Things I Have Learned This Year:

Things I have learned this year:

Once you're dead, nobody cares what scars you had. Nobody's going to remember what other people did to you. The only things that remain of you are a tombstone and the scars you've left on others.

There is nothing you can do to make someone cruel treat you better. You cannot become so miserable that they would finally have pity on you. If they were capable of feeling it, they would pity you for thinking that.

Being cruel is the easiest thing in the world. It's not even funny how easy it would be to become a monster the first second you are not the most vulnerable creature in the room. It takes strength to be gentle when you're angry.

You can't fix your problems all at once. But you can substitute them with progressively smaller and smaller problems, until you've reached one that's small enough to fix.

Wash blood and shit with cold water. Hot water makes blood stick to the fabric more. It has no effect on shit, but hot shit water smells worse.

There's a difference between being tough, and being broken down so badly that you can't be broken further. Being able to take a punch because you're used to being abused doesn't make you strong, it just tells the people who'd do that to you that you've already been broken in.

You can be proud of getting by on less than you'd deserve for as long as you had no choice, but living in the gutter just to boast about surviving there while you're not even trying to get yourself to a better place is just sad.

People who don't hurt people on purpose actually apologize when they hurt someone by accident. People who don't hurt people on purpose only hurt people by accident. They don't classify "things I did on purpose" as a special kind of hurt that would actually warrant an apology (which they won't give anyhow).

There's a difference between carrying a grudge and just being careful. If you're still lamenting how they ruined your life and how you wish they were dead when they're already dead, you're just being bitter.

You don't have to choose between cursing G-d for your sorry fate, and getting up to fix your shit. You can multitask. Curse while you work. He didn't come down here to save you, and He won't come down here to smite you either.

Your measure and your worth have jack shit to do with what kind of a father you had. You should worry more about what kind of a father your children have.

Like cats, chickens and white people are sometimes born with blue eyes that change color as they grow up.