Light Vs. Dark

Light vs. Dark

I'm noticing a strange relationship between what a community says it is and how it actually acts. Having snooped around on the Internet quite a bit, it's disturbing to see this trend hold true everywhere I look.

There's these dark corners of the world where the people are broken and twisted and hurting. These outcasts from society are left to suffer by themselves. Yet, despite their own conditions, they treat each other with honor and respect, and do their best to help each other through their messes. It's a certain dignity rarely seen in society at large these days.

Then there's a disturbingly large amount of religious communities (especially Christian), who are supposed to be beacons of light and goodness, that do the opposite. They have this righteous and elite attitude not unlike nobility, and expect others to fall in line. Instead of being helpful and loving and caring, they push others away, saying "you must be this holy to enter" like it's some sort of club. Not that they have to care anyway; life is already set up for them, they don't need to worry about anyone else!

Obviously there are counterexamples to this, but these are the general trends - the "dark" places are showing more love than the "light." Why is this? I'm not saying it should be the opposite - I'm glad there is love in the world at all, especially in the darkness - but shouldn't the light be showing an equal amount of love or more? Like, you know, we're supposed to?

Instead we lapse into whatever's comfortable, taking pride in our own self-worth and scoffing at anything we find reprehensible without doing anything to change it. We have the opportunity to help fix what's broken, and instead we cast it aside like it's garbage? For shame!

For anyone who's looking at me like I'm a hypocrite simply by typing this and yelling at the world while sitting on my own high horse... to paraphrase my dad, you can't preach at people without doing some self-examining of your own first.

I feel like I'm finally figuring out what I want to do with my life: I want to be the best friend that I can.

I enjoy making people happy. That's something that's been ingrained into my being since the start. What better way to make them happy than by being their friend? It makes me doubly happy to see someone I care about with a smile on their face, so I try to entertain, and tell dumb jokes, and listen to their problems, and.... that sounds like being a friend, doesn't it? I do this with people I hardly know, and it still brings me joy to see them laugh. 

Yet there's days when I realize that I haven't spoken to someone I know in a very long time, or when I make a mistake and hurt someone, that I wonder if I'm actually cut out for this. I often can't even bring myself to initiate conversation with someone I've known for years; how can I expect myself to be a friend when I don't even have the basics down? Sometimes my friends, even my family want to talk to me and I just ignore them. Or I make a mistake and push them away, hurting them in the process. It pains me when I realize what I'm doing.

But I'm not perfect, and no one is. I'm still an introvert, and that's hard to grow out of. Sometimes I need to be alone to better appreciate the company of others. The more I appreciate my friends - and the more they appreciate me - the more I feel like I'm doing the best I can.

Protip: Today will never happen again. Use it wisely.

Renhoek: lol

Renhoek: wow I never say lol sorry about that

WillWare: the internet is becoming engrained into your being

WillWare: embrace the lol

WillWare: EMBRACE IT

Renhoek: You're confusing Lol for lel

WillWare: lool

Renhoek: now you're not even trying

WillWare: lull?

Renhoek: Stop

WillWare: I guess you could say I was...

WillWare: lollygaging around

Renhoek: no

My friends are my family.

I was born an only child, but my family adopted my cousin (who is now my brother) when I was ten. My family on my father's side are across the country, and we've never been keen on visiting them. My family on my mother's side don't like us, for the most part; my grandparents on her side are the only real family I have outside of the household.

That's it. Six people at best, and I haven't seen my grandparents all that often. I'm not here to complain about it; this is just the life I've known.

I've heard stories about other people's families. Stories about great uncles and second cousins, three sisters, great grandparents who are still holding on. Visiting the grandparents for Thanksgiving, sleepovers at the aunt's and uncle's, being an uncle at twelve years old. Family newsletters. I might envy it if it didn't sound so foreign to me.

So instead of these things, I made friends. Friends at church, friends in the neighborhood. There were no friends at school, because I was homeschooled. We moved about every three or four years, so I lost these friends on a consistent basis. And to make matters worse, we didn't have internet access, so I didn't know I could keep up with them. After a while I just stopped trying too hard, because there was really no point.

Then I went to high school, gifted school. I made friends that actually stuck. I messed around on the internet and made friends here too. There's a few people I still talk to despite being out of high school for a year now. I'm much more comfortable making and keeping friends; now they fill the void where my "extended family" would be. I may not have many friends, but I love each and every one.

If you're reading this and you'd like a new friend, shoot me an ask or something! I'd love to chat. Just because I don't go and ask people myself or start conversations, doesn't mean I'm not willing to do so... I'm just a little shy a lot of the time. This goes for my friends too, just because we don't talk all the time doesn't mean I don't think about you.

One last thing: I am fiercely loyal to my friends family. You can insult and attack me all you want to, but do not so much as look at them the wrong way or I will make your life miserable.

Paranoia pt. 6: My greatest fear

I have yet to see a specialist at the time of this writing, but I will as soon as I get the chance. There's just one big problem with this whole situation: my paranoia.

Remember what my fears were during the hurricane incident? Poisoned food, brainwashing, diseases, anything that attacks me from the inside and I can't do a thing about it? I've carried those fears with me this entire time. They haven't gone away. The worries that something random might hurt me are under control, but the fear is still there.

The biggest of those by far is the idea that something can affect me as a person. Hypnosis/brainwashing, mental diseases, truth serum, and the like - you know, those weird things you see in movies and sci-fi stuff? I'm so afraid of all of that, I couldn't even get past five minutes of The Avengers. The less realistically it's portrayed, the better I can handle it (so some video games are okay), but those eyes... those eyes freaked me out. I couldn't handle it.

But I probably have depression, so now my worst fears have been realized! Hoo-freaking-ray. I can't wait to see who I become if the problem gets worse and I turn into some anti-social, all-consuming blemish of society! Oh, but it gets worse, you say? You mean there's problems with trying to fix it too? Of course there are!

Those medications that are supposed to fix the problem can sometimes make it worse. Everyone is different and experiences the problem in different ways, so there's about forty thousand different ways to fix the problem - and not all of them work nicely with everyone. The side effects could range from overstimulation (essentially giving another panic attack), to causing suicidal thoughts and other personality changes. Oh look, more of my fears. I have to go through different versions of that just to find the proper way to fix the problem! I had a hard time just taking a harmless beta blocker.

Needless to say, I'm scared of this whole situation. More than anything else, I'm scared of the fact that (to quote a phrase I've used thrice now) I could fight it tooth, nail, and imaginary dragon claw and that wouldn't be enough by itself to fix me. Because it catches me when I least suspect it and makes me do nothing for days at a time until I "wake up" from it and realize that I haven't done anything worthwhile; and then my concentration slips and I do it all over again.

I'm sorry if this huge story/rant/whine/post is interrupting your dashboard with a large text-filled space devoid of cat gifs and sparkly amusements, but I needed to get this out there. If anything I'm happy that I could dedicate myself to something and get it done rather than skip doing this entirely.

I'm just glad I haven't had a panic attack about all this.