Upper

So, in light of my depressing self-pitying entry yesterday I have decided to end my short-lived mild depression and do something about the problems n my life.

1. Parents: hard to change...I will try to be more thick skinned and sickly sweet to my sister and my parents and maybe if I always act nice enough they'll leave me the fuck alone.

or I could always resort to physical violence and just fight Anna: Winner gets our parents undying affection.

2. Friends: I am going to hang out with as many people as possible whenver possible...for instance: I have plans to hang out with different people every night this week until saturday!!!! Anyone down to hang out sunday? I also have monday off...perhaps we could have a bbq (weather permitting) ?

3. Stress: I'mm continuing the job hunt today at lunch and after I get home from Jodie's and I am going to talk to my Aunt Kathy for some advice on medical experience that would be good for PA schools.

4. My fat ass: I am going to really stick to my diet and work out like my personal trainer taught me....except even more often!!! Who wants a gym buddy?? I belong to 24hr fitness and I want to go at least 2 days a week for at least an hour plus Im starting a Yoga class at Chabot next wednesday.

Also! I'm gonna be coordinating with Lexi to take walks around lake chabot or the San Leandro Marina hopefully once a week at least...I think it would be nice to get a few of us girls together and just exercise and chit chat...let us know if you are interested!! It'll be fun!!!

Warning: Downer

I don't want to be a downer or a whiner. I try really hard not to be so negative, and I try to be optimistic and positive and cheerful and bubbly, but its getting to the point where I can't anymore. Things are just too hard right now for me to act happy all the time. I need to let it out a little. If you don't like negativity, then don't read this. I just need a little time to vent.

I am unhappy. I guess that's the first step right? To admit it. I've been trying to figure out why I'm unhappy and I've come up with a myriad of reasons.

1. My parents have been riding my ass my entire life. I led a sheltered childhood where I was grossly overweight and unpopular and mildly intelligent and terribly depressed. No one ever noticed, they just continued to ride my ass academically and behaviorally and expected me to be perfect. My sister on the other hand, they never treated like that. In their eyes she is perfect and no matter how hard I try and how much I accomplish I will never ever outshine her. ever. She can be a complete bitch to me with her underhanded comments and her spiteful, nasty jokes at my expense and my parents just laugh. When I strike back, I end up getting ganged up on for being "a miserable bitch" which is a direct quote both from my sister and my mother, and a "spoiled rotten brat" when in actuality, it is Anna who always got what she wanted, I just rode her coat tails. My father tells me that I need to be more understanding and tolerant of her behavior and her teasing and her slights and her generally hatefulness. He tells me that I need a thicker skin. To me it seems that as a father he is teaching the wrong lesson. Perhaps Anna should learn to be more understanding of how I feel and how what she says makes me feel rather than telling me to tolerate her meanness. Now, don't get me wrong, I do understand the fact that in life people are not always going to be kind and I can handle that, but doesn't it always seem to hurt more when its your own family intentionally hurting you?

I could talk about this for days. I should probably move on.

2. I have lost almost every friend that ever meant anything to me. Ask anyone on earth who their best friend is. Not one person will say my name. That sounds really petty, but not being a best friend to someone really is painful especially because I consider a lot of people to be close friends who probably don't consider me one. It makes me really sad.

I understand that friendships are two way streets and that both parties need to work to keep them, but that doesn't make it hurt any less. In fact, knowing that its probably my fault makes it hurt even more. I went to UC Berkeley and I struggled a lot, so studying took up almost all of time when I wasnt in class, at work, or at my various interships and volunteer placements, plus I have been in a relationship for most of my college career and relationships take time and energy, so of course I spent a significant fraction of my free time with whatever boyfriend I was with at the time. I feel like that is understandable and forgivable, but perhaps other people don't. There are only 24 hours in a day...far too few to finish all of the things that I had on my plate and make time for a boyfriend and a social life. Maybe now that I will have a bit more free time I can repair those relationships, but thats only if the other person tries, too. I've neglected my friends and now I don't have many of them left.

It's just hard to feel so alone sometimes.

3. I'm stressed out like you would not beleive. I thought graduating would make me less stressed, not bump it up a couple hundred notches. I need to findd a vocational school to go to to get medical experience so I can apply to a PA Master's program, but I don't know what kind of experience is better (Medical Assistant versus Surgical Technologist) and I honestly still don't know if I really want to go to PA school instead of Medical School and that is really stressing me out because I have to decide NOW.

I also am 2 days into my last week at my job at UC Berkeley and I don't have a new job lined up. I'm freaking out about bills and school books and how Im gonna afford to go on the cruise and all that nonsense. Its really stressing me out. I need a job, but no one seems to want to hire me. I guess I just can't give up. Perhaps I'll spend tonight looking for jobs after I check on my grandma to see how her surgery went this morning.

4. Im am once again. terribly overweight. I was huge in high school and I managed to lose 100 lbs, unfortunately I have gained a portion of that weight back and I have been trying really hard to lose it and I am having a really hard time. I have struggled with my weight my entire life and I have never really won the war. I'm beginning to lose hope, that maybe I'm just destined to be fat for the rest of my life.

I have this mindset that if I lose weight all my problems will be solved: my family will accept me, my friends will come back and want to be around me, and I'll be happy. I guess thats not really true, buts its a lifelong feeling that I've had.



Thats all I am really feeling unhappy about right now, but those are 3 or 4 huge parts of my life that are going very poorly. At least I have Jarrod, Ashley, and Christine to keep my mind off of things and make me smile.

Vaccines, Autism, and Organics

So I listen to a wonderful program call "This American Life", which is produced Public Radio International and today I listened to one called "Ruining It for the Rest of Us" which had a segment on parents who choose not to vaccinate their children. This is an issue that drives me crazy. I understand that people are scared and they don't trust the "system" and that they may not have all the facts. I have a very easy solution for those people. GET. THE. FACTS. Yes, doctors may give a one sided view of vaccines, but so do the people who are spreading rumors that the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine causes autism. The one study that I have ever personally seen that "proved" that the vaccine caused autism has been RETRACTED. Measles is DEADLY.
By making the decision to not vaccinate their child against it, they are not only putting their children in danger, but other people's children as well. When considering the Public Health impact of a vaccine one must look at Herd Immunity. This is the idea that as long as a certain percentage of the population or "herd" is vaccinated, the entire population is protected. When the percentage of people vaccinated falls below that required for herd immunity, epidemics happen. I really don't think that people consider Public Health safety when making vaccine decisions, they only think about their child and the negligible chance that the vaccine may cause autism or other diseases. They hear people talking about autism and vaccines and danger and they immediately trust rumors ahead of the "system", which is obviously out to get them and their children. The only thing that I have heard that is in a vaccine that has been a proven medical danger is aluminum, which is a proven neurotoxin. So why do people use aluminum foil to cover their children's food? It doesn't make any sense to me.
These parents are probably the same parents who insist that their families only eat organic. And yes, eating organic is good to a degree, many of the nasty pesticides are avoided, but there are also negatives. All plants have natural inseticides to kill predators and to stop them from continuing to feed on them. Well, by using pesticides, we save the plants the trouble of developing and manufaturing these natural toxins. Why, you might ask, does this matter to humans? Because many of the these natural plant insecticides are deadly to humans, neurotoxins, carcinogens, allergens, you name it. We don't have a lot of information on a lot of them, either, whereas in many places that our food is grown (in the US andd Europe in particular) pessticides are closely monitored and regulated. Natural plant toxins are not.
It seems as though people see "natural" things as healthy things, and in actuality, some the most poisonous, deadly things we know of are natural. Botulism, for example, is a natural product of the bacteria clostridium botulinum, Anthrax is also a natural product of the species anthracis when infected with certain bacteriophages. Natural by no means is healthy. Keep that in mind at the grocery store.


Moral of the story: Take everything with a grain of salt, don't listen to what people around you are saying. Do some research for yourself...you might be suprised at what you find.