2/10/04 Life is funny, how things work out I mean. My cousin was fired from work today; she was looking at it very negatively and was very upset, crying, as most people would be. When she was doing this though I found myself telling her that everything happens for a reason, so maybe in some fucked up way this is really a good thing. I mean she didn?t like that job and she really needs to get her act together, maybe this is god?s way, if there is a god, of making her slow down and think. Maybe this whole thing is just one big disaster that?s leading into a masterpiece. People say that there are no mistakes in art; they say that if you are truly a good artist all your mistakes are worked into a piece to make is truly original and eloquently beautiful. If this is true, and I?ve found it to be true from personal experience, then maybe in some twisted metaphoric way life is like art. Maybe there really are no mistakes, just mile stones that you have to mold into a path that creates a masterpiece, a life, full of problems and tears and loss, and full of solutions and smiles and love as well. This has shown to be true in my life too. With all the problems with my family, mostly including my mother, most people would ask how I am still standing today, still living, still yearning to take breath after breath so I can wake up the next morning. To them I simply say it?s not that bad. After all, we are all faced with problems, even if they are as small as ?my shoes don?t match my pants,? or as big as ?my dad killed himself when I was 3 years old,? 2 problems I have been faced with in my own life. I don?t believe that anyone is ever presented with a problem too big or one that they cannot overcome. After all the problems I have encountered in my life I have lived through them all and they have only made me a better person because of it. After living through so many losses in my life, I have learned to cherish the relationships I have with people as they last. Through my exposure to drug and alcohol abuse I know how to deal with people who are faced with problems involving it and it has made it easy for me to find no interest in trying anything like that. Dealing with a raging alcoholic has also made it easy to relate to a lot of people in problems they have with their parents. I do hate it when people make it out to seem worse than it is, like if they say my mom went on a rampage, or my mom is crazy, or I hate my dad he?s such a bastard. In reality the person loves their parents no matter what they did or they wouldn?t care about them and wouldn?t care enough to bring up whatever is bothering them about them. I must admit that a lot of the time I will fall into this trap too, like when I say I hate my mother, or I wish she was out of my life, or even that no one has seen crazy or heard yelling until they?ve met my aunt or my mother. It?s true when I say this I am thinking of things that most people don?t know about me, like all the nights I hid behind my dresser crying praying my mother wouldn?t find me, or how I still have nightmares about the fights she had between me or my brother or one of her boyfriends. It?s true that when my mother gets upset she does throw stuff at me or lock me in my room for like 2 days with no food, or one time tied me to the bath tub faucet and turned the water on and left me in there, which these punishments are out of the ordinary of course, but there are people worse off than me and I remind myself of that everyday. Most of these things she doesn?t even remember doing because she was so drunk or high at the time she didn?t even know what she was doing, but it still hurts. It seems weird to people when I say that I like my life and I don?t mind it too much. Obviously I have problems and they bother me but in the end I?m happy for them. Through the 14 years of my existence I have lost a grandmother to cancer, got taken from my mother because she loved drugs more than me, had a father who walked out on my family after I was born, and whom I?ve never met but only heard about, who actually is the cause of most of my problems since he got my mother into drugs. I have had a cousin who has relapses with mostly crack/cocaine, more often than she?d like, but I always am here for her to have a shoulder to cry on. I?ve had a friend kill himself, 2 cats die, a suicidal brother, a crazy aunt, a lot of confronting myself with who I am and being happy with myself, a lot of heart break and too many break ups with boyfriends and friends, but in the end I am grateful for it all. If it wasn?t for any of this then I wouldn?t have experienced as much wisdom as I have, I wouldn?t be as sarcastic as I am, I wouldn?t be as funny and be able to brush things off when people think badly of me. I wouldn?t be such a perfectionist, I wouldn?t care about people, I would never know how to love, I would never know how to cry, I wouldn?t be able to relate to people as well, I wouldn?t have as much knowledge, I wouldn?t like the same kind of music, I wouldn?t accept so many different kinds of people. I wouldn?t tell people I?m bisexual, I wouldn?t understand how people think as well, I wouldn?t look at all angles of problems, and basically I wouldn?t be me. I am pretty content with who I am right now, and I love it that way. If it wasn?t for all the bad stuff then there would be nothing to lead to the good stuff, and the good stuff sure wouldn?t feel as good when it came. Just for today, my glass is half full, and just for tomorrow I was to keep it that way. ~Ali~