Give Way

I just want to stop being sick for a while. The coughing gets so bad that I can't breathe in between the coughs. It's not the least bit fun and the sympathy bit has gotten old. I just wish I knew what it was so I could kick it's little disease-carrying behind.

On top of that, my two best friends in the world are in a fight, and I'm being pulled in two directions. Not that anyone's putting pressure on me to choose a side, I just hate this feeling of letting people slip away from me, of feeling like maybe we've outgrown each other. It makes me so sad sometimes to see people I love in pain. I can't bear it.

I just feel like everything's working up to a climax, to some big event, to some time when something will give way. Unstable elements can't stay in that state for long. It's just that sometimes those in the way of explosions and reactions don't always walk away unscathed.

And I'm getting confused about what I want. I think that this one thing would make my life complete, and now I see that's not the goal, not perfection, just happiness, a better world. I can't keep changing the way I think about every little thing, the way I feel about people every day. I need stability. But my tendency is just to run away. I just don't want the complexity anymore, to feel that I need to follow the rules of the game, that I'm a playing piece, a two-dimensional, unfeeling cardboard cutout that bends and jumps at the will of some other force.

I don't understand why my mind is trying to tell me that I'm running out of time. It's just a feeling, I don't know what, intuition, psychic vibes, whatever. This feeling of urgency is pushing at me, making me restless, distracting me. And I don't need distractions right now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So a famous rapper is running the NYC marathon to raise a cool million to give to NYC public schools and raise awareness of the plight of the NYC school system. So the children in the schools can grow up, and the little girls can become not just stereotyped and objectified women, but stereotyped and objectified women who are educated. Hell, it's the principle of the thing, right? Ends vs. means, only ends vs. later eventual ends in this case.

Why does this bother me so much? Personal, Societal, and International reasons. It's not cool. For example, on a well-known cable-TV show, scantily clad women jump up and down on trampolines, leap around and prance about in costumes. I flipped past one day, and a woman with two long blond braids in her hair was gyrating and thrusting to the music. She was wearing a modified Girl Scout-esque uniform. Sash with badges, mini skirt, knee-highs, cap, and blouse tied in a knot over her chest. Not just any G.S. uniform, though, a Junior's green one. So we're teaching men and boys to objectify girls from this age group...in other words, 9-11 year olds. Like there's not enough rape and child molestation in the world already? Let's start training girls when they're even younger. But hey, the dehumanization of half the world's population isn't the responsibility of the show, the actors, or the network, right? They're just getting paid, and so what if they capitalize on age-old traditions of abusing and degrading women.

I don't mind sexy outfits, dances, or women who do what they need to do to get by. What I do think is that I should be able to wear what I please without being labeled a tease, a slut, a whore, or stupid. Wearing a short skirt just means I like the way it looks, or I like the colors, or it makes me feel good to know that I think I'm beautiful. The problem comes from treating women like dogs, from looking at us like we're pieces of meat, or things that can be bought.