You're the finest thing I've done, the hurricane I'll never outrun

What does it mean to refuse to be with someone because you think they could be what's best for you?

What does it mean to have one thing in your life that you refuse to risk destroying?

What does it mean to realize that if she's the only thing you won't destroy, it means you are willing to ruin everything else?

Stay small

I know you'll grow
But I wish I knew you'd stay small
If I said so
Please just don't grow
Please just don't grow
Stay small
Won't you stay small
- The Receiving End Of Sirens, "Stay Small"



So a few weeks ago I had a terrifying thought. I'm 19, and not planning on having biological children (ever ever ever - I have a horror of childbirth). I want to adopt older children through the foster care system, and I planning on starting my foster care training when I'm 28, 29, 30-ish. So it occurred to me not long ago, that my kids may already be born.
I might have kids. They might be alive already. Somewhere on this planet. Already. Even though I won't know they're my kids for another ten years. They're still mine. And they might be there already.
Crazy.

So, I'm mentioning this because I had a strange reaction to the movie An American Crime the other night. I watched it with Thing One and Thing Two, two of my awesome roommates who are a couple and kind of inseparable, hence the choice of blog name - which might change if I come up with something better. First of all, the movie is harsh - I seriously hope anyone who watches it knows exactly what they're getting into. I did, and I still had a hard time with it.
The movie tells the true story of Sylvia Likens, a teenager who was imprisoned in a basement and tortured by a woman who was supposed to be taking care of her. Ellen Page has the lead role and is amazing as always - though I do wonder, between this and Hard Candy, if she has some demons she's trying to work through. I might be completely off, but it's just a thought.
Anyway - well done movie, but I'd be cautious recommending it to people unless they understand how upsetting some of the content is. Thing Two had nightmares. It's harsh.

When we got to the end of the film, though, my reaction was kind of interesting, at least to me. It definitely brought up some baddy bad stuff from my past, but more than that - I wanted my kids. I was sad and scared that they're out there, going through whatever they're going to have to go through in order to wind up in foster care and then eventually with me. The state doesn't take kids away from their families just for kicks and giggles - they take kids away when things are too bad to ignore. They take kids away from their families because they're being beaten, or starved, or left alone for days, or molested. You do not go into foster care without a fair amount of damage having already occurred.
And that's why I've always wanted to adopt older foster children - to give some hope for healing that damage, to try and make things better for someone. But I can't stand thinking that I'm here, living my own young adult still mostly teenage college life, and my kids are out there somewhere going through some kind of hell. I hate feeling like I can't do anything, even though that's obviously the situation. I almost feel guilty, as though my wanting foster children is somehow responsible for their situation - even though abuse and neglect happen every day, all over the country and the world. I know that I'm going to be doing a good thing, when I eventually get my licensing, that I'm going to do my best to give a child the best possible shot at life they can, especially when they've already had a rough start.

But still - last night, I wanted nothing more than to find my kiddos, wherever they are, and just hug them and hold them and tell them everything is going to be okay.

If I could

"If I could start again,
A million miles away.
I would keep myself:
I would find a way."
-- "Hurt", as song by Johnny Cash


If I could go back, even partway...I would give anything.

Gender fluidity & interpretation in WALL-E

Well, I was going to post something completely different, but how could I not link this: my hero Kate Bornstein writing about gender interpretation in Disney-Pixar's WALL-E.

http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2008/07/walle-a-butchfe.html

How fucking fantastic is that? Made my day, that's for sure. It still amazes me how ingrained gender binary is into our culture, where we assign gender to freaking ROBOTS and think nothing of it. Geez.

Yeah, Kate B. always makes me smile, no matter what ze's up to. :-D

Still trying to figure out where I'm going with this....

So generally speaking, bloggers tend to fall into one of two categories: those writing for the general public, and those writing for themselves or a few friends. As per usual, I'm undecided about which of these this blog is going to become. This particular post is probably more of the latter, though, since at this point no one reads this. Oh well.

Watching Ninja Turtles III - I know, I'm classy - and getting ready for sleep. Didn't do a lot today, other than shopping with Roommates One And Two, and made apple crisp this evening. Yay homemade food! Goals for tomorrow are to start writing my resume, finish reading Tom Sawyer, and to work on either some poems or one of my fiction stories. Then in the evening a bunch of friends and I are sitting on a panel for diversity training for RAs at our school. I've done it quite a few times before, but the last RA-specific session apparently wasn't great, so I'm kind of nervous.

Other than that...I don't know. I talked to my friend Xurikaya for over an hour tonight, about various things. Towards the end I don't think I was making much sense, partly because I was overtired and partially I think because I was doing that going-inside-myself thing that I'm so good at. I get to thinking too much and then I can't focus on whatever's actually happening because I'm too far into my own head. I dunno.

So I guess that's it for now. Like I said, I'm still trying to figure out where I'm going with blog thing. In the awesome words of Garrison Keillor: "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

Begin the begin.

Oh dear.
I've started a blog.
Now what?

Things you should know:
- I will most likely forget about this thing and stop using it in a month or so, if not sooner.
- I'm very, very odd about my privacy on the internet, so don't expect any full names or even real ones to be used.
- I haven't decided yet whether to let friends see this, so I'm not sure who this little spiel is directed towards.
- If you randomly stumbled across this, and think it is dumb/pointless/offensive/etc., skip along off somewhere else. It wasn't written for you, it was written because I had a sudden whim. I'm not trying to bother you, so please don't bother me.

Who am I?

I'm some girl.

Some descriptors and other things: 19, tall, worries too much, laughs a lot, lesbian, queer, Irish-American, feminist, wannabe activist, Democrat, liberal, rides horses but not as often as she used to or as often as she'd like, loves animals, lives in a nifty apartment with nifty people most of the time, spends the rest of her time at her mom's house 100 miles away, gets bored while driving between the two, can play some Rock Band songs on medium, bakes but can't cook, recently lost her dad, still has an awesome mom, had a crazy teenagehood, formerly homeschooled, goes to college but is taking a semester off, wants to work with teenagers, likes shooting her roommates with a Nerf gun, will probably never leave New England, needs to find a job, half-assed hippie, likes almost any kind of music unless it's about going to the slums where the killers get hung, probably has some some undiagnosed depression/PTSD/anxiety, writes when she can, reads more than that, has a Ban deodorant ad taped to her wall because she thought it looked cool, wishes her life was a musical, knows the significance of orange ribbons on March 1st, thinks Rosie O'Donnell is the shit, is good at faking smiles, wishes she never had to, and is paranoid that internet crazies are going to get her. Probably should not have a blog, for this last reason, if not all the others.

Ummmmmm.
Yeah that's good enough for a first post. Let's stick with that.


I hope the internet crazies don't get me....