we all lie to ourselves to be happy.

"....getting drunk, and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself.

A damsel too dumb to even know she's in distress."


-Chuck Palahniuk(sp?), Snuff

The quote struck me. Because I see so many young women going crazy much too fast and much too soon. And they believe its empowering.

This will never get as much airplay as Katy but:




Also. If you seek Amy is not as innocent as it first sounded.

Earth Hour came and went. I didn't feel a pinch.

I am not as certain of the world as I was yesterday because of happenings today.

I love my family and I'm terrified beyond terrified of the ramifications of some certain decisions.

I am always waiting, waiting, waiting.

I hope this time I waited for something worthwhile.

Its such a long night and yet I don't want tomorrow to come. Ever feel that way? When the night has been all you could ask for. Tomorrow just doesn't seem fair..

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.

Everyone sang 'Amazing Grace' in various strains of dodgy disharmony. And I didn't feel like a wretch, and I didn't feel saved but maybe no one else did either, maybe they were just singing. Maybe it was the being together that counted.

-Simmone Howell

***

It is very refreshing to meet seemingly unspoiled 15 year olds these days, because so many of them are more like her.

She runs to her friends and talks about her latest boyfriend, her latest new handbag, her latest thrill. She is 15 and she talks and blogs about herself and her life as if she's gotten the whole world figured out. I wish I could reach out and tell her that being 15 is so beautiful and she should not, simply should not waste it by trying to dress and act 18.

Its not wrong...but this world and its media has corrupted you and made you think what you're doing is okay. That name calling and tagging others is okay. That keeping up with the joneses wont make you lose yourself (it will) and that money and beauty have become the new gods (they havent).

So you indulge.

Too much, too fast, too soon.

Growing up so fast is not healthy.

Ask us grown ups.

We're the ones watching you and wishing you wouldnt waste your teen years away. Plenty more years down the line for your to act older, and thats when the time will actually call for it.

Not now, child. Not yet.

But I will never reach out and tell her this. Even if I ache to.

Like me at 15, I would not have listened to me.

I hope that she at 23 won't regret what she missed out on by simply being 15.

I turn to watch her.

And its like she's already gone.


***

I've been cutting back on things this lenten season, and its been very hard. I went for confession and I poured out my hurts and my sins and my tears and I get told to pray 3 Hail Marys, a penance which does not befit my load. But who am i to judge? Who am I to reckon? Maybe the penance is not meant to equal the weight of your sins because I really think had they been equal, Id still be on my 30th decade of the rosary by now.

***

Money.

Career.

Its all so insignificant in the grand scale of thing. So many have been in my place, in your position and so many have lived our lives and gone on their ways.

I am just another and only one.

Life is so short.

If you're only living for you...technically you're really already gone.


***