A sweet lie

I have been incredibly busy lately, but I felt I had to take the time to sit down and write something before I went crazy with my thoughts.

It was a happy moment when my friend Cara called me and told me she was pregnant. She and her husband had been trying to conceive since they got married a year and a half ago. Cara had a seven year old daughter, from  a previous relationship, but they desperately wanted to have another child. They were beginning to think that they may not be able to have children, when it happened. They were overjoyed with the news, and began making plans for their new little one right away. Cara was about eight weeks pregnant, when she got a blood clot in her brain, and began having horrible seizures. She was rushed to the hospital, but by the time she was stabilized, her brain had stopped functioning. She was kept alive by a ventilator while her many friends and family came to say goodbye. She looked so peaceful and beautiful, lying there.

The other grieving people comforted each other with typical religious sayings. "She's in heaven now with her baby" and "We will see her again one day."  and "God has a plan." I found no comfort in these sayings, nor was I able to comfort anyone else with such talk. Instead, I felt the harsh realities of "natural selection" and "the diathesis-stress model" punch me in the stomach. I knew that this is how the world works, yet it felt so unfair. I felt alone in my grief, as even my own husband turned to his God for guidance. My questions of  "why her? Why this beautiful, sweet, caring, selfless person, who has a daughter and husband who need her?" can only be answered with such cold words like genetic mutation, and predispositions. Because after all that's what I BELIEVE life is. Four nucleotides strung together in an infinite amount of ways. And believing anything else would be lying to myself. But, oh what a sweet lie it would be.

I usually hate the cold; I usually bundle up if it goes below seventy. But today I went to school with no coat or jacket. The cold was shocking and wonderful. It reminded me that I was alive RIGHT NOW, and that's a good thing.

A Humanistic quote

I'm studying again, and I know how upset you guys would be if I did not share this stuff with you.

"The haunting notion that there must be something more to life represents a subception [the ability of the organism to discriminate stimuli at a level below what is required for conscious recognition]  that there is indeed a good deal more to life than what they are experiencing, but what's missing is to be found within them and not outside them. There is no need to give life meaning for those in the process of living a congruent, complete life. The locus of evaluation, the source of meaning, is found within the individual. The person should be the center of his of her meaning, rather than having a meaning imposed by other individuals or society as a whole. The criterion for values is the actualizing tendency: Does this action of experience enhance the organism?"

Yes, I AM a nerd, and yes, I DO love this stuff :)

Something Funny

Something HILARIOUS just happened to someone I know. Okay, she probably does not think it is hilarious because she got arrested. And guess what she got arrested for? Bigamy! Have you ever heard of anyone being arrested for bigamy these days? Anyways, her soon to be ex-husband reported her for bigamy because she was supposedly "common law" married to some guys she lived with before him. But, there is no common law marriage here in Texas so the charges will be dropped, but she got arrested on his word and absolutely NO evidence. But that's not unusual for the APD. Well I guess it's not too funny, when you look at it from her perspective, but I thought I would share.

Anyways, for anyone who read my last post, I am feeling a lot better. The "incident" is feeling more like a disappointment than a betrayal and more like a lesson learned than a serious blow to our relationship.

In Debt, Out of Luck, and Out of Patience

I don't think anyone reads this anymore so I will just use this as an opportunity to whine about all the crap that's gone wrong lately. We are broke. Not broke like we always are but SUPER broke meaning there are bills that need to get paid and no money to pay them. My son's birthday's coming up and I feel like a horrible mother for not planning ahead and saving for it. My financial aid got all screwed up this year because my husband did not get registered for school on time . As a matter of fact, my husband procrastinated so long that now he is not even going to be able to take classes this fall, and that's just one more semester wasted for him. My schedule got deleted for nonpayment and now I don't even know if I'll get the classes I need to graduate this Spring. Of course my "boss" hits me with a huge project to work on knowing that school is about to start... And all of this crap is just minor annoyances compared to what's REALLY bothering me:

Apparently I said something to hurt my husband's feelings last night and suddenly he decides to tell me that my friend hit on him about a week ago. Now this is not a long time friend; I have known her all of about one month but still, what the hell? He said that she told him she has the "hots" for him and that she doesn't know what it is "something about his eyes". I just couldn't believe that my husband didn't tell me. He has gone over to their house without me ( he is sort of friends w/ her husband but has known him for less time than I've known her) which I was fine with but if I would have known what she had said I would have NOT been comfortable w/ that. I may be blowing the whole thing out of proportion, but I feel so betrayed! Until now, I have always trusted my husband to do the right thing in these situations, and I know it was not his fault that she hit on him. But, I feel cheated on by him not telling me and him continuing to talk to her and hang out w/ her even after that happened. And losing a friend isn't fun either. I don't have many friends, and I don't make friends very easily.

To me, the only reason he wouldn't tell is because he liked her back. My husband's defense is, he was afraid to tell me because he thought I would blame him. I have to find away to believe my husband that he had no intentions of cheating on me w/ her and that he would never do something like this again. I know it could be a huge mistake, but I feel like I have to risk it because I love my husband and I need to trust him, if we are going to  make this marriage work. But for right now, I feel hurt and very alone.

"Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard. Take me back to the start."

just random stuff

I watched Hostel at work this weekend. It was horrible. It was gross and seemed pointless, but who knows, it could have some deep meaning that I am just too shallow to get. I rented it because I saw "Quentin Tarentino Presents" on the cover, but I should have known better after Sin City, but even that movie was better than Hostel. I don't know if it's because I am getting older or because the movies are getting worse, but I just can't handle these new horror movies. My husband and I walked out on The Hills Have Eyes and I refuse to even watch SAW 2. They give me nightmares for days afterwards. I guess that's why they call them horror movies though.

Work has been getting to me lately. My job is pretty easy but it can be stressful at times. Women come in here who have been through hell and back. They come here for a safe place to stay and a new start. We help them all we can knowing that they are likely to end up back with their abuser or worse - dead.  I've seen women go back to men who have given them broken ribs, knocked out their teeth, caused them to have a miscarriage, and even raped them. All we can do is try to give them enough support to make sure they don't go back, but it is frustrating work.

I think it's weird how I can hear a song, and it can take me back to a completely different time and place in my life. I got in my car today and Coldplay's song Shiver was on the radio. Suddenly, I felt just like I did when I was falling in love with my (now) husband. We were lying in bed and he was singing that song to me and playing with my hair. At that time I thought he was perfect, and wanted to spend every second of every day with him. He amazed me at how talented and smart he was. Don't misunderstand me, I still love and adore my husband, but things are different now. We get on each others nerves, argue, and worry about bills, work, school, kids... I know our love is stronger now that we've been through so much together in the few years we've been married, but I sometimes I really miss the days when it seemed everything would just be okay as long as we were together. 

Here's something related to my field of study: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00057DC8-20C7-14B4-A0C783414B7F0000. It's an article titled "Neuroscientists Probe Psychedelic Psilocybin". Scientists tested the therapeutic effects of "shrooms" and found that "67 percent of the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as among the most meaningful of their lives, comparing it to the birth of a first child or the death of a parent, and 79 percent reported that it had moderately or greatly increased their overall sense of well-being or life satisfaction." This does not surprise me; I've done shrooms several times and although I wouldn't compare it to the birth of my son, they were mostly pretty awesome experiences. However, I do know people who have had "bad trips". A friend of mine had such a bad trip that she not only would not do shrooms again but wouldn't even so much as drink alcohol again after the bad experience. I suppose this is not such a bad thing. Then another time I tripped with a friend of mine and he began talking and acting strangely. No big deal for someone on shrooms right? Well, I was volunteering at the Pavilion at that time and the next weekend I saw him; he was a patient there! He never recovered. As far as I know, he is homeless now, living in and out of jail and mental hospitals. The theory is that he already had mental problems and that the drugs really just brought them out or made them worse, but he seemed fairly normal to me.  Hopefully there will be more long term studies that will tell us more about the positive and negative effects of these psychedelic drugs.