Please Excuse the Profanity

I sincerely dislike conservatives (who feel the need to impose their ridiculous point of view on others). If you think John McCain is God's gift to creation, good for you. Go spout your republicanism elsewhere cause this liberal isn't listening to you you stupid asshole.

I also sincerely dislike white trash, and I don't even care if I offend anyone by saying that. Racist ass white trash need to shut their damn mouths. JUST BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE BORN WITH A DIFFERENT SKIN PIGMENTATION THAN YOU DOESN'T MAKE THEM LESS THAN HUMAN YOU ARE DUMB AND YOU SHOULD GO BACK TO BIBLICAL TIMES YOU STUPID FOOL!

And homophobes. I'm gay, and I have been in same-sex relationships. A same-sex relationship is no less meaningful than a heterosexual relationship and fuck you for thinking that homosexual relationships are any less meaningful than heterosexual relationships. YOU ARE WHITE TRASH YOU RACIST DUMBASS GET A LIFE AND GET OUT OF MINE.

I ESPECIALLY DISLIKE THESE PEOPLE WHEN THEY ARE ALL COMBINED INTO ONE HUMAN BEING AND THAT HUMAN BEING IS IN MY ROOM!

I am so angry right now I could punch a wall. My hands are literally shaking. I'm not a violent person but God help me...

I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to hurt someone. God help me.

Homecoming

The interwebz and or a pen and paper will be my only form of communication for a few days, I think.

Tonight was homecoming and I screamed and shouted and cheered myself hoarse. All the fall sports were represented, and all the girls from lacrosse were there and we took tons of pictures and it was fantastic.

But now I can't speak without sounding like a frog. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's almost 2 in the morning, I'm just getting into my room now after spending the last almost 8 hours wandering around campus, from work to dinner to homecoming and finally to my friends' dorm where we sat around and talked and laughed for almost five hours straight.

Oh and get this. They gave raffle tickets out for people who bought homecoming t-shirts and for simply attending homecoming (I did both of these things). The grand prize was an iPod touch, AND MY RAFFLE TICKET WAS ONE NUMBER OFF!! How ridiculous is that!! Gahhhhhh!!! Whatever, knowing me I would never have been able to figure out how to work the damn thing anyway and it would just end up in a drawer collecting dust.

I hope my voice is back by the morning when I have to get up for my 10:30. But at least I only have one more class and then WEEKEND!!

I'm driving out to the cape this weekend and meeting the madre in Middleborough and then we're driving together to Ptown because we both love Ptown, and we crave calamari. No lie at all, there is a place called The Patio in Ptown that has THE BEST calamari I've ever had in my life, and I've been to Italy. I don't know if it will be open this time of the year, but as I understand it, Ptown basically closes down at the end of October, which is rapidly approaching (as scary as it is). I simply can't last the remained of the fall and the entire winter without one last little Ptown excursion. It should only take about two hours to get out there.

And then I come back here to run more homecoming activities because I'm so doubled up on clubs/being in the athletic department that I have royally screwed myself over for potentially my only free weekend for the next month. The athletic department badgers me into doing busy work for them and then all of my clubs seem to somehow overlap each other, so I can never just be present at an event and enjoy life. I've got to run around like a crazy person. I don't know why I do these things to myself. Because it's fun, right? Yeah.

It is fun, no lie. I'm having a great time :-)

Another Letter I'll Never Send

Another letter I'll never send.

Dear Pastor,

If I had to come up with a list of the most influencial people who have ever come into my life, you would be among the top five. I listen to you preach the Good News every week, and every week I am reminded of how good the news really is, how good it is to know God's love. Now you're retiring, leaving your tiny congregation, many of whom take God's love for granted. I can't beg you to stay, I can't implore them to listen to you when you preach, to act like Christians, to act humanely. It seems I am powerless in this situation, but I am not so powerless that I can't take the things you taught me and use them in my life, to teach others, to attempt to teach a blind and deaf congregation hell bent on remaining stationary in this rapidly moving world.

I came to you when I was fifteen, as lost and confused as any teenager, searching for all the answers to all the questions. I had spent so much time focusing on hating God, believing God was at fault for my father's death, that I began to hate life. One can't live when one hates life, and for the longest time I was dead, almost without hope. I didn't know that my hatred for a God I never knew was eating me alive.

Until the day that I decided I couldn't hate myself anymore, I couldn't hate life anymore, I couldn't hate God anymore. How could I hate something I didn't understand? I began to seek out answers everywhere I could, but truth is elusive.

And then I found you, and your tiny congregation, with a life sized wooden cross as the only decoration into the long white hall. And we sat for hours, once a week, every week, discussing God, faith, religion, death, life, Christianity, Buddhism, men, women, family, service.

Sometimes you listened, sometimes I listened. Always you saw my pain, always I saw your humanity.

You didn't hold my hand and lead me out of the wilderness. No, you didn't even lay a path before my faulty feet.

Rather, you set a beacon on a hill, far off in the distance, something I could see but never touch. You gave me something to aspire to: love. You showed me that even two complete strangers, a devoted life-long Christian and a sincere but confused agnostic, both from very different generations and very different life experiences, can meet, can agree that love is far more productive than hate.

I've never told you my deepest secrets, but you could see the writing on the walls. All that mattered to you was that I was lost and alone, and in the truest Christian spirit, you welcomed me into God's house and showed me how to love again. It didn't matter where I had been, or where I was going, so long as I took love with me.
Everything I do, I do with love and earnestness. I take your words with me everywhere I go, and I reshape them into my own.

I know I believe in God, I believe that Jesus Christ was God's Son, and I know His love in my heart. I know the importance of faith, the importance of ANY belief.

I can't believe the hate that many people, many Christians, preach. I've known so much hate, and I've come to know so so so much love, and I simply can't be swept up in the hate any longer. It doesn't exist for me.

And that's thanks to you, Pastor, that I've forgotten hate. It's so hard when you have to watch the person you love the most in the world be ripped out of your life forever. It was so hard not to hate what happened to him, what happened to my mother, what happened to me, what happened to our lives. I can accept what happened to us, what will happen. I can be mad as hell sometimes, but I can never hate.

Thank you, Pastor, for not taking me by the hand and leading me out of the dark. I needed to find my own way, and I did, and I am forever grateful to you. Happy retirement!

Dorm Sweet Dorm

Flew from St. John's through to Halifax, got in to Boston at five this evening.

The madre and I went to Friday's for dinner, it was lovely, but we were both exhausted. She dropped me off at school, and now I'm all unpacked and getting readjusted to normalcy.

My body is sore, for whatever reason. I'm pretty tall (I'm not short, in any event) and being cramped into a tiny little seat for over two hours (each leg of the flight was a little over an hour I believe, maybe closer to two hours each, I don't know blah) is super uncomfortable for the tall folks. While I'm trying to find my personal space and extend my feet under the seat in front of me without utterly lodging my backpack and all my worldly goods under the seat, the madre is there swinging her feet in the air like some kid waiting in the doctor's office. She said something to me tonight about how she's lucky, she isn't uncomfortable in cramped spaces.

To which I replied: Oh yeah, well at least the air I breath is fresh ahhhhh *big inhale*

And it's oh so very true. The air is fresh, but not as fresh as Newfoundland air.

It occurred to me, when coming home, that I haven't been to Canada in just about two years. I'm an American through and through, don't get me wrong, but I have roots in Canada, deep roots. It's hard when people ask me what I am, because besides being an American, and a bonafide mutt, almost all of my "ancestors" came through Canada to get here, and some opted to stay in Canada and build their lives there. None of this Ellis Island business. They walked, rode, drove, flew their way into this country (making it VERY difficult for our family to trace our roots, thanks a lot guys).

My family is spread out over two countries, and so is my heart. To know that someone hundreds or thousands of miles away loves you, misses you, thinks of you, there is nothing like it. I wish I could surround myself with my family all the time, that we could always be together. But we all have our own lives, and our own worlds.

It's good to be back in Massachusetts with the warm night air. But I miss watching the sun meet the sea, I miss my uncle's laughter, I miss hearing stories about my father, feeling like he is there with us.

Two years is too long to go without seeing them, I have decided. I just hope our economies improve (drastically) so that we will be able to see them again, at all.

Happy Thanksgiving Canada!

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, and tomorrow they elect their new leaders.

I can't say as though I'm up to date on Canadian politics, but from what I understand the great white north isn't doing much better than we in the States are right now.

In any event, it's Thanksgiving and there is so so so much to be thankful for. Great family, good food, a roof over our heads, the ability to see each other, to know we love each other.

I am looking forward to getting back to school though, despite all the work that is growing in huge piles all around me. It was very nice to get away from the chaos for a while, but I'm ready to go back.

I'm kind of sad because I don't know when the next time I'll be going home is. My best friend called me about a week ago asking when I was going home so she could plan accordingly and I had to tell her honestly I don't know. The next time might be as far away as winter break. I'll be in D.C. for our Thanksgiving holiday, and all the weekends between now and winter break seem to be filling themselves with concerts and day trips and work work work.

I do miss home, as much as I'm used to the dorm and have re-adjusted to the chaos of college life. There is no cat to curl up on my chest, and no dog to lay at my feet. And the novelty of same-sex marriage has warn off in Massachusetts, I wish I were in Connecticut to see how all this is playing out. I wish soooo badly that I had been there last Friday. But at least I can say I'm from Connecticut, one of the free states.

Try To Hold it Like Rain in a River

I guess I've come to the conclusion that I have a somewhat nihilistic view of life. I suppose my optimism has gone so far as to thrust me into the depths of nihilism.

For as long as I can remember, my view of life has been that everything is always going to be okay. Because everything will always be okay, nothing really matters at all. When my father died, it was hard and we cried and we saved our money and sometimes we went without, but we're okay now. Life goes on. If tomorrow I were to drop dead it wouldn't matter in the least, because all there is is life. An afterlife is another matter entirely, but in this level of existence there is only life, beyond that there is presumably nothing (or everything if you subscribe to those beliefs). When you live you live, and you best live to the best of your ability, because when you die, you die.

My friend said something to me the other night that made me do a double take on what I tell people. He said something to the effect that it is incredibly egotistical to go through life thinking you are the only person who matters, and I agree 100%. No one life matters more than any other life.

Whenever someone comes to me and says they're having a rough time, I listen to them, listen to their story, and give them whatever advice I can offer. I almost always remind whomever I'm giving advice to that: Everything is always okay, no matter what happens or how terrible things look right now they are ALWAYS going to be okay, and the thing I am probably most often found saying is "at the end of the day you are the only person who matters in the entire world."

I truly believe that between the time when you close your eyes and the time when you open them to begin your day, you are the only creature in all creation who matters. In order that I don't sound like a preponent for the "it's all about me" mindset. For the hours when your eyes aren't closed and your mind isn't asleep, it can't be all about you. It's a downright sin for one to go through life thinking it's all about them, no one else matters.

So I suppose now when I am talking to my troubled friends I'll need to qualify "at the end of the day you are the only person who matters" with "but during your waking hours you need to give back, you need to see the world and see what needs to be done and do it."

Everything is always okay, true enough, but there are babies going to sleep hungry, and children too afraid to play out in the fresh air and the sunshine, children who have never known green grass or a peaceful night's sleep, right here in our very own United States. Sure life goes on, but so long as life is never allowed to begin for these kids, so long as our society has forgotten about them, our government has refused services to them, life remains stagnant. Imagine the beauty these young people are capable of, the art, the music, the science, the discoveries. They will never be allowed to contribute to society, and they will remain stagnant, like the air that they breathe.

Reading Kozol has put a spin on everything I hear, everything I say, everything I do. I can't just sit around and do nothing.

I remember working for Habitat for Humanity, when the family came in at one point to see the house, and how thankful the man was. He was so very grateful, so very moved. I didn't understand why. Sure it's nice to have a house, it's nice to have a yard and a tree, nice to be close to school and work, nice to be able to see the sky and the grass, to put everything in perspective like that. But I didn't understand why he was so thankful, until now.

Our country, our society, our neighbours, we've all forgotten about these people, these good decent hard working people who need us to see them, need us to remember them.

I can't even bring myself to say much about the fact that today is the ten year anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death. We need hate crime legislation that includes gender and sexual orientation, no question about it. We need to remember that there are many different people in this world, in fact all people are different. No one person is exactly the same as another, nor is the "ideal" human being the same person for any given individual. We're not all right, and we're not all wrong. All we can do is simply live, and love.

"If you judge someone, you never have the chance to love them."

Mother Theresa was a smart woman, an incredibly compassionate and intelligent human being. I wish so desperately that we had a leader like her currently in this world. We need more love, all around.

We need to elect the right person for the job of fixing this great country. The land of the free. We need the right person to fix this world.