Altoidbunny's · Journal

Facebook as a concept sounds like a good idea. You want to see where your friends are and what they're doing. Seeing people you vaguely knew in high school become obese or get knocked up can also be amusing. But in reality it's been infested with applications and attention whore statuses flooding your screen. I don't even know why I keep it. I've even gotten to the point where I think I should delete it, but I don't. What I have done is just stop caring. I'm just there so people can have me as a friend and leave me happy comments on my wall when my birthday rolls around. And yes, I sink into fits of nostalgia and stalk the people I had relationships with or crushes on until I fall into a sulk about life.

Today, however, I saw the most soul sucking album of pictures. It was a girl I used to be really close to in elementary school. We had even declared to be "best friends" oh so many years ago. So imagine my horror when I stumbled across the album dedicated to the birthday party she and a few of her "gal pals" had thrown for their tiny dogs. The dogs were all in dresses and they had bought gifts for the "birthday girls." They had even gone out of their way to buy a birthday cake, specifically made for dogs.

I understand when people have free money and time they can do whatever the hell they want to. But really? Sure, a large part of me is bitter that her mommy and daddy are supporting her in life enough for her to have such frivolous "good time" as it were. But really?

"What we hadn't known about, back then, was pain.

Sure, we'd faced some things as children that a lot of kids don't. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

Each time, you come out a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind- graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last- and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another."
Jim Butcher
White Night





Something clicked when I read that today. I was driven to record it in a place I could easily come back to it. In the process it occurred to me that perhaps someone here might enjoy reading it.

So, out of a desire to record my thoughts I was once again driven to read through the past entries of an old journal. Starting from when I was 14. The last entry was from merely a year ago. In the middle of it all was a love letter followed by a full description of spending the first day with the object of said love letter. All of it was shortly followed by the description of how my parents tore us apart and forced us to stop talking to one another.

Anger doesn't begin to describe the emotions bouncing around my head right now. The injustice of it all. A cruel life lesson taught way too early.

I hadn't remembered it happening like that..until I read the words I had written as it happened. How does that kind of burning pain remain so fresh?


As hard as it is, it has to be accepted as the past and I have to let it go.


But I don't have to remember it all. I had let some of it fade from memory before.(Perhaps I am kind to myself after all)

So against the tiny voice in my head that tells me I am somehow corrupting my records, I have torn out select pages. The love letter that expressed so much fear and emotion and the detailed account of the day he and I spent together. But now what do I do with them? I've considered burning them just as I had done with the love letters he had written me. Or I could simply tear it up...but I'm hesitant. It crossed my mind to just find someplace around town or a park to abandon them in the hopes of one other person reading them..and in that sense I have passed the memory on instead of destroying or losing it.

I need closure from it all...for so long that part of my past has haunted and consumed me. But how do I get closure from a few pieces of paper and memories?

I guess for the moment I'm going to keep them until I can come up with the best way to end them.

It's been awhile since I posted something mundane and non cryptic. So I'll spice it up.

I'm coming to terms with hating people. For some reason I've convinced myself that the process resembles the grief process. First, I denied that I hated everybody. Then I got incredibly angry at everybody for being so hateable for lack of a better word. Now I'm in some kind of bargaining limbo where I've convinced myself I won't hate people if X happens. "X" hasn't been constant. Maybe I can actually change it..or maybe it is indeed a process that just ends in acceptance.

I've been watching silent films for the last 4 hours. I'm drawn to them every Sunday night/Monday morning. I was so amused they had a word I had never heard before...I'm actually pretty disappointed I can't remember it now it started with "Phantom-" The music is soothing in the background and watching it feels like watching the past. The fashions, the language and even the mannerisms make it feel so foreign. A similar feeling was present when I watched the 1940s movie The Foutainhead.

And like usual my mind has not been able to retain what I want to record long enough to actually record it. Ah Well...another day maybe.

Now I plan on dozing off to The Hilarious house of Frightenstein.