personal insults, and while I am completely justified in doing that, I don't feel like wasting anymore effort right now on writing about you two worthless people. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 10th, 2005|04:59 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  confused | ] |
A lot has happened. Steven wants an open relationship, so he can get "close" to other people. Roughly translated, that means he wants to continue to do what he's doing with Liz and and not feel guilty about it. I don't want to get into it, but if you think that this must make me hate them, you're right. But I have to admit to a high degree of hypocrisy, because I have met someone too. The timing is awful, as there are less than 2 weeks until the end of the year and we're both going to be really busy with finals. We hooked up unexpectedly at a party, and I went over last night to say that it shouldn't happen again, but it did. Unfortunatly, this person is someone who one of my friends really likes, so I feel like an asshole for that. But we like eachother, and we'll get to know eachother better and see what happens in 11 days, and then it'll be summer.
Last night we went to a park and kissed under the streetlamp, and everytime a car drove by I got scared and would stop. I kept thinking, "This is a small town in the midwest and I'm kissing a girl in a public park." |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 4th, 2005|01:11 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  listless | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | nic | ] |
Finally caught up, but still another 4 papers and 2 exams to worry about. Feeling a lot less bipolar than I have been the last few days, fortunatly. Steven is 22 today. Watched Strangers with Candy and Desperate Housewives today in one film class (contemporary melodrama, evidently) and Blue in the other. Listened to Mahler 5 as I did anthropology reading. Feeling listless. Hope Steven is having fun right now. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 3rd, 2005|12:28 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  weird | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | miss chili and the lemongrass soup - thai kitchen | ] |
Man that was fucked up. Why am I so emo? High school is supposed to be emo, not college. I'm sorry. I apologize for being nauseating.
Steven's birthday is tomorrow- 22! wow. i don't think i'll ever be that old. i never thought i would be 19, but here i am. i remember being 9. that was kind of a crappy year for me. i cant believe how young i used to be. like when i met steven i was 15. and when i dated nathan i was 13 and 14. haha, does anyone even remember that? i cant believe that...me and nathan, how weird! shannon rebooted her computer and now it's making techno noises. I should call Rob in, he would love this. i am avoiding finishing my paper on confining social roles in rebel without a cause. i took a nap earlier so im not tired so i have no incentive to get this done in a timely manner. max and dan are drinking tonight, and my friend's boyfriend does coke "every once in a while." i want to go to boston. i have about a million friends there and i'd like to see them in their new habitats. lauren you didnt call me tonight :( i also want to go to the marshall islands and pohnpei and tahiti. thats why i'm taking french, so i can go live in tahiti like strickland. i only read the news for 20 minutes today. |
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| some things |
[Apr. 30th, 2005|06:52 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  melancholy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Cat Power - I Don't Blame You | ] |
It seems from this journal and my internal monologue that I never think about anything except politics and the news. Everytime I open the Update Journal page I only want to write about the latest injustice or some appalling thing I read in one of the four newspapers I read every day. I'm obsessive about this stuff, and it's getting pretty self-destructive at this point. It's not like there's nothing going on in my own life so I have a lot of spare time and interest. I literally sit at my computer reading the news for three or four hours every day, and when someone forces me to stop I'm still thinking about it all the time. I often can't sleep because I'm thinking about one of the horrifying things I read that day. It makes me feel hopeless and depressed all the time. I can't focus on any of the good things, just the bad ones, and I panic myself over things that have not yet happened or might not at all. I think about suicide every single day. Isn't that crazy? Every day at least once. Not because I'm particularly sad over anything in my own life but because I feel so hopeless about the world and this country that I don't really see the point in living another sixty years just to see more of the same. I'm not going to do it, but I think about it a lot.
I have a bunch of personal problems that seem like a big deal to other people when I talk about them but that I don't even think about because they are trivial compared with everything I read about. I might not be able to come back to Oberlin because of money issues. My mom can't afford to live in San Francisco anymore so she's moving, most likely to Stockholm to be close to her family because her mother is really ill and can't live alone anymore. My dad died three years ago and I've never really dealt with it because I still feel like I'm going to throw up if I think about it. I'm completely lost when it comes to what I want to do with my life. I don't really have a family, not like most people do. The closest thing I have is Steven, and things are pretty bad with him. We have broken up or come very close about a dozen times in the last month. We barely talk at all unless we get into an arguement. He says he doesn't like talking on the phone, some ridiculous fear of getting cancer from cell phones. So I ask him what he wants to do if he doesn't want to talk on the phone and he doesn't have regular internet access so he won't write emails and he doesn't write letters. He claims its easier to drive to see someone than to call me. He went to the SOTA concerto concert on our 3 year anniversary instead of calling me and I almost broke up with him. I told him I don't want to do this for another 3, 6, or 15 years, however long it's going to be until we're near eachother. He said that he can't really care about someone who isn't in front of him. Sometimes I really hate him, maybe even often. I don't know what I want to do. He thinks the only explaination for me not wanting to do this anymore is because I want to hook up with someone else and the relationship with him is what's keeping me from doing it. That's not true at all. I'm not interested in anyone here at all. I think he's not scared of losing me because he found a backup. If he didn't have that, maybe things would be different. Alex told me when Steven and I got together that I would have to expect this sort of thing, given that he was with someone else when we met and that posed no problem for him.
I want to go back on anti-depressant medication but I can't because we can't afford it. I'd also like to go on the pill, but again, it's expensive when you don't have insurance. The reason I didn't take those when I did have insurance was because Steven has a problem with medications because he doesn't understand how they work and didn't want me to take anything. Of course I could still have taken them if I really wanted, and I did take anti-depressants for a while, but I didn't (or stopped) because it bothered him so much. That was a mistake; I was depressed and constantly worried about getting pregnant throughout high school, and those things could easily not have been issues if I had just taken some damn pills every morning.
I don't want any comments to this. In fact I don't really want anyone to read it, but since I've already written it, it would be a waste not to post it. I think I'll drown my sorrows in vodka again tonight. That usually seems to work. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 27th, 2005|02:10 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | cynical | ] |
I'm starting to wonder if growing up in idyllic San Francisco, where the elections aren't fought between Republicans and Democrats but Democrats and Greens and no one looks twice at two men kissing on the street, has actually been such a blessing. I grew up knowing that American and world history was full of some pretty embarassing and shameful stuff, but thinking that we had gotten over most of it and had progressed to the point where everyone knew that black people were equal to white people and women should have equal rights and appaling things like genocides didn't happen anymore. I was shocked senior year of high school when I learned that Congress had never passed the Equal Pay for Equal Work amendment, and that paying women less than men for the same job is still legal. I thought segregated schools and the Holocaust and Roe v. Wade were a long time ago, until I considered seriously only recently that those were all less than 60 years ago. 60, 100, and even 200 years is so recent, and when I reflect on that naive belief I had that those were all so long ago, I realize that we have barely made any progress. There are so many people who still hate people based on the color of their skin or their religion, and think that women can't be trusted to make decisions about their own lives, and who shrug their shoulders either in ignorance or disinterest when the word "Darfur" comes up. 3 months ago the President of Turkmenistan shut all of the hospitals in the country except for in the capital. The story was on the BBC for one day, and as far as I know, this issue has never been brought up in the UN or any other international body. The UN continues to drag its feet in the Darfur conflict. 60 years ago the whole world said "never again" when they could no longer pretend that they hadn't realized that the Nazi's were exterminating every last Jew in Europe. Ten years ago they repeated "never again" when 800,000 people were murdered in a genocide sponsored by the Rwandan government and no one bothered to take out even a goddamn radio tower that could have stopped or seriously slowed down the violence. I saw a comment on the BBC from an American who lamented the fact that May Day, once an celebration of American worker's rights, had been usurped by "feminists and other anti-Americans." Women still earn 70 cents to every man's dollar. The pope has called for any pro-choice politician to be denied communion in Catholic churches, but has never asked that the same be done to those who support the death penalty, which the Catholic church is also against; Bush and his followers wants to promote a "culture of life" when 78,000 women die every year from botched illegal abortions. Violence against gay people is up by 7% this year, and who could expect anything else when the government is telling us that gay people are trying to destroy the American way of life? The world has the technology to feed every person, and yet we don't. The country has the wealth to provide health care to every person, but we don't. We have the space to build a house for every person, and we let hundeds of thousands sleep in doorways.
I wonder if these things would be less disturbing to me if I had grown up in an area where they were considered normal and acceptable, such as the rest of the world. I had a long conversation with Graham one night about whether people are basically good or basically bad. I truly believe that people are basically bad. We are a disgusting species. We are selfish and malicious and justify it by claiming it is "human nature." It is dispicable. As the lawyer at the end of Dekalog five screams, "I abhor it." |
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| Good News and Bad News. Good News first: |
[Apr. 21st, 2005|06:43 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Pulp Fiction Soundtrack | ] |
I'll bet you wouldn't think so, but I'm actually really happy about the new pope. Sure, like the previous pope he is homophobic, mysoginistic, and has an irresponsible opposition to condoms, but most importantly and also like John Paul II, he is very, very old. Ratzinger or Benedict XVI is 78 years old, only six years younger than John Paul II was. There is no shortage of very conservative cardinals, though Ratzinger is one of the most orthodox, and if they had wanted to, they could have picked an as or nearly as conservative pope who is younger and would be around for much longer. It seems clear that Benedict XVI is meant to be a temporary placeholder while the church figures out how to liberalize. There needs to be a certain level of consistency between different popes' reigns; they cannot simply appoint a new pope with vastly different views than the last one, because there would be mass confusion on who was right, and they would risk splitting the church into followers of the different popes- no one would believe that God changes his mind on whether condoms are good or bad everytime there is a new pope, people are going to believe that one is right and the other is not really representing God's will. So they chose someone whose views are pretty consistent with the last pope, but who can't possibly reign (is that even the right verb? what do popes do? rule? reign? bless?) for more than a few years, time necessary to figure out how to revise the church's doctrine or stances on certain issues. They could have chosen someone younger, but they didn't. They did that for a reason: they don't want Benedict XVI around for long. They want to change, they just need time to figure out how to do it in. People shouldn't be upset about this new pope being so conservative, they should be encouraged by the fact that he is so obviously temporary, a sign that the church is changing.
But you all know me, I couldn't possibly write for so long without injecting something depressing. So how about that nuclear option, huh? How's that for total and shameless disrespect for the Constitution and the checks and balances and separation of church and state and protection against the tyranny of the majority that it stands for? Bill Frist should be thrown in jail. The filibuster is the only protection the minority party has against extreme judicial nominees who would have the power and have shown their willingness- even eagerness- to overturn supremely important civil rights, environmental protection, and workers rights laws that ensure basic rights to all Americans (with a notable exception in LGBT citizens, but we are well on our way to winning that fight, and I am confident we will, because we are right, and also thanks to "activist judges" who actually respect our constitution and recognize that outdated and bigoted arguements are not valid bases for laws). It is downright abominable that they are marketing the destruction of this last tool of a minority party through videos sent to churches, in which they claim that Democrats are "against people of faith," and that by removing their right to filibuster, the Republicans are somehow standing up for God. This isn't some fringe group that bombs abortion clinics (although undoubtedly those groups do contribute quite a bit to the Republican Party), this is Bill Frist, the fucking Senate Majority Leader, and at least 53 other Republican senators, who were elected and sworn into office on the belief that they loved America and what it stands for. Now we see that they really are not invested in either democracy or freedom, because those concepts must necessarily be extended to all citizens for them to be accurately called by those names, and the country which these people envision so rapturously includes rights for only straight white christian men, and would therefore be neither a democratic nor free nation. |
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socialistoboist's journal