Everlasting Words

I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today,

life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things:

a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents,
you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.

I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life."

I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands;
you need to be able to throw something back.

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, 
I usually make the right decision.

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.

I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone.
People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou
April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014

Make Way For Gray

appreciate (n.) 

to value or regard highly

    It's a shame I have to begin with a cliché, but furthermore, my sadness stems from the thought that people don't truly understand the candor of it: you do not know what you have until it's gone. 

    I lived in Colorado for 20 years and grew too comfortable and familiar with it. It didn't help I lived in a town with a small population, about 14,000. I got into a really terrible physical fight with a childhood friend. I dropped out of nursing school. My best friend recently moved to Utah with her amazingly perfect son (my god-son). Things just really started to look bleak for me. 

    One cold, winter day, I had a conversation with my aunt who was visiting for the holidays. We decided that it would be best for me if I moved to Florida with her and her family. I was ecstatic! I was so eager to get away from the weed and partying and shady friends I revolved my life around for the previous five years. It was time to get away and to start fresh. 

    I spent almost two months working at a nursing home, not really seeing anyone, and counting down my days until I ascended to the sunny state. I threw a party the night before I left. It had a fairly decent turn-out. One of my exes showed up and reminded me why he resided in my past. My best guy friend and I got shwasted and danced to the "Macadelic" songs that blared from my speakers. My good friend drunkenly chased my dog around and took care of her all night. Good times....

    The flight was easy and only lasted for three hours. I listened to music the entire time and looked out my window. I love that sight. It feels like you're in a Sims game, towering over the different shades of green and brown patches that stitch together and make an agricultural blanket for the earth. I love being amid white, fluffy clouds and daydreaming about jumping out of the plane; pretending that the clouds would rearrange their consistency just for me and support my weight. Sure, I pictured my plane crashing as well. I came up with hypothetical situations that could arise and how I would handle myself. Nothing happened, though. I landed safely at Jacksonville International Airport on a rainy, February night. 

    I would like to say that my first couple months in Florida were fun and exciting, but in all honesty, they weren't. My uncle is a homebody, and although he has an impressive income, he doesn't use his money to travel or to go out on the weekends. He makes sure his alcohol stash is supplied plentifully and tucks the rest of his earnings in savings for his retirement. I was so used to hanging out with friends and throwing/going to parties. When I got to Florida, I had absolutely no friends and my aunt & uncle didn't know anyone my age, either. I spent the first few weeks with my 10-year-old cousin, but after a while, her naive antics were no longer funny or cute. I wanted to socialize with someone on my level. I wanted to laugh at Seth Rogen bromance movies. I wanted to talk about Tyler, the Creator and how he impacts the music industry. I wanted to talk about the Christian book I was reading and get intelligent, thought-provoking feedback. Want in one hand, shit in the other.

    I got a part-time job at a clothing store. I was hoping to meet a friend there; someone to give me an excuse to get out of the house. Four months later, I still haven't found anyone. There are a few people who I get along with great, but it mostly stays at work. No one compares to my friends from Colorado. The ones that send me daily SnapChats saying how much they miss me (Kisha), the ones who send me letters and brighten my days (Robbie), the ones who used Throwback Thursday to devote a picture and paragraph to our wonderful memories (Nicole), or the ones who spent late nights talking me out of my terrible mood (Kyli). People in Florida don't seem to have much substance to me. 

    It's incredibly strange to me that now that I'm financially stable and live in a big, majestic house like I have always dreamed of, I'm the most unhappy I have been in a long time. This "rich" life filled with healthy food, a gym membership, a car that was actually made in the 21st century, and plenty of time to lounge around has actually panned out to be unfulfilling. 

    I am in awe of the beauty in Florida. The flowing green plant life and the diverse animal life contrasts the bland plains of where I'm from. There are more beautiful African-Americans than I'm used to and the respect strangers have for each other is unreal. However, I find myself missing my "poor" ways of life that I'm used to. 

    I have no clue what's holding those four walls up, but I have had so many great times and memories in that rickety trailer. My true friends know they're always welcomed and I don't have to hide anything. I found my own ways of entertainment and I had my stupid siblings to keep me on my toes. I was too busy trying to see a mirage in front of me that I didn't see what was right there all along. Don't get me wrong; I am infinitely thankful that I was given the opportunity to live halfway across the country and out of my comfort zone. But... I just want to be happy again.

    I wonder when I will look my own grass with the admiration I look at my neighbor's.

The Heart of Hate

    I think what attracts one person to another is their ability to see something in the exact same light. They say opposites attract, but only for so long until the things that they disagree on starts to separate them. At least that's how I feel, though I'm a bad example because I'm a cynic and foresee anything that is built has a date with destruction.

    One of my best friends and I connect over our atheism. We are constantly inspecting the world around us and scrutinizing beliefs for their fallacies as well as their truisms. So when someone retweeted: "I don't get how someone can say I don't believe in god because I don't go to church. When was faith was based on church attendance?"

    Alright, I don't doubt that homeboy believes in god, because how could anyone even know that but him? What I find ironic is how it is literally in the 10 commandments (or the biblical constitution) that you must attend to church to commemorate god. I am a frickin atheist and I know this! I wanted to explain this to him, ie. correct him, but the thing about being atheist is that you must keep your beliefs to yourself, otherwise you're considered insensitive or arrogant. It's fine for Christians to plaster their beliefs up and down and left and right, but if atheists were to do the same, it would be "offensive". High five for double standards!

    Because I'm me, I couldn't let this go untouched. All I did was simply tweet: "I just about had to school a Christian on Christianity, but I didn't because it would escalate to an argument probably." My atheist best friend "favorited" it and I laughed. She understands me. I took this as a cue to text her and fill her in on my motive for the tweet, so I started explaining a conversation I had with my brother.

J: I called Marc the other night to talk about "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" and we ended up having a 45-minute religious debate. LOL. Needless to say, he called me a hypocritical bigot.

Homie: I just power-rolled my eyes, just so you know

J: Me response- I hate catchy choruses too

J: **my

J: Goodness. Typing like the Cookie Monster & shit.

J: No, he thinks I'm a hypocrite because I try to promote open-mindedness, yet I myself am not open-minded, since I don't openly accept Christian ideology. To which I explained to him that I was one and studied it for 16 years before I decided it was illogical and untrue.

To which he says is an even greater mystery as to how I was, in fact, a Christian for so long and suddenly changed my point of view. 

I didn't have an educated response at the time, but I've been thinking about it the past few days and I have 2 rebuttals.

H: Do tell!

J: 1. You used to believe in the Easter Bunny for several years until you found sensible evidence to prove otherwise.

H: Love it love it

J: 2. The reason I started out believing in god is because that's what my mom fed me. Then I went to a private kindergarten where they taught me religion. They were my influences until the day came where I was in charge of my beliefs and used the knowledge I gained over the years to make a sensible conclusion.

H: Noice

J: OMFG if that is a Key and Peele reference, we should probably just make love now

H: It was indeed!!

J: Oh ya. But the debate was pretty great. I held my own. Although he did mind-fuck me at one point and I was forced to reword a statement.

H: What did he say?

J: I explained to him that knowing our origins won't affect how we live tomorrow or next week. I asked him if he would become a murderer tomorrow if he found out today that god truly doesn't exist and he said no.

J: Oh, the mind-fuck thing? Here it is:

J: I started with the basic truism that "snakes can't talk". He said "that isn't true. A snake may be able to talk, other snakes know what they're saying." I said, "Still... it can't talk."

He said, "Do you understand Arabic?"

I said, "No."

He said, "By your logic, because you don't understand what someone speaking Arabic is saying, therefore they're not talking."

J: So I recanted with― humans cannot communicate with snakes to the extent the bible exhibits.

H: Nice save

J: So I told him, "It's okay that I'm atheist because Jesus died on the cross for all sins and therefore I will still hypothetically go to heaven." Then Bizzle whipped out a bible verse that states, in sum, all sins will be forgiven except not having faith in the holy trinity.

H: Damn

J: I didn't reply then, but a thought occurred to me a few days later― if the bible is supposed to be taken completely literal, Deuteronomy 22:13-21 says, "A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed."

H: Checkmate

J: Also, wearing different fabrics is a sin, divorce is a sin, and so is premarital sex, which the majority take part in. 

J: I'm not understanding how I can lead this perfectly wholesome life where I don't hurt others, I don't participate in promiscuous sex, and am a giving person, yet I can't get into heaven for the mere fact that I am atheist, whereas a man who raped and murdered a child becomes "born again Christian" and has the chance to go to heaven. If that's the case, this is not the type of god I want to associate with.

H: Yussssssss

J: I asked my brother why he did believe and he said when he was 8 or 9 he heard my Mexican grandma reciting her Hail Marys and that when he saw how devoted and passionate she was about Jesus, he said there was no way it couldn't be real. 

J: I said― similarly, a Nazi soldier would recite his creed and genuinely believed that what he was standing up for was the truth and that it was right.

He said, "Ya, but the Nazi creed was made and written by man."

H: Please tell me you said "so is the bible"

J: I didn't because he clearly wasn't making that mental connection on his own

J: At one point he said I feel sorry for you

J: And I said― no, no... it is I who feels sorry for you

J: He thought I was mocking him

H: So it ended in a stalemate?

J: I said― no, I'm not. In the time you commit to reading the bible or going to church, you could be devoting that time to biology or chemistry or physics or astronomy. You could be discovering a cure for cancer, figuring out more efficient and ground-breaking ways to put man further into space, or figuring out a legitimate way to filter industrial pollution into clean air. Albert Einstein was an atheist and look at everything he discovered!!!

J: No, it ended with him calling me a bigot and saying that he loves me all the same.

H: That would piss me off even more

J: Hahaha. It didn't because I know that I'm more knowledgeable about what I'm talking about than he is. Shit, I could have a whole argument for my opposition. I know my stuff.

H: You do indeed 

I hope you have a friend that supports you and comforts you like I do.