I'm not perfect either
04/07/2006 07:59 p.m.
What is "real life experience"? What differentiates one persons life experience from another's in terms of what is real? The experiences of a child who's just learned to walk are as real as those of a hardened criminal who's just learned to love, aren't they? I think that all life's experiences are real and valid. It's what you take away from them, what you ask yourself when you walk away from that moment, that distinguishes just what kinds of moments you are walking towards. I am not innocent. Not everyone who is guilty has done community service or betrayed someone they cared about, just like not everyone who is innocent has been through life unscathed. Discounting a person based on their experiences alone isn't right. Discounting a person at all isn't right, which isn't to say we haven't all done it. But you cannot do anything, commit any action, without being judged for it. The words on this page are being judged right now, because I write them and they are here in plain sight. I don't lobby for anyone's redemption, but everyone has expectations of how they think things ought to be. There would never be any opinions at all if people didn't have an idea of what things ought to be like, and it's far from me to discount myself, to discount my own sense of right and wrong solely because not everyone in the world agrees. But is it so bad for my personal goal in life to be being a good person, and human at the same time? Is it really so bad to think that I want to be good, and think about my actions, before and after, and weigh my emotions out without discrediting them?

I hated Barbara. When everything that happened did I hated her more than anythingI could possibly dream up. There was nothing more horrible to me than the idea that the person you trusted with one of the only real friendships you've ever had would betray you in such a way as to take everything you love, including herself, out of your life in a way that cannot be replaced.
But I don't hate her anymore. And that took some time, and some thinking, and some reasoning. i don't discount the way I felt because it was real and appropriate to the situation. I didn't want her to die. I didn't want her to be shunned by every living person on the Earth (at times I thought I did, but then I thought...). But I'm not going to just whisk my hand at the whole ordeal and make off handed comments that I don't think about at all, stuff that I just say, just so that they can be said. I don't think thats right. And really, deep down, people don't tend to do things that they know are wrong. They either think they're right at the time or have no other choice.

So sue me for wanting to be better than I am. I am not finished yet. I am a work in progress. and in the "real world" only progress gets you anywhere.
I am currently Fine