Mar 24, 2010

Well i don't get it.

A statement i find myself saying about alot of situations. Like how every single person in the whole world can be unique when being unique is something we have in common so we aren't actually unique so we no longer have anything in common thus making everyone unique and giving everyone something in common. . . . . Well i don't get it.

Something else i don't quite get is how we can possibly fit in when we are supposedly unique, or at least extremely different from everyone else. Sometimes it can feel like everyone else goes together like a perfectly made puzzle while you are only slightly different. Not different enough for someone to notice the puzzles imperfection from afar, but different enough to be cast as a defect when someone does look closer. Feeling like that can only make one wonder if their steady coarse is limited, if it is only a matter of time before someone points and says "You're different. Why are you here?"

The fear of hearing that question can lead to searching for the answer.
"I'm here because i feel like it."
"Im here because i like it here."
"I'm here because no one realised i shouldn't be."
"I'm here because its normal."
"I'm here because its expected of me."
"Why can't i be here?"
"How do you know that i'm not the normal one and that everyone else is different?"
"It hasn't been a problem so far."
"Why. . . do you want me to leave?"
"Well it seemed like a good idea at the time but if its not working. . . "
"Your right i shouldn't be here."
"Sorry i was just waiting until someone decided i should leave."
"Its OK i'm going now."

Thinking too much, I have discovered, can be dreadfully annoying. When a situation gets stuck in my head, sometimes i can't help but run through multipul scenarios in which i confront it. Sometimes we can feel so out of place that we are truely convinced that no one cares if we are there or not. You might sometimes ask yourself, "Would anyone really notice if i wasn't there?" Is this group of people a puzzle where every peice is important, or is it more like a stack of papers and no one notices if a peice is missing?

How can some people fit in so easily while others feel like they don't quite fit? Well i don't get it. Maybe thats an answer i'll have to settle for. There are alot of things like that, questions i just can't find answers too that i'll just have to hope can be worked out. Yeah Eye Thought So is just something i can use to vent, get it all out there, ponder outside my head for once. Well guess i should stop writing before i end up with a post as long as that confronting subject one.

-JustMe

Mar 23, 2010

Pastafarianism? Hell yes!

So anyway i thought that since i wrote such a really long post last time i ought to write something a little shorter maybe. I also figured it would be fun to make it absolutely nothing to do with anything. If you were wondering, pastafarianism is a religion that involves worshipping flying pasta.

-JustMe

Mar 18, 2010

Well heres a confronting subject that people aren't comfortable discussing!

For some reason i read alot of depressing books. Maybe the fact that the simple written word can effect me so is what makes me enjoy them. That and how well they are written. There are two books in particular that i feel the need to mention at least once on this blog. The pact by Jodi Picoult and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. Each book confronts the issue of suicide and takes a look at the situation from different angles.

Thirteen Reasons Why is told from the perspective of Clay as he listens to audio tapes that his classmate Hannah recorded before she committed suicide. Through the tapes Hannah explains that there are thirteen people that did something to her that led to her ending her own life. Clay listens to each tape dreading the one that would be about him but at the same time desperate to know what he did to hurt Hannah so deeply.


This book shows that there is more to suicide than simply someone taking extreme measures to end their depression. It goes from the moment that started Hannah's downward spiral through to her last try at living. The book was written so well that you truely experience what Clay feels. You learn that Hannah was someone he always wanted to get to know, but because he was afraid to he only got to know her after she was gone.

There was a particular scene in the book that moved me to tears. When Clay is listening to a tape about Hannah finally giving up. As she retells the moment when she let herself be used, Clay cries out and punches at a wire fence. He knows she can't hear him when he shouts for her not to give up, he knows that he can't change a thing, because she is already gone. For a moment i realised how real this book was. If i could feel the pain of a fictional character then how deeply must it hurt to really go through it? I truely admire Jay Ashers talent and his work.

The pact by Jodi Picoult is a lot more detailed in its look at the issue. The pact is in adult fiction while thirteen reasons why is teen fiction, with good reason. The pact takes the issue of suicide, pulls it apart, annalises it, pulls it apart once more and leaves you feeling everything the characters feel. The story, unlike Thirteen Reasons Why, is told from different perspectives while also taking looks at the past. It is much more complex but just as, if not more, devestating.

The pact begins with a young couple, Chris and Emily, sitting alone together. Then a shot is fired. When they discover Chris passed out beside Emily's body he claims that they had planned a suicide pact, but when she shot herself the sight of the blood made him faint. It starts with a chapter from Emily's mother, Melanie's point of view. It takes you through the experience she has when she hears the news that not only was her daughter gone, but it was what Emily had wanted, and that the boy that had lived next door, that had known Emily from the day she was born, that was like a son to Melanie, had been there but still lived.

And that was just the start of the first chapter. Every second chapter it reverts to the past, from when Melanie is pregnant with Emily, and by the end of the book, to the moment when Emily's life ended. It shows the situation from every point of view: Emily's mother, her father and Chris, his mother, his father, his lawyer, and during the later chapters of the past it is from the view of Emily herself.

It shows how someone taking their own life ends the pain for them but causes so much more for everyone else. The two teenagers parents had been best friends since before Chris and Emily were born, yet when Emily is gone that friendship is ripped apart. Chris and Emily had been next door neighbours since Emily was born. "Because your two halves of a whole." is a line from the book about Emily and Chris. When she is gone Chris has lost his other half.

The book was so well written and so deeply moving, just like any Jodi Picoult book. At the end of the book it is as if they cannot be happy anymore, because she is gone. The book is quite depressing but it made me think. Suicide isn't just about the individual. There is so much more to it than that. If someone is suicidal it is not just a cry for help or an over reaction to sadness. It is real. There are so many more layers to it than i ever realised.

Before i read these books suicide was never something i thought of as a real issue. I have never known someone that was suicidal so the issue wasn't one i needed to confront. Then one day i stumbled apon thirteen reasons why at the library. I just added it to my pile of books and went home, not even realising i would do nothing but read that book the next day. That was just when i started thinking about it. I realised how one cruel moment could just be the begining. That it could lead to another devestating moment and another and another until the pain is too much.

Then one day i was in the book store and i stumbled apon a book that i now realise was definately not meant to be in the teen fiction. I got the book from the library and one depressing weekend later the pact was constantly making me think. I thought about how one horrid experience could fester and effect someone for their entire lives. . . and sometimes make them shorten that life. I thought about how when people are feeling something it doesn't just effect them, everyone around them is effected, and that the ending of a life can be the destruction of six others. Or more.

I also believe you can never understand what someone else is thinking. I don't believe there is such thing as a textbook case of depression because people are far too complex to have the same problems running through their head as someone else. Suicide is an issue, and a serious one at that. I just wish that the people thinking about ending it all didn't have a reason to, let alone thirteen of them. The world was designed for us especially, it shouldn't be so horrible. These two books made me think twice about everything i say, everything i do. It is so easy to miss the signs that someone is depressed because people aren't programed to see what they don't expect to be there.

So if you have ever had suicidal thoughts, please don't give up. There is so much more the world has to offer. If things are so bad that you want to end them all, talk to someone about it. Ask for help, you have nothing to lose but there is happiness to be gained. Don't let the world crush you, don't just lay down and take the beating that is life. Fight back. Tell the world that it can't beat you. Don't let the sadness win.

As for those of you that, like me, have never had suicidal thoughts, if you have ever made fun of someone, if you have ever made up a rumor or just done something plain horrible to make someone feel absolutely awful, appologise. If you ever think of playing a trick on someone or doing something to make their life uncomfortable, think twice. Your actions could stay with them for longer than you realise, festering into something worse than misery. If you do take something from this extremely long post other than two increadible books to look up, let it be this: What you do in this world matters.


ps: To any friends or family that are reading this, relax i am not nore have i ever been suicidal. I just like trying to work out things that don't make sense to me.

-JustMe

Mar 17, 2010

Smoke, clouds and other floating inconsistancies

Sometimes i think everyone moves too fast, myself included. We take each day as it comes like the days are baseballs being shot to us by a machine. We have to hit each one just right or it could fly by or worse hit us square in the face. You don't have time to admire the slight sound of the wind being pushed around by the ball, you can't stop to figure out what part of the machine is making that flicking noise when the ball is loading. You just have to take it without knowing why your holding that bat in the first place.

Everyday is just another baseball that we need to hit. When we are kids we are just doing it because its fun. We didn't always hit the ball but it didn't matter. Because it wasn't about how many hits we could get it was about how much fun we had doing it. Then as you play the game for longer, the number of times you make contanct with the ball gets more important. You reach highschool and missing the ball can throw you completely off your game. Then the further into life you get the harder you hit, and the farther you want the ball to go.

This whole time spent making sure you hit each day just right, the sun was shining, the clouds were gliding by, the breeze was keeping you cool. We get so cought up in surviving each day that we forget to enjoy it. A world that exists just for us to live in. Every now and then we should stop staring at the machine that insists on continuously throwing these days at us. Put the bat down, step away from the plate. The days will come to pass and the world will not end. Lie down on the grass, stare at the clouds. Spend a moment doing nothing and be thankful because you don't have to hit the days all the time. Occasionally you can relax.

-JustMe

Mar 13, 2010

Fiction, why must you mislead me so?

Sometimes i truely wish life was more like what i read in books or see in movies and tv shows. Why can't i be clever and witty like the characters from my books? Although alot of the time i'm truely thankful that I have nothing in common with the people in my books, mostly when the book I'm reading is by Jodi Picoult because someone always tends to die in her books.

Alot of the time though when these things made for entertainment come up with a character that is smart, witty, successful and comes up with lots of clever one liners, I can't help but wonder if there is anyone that is like that really.

I spend alot of time thinking about originality. People are rarely who they say they are. More often than not they are who they think you want them to be. Its like there are more similarities between TV and reality than we realise. TV is all about actors pretending to be these people so they can tell these stories and give their viewers what they want. Doesn't everyone put on a mask when they go to entertain their peers or work mates? You might not be pretending to be a cop or some other television stereotype but you still aren't being yourself. Maybe you do it so that if someone doesn't like what they see you can tell them it isn't really you.

I'm not pointing fingers here I'm not trying to say everyone is a fake but me. I'm just saying there are a hell of alot of fakes in this world. They give in to what the media wants them to be and they try to the death to be it. I know this might be hipocritical saying i wish i was like the characters in books then saying no one is real, but what I'm trying to say is that the characters in books aren't nessicarily what the author is like. The characters in film and tv aren't nessicarily the same as the actors.

We all wear masks, for some people its a job requirement. Now i'm not trying to give some life lesson or anything I'm just thinking outloud, or rather im just thinking online. Well i think i have written enough for one day.

Bye for now,

JustMe

Mar 9, 2010

Here Goes Nothin

Well today i decided to write again. Mostly because I'm avoiding other things that have to be done. But i have been annoyed recently and figured this might give me some relief. That was the original purpose of this right?

Is it just me, or is there not a single person that is themselves? Lets face it, you can say that you are being you to your friends and they might even agree, but it would most likely be a lie. Because there is no one you. There is who you are around your friends. then there is another person that you are when you are with you family. It goes the same for where ever you are, workplace clubs or any other group. If there is a different group of people you will act different.

Yeah yeah i know what your thinking. "This isn't true i am myself around everyone! Shut up this is just you." Well you make a good point. It could be just me but from what i observed after realising that i change in each new environment, is that people act different unconciously.

If group A enjoys a persons company because they are loud and unpredictable but group B only accepts said person when they are calm and cool then this person unconciously adjusts whenever they pass each group.

Look i'm not judging I'm thinking. I know i do it. I'm around one group of friends and i am what i once considered myself. I thought i was always myself until i realised that with my family i am different. I didn't realise this until i started spending some of my time with another group. A group that has excepted my first impression of being quiet but occasionally saying something unexpected. They have excepted that of me so that is who i am when i am with them.

Just because i realise this doesnt mean i plan to change. Despite the argument that people should be themselves and that originality is best, this is extremely difficult to achieve. Mostly because i don't know who i have to be to be myself. Does the fact that i have to wonder who i have to be if i want to be me mean i can no longer be me? Will i just have to accept who others want me to be? Or can i discover me through the freedom in this blog? Can anyone discover who they really are?

I come to no conclusion. If anyone actually reads this and can be bothered posting, which i highly doubt, i wouldn't mind your opinion. It doesn't make sense. Like a lot of things it doesnt make sense. Why would we be made unique then our natural instinc be to fit in? Does anyone know? I doubt it.

I'll return my non-existant viewers that don't exist.

JustMe

YeahEyeThoughtSo

Well I guess i should write something. That is after all the purpose of one of these things. I suppose if anyone at all even stumbles apon this they would expect some form of writing to entertain them. Thats all anyone ever expects wheather they know it or not we are all expecting life to throw some interesting thing at us as incentive to stay.

"Hey life my dayly routine is getting a little dry, mind giving me some entertainment? If you do i won't cancel my membership!" I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. You can't get something for nothing. You want entertainment? Say yes to the occasional oppertunity rather than rationalising it.

Before i go on with this pointless writing i would like to point out that i'm doing this for my benifit. I am not pointing fingers i am not trying to tell everyone that they aren't living right I'm just writing down what shows up in my head. For once i'd like to see my thoughts. I'm not going to say my name unless i get bored or decide i don't feel like hiding but for now i won't.

I'm not sure how this whole thing is gonna go. To be honest i only started it because i don't like the idea of a diary. I am into writing and i don't see the point in writing something no one will see. The point is i don't know where this will go it might vary from day to day and there is no way i will write one every day. There are just some things that you need to let out.

Sometimes i think i don't belong, that i'm out of place, that the world just isn't where i can be. I guess it would be nice to know that i'm not the only one. These might sound like pathetic scribblings of a lonely idiot that discovered a lonely corner of internet that hasn't been seen and probably won't, but this isn't just another damn story. This is what i think. This is what i mean. Have you noticed that when people are themselves they don't say what they mean but when they are someone else they are free to?

Yeah, I thought so.