Today I lost my great grandmother at the age of 99. Not only was she a strong, independent woman, but she was also one of my main role models and a very important person in my life. I knew it was coming, but for some odd reason I always feel like my family members are going to be around forever. When my grandpa died last year, I couldn't even fully grasp the fact that he was no longer there. Sometimes I still feel as if I walk into his house tomorrow he’ll still be there, but I know that’s not true. I know that as much as I don’t want to believe it, I know that just a few blocks away, her house is vacant, everything in its place just the way it was when she passed.

I've been put in charge of keeping the family together. Everyone is devastated and for some reason I’m looked at as the strong one and a lot of responsibilities have been put on me. How am I supposed to have time to grieve when I’m the glue holding the pieces of my broken family together? I haven’t really had time to process anything yet and I don’t really know how that’s going to go over. It’s not like she was a distant family member, she lived almost right next door to me my whole life, I spent every holiday and birthday there, and most family dinner nights as well. Having to fill that void and look at her house everyday sucks. A lot.

Coming from a traditional Southern background, being a feminist in my family has always been extremely difficult. I am constantly being asked when I’m going to marry, why I don’t want to have kids, and why I often times “dress like a boy”. Traditional gender roles are still very influential and followed in my house. When I speak up about something that offends me or something happening in politics, I instantly get shut down, getting told to stop trying to “be a rebel”, and sit down. It doesn’t end there, either. My best friend, a tough looking punk girl who you’d expect to believe in the rights of others, HATES feminism. Hates it. I remember one day a friend and I were talking about the death penalty for rapists and pedophiles and she butts in “Hannah get away from me with your feminist shit”. I was, and still am, in shock. In what world, in what UNIVERSE is standing up for children and rape victims “feminist shit?”. If she or one more family member tell me to “Stop getting all feminist on them” or something of the like, I am going to lose. My. Shit. I am sick and tired of being a door mat because I don’t want someone to chastise me for speaking up.  Over it. Done.

And don’t even get me started on the word “feminazi”, which I am still in shock that people actually use thinking it’s okay. Like, “hey let’s compare a movement for women’s rights to Hitler’s regime and the Holocaust, great idea!”. Yeah. No. Shut up.  

Heart of Darkness has got to be one of the most confusing books I have ever read. The story is pretty straightforward in my opinion, but the way the narrative frame changes back and forth gets pretty confusing. It reminds me of Catch 22, which severely hurt my brain. I do feel pretty lame compared to everyone else, because it seems like they’re all grasping it a lot more than I am while I just sit there like “uuhhhh yeah okay”.  I probably re-read each section at least twice, and still end up being confused and frustrated.               

                Other than that, I really like the message behind the book. The fact that the depravity of human nature leads us to commit savage acts is a very central theme of this novel. For me, this means the harvesting of ivory, something that in recent years has led to the extinction of the black rhino, and the endangerment of many other species. There is a lack of respect paid to exotic animals, and in many countries you can pay large sums of money to hunt them. While this does help the local economies, it’s still a very morbid thing to imagine.

                Now that I’ve gone off on a tangent, I’ll get back to the book. It’s confusing as hell and I’m a little frustrated, but in all I like where it’s going and think it’s extremely interesting and pretty cool.

More Rants

There’s been a concept haunting me a lot lately, and that is that family is family and blood is sacred. I've cut ties with many of my family members due to them being poisonous and bad people. I get a lot of crap for it from my other family members though, warning me that it’s toxic and unhealthy to cut family out of your life. But I beg to differ, for me personally, cutting these certain people out of my life has made me a better person and saved me a lot of hurt and stress.

 I don’t think that anyone has the right to tell you who you should and shouldn’t keep in your life. Blood is not a binding factor and no one should have to deal with any kind of emotional, physical or mental abuse and have it justified because that person shares DNA with them. If someone is not being a healthy influence in your life, don’t let them be a part of it. It may not be easy, but the outcome will be worth it and that negative person will no longer be able to feed off the negativity from the pain they caused you.

                It’s true that you cannot choose your family, but you can choose who you let into your life, and if people want to make you feel guilty about it, then that’s their issue. Removing poisonous people from your life is no one else’s choice but your own.

Being in Colorado for 2 weeks, I’ve been thinking about the legalization of marijuana and the reasons I support it. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding this topic for many understandable, but invalid reasons. First of all, marijuana is an all-natural substance, as opposed to substances such as alcohol and cigarettes, which have proven negative effects on the body. There have been no known pot related deaths, yet many have been caused by and involved alcohol and cigarettes, which are entirely legal. In my opinion, it’s complete crap that 2 extremely harmful substances are easily accessible and normalized, while marijuana which has been proved beneficial to numerous medical conditions is criminalized. Not only does this make it difficult for people who could actually benefit from occasional use, but it incarcerates an unnecessary amount of people and fills out nation’s prisons with “criminals” who have committed petty crimes.

Another aspect that people tend to overlook is the use of hemp. Hemp is a precious resource that is ignored because of its relationship to pot. Hemp can produce paper, clothing, oil, medicines, food, and plastics and grows at a much faster rate than trees and other resources currently used, making it an optimal resource for an abundance of products.

If people could just stop making marijuana out to be an evil, life ruining substance and realize all the good it can do, the world would be much better off. Although it has negative connotations, the drug does a lot of good things for a lot of people, and we as a society need to start looking at it in a different light.

As a feminist, The Handmaid’s Tale has been a huge part of my life recently. I feel as if Atwood is completely ludacris or even that far off in what she is writing. Although the novel takes it to extremes, even nowadays women are seen as fertile baby making mechanisms. We’re supposed to get married off, procreate, raise, and die. Our modern day society is even mirrored in the novel again in that in both instances women are silent and subservient to men. In the book, when women do rise up and take a stand, they are labeled “unwomen” and in real life when women stand up they are given nasty names like “Feminazis”, “dykes” and “bitches”.

In my opinion, Atwood wasn’t just writing this as a dystopian fiction, but also as an influential piece of literature to spark conversation and even change in the patriarchal society we live in considering much of the imagery depicted is a dramatization of what we are currently living in. The dehumanization of women has been going on for centuries in western culture, Atwood jusr takes it to the next level and exposes what could be in our future if we continue down the path that we are on.

Thought on Alcoholism

I’ve never really been a preachy kind of person or had really any interest in telling people what to do with their lives, but in the past month watching my mom’s health deteriorate, I’ve become more and more wary of alcohol and want to put out a general warning to anyone who drinks regularly. Be careful. My mom was always just a social drinker, but it eventually got more and more out of hand. Soon she was drinking multiple pints of vodka a day, she sunk into a deep depression, and now she’s almost dead.

My freshman year of high school my mom was in the hospital for 6-8 months with alcohol-induced pancreatitis. Her body was failing and she was on her deathbed. Eventually she pulled through, but was warned that anymore drinking would put her in the hospital and she would most likely never come out. Of course she didn’t listen. With all of her special medications she felt invincible. Until about a month ago. Now she’s back in the hospital, and most likely not getting out any time soon, or ever. She has no control over her breathing, bowels, and is basically a vegetable. All because of cheap liquid you can get at any store or 7-11. She barely knows who I am, where she is, and why she’s in the hospital. The most that can come out of her mouth is “water” or “pain meds” when she needs them. It’s not a good way to live, or have tour children and family see you.

I’ve promised myself that I will never abuse alcohol or really any other harmful substance, and always consider the long term effects these substances have on my body and life. I also want to encourage everyone else to do the same. The feeling drunkness gives you will never be worth your health, independence, and even life.

I don’t really have anything school related to write about, so I’m just going to write about something that’s been bugging me lately.  Most of the women in my family are pretty thin, my grandma, aunt and mom have all done their fair share of modeling, and all have pretty good bodies.  My sister and I, though are naturally curvy and have meat on our bones. It’s not that either of us is unhealthy, we are just naturally not as thin. I’ve had my fair share of body struggles and for the most part I’ve moved past them. My sister however, is 12 and very susceptible to the comments and opinions of others about her appearance.  You’d think most of this criticism would come from others, but lately I’ve noticed a lot of snarky comments coming from my family themselves.  The other day my grandmother made a snarky comment about my sister and I making rice, remarking on how many carbs were in it, while she was eating a burrito with rice and refried beans. It came off to me like she was telling us to watch our figures and basically not eat, but it was okay for her to indulge because she’s naturally skinny. I can move past these things for the most part, but I know they hurt her and it hurts me to see her self-esteem lowered by members of our own family. I won’t go into detail, but this happens regularly from my mom and aunt as well, and she’s admitted to me multiple times that she’s gone without eating at home to avoid comments from them.

Family is supposed to be your support system, to make you feel good about yourself, but instead my family tears their children down over something they cannot change. I’ll admit, I’m not always super nice, but making negative remarks about someone’s weight, physical appearance or how much they do or don’t eat can be damaging and scarring, and it is not okay. 

Conservapedia = LOL

Recently in my graphic design class, Trevor told me to look up this website: Conservapedia. The name really says it all. It’s a wiki page for extreme Conservatives and the content is just as infuriating as it is funny. As I was looking through the articles, one in particular caught my eye, Feminism.  There was a list of things on the feminist agenda, including “shirking traditional gender activities, like baking” and “condemning the God-given order of gender roles”. Following this list, was one quote that mildly disturbed me, but also made me laugh hysterically:

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”

The complete and total ignorance in this article and website in general is the exact reason that we need feminism. The ignorant authors of this article are obviously under the influence that feminists are cruel devil worshipping women with an evil agenda rather than rationally thinking women who want to be seen as equals. The implication that baking and raising children are “traditional gender activities” is totally ridiculous and almost prehistoric.

There were many other statements in this article that were either way out of context, or just entirely made up. The radical conservative writers and contributors act as if the burning of bras is like the burning of books and buildings: detrimental to society as a whole. It’s extremely obvious by this whole wiki site that conservatives are not at all interested in a progressive society, but instead want to set the time clock back a few hundred years so women remain silent and in servitude of a patriarchal society. 

I feel like throughout elementary and middle school, I as well as most of us had always been told I was a great writer. My teachers made me feel like this special little snow flake even though I wrote very generically and stuck to the same boring model I had been taught in 5^th grade.  The more I have talked to people in my class, the more I realize just how many of us were misled by our middle school teachers. The motives behind it are unclear, whether it was to lift our spirits or if they truly just thought we were awesome,  I don’t know. All I know is that it left me severely unprepared for my high school English career.

Junior year I walked into Mahr’s class cocky and ready to take home an A, but oh boy was I wrong. I thought I had this on lock because, after all, I was a genius snow flake English student and I was definitely going to have no trouble with an English class. That was the hardest class I’ve probably ever taken. Mahr snapped me back into reality and showed me what it takes to become a good writer, not a fill-in-the-blanks mold that would guarantee I sounded like a half-intelligent robot. I learned that the way I had been writing was boring, repetitive, and actually pretty stupid.

Even though having my emotions babied through middle school definitely didn’t help me prepare for high school or the difficult world of AP, I am now on my way to becoming a halfway decent writer.

AAAHHHHHHHHH

I’ll be turning 18 in a week, and I’m kind of nervous to be honest. I know not much will change considering I pretty much am already self-sufficient, but it’s still I big change. It’s a big turning point in my life, and it’s making me realize just how close I am to being done with high school. No one really prepares you for adulthood, I feel totally not ready to have all of these responsibilities put onto my shoulders. Now I can go to prison (scary, I wouldn't do very well in prison), my family can kick me out if they wanted to, and I can buy cigarettes (I don’t smoke, but still that’s scary).

I am excited for the freedom though, I’m happy I can now do things without getting my mom’s permission, go to 18+ events, and work in a lingerie shop, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I remember being really young and looking forward to turning 18 and feeling like it was so far away, and now it’s only 9 days away. It amazes me how time has gone by so fast, it feels like not that long ago I was walking into AACT for the first time, and in a few months I’ll be leaving here for good.

I’m really nervous to be thrown into adulthood, but I’m also really excited to go off on my own and experience everything for myself and start my own life.

But seriously, I can go to prison now. 

I used to always think that poetry was something easy and kind of second nature to everyone. I never really understood until high school that poetry was something that took a lot of effort and a lot of meditation, as well as required a certain amount of skill which I do not ave.

Anyone can string a bunch of words together and make them rhyme, but ultimately that’s not what poetry is all about. Good poetry provokes thought and stays with you long after you read it.

 Ever since I was young, I have always been a fan of Emily Dickinson. My mom raised me reading her writing, and certain ones have always stuck with me. Throughout elementary and high school, I did every did every History or English project on her, eventually knowing her life story like it was my own. Over the years, I’ve carried many of her poems with me in my head, creating and thinking of new meanings for them every time I think of them. This is hard to accomplish with simple rhyme-y 6 line poems written for children’s illustrated books.

Whenever I hear someone say that poetry is easy or EVERYONE can write awesome poems, it makes me doubt if they themselves have ever sat down and read a really good, deep poem. Because whenever I do, I have to simply appreciate it because I know that is something so intellectually out of my reach.