I love you Grandma but that was NOT OKAY.

I just got the notification card from the donation she made in my name as a birthday present and it reawakened my anger and hurt over what she did. It reads:

During this joyful time of celebration, a gift was given - in your honor.

To share in Christ’s abundant blessings, a special gift was given to Compassion International to help the world’s impoverished children.

We pray that this gift brings joy to you, as well as the compassion-assisted children and their families who receive its benefits.

In celebration of Christ’s many gifts.

Now, you may be thinking, what’s so offensive about that? Why am I so angry? Poor children are benefiting!

• To start, for the most shallow reason, I am an Atheist and she donated to a Christian organization in my name without a second thought. This is highly inconsiderate of my personal beliefs when I am never anything but considerate of hers, to the point of attending ceremonies with her on holidays when she feels it’s important to be with family.
• Next, I do not believe in religion-based charity organizations. I feel that religion has no place in true charity work and that proselytizing to children and adults who cannot afford to say no or who are not educated about or presented with any other choices is incredibly immoral. This is made worse by the fact that my quick check of Compassion International’s website showed me this: “Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults.
  
  Founded by the Rev. Everett Swanson in 1952, Compassion began providing Korean War orphans with food, shelter, education and health care, as well as Christian training.”
  
  This is not in any way okay. “Spiritual poverty” being implied to mean any non-Christian spirituality is a horrible, horrible idea that erases the validity of the beliefs of the cultures these children are raised in and smacks of an uncomfortable level of brainwashing and the desire to stamp out any non-Christian beliefs in children with no one else to turn to.
• Their website and the card I received are plastered with poverty porn of starving children of color and their white savior sponsor families. With no exception, the children portrayed to be in need of saving are non-white and the sponsorship families are white Christians.
• The fact that the card “pray[s] that this gift bring joy to you” really rubs me the wrong way. Charity is not about giving privileged white bible-thumpers the warm fuzzies because omgz, they’re so kind that they sent money to the little brown children and they can tell their friends how good they are! Charity is not a present that you give in the name of another privileged person to give them the warm fuzzies and make them feel like a better person. Charity should be about a genuine desire to do good for others even if it never affects you in any way and you get no social benefit from it.
• Last, I am especially angry because, if she had asked, I could have given her 5 charities off of the top of my head that I would have been extremely grateful to see receive money. If she had given me a few minutes I could have given her a hugely long list. If she really desired to send money to this specific kind of cause, I would have willingly researched organizations that do similar work until I found one that I was comfortable donating to.

This is not a problem of me not caring about charities, this is a problem of disrespect and holding people and organizations to a higher ethical standard before I’m willing to throw money at them. I am incredibly grossed out and upset.

Finding the Words

There are so many things I want to talk about. I am nearly overflowing with topics, with thoughts that would do better on a page than in my head. But...I don't seem to have the words. Anyone who knows me can tell you that that's a rare thing, I can talk about nothing forever, and when I actually WANT to talk? You've got no chance of getting me to shut up. I'll tell you what I'm thinking whether you like it or not. Apparently I intimidate people with how vocal I am about...just about everything (pardon me if I think that, perhaps, those people NEED to be intimidated, so that maybe they'll learn to speak up, too).

But today I just don't have the words. Today I'm tired. Two weeks ago I fell off of a horse, all that remains as evidence is a scar on my face and a lingering sprained ankle, but healing is tiring. My heart hurts, because caring is tiring. People are strange and complicated animals and understanding them, or at least trying to, is tiring. (I don't think I'm ever going to perfect that skill, but maybe I'll learn to find an off button for whatever makes me want to understand people.)

If I was going to try, I could write about: the mustang roundup (though I already did that, and I just need to edit it from an essay into a blog post), my accident and how much I hate hospitals and bitchy ER nurses, the damned horse that hospitalized me and how much I love him, or how much fake concern from people who hate me annoys me and has made me want to hit something in the past few weeks. If not those, then I could write about how I've been reminded lately why I haven't consistently watched the news in years and why I stick to abstract concepts of social justice rather than current events, because the world makes me sick and I like to cling to what little faith in humanity I have left. Or I could be a bit less tragic, a little more hopeful, try to remind myself that there are things worth paying attention to by talking about the It Gets Better Project (and how much I sometimes love Dan Savage) and all the amazing people who have already participated in it and who are spreading it to reach those who need it. I could say that sometimes Violet Blue, or maybe The Rejectionist, say really cool things.

Perhaps I could try grounding myself in real life instead by writing about Beth DiCaprio who runs the Grace Foundation and continues to give me amazing opportunities to do inspiring things (and has really cool dogs that I want to kidnap).

I could meander into discussing music and how much I love it and need it and really need to acquire more of it. I could tell you how cute my puppy is at great length, because she's damn cute and and a really good foot warmer to boot. Had I the words, I could probably go on about books forever because, you see, I have so many and they're all pretty wonderful. Maybe even a mention of Banned Book Week and how ridiculous banning any form of literature is, though I haven't bothered to read a banned book this week even despite having meant to.

But, see, I don't have the words. I have all these really cool words, strung together in sentences and mashed up into paragraphs, but I don't have the right words. I can't find the ones I want. So I guess that will all have to wait.

Amid Weeping There Is Joy (or HSC Conference 2010)

I find that it becomes infinitely easier to look back on things and find the good in them after a few days. The same is true for looking back and seeing what truly was as bad or worse than you thought it was at the time and figuring out how and why it went so wrong. It's somewhat therapeutic, after an event such as this, to lounge and think about the whys and the hows and pick apart the stresses, fights and failures.

When you put 25 teenagers together and deprive them of sleep, feed them junk food and put them under stress breakdowns will inevitably happen. Adding in 150 of their peers relying on them for amusement doesn't help anything. As well as things went (and most of them went wonderfully) bad things do happen. Things that could ruin the truly unique experience of the conference as a whole if you are willing to let them, and I almost did.

I've come to realize that there were a lot of tears shed in vain and perhaps some words that would have been better off left unsaid, but many things were justified even outside the heat of the moment. There are some people that will never be likable, actions that are unforgivable, trusts that won't reform. Those things won't change even after the initial bursts of anger and betrayal have passed. Nothing will make false rumors less biting or lies less hurtful, and they can't be taken back.

But there are also just people who made silly mistakes and said stupid things to the wrong people and never really thought about the consequences. Forgiveness isn't really in my nature but when it comes down to it well intentioned ignorance is not the same as idiocy and has to be forgiven. And the upside is finding out that what you thought was malicious really wasn't, which kind of brightens things up. :)

So when it comes down to it...conference was pretty good. A lot of the people were really awesome, and really gorgeous, and I wish I had been in a better mood to enjoy their company. We put together a few supercool parties and dances that were totally worth all the effort, and arranged way more workshops than I want to think about.

But my favorite part was probably Sunday night, hanging out and detoxing and letting go of all the things that had been stressing me out.

I'm still exhausted. I'm still kind of upset. But I'm actually pretty happy. Looking back there's always joy amid the tears.

I can't wait for next year. <3

Conference Countdown

This summer has been crazy: beautiful places, beautiful people, adventures, drama, sickness, parties, my 1 year anniversary with my boyfriend, and a new puppy, just to name a few of the things that have happened in the last few months. It's been pretty epic and I've hardly been home at all in the past month. I think my family is starting to wonder if I'm trying to abandon them.

But August is drawing to a close, school is starting (for you conformists who attend XD), tons of people I know are being eaten up by Community College, the awesomely hot weather is going to fade...

But we're going out with a bang because the HSC Conference is this weekend!!! I'd have a hard time thinking of a better way to say goodbye to summer then this. Parties (SUPERHERO THEMED, WOOOOO! the nerd in me can't stop grinning), dances, crazy workshops, not to mention tons of awesome people in one place. And all the weekend before I start class (only one, damn them) at Sierra community college.

I can't wait! Only a day and a half left until it starts....

Toy Story Is Proof That I Have A Heart

Toy Story 3 is not a children's movie...it's a movie for all the has-beens, the children that grew up and left childhood behind in the past eleven years. Four out of the five members of my family that saw it today cried--the only one who didn't is eleven years old, with a dollhouse made out of the entertainment unit and a collection of Bratz guaranteed to trip anyone who walks through the living room. This movie wasn't aimed at her, not yet.

It's a movie for tweenagers trying to forget their childhoods, straining to grow up but not quite there yet, and teens desperately scrambling back from the brink of adulthood and wondering where all that time went. Shown in snapshots of yesteryear that probably match the pictures on your mother's wall: Andy constructing fantasy lands out of linkin' logs and imagination, Andy asleep amidst a mountain of well loved toys that are, inevitably, forgotten in a dusty toybox. The toys scramble to hold onto what they've known; Andy grows up, forgets them, prepares to leave them in the attic with only one exception.

My own toys are gone: Barbies beheaded by a ten-year-old tomboy, toy cars crashed, action figures lost and left behind in multiple moves, a toy school bus that got dropped on the cat and was forgotten somewhere down along the line. There's no safe warm attic for them, they died in a dump somewhere. I have a collection of Breyer horses (missing hooves and legs, paint scratched, propped up against each other in the windowsill) and a pile of stuffed animals next to the bed, and nothing else. Somewhere there is a stuffed chihuahua with a pink bow tie named Mr. Snookums (you see, I've always been cruel) who went with me to Florida when I was ten and will no doubt go to college with me when I'm 18. No toddler is getting their grubby hands on these, they're mine, and I cried when Andy passed his off even though they went to a good home.

Andy grew up, went to college, and passed his childhood on to someone else...but it went out with a bang, and in doing so has made me want to cling to mine a little harder.

I don't wanna grow up...

My sister is obsessive. Painfully so, in fact. She watched one documentary, decided she wanted to become a Marine Biologist, and has since researched colleges and requirements for the programs and already begun having a panic attack about how much work it will be. My sister, by the way, is thirteen.

This makes me feel guilty. This makes me feel like, perhaps, I should go about researching college requirements and where I want to go beyond the vague idea I have always had. After all I'm 16 and college, with all its requirements, is beginning to loom over me. Inevitably this will all end in a panic attack (because I'm already tired, stressed, and in pain--on a side note, I just had oral surgery to remove a benign tumor in my gums that was formed by inflammation in my gums that was caused by a bone spur on my jaw, and they also took out that bit of my jaw, and there is now a giant goddamn hole in my mouth that is slowly healing. That was last week, and while I'm off the vicodin I'm still sleepy and downing motrin by the fist full, and trying to get back to regular life is Not Working Well, and I hate everything and need a nap.)

But it's something that needs to get done. In fact, I need to start taking community college classes in the fall semester to finish highschool with any sort of passable education. Where I will find time for this with any possibility of continuing to have a life I do not know. Oh lovely science and higher maths, you bitches, I am not looking forward to you.

I'm off to research college :(