$3N!0R$ 2013

I could also talk about this all day, but I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Oh wow a blog post reminiscing about high school how surprising

 
 

I look at these pictures and I realize how long ago they actually were. All of them are from freshman year. That picture of Jessica and I was taken at her high school graduation party. That is how old I am right now. Khala and I used to walk around our neighborhood like that almost every day after school. We have our license now, so it made little things like that obsolete, but I never thought about how much of our friendship was built by that proximity. 

That Christmas party was one of the best I'd ever been to. I remember Raven's old house - I know she hated that house, but I was in love with that house - and I remember that musky basement where we had all our fun. Seth is there, so was Connor, and then there's Aaron. Good old Aaron. It would be a long time before I found someone who made me happy like Aaron made me happy. I dated him for six months, and I never told him I loved him because I never did. I was fifteen, and I was miserable. He made me happy because he made me feel like I mattered, but once he helped me to find the self-esteem to stand my own ground, I realized that I did not want to be with him anymore. He deserved better than me. 

And then Raven and Khala and I, we were a trio back then. We were best friends, and there were no falling outs, no misinterpreted signals or choosing one side over the other this year. I forget sometimes how nice it was.

 

 

And then there is sophomore year, the finest of them all. Actually, sophomore year from me is a bit of a blur for me. It started out uneventful, and then I met Cameron. We look happy in that picture, don't we? We were happy then. But in general, oh, we weren't happy. We fought every day, and every day, he would tear me down until I thought that I was a worthless pile of nothing with a boyfriend who was so amazing because he put up with my bullshit. I almost lost everything because of him, but I got everything back. Mr. Thoma helped me through it all, and I still miss his class terribly. He will always be the greatest man I ever knew in high school.

That photo at Matt's was from Baby Thanksgiving. That was when he was with Lila. I remember talking about her all night with him, and I remember how in love he was. I remember how his whole life was ahead of him and man, he was so smart and he was athletic and funny and driven and he was going places. He was my best friend. I miss that Matt. No, I don't miss 2010 Matt. I just remember how I had never heard him talk about a person with such adoration that he talked about her, and even when they fought, you could tell by the tone of his voice that he still saw her as the best thing that had ever happened to him. I remember how she was his motivation to do well, to be good, to be safe and to be kind. She was his better half, and he used that to become the best version of himself I've seen so far. Their relationship wasn't perfect, but it was the only thing I've ever seen play a driving force in his life. So no, I don't miss 2010 Matt. I just miss Happy Matt.

Taylor came into the picture sophomore year. She's the most significant part that still affects me today because she is the single most important aspect of my life. I have always been friends with her, and I have known her since kindergarten, but she had always kind of been on the sidelines before. I had Khala and Raven, and I loved Taylor, but she was more or less a runner-up. But then Cameron started taking little pieces of my life away. I lost Khala. I lost Raven. I lost almost everybody... but not Taylor. Taylor put up with all of my irrationality and my excuses because she's loyal and because she's wonderful. Taylor will always hold a special place in my heart because she stayed, she helped me when no one else cared to do so, and I would be in a horrible place if she hadn't been there. I hope she knows how much I love her.

 

And junior year, I can hardly remember junior year! Prom is the biggest memory in my mind. I remember the dance hardly at all, but staying out until 5 listening to live ukelele music ad Daniel Carr's house was probably one of the memories I'll carry around for the rest of my life. And in the second picture, K Kuo. Can't sayy no to the Kuo. Oh good lord, I loathed that man. We were both in positions of power in Latin club and he took it too seriously, but in that picture, we forgot all of that petty stuff for a second and appreciated each other's company.

And Dr. Allen in that last one, I remember her class so clearly. I never thought I'd see the day when I missed it, but that class made me feel like I belonged. Even through the homework and the essay tests, it gave me a sense of unity with people in my grade that I've never felt in another class before. Junior year wasn't very important, and it's all a bit of a haze of Joe Joe Joe, but I was happy. I really was.

Danny Boy:

I am going to miss you very much. I didn't think it was going to affect me much until I watched you leaving Denny's. I cannot believe I've only known you for a year. You were the first person I really talked to when I started working at Baskin Robbins because we were so similar. I was really intimidated by everyone there because everyone was already friends. Emily was nice to me, but she still had that polite small-talk attitude. Isaias didn't talk to me at all, and I felt really uncomfortable and awkward around Katelyn and Jacci. Emma and Becca were nice people, and I did have Matt, but it still felt really strange trying to inject myself into a group of people who were already close-knit. But my first day, you told me I was fired because I accidentally dropped a scoop on the ground and you made fun of me. That's how our strange dynamic started, and it made me feel a lot better about my job. I'll always owe you for that.

Even when you irritated me, I still really liked you as a person. You're still one of the funniest people I have ever met, and you're one of the few people in my life that a connection came effortless with. I'll miss our hour-long chit chats on the benches outside of Baskin Robbins after closing shifts. What you wrote about me in that letter was incredibly sweet. I'll miss you very much, and I hope you have a good time living in Indy. I'm sure you will! You're smart and talented and funny and you'll be a great addition to wherever you go.

I hope I get to visit you on your birthday! 

Stay gold.

la la la la

First of all, I want to draw attention to this series of photographs because they are beautiful.

Second of all, I went to bed at 8 in the morning and I woke up for work at 9:30. I am not tired right now, and I feel like it's all going to collapse upon me at one time sooner or later in this day.

I want to blog but I also want to play sims and this is a problem.

Such is life, she often said.

It is very hard for me to function sometimes, but I am doing the best that I can.

I also do not understand how I have a bigger audience in Russia for this blog than I do in the United States. I don't even know how I have an audience at all.

It must seem to you, reader, like I focus too much on my anxiety. I wish that weren't the case. I wish I could focus on my life, but I'm not invested in anything except the pure, gripping terror I feel all the time, sometimes for no reason, sometimes for a very specific reason.

I miss the person I used to be.

I miss the person I'm supposed to be.

Drabble.

Oh, anxiety, I am so angry with you. I never thought that could happen, being angry with a concept. You're right up there with love and hatred - you can't be wholly defined universally. You mean a different thing to everyone. 

I mean, you've got your dining chairs and your bean bag chairs and your comfy dad chairs, but a chair is always a chair. No one will ever know if the way that I perceive love is the same as their own perception. 

The same goes with you, anxiety. You're not real. You're not a concrete object, but you are the force that works against me everyday like gravity, which, by the way, is apparently not a downward force, this universe is a lie. 

Maybe I shouldn't be awake reading theories about outer space but maybe I could also learn a few lessons from my perception of anxiety. Let's jumble these two together and make a blog post, yeah?

(What does that even mean? Jesus Christ, Einstein, you're long dead and you still stop me in my tracks. This is why it's a compliment to call someone an "Einstein" but using my last name as an adjective would entail nothing more than a disorganized concoction of about five of the seven deadly sins and also bad jokes. 

Alright. Fuck physics, fuck astronomy, fuck Einstein. Gravity is either a downward force or a distortion of the shape of space-time, or maybe it's neither, and some new smart cookie will come out and say, "No, gravity has been this all along" and everyone will want to buy baby foods with his or her name on it. That doesn't matter. 

But anxiety is more than just a perception. It's like this: love doesn't exist in the concrete and physical sense, but if you ask me if love is real, I'll tell you damn straight. And you'll ask me how I know, and I'll tell you that I can feel it. 

But I can't point it out to you: I can't tell you that love is feeling stubble against your cheek because you might not like facial hair. I can't tell you that love is your boyfriend trying extremely hard to make a pun from "Sleeping Beauty" that will always be redundant because that might not be your sense of humor. 

But is it real? Is it just as real as a bean bag chair? Of course it's real! 

Or time! Time doesn't exist - clocks exist. But yet we have minutes and hours and days and all of those are composed of seconds and we call it all "time" even though we can't really define it or weigh it or poke it with a stick. We are dependent on the confines of time because we need its structure to give our tiny, finite existence meaning in a seemingly infinite universe. We need time to exist, so it does.

But love, time, hatred, all of those things can be just as concrete as that unfashionable bean bag chair. Do people even buy those anymore? They can weigh on your chest just as heavy as anything else. They can suffocate us. 

The same goes with anxiety. I wish it were something that was easy to define. I suppose, put simply, it's fear. But it is more than fear. It is when you take fear and you turn it into a state of being. 

For me, my anxiety often focuses on dying young. But I'm not afraid to die young, no more than anyone else in the world. But my anxiety allowed that small little flicker of awareness of my own mortality to turn into a wildfire. My body basically really, really fucking sucks as a firefighter. My body needs to be fired from the squad.

It is hard to struggle every day with something that doesn't exist. When you cut your arm open, you can see it. You can see the blood coming out of the open wound. With anxiety, it's easier to dismiss. Your body is perfectly fine. No one expects there to be anything wrong with you. Sometimes, people don't even believe you. It is not something that makes your heart stop beating but anxiety can definitely kill you. 

Anxiety might not exist in a physical sense, but if you were to ask me if it is real, I would say damn straight. I know what it is to me, and to me, it is probably the most durable, concrete, hard-as-hell-to-destroy thing I have ever come across.

Anxiety is a downward force, if you ask me. Or maybe it's a distortion of the shape of space-time. It may even just be the subject of the sloppy musings of a young woman in the middle of a sleepless night. I'm not intelligent enough to make that call. 

New Look! And New Obsession: Video Bloggers

This post is exactly how it sounds.

John Green looks like this right here. And this left here is Hank Green. Hank and John are both real fuckin' smart. John has a double major in English and Religious Studies. Hank has a Bachelor's in biochemistry and a Master's degree in environmental studies.





Now, these clowns in 2007 realized that they didn't talk at all except through text. They decided that they should communicate through a vlog for one year. And through this blog, Nerdfighteria was born! Basically, their blog (vlogbrothers) became super famous. These idiots then used this fame not to do stupid things but to educate! To donate to charity! To make the world better!

They do a lot of silly things like "giant squid of anger" and "peanut butter face" but they also take North Korea and Syria and  Egypt and break them down into five minute historical videos put into language that kids actually take interest in.

John Green even runs the channel Mental_Floss (for the magazine) where he teaches you things in lists (e.g. 50 common historical misconceptions).

Hank Green runs several different channels such as scishow (which explains things like tornadoes and evolution!) sexplanations (which helps people become comfortable and tolerant of both their own and other people's sexuality) and hankschannel (where he pretty much talks about whatever he wants.)

I just think it's amazing what these two people have done. They're both so intelligent and in different ways. Hank green runs the website ecogeek, and he can actually explain things like why the sky is blue. John Green taught me the difference between "less" and "fewer" which I had no idea existed, and he writes beautiful things like this (and fuck you, by the way, because I haven't even read TFIOS yet and it makes me sad):

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.

 I just cannot explain how much I admire these people. They are both very wealthy in money and in knowledge and they use it to get people to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities or to set up their very own day (in honor of one of their fans who died of thyroid cancer at 16) in which they tell family and friends they love them. They're just good people. They're good, smart, silly, well-rounded people. Hank sings songs about Harry Potter and he is a biochemist! John Green teaches history via youtube and wrote a love story about two teenagers with cancer.

I just love them so much. DFTBA

Crack the shutters

You draw me from my mind and make me feel like I have a future where I wake up with you beside me.

You're what keeps me fighting.

Those persuasive rays

I have to cut this attitude I've developed where I am nothing but a useless burden to everyone I love. I am not who I want to be, and it is not because I have an anxiety disorder. It is because I am letting that anxiety disorder control me.

I deserve to be proud of myself. I deserve to love myself. I deserve to take care of myself. And just because my loved ones can't cure me does not mean that I should not accept their support. No good comes from my isolation.

I'm going to be better. I'm going to be who I want to be and my anxiety will just have to deal with it. I'm so much stronger than I've been lately.

eek.

I am tugging at the collar of my shirt uncomfortably. I am clicking a pen over and over, and I am trying to find hollow, temporary comfort in words that are not my own. I am tired. I am so tired in mind, body, and spirit.

I genuinely do not know how to find the strength to be the person who handles herself with confidence and silliness.That is who people expect me to be because that is the person I used to be. Some days, I manage a shoddy version of it, but most days, I feel as useless as other people should think I am. I used to be charming. I used to be charming and I used to be brave. I used to be so beautiful in so many ways, and I wasted that time as a stupid little teenager trying to find meaning in textbooks and boys who treated me poorly.

I guess that was the way to spend high school, and it's entirely not unique to me. It passed by quickly and nothing remarkable happened. Nothing remarkable has become of me thus far.I have a full-ride scholarship. I'm going to go to college for free because I got grades that made me stand out among over 500 people in total who applied for that same scholarship. I will never, not once in my life, have to worry about paying off student loans. While I recognize that this is entirely remarkable in itself, I cannot find a reason for it anymore. I cannot find a reason for much anymore. Unremarkable I remain.

On nights like this, it is very difficult for me to see myself as anything but this weak frame of a person that has been hollowed out like a jack-o-lantern. I am no longer any of my redeeming qualities. I am not funny, I am not smart. I am not beautiful or bold. Instead, I am afraid. I am terrified, actually, and that is who I am now. That is what my personality has become. I am unlovable, irrational, and I have been twisted into this pitiful version of the beautiful, vibrant person I used to be. I'm a palette of pastels when I used to be tie-dye. (I guess that's okay, though. Tie-dye isn't really in style anymore.)

And it makes me want to throw a fit. I want to stomp through my house and slam my door, and I want to break things out of frustration because dammit it is not okay for me to be like this. It is not okay for me to be who I am now because I want to scream that it isn't who I am supposed to be. But it's taken over my entire personality by making it exhausting to put forth any effort into anything else. This is not the version of me that I like. This is not the version of me that anyone should love, and it makes me angry that people still care about me because, sooner or later, they're going to realize that their efforts are null and void; I have a real problem, and they can't help me. And they won't want to be around me anymore. Why would they? Why should they? I'm not the kind of person right now that forwards anyone in their lives. I've become parasitic. I am needy and sooner or later I'll be unwanted.

Some days, I'm good. Excellent, even. Some days, I get out of bed and I feel okay and I go spend my time with friends or at work and it's great to be alive and everything is okay because I am okay and the world is spinning just like it's supposed to and god it feels so good. But those days are becoming the minority. Every day, I am in a constant battle with myself. Some are easier than others, but somewhere within me, there's always a feeling of this horrific powerlessness over my own mind.

I talk as if my life is over, and I recognize that it's hardly even begun yet. But recognizing is not the same as feeling. I recognize that nothing has changed in my world. Gravity works the way it is supposed to work. I will scoop ice cream again tomorrow. It's unexciting, really. But I, who has always prided herself on the ability to look at the bigger picture, cannot see into a future where I do not feel as hopeless and on the verge of giving up (Giving up on what, exactly? Fuck if I know. I think this is just a phrase people use for effect.).

I really hope that there are better nights ahead of me.

we don't want no drama.

This was originally about depression, but it is everything I've been trying to say but lacked the elegance.

"Anxiety is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation.


"Anxiety is humiliating.


"If you’ve never had anxiety, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of an anxiety disorder over an averagely turbulent normal life.

"It's not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If anxiety has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too.


"Anxiety is humiliating.


"No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself.

"Anxiety is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a person with an anxiety disorder may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their anxiety. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.”

the funniest thing on the internet, everyone else go home.

OH MY GOD

Be okay be okay be okay today

I'm trying really hard to trust you by ignoring the constant voice in the back of my head telling me to be fine for you. You're the first person who I don't feel like I have to do that for. It's a foreign feeling, and I'm afraid that in becoming too reliant on it.

I'm immensely sorry you have to know who I really am. 

I always put myself in your place. If you were going through what I am right now, if you were battling something I could not possibly fix or understand, I would feel powerless. It would be irrational, but I would feel like I was not doing my job. 

God, I hope that's not how you feel. No one's ever been as good as you are to me. I hope you never think that you do not make me happy. If I found out my problems were making you feel like you were any less than the perfect person you are, it would genuinely break my heart.

(But I hope you'd be honest with me, if it was too much. My heart can take another hit.)

This is a struggle for me. If you were anyone else, you'd never know about this. I'd put on my brave face and be silly because that's who I know how to be. But I don't want to lie to you, and at the same time, I don't want to be too much for you. I would hate myself if who I am ever drove you away. I couldn't stand it. I could probably handle losing you eventually, if I really had to, for almost any reason except for this one.

I just need to go to bed. I'm sick of the conscious world. I feel like the Doctor Who depiction of Vincent Van Gogh, for Christ's sake. I'm a dramatic mess.

Too bad I don't have the ability to paint. Man I'd be so rich these days.

I am using comic relief to paint an end picture of hopefulness because dammit someday I will be okay. I have to be. I have to be for me and for you.

This has been one of the hardest weekends I've ever had. I'm tired of my life, and I wish I were alone so that I could cry.

I just wanted to enjoy my weekend. That's all I wanted to do. Was it too much to ask for 48 hours of peace? 

Apparently so. I hate myself. I was having so much fun and now I'm in a living room trying to make myself breathe easily. 

Please. God, Allah, anyone... just make it stop. 

el amor y otros monstruos

And so, being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.

alright you little shits, you're going to make me get all pro-choice upin here

Do not pretend like I didn't see what you did in Texas.

The Short Version: The Texas House Committee republicans have voted to move forward with a bill that places new restrictions on the whens*, wheres*, and hows* of abortions after the following measures were taken during the meeting:

• limiting the testimonies from the over 2,000 eople who signed up to fewer than 100 people with a 3-minute time limit for each person and a total of eight hours of testimony, as well as a room seating only 64 people
• refusing to consider any Democratic amendments to the bill
• strict security precautions to subdue any disruptions from the pro-choice protesters, even though 3,500 people came to the Capitol to register an opinion on the matter, and a majority of those people were not in favor of this bill
• despite the fact that Senator Wendy Davis led a chaotic but passionate 13-hour filibuster just recently that completely derailed a very similar attempt during a public testimony on the same restrictions

*This bill includes but is not limited to the following restrictions: an outright ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, mandate that abortion doctors obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles, nonsurgical abortions (i.e. a pill) also have to take place in a surgical center, and require that procedures take place at ambulatory surgical centers*.

**Only 11% of Texas clinics qualify as "ambulatory" surgical centers and are in densely-populated metropolitan areas, and many clinics would need to relocate to meet ventilation requirements to have the space required for operating rooms and hallways.

Okay. Whoa. Back it up there, partner. 

This is an issue I feel very strongly about. This may be, in fact, the issue I feel most strongly about, aside from the age-old separation of church and state debate (which isn't a debate by the way, that's actually a real thing upon which our country was founded, but if I don't stop that subject now, I'll never stop). The way in which a person handles themselves when asked about this topic, in my opinion, is one of the single most defining aspects of their character. It speaks on an infinitely deeper level than just pro-life and pro-choice: it cues you in on their most basic values, on their integrity, and on their respect for other people.

I am passionately pro-choice. Funnily enough, I am passionately pro-choice, and I do not know if I could ever follow through with an abortion in my personal life. However, I would never deny anyone the right to seek abortion as an alternative to raising a child or adoption. That's a huge problem with people who identify as pro-choice: I am not pro-abortion. I am exactly what my label implies: I support a woman's right to choose the option that is best for her, even if it results in the intentional termination of a pregnancy. What pro-choice people support is not only the access to safe, legal methods of abortion, but also the reduction of the need for abortion itself. We don't want to kill all the babies, guys, I swear.

There are hundreds of reasons a woman may seek an abortion. They may include interference with education or work, inability to care for a dependent due to lack of emotional or financial stability, or simply the wish not to be a parent. One must never forget, though, that victims of rape, incest, or people who have pregnancies deemed "high-risk," or babies who will be born with fatal disabilities, for they also gain the right to abortion when pro-choice laws are passed. By doing so, you are telling women that they have the mental capacity and the civil liberty to make decisions about their own body. The decision whether or not to let another human being develop in your uterus is about the biggest decision a woman can make about her own body, if you ask me. 

Yes, sometimes, perfectly healthy embryos and fetuses are terminated in this process. Pro-life people argue that this fetus has the right to a life, but look here: 

By law, you cannot be forced to donate one of your kidneys or part of your liver to someone who needs it. You cannot be forced to give blood. Even if you are the only person with a certain blood type and your refusal will mean the death of someone else - maybe a family member, maybe your child - if you refuse, that is your right as a human being and no court can prosecute you for murder. You, and only you, are the final arbiter of what happens to your body, and if you decide the risks are too great, the right to refuse to help is absolute. What you are implying is that bodily autonomy ought to be less important than saving someone’s life; that a fetus, or a human being, should be given the opportunity to live at the expense of other people’s bodily autonomy. So put it into context. You have a kidney that’s a perfect match to someone in the hospital - let’s call him Fred - who will die in the next week if he doesn’t get it. For your own personal reasons, you do not wish to have your kidney removed. Your reasons aren’t material to this particular argument, but they can range anywhere from your phobia of hospitals to your allergy to most kinds of anesthesia, to a history of kidney disease in your family that may mean you will need that extra kidney one day or to the simple fact that you do not wish to give this kidney at this time. The point is: you do not consent. If life is considered more important than bodily autonomy, then the law can force you to be taken to the hospital against your will, be sedated against your will, cut open against your will, and have your organ removed against your will. 

And let us not forget that many (not all, but many, you cannot deny) who are in favor of restricting or outlawing abortion also do not support any of the necessary steps to prevent them. They do not agree, morally or for whatever reason, with birth control, adequate sex education, or easy access or knowledge of other resources. Do you realize what birth control and adequate sex education do when applied to society on a grander scale? You guessed it - they reduce the need for abortion by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies. Wow! What a concept! You cannot say, "You fucked up your life, sorry," while simultaneously stripping them of any of the resources that could have prevented the unsafe practice that led to the pregnancy in the first place. This logic allows for a very narrow spectrum of lifestyles, and honestly, I can see really no other reason than to forward the same narrow-minded, fucked up line of thinking and to put a bit of a damper on any kind of sex for pleasure at all.

We also cannot leave out the methods by which people try to prevent abortions. Look at Dr. Tiller, for example. He was murdered in May of 2009 because he provided abortion services. In 2003, Bush signed in the Federal Abortion Ban, which banned a particular method of safe abortion after 12 weeks, which had no exception to protect a woman's health, no regard for the medical groups and doctors who opposed this law, and does not leave the decision of viability to the doctor. There are also places called "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" who mislead women into thinking they are an establishment similar to Planned Parenthood; however, they use manipulation, trauma, lies, and even threats to keep women from getting abortions. Even today, people say things that just aren't true both directly and indirectly relating to abortions. People still say that abortions lead to breast cancer and mental illness. And remember that guy Todd Akin? I bet you do. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." This line of thinking is particularly dangerous because it discredits those who seek abortions on the grounds of rape. It even may go so far as calling some of them liars. Remember Mourdock and that a child from rape is still what God intended? Just... no. No no no. We can't even go down that road. No.

Let me clarify something here: there is nothing wrong with holding the belief that life begins at conception. In America, A problem arises when you take that belief and you impose it upon other people. Be it a religious belief or just your own personal judgment, you have both the right to practice that in your own life and the obligation to tolerate the fact that others may not share the same viewpoint as you. It is, in fact, possible, to practice a faith in your personal life and understand that society functions in an entirely different way. Life may begin at conception for you, and that is perfectly acceptable. Abortion may be against your moral, religious, or spiritual code, and that is perfectly acceptable; however, it is your duty as both a citizen of  this country and an individual to realize that your own personal choices do not reflect the moral integrity of any other individual at any given time in the history of mankind. 

Joe Biden, in the 2012 vice-presidential debate, said:

With regard to abortion, I accept my church's position that life begins at conception. That's the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and - I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman. I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that women can't control their body. It's a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court--I'm not going to interfere with that.

 In fact, there is absolutely no affiliation between religious institutions and a pro-choice agenda. One big argument in the Romney campaign was that churches were a victim of Obamacare. That is the simplest issue in this blog post - it's a lie. Yes, Obamacare has the "contraceptive mandate" which requires that employers offer insurance plans that cover contraceptives without co-pay. Religious entities such as churches, temples, or mosques are exempt from the Obamacare requirement. Only religiously-affiliated institutions have this requirement, meaning religious universities or hospitals. Huge difference there. Like, super mind-changing difference there. Using those words incorrectly could make people angry and uninformed at the same time... oh, wait.

I am done babbling on for now. I just wanted to rant because I want to be clear: being in favor of publicly banning abortion on a societal scale rather than valuing human life at conception as an individual moral choice does not prevent abortion. It does not promote women's rights. It does not promote a child's rights. It actually does nothing at all to help anyone and is oftentimes promoted through false information and unprofessional means. Simply put, it just makes you an asshole.

Let's take a trip down memory lane!