And You're Surprised?

I recently read a couple of books about animals and farming: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff. A couple days ago, while discussing what I learned about factory farms with my partner, I explained to him how many cows are skinned and otherwise "processed" (aka have their legs cut off) while still alive and conscious. His answer floored me: "And you're surprised?"

Apparently it's pretty common knowledge that factory farms and slaughterhouses are terrible places where living animals are daily tortured and mutilated by sadistic excuses for human beings.

My answer is yes. Yes, I was surprised and disgusted when I found out about how these animals are treated. How can you be aware of the horrors that these animals are subjected to daily and not want to do something about it? Cows, pigs, and chickens are intelligent and emotional animals just like your house dogs and cats. When a story about dog or cat abuse or neglect surfaces, people are outraged; they demand something be done to the perpetrators so that the abuse doesn't happen again. When the same (or even worse) abuse and neglect happens to millions of cows, pigs, and chickens every single day, no one bats an eye. That's normal. Bacon tastes good, so who cares what happens to the animals that it comes from.

I'm so tired of this hypocrisy. I may be only one person among millions, but I am going to do something about it. I'm starting by educating myself and reading about factory farms and animal welfare in the United States. I'm cutting meat out of my diet (more than 90% of meat in the US comes from factory farms). I'm researching products that are not tested on animals. I'm putting my money where my mouth is. Is anyone with me?

"Silence is the enemy of social change." - Marc Bekoff

She Didn't Say "No"

Trigger warning, obviously. Poem after the break.

Make Life More Worth Living

Do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living. Anything at all. It can be illegal, immoral, unethical, self-destructive...anything at all if it makes your life more worth living. There's only one rule to follow to make the kind of blanket permission work: Don't be mean.

-Kate Bornstein, author of Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws

What makes life "more worth living"? Brainstorming!

Settling for Unhappiness

"Why don't people do what they really want to do, Reuben?" he asked. "Why do we so often settle for what makes us devoutly unhappy! Why do we accept that happiness just isn't possible?" [...] "I don't know why I woke up every morning with the idea that I had to adjust, had to accept, had to go along with."

-Anne Rice, The Wolves of Midwinter

I do this a lot. Maybe it's because of my depression, but I have this belief that I just can't be happy. I don't try to make changes in my life regarding things that make me unhappy, since I don't think it will make a difference anyway. My depression tells me a lot of nasty things, and this is probably one of them. That's why this part of the novel really jumped out at me. Why do I just accept what makes me unhappy? I have to learn to not listen to my depression when it tells me things like this, but I have to learn to identify the voice of my depression first. Maybe then I can work at being a happier person.

Prince Lestat is Back!

It's official!

Can I just say that I'm REALLY FUCKING EXCITED for this? Please excuse me while I put my life on hold to re-read the original five books of the Vampire Chronicles. October 28 can't come soon enough!

For more info: LA Times article

Depression Meds

I've been living with depression since my high school years, maybe since 2005-2006. Since then, I've tried a bunch of different medications to try to treat my symptoms and make living bearable.

These are the some of the medications that I've tried:
Prozac (fluoxetine)
Celexa (citalopram)
Paxil (paroxetine)
Lexepro (escitalopram)
Zoloft (sertraline)
Effexor XR (venlafaxine)
Cymbalta (duloxetine)
Viibryd (vilazodone)

Some of these have been more effective than others, and some gave me some pretty bad side effects (like dizziness and terrifying nightmares). I had been using Effexor for a couple years until I started having regular panic attacks--a couple every week. My doctor switched me to Cymbalta (duloxetine) about a week ago, so now I have a new med to add to my list. I really hope that this one is going to work. I have not been sleeping well since I started it, but I'm not sure if it's because of the medicine or from something else. I'll give it some more time and keep my fingers crossed.

Guilt

Living with depression and anxiety comes with a lot of guilt. Up until recently, the main thing I felt guilty about was moving out of my aunt's house while she was in the middle of chemotherapy treatments. Even though she assured me that she would be okay and that she had friends that she could rely on, I felt lousy about it for months.

Then I drove by the trailer where I spent a few months of my childhood while my family was homeless. I was in the area for other reasons and wanted to show my partner a piece of my past. I figured that it had been many years since I had been by there, and I was a little curious if it looked as horrific as I remember it.

The place itself still looked like a hell hole, but how it looked was nothing compared to the memories it drug up. Being told continuously that we (my brother and I) were unwanted and on the verge of being kicked out onto the street (we were about 10 and 12) is what I had remembered from this time; being told that you're going to be "on the outside looking in" is hard to forget. However, I had apparently repressed even worse memories.

The one that haunts me is of our family dog, a rottweiler/lab mix named Bo (named for Bo Diddley). We usually kept Bo inside at our home, but when we moved to the trailer, there wasn't enough room for 12 people as well as our dog (obviously there wasn't even enough room for just the people). Bo stayed outside like the other animals, tied up by himself.

Honestly, I don't know whose responsibility it was to take care of him and make sure he had food and water. All I know is that one day I saw him for the first time in weeks. He was skin and bones - literally starving to death. I can't even imagine the pain he went through during those weeks. It makes me sick just thinking about it.

Bo survived for about another year before he died when I was in 8th grade. I was heartbroken. I had awful dreams about his death. And now I have the weight of guilt. It doesn't matter if his pain and death was my fault or not. It's going to be on my conscience for the rest of my life.

Bo and I at our old home

Don't Pray for Me

Whenever shit goes wrong in my life, other people (family or friends) feel bad that my life sucks. Sometimes they honestly feel bad and want to help. However, depending on the situation, their ability to help is very limited. Truth is, they can't make life not suck. They can't bring back a dead dog or make someone get over a hard breakup. Even though they know that they can't fix the situation, they want to do something--anything--to make it better.

So they give that irritating line: "I'll pray for you."

Let me make this very clear. You praying for me does absolutely nothing for me. Nothing. It doesn't make my problem go away, and it sure as hell doesn't make me feel better. In fact, it makes me feel worse. It says to me that you feel bad for my crappy situation, but the best you can do is talk to your imaginary god about it. What this does is makes you feel better about the situation without you actually doing anything to help.

I think the time this pissed me off the most was when my grandfather died. At the funeral, some woman (not sure if she was family or friend) told me that she would pray for me and my family. Clearly, she felt bad enough to feel the need to do something for us. However, instead of offering to actually help us (see below), she just said that she would "pray" for us, thereby alleviating the guilt she felt about our loss without actually doing anything for us.

Long story short: Praying for someone does not help the situation. It only makes the person doing the praying feel better about a situation that they can't fix.

If something bad happens to someone you know and want to help, try some of the following things that might actually help them:
~Give them your phone number and tell them to call you if they ever want to talk and/or vent about what happened. Be sincere, but don't push them. If they don't want to talk, then don't force it.
~Offer to cook them dinner. Be sensitive to dietary restrictions or allergies.
~See if they need help with other household chores. Grief can make cleaning or babysitting even harder than it usually is, so offer to clean their house or watch their kids for an evening.
~Send them a nice email, but don't expect a response. If they're feeling lousy, they might not be up to answering emails, but it is nice to get a friendly message.

If you have a neurotic impulse to pray to your imaginary god about me, and you can't resist or your head is going to blow up, fine. Just don't tell me about it. Seriously.

Quit Telling Me To "Smile," Dammit!

The Guy At Work (GAW) at my new job is one of those guys who likes to tell women to "Smile!" The first time it happened, I let it slide. The second time it happened, I stuck my tongue out at him. But today, the third strike, there was only one other person working, and she was on the phone. So I finally stood up for myself.

GAW: Smile, Sarah!
Me (not smiling): Please stop telling me to smile.
GAW (looking like someone just slapped him): Oh, you're having a bad day?
Me: No, my face always looks like that.
GAW: Like you're having a bad day?
Me: Yes. It's unfortunate, but that's just how my face looks.

He hasn't said much to me since then. I think I got my point across though.

Just to clarify, I'm not a grumpy person or whatever. I'm just sick of people (most often men) telling me to smile. I don't care if you think I look angry or pissy or ugly. That's my face, and it always looks like that. I'm not obligated to change it just because you don't like it.

Rules

Thanks to a certain someone, I am thinking of rules. Why is the world governed by rules? Because chaos would rule, surely, but why do we need personal rules on top of the "legal" ones?

Rules.

Rules for relationships:
1. Don't cheat.
2. Don't lie, unless it's for their own good.
3. Don't hurt them.
4. Don't make them cry.
5. Don't lead them on for no reason.
6. Support them in whatever they want to do.
7. Stand up for them if someone else says or does something to offend them.
8. Don't get drunk. You will say something you will regret.
9. Respect their family.
10. Don't be clingy. Respect their free-time and their friend-time.
11. Dance with them.
12. Kiss them.
13. Say "I love you."
14. Don't say "I love you" if you don't mean it.
15. Don't belittle them.
16. Listen to them.
17. Communicate problems.
18. Make them feel good.
19. Give them backrubs.
20. Don't ask about their past girlfriends.
21. Don't belittle their past girlfriends.
22. Spend time together, but don't let them become your whole world.
23. Don't take all their money. Don't make them buy you things.
24. Don't push them away. Embrace them.
25. Leave them little reminders to show that you care.
26. Discuss important matters.
27. Love them!

These are my own rules that I do my best to follow. Some of them, I have broken; others, I break on a regular basis. When I follow them, I make him feel his best, which in turn makes me feel good. When I break them, he gets upset, which upsets me. The emotions flow back and forth so easily--in order to keep the emotions positive, I must follow the rules.

The rules are only mine; I must not hold anyone else to the rules. He cannot break the rules because they are not his. You cannot break the rules because they are not yours. If you have your own rules, follow those. Leave me to mine.