Observation: Life is full of tragedies. It’s not a matter of if they will happen, or even when because they are constant and innumerable. The constant nature of these melodramas doesn’t negate their profundity. The solution for survival isn’t numbness or insensitivity. I think it’s the opposite. To feel every pin prick, every soul swallowing deluge, every inch of them fully and wholly. Let them devastate and drain you to completion. Because if so much of life is this pain, it is the most vivid and alive feeling we are allowed on a regular basis. It s the most human we can be, and in it we can find camaraderie with the entirety of the human race. Happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, satiety: those are the rarities. But I don’t see this as a depressing of hopeless observation about life. Apathetic: it’s merely an observation. Because while I can rationally say that fear and isolation and loneliness- the products of tragedy are in many ways the most shared human experience one can have, and as important as good feelings, I also know that that in no way makes those feelings any less earth shattering.

Unrelated: I find myself drawn to movies with sadness in them lately. I find the saddest things to come from everyday type of tragedies. Namely, somewhat mundane relationships-gone-bad type of pictures. Clearly, I’ve been in those situations myself and it therefore brings back vivid images and feelings. But I CHOSE those films, knowing that the very best they could do, would be to make me feel pain. I’m becoming an emotional masochist. But I’m not the only one, melodrama has always been demanded by audiences, it’s its own genre. I think I’ve figured out why I’m obsessed with them, and why the ones that most closely mirror my own experiences and personality are so engrossing. Catharsis right? Closure I guess would be another word for it. But the idea of hurting oneself again in a similar fashion to a more enormous blow, and then somehow to project the healing from the smaller wound onto the healing for the larger, but what are the other applications? We’re not unfamiliar with the concept in America, “whatever doesn’t kill you…” but what about our psychology makes this work? How did this evolve? But more importantly, how can I use this method of repair and recovery in other aspects of my life?

I embrace feelings too much sometimes I think. I allow myself to feel an inappropriate amount for everyone and everything. I wonder where that came from? You should think that that unconditional love thing would be great, but I’m pretty indiscriminate. If I get to know someone and we share some part of our lives with one another, boom I love them- unconditionally. I think about them constantly, want to see them, talk to them, know if they need anything and how I could help. Friends, lovers, I’m a doormat by choice. I think this is relatively new, like within the last year or so. What changed me, and how can I change it back. Loving without choice or reason and logic is completely and utterly draining and not good for my social life. No one wants to be with someone that loves them more than they love the other person. Neither friends nor lovers. I want to see if the new therapist might have advice for that one. I’m not naïve, far from it- maybe I’ve come to terms with so the innate flaw of humans so thoroughly that there is no amount of personal abuse they could inflict on me that I wouldn’t forgive. Despite repeated infractions. I’m rife for being taken advantage of and am sometimes, and even that, I forgive. Sigh.

I hate not sleeping.

Layman's Terms: Healthcare

Healthcare is one of those tricky subjects in politics. The ones where we realize whether or not we’re as liberal as we claim to be, since apparently since Obama, that’s the new “cool” political persuasion. (Us old school dems find it laughable, given that just a few years ago, calling someone a liberal was tantamount to calling them an unrealistic, tree-hugging, espresso drinking, European car driving, arugula eating, literati.) But no grudges, glad to see at least some people have seen the light thanks, in no small part, to our economic recession and complete collapse of the private banking system. I guess impending doom of an economic superpower is the amount of pressure needed to make individuals see past their own selfish desires and out into doing things for the good of society.

Depressing, but true. Humans are self-interested. I get that. I’m no champion of the human spirit as the driving force behind societal improvement. But individuals need to realize that the greater good, is almost always, good for them (thus the name). We as Americans like to consider ourselves among the middle class, even when statistically, very few, (and recently- exponentially fewer) people can actually count themselves among the fortunate few who exist “comfortably.” Both high and low, “middle” is where we often strive to be. This makes sense logically. We neither want to be incorporated into the “have’s” (too pretentious), nor the “have not’s” (too pathetic). Then why when an issue like healthcare, something so completely universal to the human condition in modern society gets brought up, do so many people want to be kept separate from their fellow countrymen and women.

The President’s new health care reform bill is going to help. Is it going to be perfect? No. Would I have much rather liked to see an all inclusive nationalized healthcare plan similar to those in Europe? Absolutely. But at the point the American people are at after years of the anti-national healthcare fear-mongering they have been inundated with by the Republican Party for the past 2 decades, I think this is the closest we are going to get for quite some time.

Taxing the rich to feed the poor; seems to be the colloquialism of the day when it comes to the Republican rhetoric filling our Fox news screens. Is there a significantly higher tax on the wealthy to fund this plan? Yes. Should there be? Hell yes! Those who prosper greatly off the back of the American economy and labor force, deserve to do what it takes to keep that market alive and healthy. Moreover, the tax bracket that will see the increase are those households making more than 1 million dollars a year. These aren’t exactly your everyday, kids next door. These are multi-millionaires and billionaires. It is EXTREMELY doubtful that any of them will see any significant if ANY difference at all in their lifestyles due to these tax increases. Progressive tax structures work people! 15% of 1,000,000 dollars despite being significantly more money in tactile terms than 5% of 1,000 dollars does not have the same level of impact on those households. The millionaire is not going to have to forgo groceries to pay that tax, while the lower wage earner might; even when taxed at the lower rate.

Now let’s talk in terms of why governmental healthcare program options lower costs of healthcare. Right now the private system is comprised of large insurance companies and pharmaceutical reps dealing individually with customers to negotiate the prices of their products. When the government becomes the sole of major provider of healthcare in a system rather then competing smaller insurance companies who do not have large enough shares in the marketplace to assert their buying power- it essentially becomes the SOLE buyer. Thus, it is able to essentially, name its own prices when it comes to purchasing, healthcare products and services. With no other consumers in the bidding, pharmaceutical companies are forced to sell their products to the government at costs significantly lower than when they had individual providers bidding over them and driving up the costs.

And the thought that this might kill the competition and profit making ability of the pharmaceutical companies is laughable. These companies have been posting some of the highest gross incomes and profits for years, while Americans everywhere suffer. The idea that we will somehow get inferior drugs by eliminating competition in this market is also ridiculous. These are global corporations that are selling the same drugs we get here in America at astronomically higher prices because they CAN. Other countries that have nationalized medicine receive the exact same drugs we do at a fraction of the price precisely because it is only their governments that negotiate with them, as opposed to allowing individual consumers shoulder the burden of these companies abuse of the (never truly was) free market system. This is why there were scams such as buying Canadian drugs and selling them over here. Clearly THOSE were not inferior products, despite the fictitious claims by many that they were. They are exactly the same, made in the same factories by the same employees.

So why all the hubbub? Offset your slightly increased income tax amount by the amount you will no longer have to pay for out of pocket healthcare, or there might be NO change to your plan, if you already have healthcare? There’s no downside people. Either you have healthcare (awesome) and you keep it. Or you don’t, and you now get it, (great.)

Sorry for the rant ladies and gents, but illumination needs to happen to pass these bills. Just doin’ my part.

Glass House

At first it starts as a hum. A tone. They call that tinnitus, but that’s not what this is. This is the drone of blackness. Emptiness. Void. It escalates, exponentially. Until the pitch is so clear and so loud it makes your entire being vibrate at its level.

When the first wave of stomach clenching, bowel pulsing sickness hits, that’s when you know. Sickness, sadness, darkness, like an oil drenched dragon perched on your shoulder, hissing obscenities into your ear. That’s when you start to really feel. Your body is the minion of your mind. When sorrow reigns, the body’s only natural response is to manifest that pain into physicality. Sickness.

You stumble forward, groping, grasping for the door frame, too hurried to hit the light switch just inches from your hand. Falling to your knees you crawl to the edge of the toilet and hold either side of the seat, like it was a life preserver- your last chance. The wave of despair hits again and your entire body is wracked from head to tow with a heave. Every ounce of matter in your stomach slides up your throat in a fiery acidic blaze. When it passes, you cough, hard. Sending spit, blood and stomach acid, into and around the white porcelain bowl. You collapse back and reach a damp hand to your sweaty forehead, slumped against the wall directly across from the toilet in the dark, sniffling and gasping at air in deep, thirsty gulps.

The world is spinning around you. The light from the hallway is just enough to etch the silhouette of the bathroom fixtures into your stare, and just enough to demonstrate your complete disorientation. All sense of balance and stability. Gone. As the dark shapes swirl into space before you.

How do they not know? How do they not see the agony in plain view on your face? Of course they don’t see THIS, but they must have some idea. Pain this intense can’t possibly be so invisible.

You fold yourself over and press your hot face against the cool bathroom tiles and grip the floor tightly. Fingers nails dig in deep, into the shag of the bathmat.

It’s not always like this. No, sometimes it’s cutting. The sliding of the blade across your skin; releasing the anguish, expelling the sadness. Yes, sometimes that makes the droning stop. Depends on where you are. The body is the minion of the mind. The mind knows where and what we can do to relieve itself. The appropriateness of the venue. We make the effort to hide what we know they won’t accept. It’s a shared delusion that makes things palatable for both parties. That you’re normal; that they’re happy. That the pain isn’t going to consume us one day…

But not today. The wave is subsiding, the dragon retreating. You drag yourself up into the sitting position as your breathing and your heart rate return to normal. The world rights itself.

Not today.

What to do when you’re heart isn’t in it.

So here’s how it goes. You meet someone in a bar. Cute. You exchange contact info. “Can I call you sometime?” You get called sometime. You go out some other time. The date is a flop. No stimulating conversation, no nothin’. Just a quick adieu and a, “see ya around.”

Then an hour later, a text from tre boring boy: “I had fun, we should do it again.” Seriously!? The conversation had persisted interview style for the better part of the afternoon. “What books have you read lately? Seen any good films?” Not exactly what one would call a good, or even “not bad” chat. It had been painful.

But.

You haven’t gotten positive attention from another human being for 3 months. You hadn’t even taken a shower that day. And you were still appealing? Most certainly a boost to the self esteem if nothing else. So you agree, tentatively, to try again. “Yeah. We should.”

The textual relationship continues. Tre boring boy is less boring via a medium. He’s still a cutie, despite the lack of personality. One mustn’t judge a book by a first date. You invite him over to drink.

Drunk.

You make out and let him touch you up in an alley. Your conscience kicks in. “Okay you can go now,” you state matter-of-factly. His confusion is palpable but your own desire to retain a shred of dignity is stronger than your libido. He leaves. You sleep. Alone.

It’s a week later. He’s still not giving up. Persistence has its place. One can be “worn down.” Movie and dinner? A real date. Alright. Surprised, you have fun. You think. OR maybe the loneliness has just kicked into a level of desperation. Either way, it is enjoyable. You don’t invite him home.

Why?

It’s been so long since you’ve had good sex, and this is your only prospect. If this blows, there goes any chance for getting anything worth getting for another 6 months. God only knows college sure as hell isn’t. So you hold back, scared. Does good kisser mean, good sex? Not necessarily. But bad kisser means definitely bad sex, so at least we’ve crossed that bridge.

There is no subtlety left. The texts have turned blunt and expectant. “Are you alone tonight? Should I come over?” So what do you do? Out of options.

Fuck.

Things that bug me

Headaches.

People who drive with they're back windshield wiper going even when it's not raining and hasn't rained for days.

Most Cats.

The fact that fox news uses the term "futurecast" for their weather forecast. It appears someone didn't understand how prefixes work.

Fox "News".

Flare jeans.

Skanks who can't take a joke.

Human interest stories.

Adios London

Last few hours in Londontown. Finally time to reflect.

I've had such an amazing experience here I can even begin to articulate it, maybe I will be able to later, but for now I can only say these few things.

What are the chances that we meet the individuals that radically shake up our very concepts of existence? What if these things, are both the most wonderful and the most horrible we've ever experienced? What then? Do we denigrate an experience for the negatives, or relish it for the positive?

The opposite of happiness, elation, bliss, isn't pain, sadness, anguish; it's emptiness, nothingness, void. I would rather spend a lifetime in the state I'm in, feeling as intensely and passionately about life and love as I do, then even a minute more of the numbness I've experienced.

I sit here, lump in my throat, trying in some vain hope to be able to encapsulate even a sliver of my state, and I'm failing, so I think I must bid adieu.

To anyone that actually reads this, Blogging is going to be more frequent this summer and back on theme now that I'm headed back to real life. But I'm going to decompress first. No friends, no "out", just me, alone, at home. Until the reverse culture shock wanes a bit at least.

It's based on the fact; not the concept.

Babies are getting married. Nothing more frightening than tuning into the latest Facebook newsfeed scroll to see, "so-and-so is now MARRIED." And these aren't like, your friends aunt, that friended you that one time, your friend lost their cell phone for a week and they needed to get a hold of them, so they friended you because that loser was crashing on your couch for a month and only was available via contact, through borrowing YOUR computer and even started giving out YOUR cell hones number to people telling them "to just ask for me. NO it's no problem at all!"
Unrelated.

So now, you log on to see the latest scandalamorous pictures that you were tagged in on your last night out and what should you see in your blurry, hungover state- but that one, bone-chilling word: MARRIED. Upon closer investigation it's usually a decision undertaken haphazardly by two of your dopey friends who thought it would be funny to be married with regards to the vast network of tubes, otherwise known as the interweb. But more and more often, it's becominga legitimate declaration of legally binding contracts with the state between "that weird couple from your high school."

Now some people may cal me a skeptic for being highly doubtful of the future security and success of these unions, I prefer, not blindingly ignorant. Don't get me wrong, I really do believe in marriage- how else are you going to get someone to stay with you when the wrinkles set in and all your good parts start to lose their flare? Answer: legal contract. But these people tying the knot now, are not even old enough to have a glass of champagne at their wedding receptions without serious risk of reciprocity.

Why not wait? I can't help but think of all the opportunities and experiences these people are giving up. I don't think they're foolish or unintelligent, they're clearly just VERY in love. The problem with being VERY in love when your 20 years old, is just that, VERY in love at 20, most likely will not feel the same as being 25 and never having dated another human being seriously EVER, or hell, even known who you are without this other person to define you.

If this doesn't end up being very coherent, I apologize. I am basically functioning on shots of espresso, Black currant "Lemsip" and am at the moment, filled with a pretty gargantuan dose of tranquilizers (cocktail of seroquel, lunesta and xanex to be exact) so my thoughts and hand-eye coordination may not be their sharpest. "She says she loves me, but the Valium rattles so I don't trust her."

I'm REALLY starting to enjoy London. It took about a month for me to really feel at home and comfortable here, but now, I am finally taking advantage of all the great things this city has to offer. A live music freak such as myself, is in heaven with all the great shows that are constantly occuring throughout the central district. Simian Mobile Disco last thursday was INSANE. Sooooooo amazing. An the general ability to hang out in neat places, with interesting people, is just so refreshing compared to so many years of living just outside of major cities. Location, location, location.

This IS reading week at King's but lucky me, War Studies doesn't observe it, so I still have that class this week and therefore couldn't travel anywhere. Ah well, I also have two sizable papers due on the monday following so it's probably best I stayed and worked on those. I have a month to travel before exams after the 27th of March so I suppose I can hold back and take advantage of this lovely town.

Other than that, life's the standard drawl. Oscar's coming up. My picks: Fincher for best director, Milk for Best Picture. The rest is a wash. Don't think it will pan out that way (fucking slumdog millionaire) but a girl can dream.

Any of you that actually read this: WRITE ME. I love to hear about your lives, and I certainly have the time to keep up with all of your emails (if you EVER send them).

LOVIN YOU ALL,

Smellsey