Helping the Helpless...

First and foremost, happy belated thanksgiving. I hope all of them were blessed and filled with more memories to remininse about.


Now, I was talking to a friend of mine about another mutual friend our ours right and we got into a very interesting conversation. My friend Dave was talking to me about my friend and her current situation. Dave in a serious Christian (and for those wondering, I am a Christian as well but I have some issues with the institutions of Church but we will talk bout that at another time) and he is really concerned about her. And with good reason. She is 22 years old an bout to have her second child when her first one is not even a year old. To make matters worse, at this time she seems to lack direction and motivation to get her life together even though she knows she has to do better for her children. And to make matters even worse, her child's father is not worth two shits at all.

Dave was proceeding to tell me how I need to help her and not give up on her. How I needed to keep her motivated and keep her focused. Okay folks, let me tell you guys something about my relationship with the friend in question. Before she even got pregnant the first time and got with this dead beat I had told her to use protection with the tag team (the tag team being birth control and condoms) and she ignored me and behold, she was pregnant. I was like, okay, its only one baby so lets help you get together. She didn't drive so I was helping her get her license, she wanted a new job so I helped her fill out applications, she wanted to get promoted at our job in case the new job didn't come through and since I am a manager I started putting in good words, she wanted to go shopping, get her hair and nails done, I took her, she wanted to keep living with the dead beat in question and was about to quit our job not giving a shit that she still had a child to take care of so for a whole summer I went out of my way to get her to work everyday on time. With all that said, Dave wanted to know why I didn't want to take on that responsibility again and it was during that process that I had a revelation.

I took such a big interest in her because I was worried for my God niece as well as for her own situation. I thought, what if she wanted to leave him but she couldn't because she wouldn't have a job. I just took on too much in a situation that had absolutely nothing to do with me. I wasn't pregnant. I was not that irresponsible to bring a child into the world without a plan or, in her case, her only plan being that her child's father would take care of her and that baby. You would think that she had seen enough Maury shows to know that the man is only obligated to love and take care of the baby not her forever. And just in case I did think that the first time around, when I found out the truth, I would not be silly enough to get put into the same situation a second time which she did. Only this time, its a little different for her.

Instead of people being excited about the baby, they are looking at her like she is irresponsible and even in some cases stupid for having another child so soon. (Pretty much what I thought the first time but anyway...) They don't think its cute and in her own way she has retreated into a semi- depression. It was one thing when everyone was with her but now that she experiencing ridicule she is thinking harder about her choices. Its very hard to watch but it had to be done.

I don't really have a point to all of this except that it is important to know your own limitations as a person and when helping a friend becomes enabling a friend. I fell victim to it because I love her and I only wanted what was best but I ended up having to tell Dave that if she doesn't want the best for herself it doesn't matter what I want. I also had to cut her off a little to make sure that her issues did not filter into my own life. I think I involved myself in it so much that people at work were asking me what she was going do and how I felt about it like what I felt really mattered. I never really understood the concept of tough love until now. Tough love being, watching your loved ones make their own mistakes and doing nothing until they realize what the mistake was and fixing it, if they can, by themselves.

Man, is anybody feeling me out there?

The Jaded Youth...

So, I was at work tonight right and I had the opportunity to talk to one of my co-workers/ friend/ subordinate and I had asked her of her plans for the future. Now, I mentioned in my bio that I was 22 and this girl was about 17 or 18 so since I am 4 or 5 years her senior I wanted to see where her head was at and if necesary impart my wisdom. She told me of her future plans and it was cool--she wanted to go to a trade school so she could get some decent money because she didn't see the point in going to a 2 or 4 year college and paying a shit load of money for a whole bunch of bullshit classes that was not even remotely connected to what she wanted to do for a living. I can understand that p.o.v. cause Morgan damn sure put me through enough to graduate but that wasn't the problem. The problem came when she said that she wanted to have children at about 21 or 22. My age. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, 'so what? if she wants to have kids at that age what's the big deal?' Nothing normally but I had to ask her one more question before I decided how to proceed. What was the question you ask? What else did you wanna do before you had kids? And guess what? She looked confused like 'what do you mean?' Bingo.

I then began to tell her that if you always wanted to have a family go for it but being a parent is more than giving birth and taking care of the kid's basic needs. Kids look up to their parents for guidance about experiences that they themselves have yet to deal with or to gain knowledge about what to do when confronted with a situation. Kids look to their parents as examples as to what they could possibly achieve if they make the right decisions. At least I know I did. But more than that, she has a good 25 years before her baby making factory shuts down and she can do a lot of living before she has a kid.

The whole point I'm trying to make I guess is that I don't understand where teens these days get the idea that all they are supposed to do in life is go to school, get a job, get married, have babies, and die. Where is the adventure? The enlightenment? The desire to want to do everything you could possibly do before you saddle yourself down with kids? I guess I'm a bit jaded because I have 5 nieces and nephews and I saw from the age of 6 how kids can slow you down but she has plenty of friends her own age whose lives were drastically changed because of an unexpected trip down parent lane. I don't know. I just worry about the youth today. How about you?

This is only the beginning...

I decided to start my own blog because I wanted to see what it was really about. Would people really want to read what I had to say? Would anybody really care about the pain and strife of my life even if what I was saying was a total rant that equated to nothing in reality? How intriguing. I had to see for myself what all of this was about. As a psyc major I approached this from a mental health standpoint. I wonder if all of this venting to complete strangers was actually going to be a benefit to my emotional state of mind. Now is the time to find out right? I am not opposed to this at all for people who may or may not soon be reading this. I write fanfics about my favorite Animes all the time so this probably isn't too different. But I wonder if this world that I am about to engage in will distort me from reality in some way. I'm not going to lie, but I think my sister is a bit obsessed with this to the point where she thinks my family and I don't understand her like the people here do. Is that the bloggers fault though? No. This is the fault of people who no longer want to deal with their tangible peers and want to escape. Blogging, like any other drug when abused. lol. How interesting. But, now that's out of the way, I will try this for a time and hopefully this will enhance my own life experiences and maybe the lives of others.