I am trying really hard to keep a positive outlook.
I am trying really hard to keep a positive outlook.
I am trying really hard to keep a positive outlook.
...
There are so many good things in my life, and I am grateful for all of them. My dog is healthy and happy and loves me, my friends are some of the best people on the planet and they love me, Chris is veryvery good to me and he loves me, and I think his folks do too, my job is a good one, I live in a beautiful place, the sun is warm on my aching shoulders right now - and so on. It's a long list, and that's wonderful. But I can't help but feel like it isn't fair. How can some of us be so happy or satisfied and some of us be carrying our dead children out of the wreckage of a few men's nuclear- and money-powered dick-wagging contest?

I am still writing to Mr. Bush every day. And in some ways, it is helping me. I am really learning a lot about myself and my beliefs about peace and forgiveness. In today's letter, I told him about how, when Hamilton met Boonkie* and saw his precious face, and his thin little trembling, cowering body, he said "People who do things like this deserve a good thrashing.". I realize that this is the most natural way in the world to feel (of course I do, I am The Warrior, ferchrissakes) but then I realized that something I've been saying to the kids for sometimes is what you should DO. I tell them that the kids who are mean to them, or obnoxious, are the ones who need love the most. When Hamilton said that about the person who did that to Boonkie, I realized that they were probably hurt themselves and that they were taking their pain out on something more helpless than themself. Oh, god, how well I know this routine.
I told Mr. Bush that it is the hardest thing in the world to love that "bad" person, but it's the answer.
It was patient love that kept me from being an abuser, from continuing the cycle in my family. That doesn't mean indulgence, obviously, because discipline is important, too, but discipline doesn't have to be bloody. It doesn't have to leave scars. It should leave memories and strength. And appreciation for the person kind enough to set you straight without hurting you.

Peace is possible. I KNOW it is. I believe.
-s


*the little pup-pup i am helping to rehab. he was beaten and abandoned...