Sea Glass

We all come into this world as beautiful glass bottles- filled to the brim with wonderful goodness to share with the world. Some are sweet, some are bitter, and some are utterly intoxicating. Some give you a sugar rush, and some get better with age.

And some are drained well before their time. Misused, and left broken to try and piece themselves together. Lamentable, mere shards of their original splendor. They cannot imagine being loved as the shards they now are, and wonder if perhaps that is their own fault. People walk by the shards without a second glance, or throw them away as worthless garbage.

But some, a very lucky few, find their way to the sea. Over many years (it averages 20-30 years) they are churned and tumbled with the waves and sand of the ocean. They lose their inherent shine, their smooth surface and take on a frosted finish and appear to glow from deep within.

When the time is right, the sea returns the glass to the beach. Now, the same passerby who would not spare a glance or tossed them aside notice them. They are rare, coveted. They are Sea Glass. Despite humble beginnings, and tragic circumstances they have been remade into something even more beautiful than before.

But they could not have become as they are now were it not for the original hardships, were they not broken they could not have been swept away with the tide. Had they not been reduced to shards, they could not have become jewels.

We are not broken, we are not lost, we are not wrong. We are sea glass. We are who we are. Not everyone can appreciate the same beauty, some eyes are blinded by the inner glow. We were not created to thrive in a controlled environment. We are beautiful as we are, and do not require refinishing.

Remember your inner peace, recognize your unique beauty, remember your own strength. You were tumbled by waves, the fury of the ocean herself could not reduce you. As you were broken, now you are whole. You are no longer a shard- you are a gem of the sea. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

Too often, we allow our worth to be measured by the rules of others. Their opinions, their standards. To the average person, a broken bottle is garbage. Because it no longer serves their purpose, it is without value. It cannot sit on a shelf and be beautiful, it can no longer hold beverages. Its original value is gone. However, there are rare people. They comb the beach in the spring and during low tides looking for sea glass. They appreciate the unique beauty that can only come from being broken, churned, and re-emerging. 

Many people prefer to use the metaphor of turning into a butterfly. But a caterpillar begins life with the expectation that they will go through metamorphosis and gain their beautiful wings. They do not struggle, they simply fulfill what is expected of them. A glass bottle, on the other hand, is never expected to be anything more than what it is expected to be; a vessel. When its time as a vessel is spent the bottle is discarded. Becoming Sea Glass exceeds that expectation, and takes an entirely unexpected path to do so. It is beauty beyond original purpose, and as such is something to be admired.

~Night Rose

To My Younger Siblings' New "Dad"

Part of me has dreaded your arrival, imagined the pain it would cause
Hearing them call for Daddy and for me to turn to find you.
Knowing that you will sit in attendance of their achievements
With our mother it will be you who helps guide them to adulthood.
It will be you who stands in when they go astray or falter
Likely, it will be you who takes pictures
As they walk down the aisle to that hard-earned diploma

It will be you who reminds upstart boys of their manners
And the type of  young women my sisters were raised to be.
It will be you who helps with my younger brother
As he and my mother travel his hard road
Likely, it will be you who walks them down the aisle
And has the honor of that sacred paternal dance.

It will be you, who they refer to as Dad.

For me it will be a reminder of what HE would have done.
What he would have said, what he would have felt.
A reminder of the glowing pride he had from their first days.
A reminder of all the things he looked forward to
And the Daddy they never knew.
I can't help it, he was the one there for me.

I don't say this to cause you pain
Nor to make you feel guilty for the place you now hold.
I love my siblings, with all my heart.
And they deserve SOMEONE, I think it could be you
It's what he would have wanted too.

But please, this one thing I ask;
Remember the honor of the name.
It's a heavy weight, and should not lightly be taken.
For all its perks, it is a heady responsibility

To me, he was the best there ever was and cannot be replaced.
For them, I hope you can make the absence less.
There will be times it is difficult
And you might wonder what you were thinking
They ARE teenagers, and will have their moments.
I pray they are more tame than were mine.

I have dreaded your arrival, I doubt it will ever not hurt.
But, even if their Dad is not our Daddy
I am glad they will have your support, your guidance
I am glad they will have you.
If I seem moody, remember my perspective, take no offense.
I wasn't ready to lose MY Daddy
But, for them, "Dad" has become synonymous
With you.

~Night Rose

This post is happening for a reason.

Stand ye warned. This is a rant. It is not going to be eloquent, it is not going to be structured, it is not going to be overtly rational. It is pure, unrestrained, fuck your excuses.

"Everything happens for a reason" <---- THE biggest cop-out of the species. Be more sensitive, say that you honestly don't know what to say or that you don't have words. It. is. NOT. comforting. If someone tried to "justify" most of these situations being caused by a person, the person would be called a psychopath and locked away or killed, and the one making the excuses would be institutionalized.

NO ONE should have the last remaining tatters of their pride stripped from them, be hand-bathed and spoon fed as an infant for three days with their face melted and every labored breath causing them agony because of scorched windpipes before passing. NO ONE should be born only to be crippled in their first few weeks of life by a FEVER and have all the "could have been"s stripped away without ever seeing them- to build SOME semblance of progress and then be told that it was for nothing- the condition has worsened and there is NOTHING that can be done. NO ONE should lose all sense of who they are or what's gone on around them and either be tortured with re-learning that their child died before them or torture their families with asking how they are. NO ONE should die alone as a Jane Doe, their family torn in two locations with critical injuries unable to locate their family. NO ONE should fear not being able to seek justice for their family, that a monster might walk free while their family lives with the impact of their choices for the rest of their lives. NO ONE should have to watch their beloved waste away and die, be hospitalized themselves and come home to find that some unswallowed load robbed them of their precious memories because they heard that the pair were en-route to the hospital over a police scanner. NO ONE should have to bury their child, or worse yet be left with nothing but an empty casket.

It does NOT all happen for a reason- there IS no reasoning for it! It's sadistic, it's torture. And if there IS something grand and omnipotent behind it they are no god- they are simply playing with a magnifying glass and delighting in the suffering they cause. It is meaningless chaos.

If such a being does exist and is reading this- FUCK YOU.

~Night Rose

I'm the only one allowed to kick that much ass Gamora.

     The other half and I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy last night...

     IT WAS ABSOLUTELY MIND-BLOWING. Great balance of humor, action, skirted romance, mystery, misery and of course, Groot. The jokes made me literally laugh out loud, the pain made me cringe. The battles had me at the edge of my seat and the drama tore the beating heart out of my chest and ate it.

     Pretty much Guardians of the Galaxy was everything it needed to be to truly do the universe justice. Several other Hero movies have attempted, a few have done above average. Guardians of the Galaxy nailed it, plated it in gold and put it on its ample trophy shelf. Hands-down the best movie I've seen in a long time.

     SO MANY SPOILERS I COULD SHARE. But I'm trying to do the right thing and not ruin it. Go, watch it for yourself. Take in the epic fullness that movie theaters have been cheating us out of for so damn long. If you can, find it in 3D. But watch it. You will not be sorry.

We can all be heroes like Kevin Bacon.
~Night Rose

Throw me a fricken bone here Scott!

     So one of my first realizations going into this I Am That Girl project was that I needed to stop procrastinating.

     ...Obviously I have a lot of work to do. :-D


     But, in all seriousness it is one of my major hangups. I have a million-plus things I could be doing at any given point. The chance that I'm going to settle on the one I really SHOULD be doing? Not very high. I get restless extremely easily, and tend to flit from medium to medium (typically mid-project leaving a LOT of un-finished Rose-isms... oooh pie!)

     I really am terrible. I'm not going to say I per-say admit it... more like I own it. But, the first step is realizing that there's a situation to begin with right?

     You see what I did there yet? Feel free to discover your own. I'm not here to tell you who to be, or HOW to be. That's your job. I'm just here to share my own adventure.



Hurry up and grab yours by the ponytail.

~Night Rose

Civic Responsibility Follow-up

      For anyone new to The Garden, a little while back I got a bit frustrated with a political situation that was at the time developing in our country. There had been an enormous number of "illegal immigrant" children dumped at our south western border. In an effort to alleviate the strain on that area, they were being relocated (temporarily, as I found out today) to other locations around the country. Unfortunately, some of our civilians (I use the "civil" part very loosely) thought in some redneck manner it was reasonable to repel this "invasion"- with guns. As a mother of two myself, the idea of those children having no place to go tears at me, especially when we have so many willing to pay exorbitant fees to adopt from overseas. Therefore, the idea that they were greeted by an armed you're not welcome here party  REALLY pissed me off. So, I did what I could and wrote a letter. I then blogged my irritation and several drafts of the letter showing my efforts to condense it to the White House contact form character criteria while retaining its tone and message.The entry date is 7/16 and can be found here.

     Today, I received the following response:

    
     I'm not going to lie, when I first saw that I had a response in my inbox (ESPECIALLY the day before my 25th birthday) I was stoked. I wrote that letter two months ago, I can't believe they actually thought enough to write back!
    
     And then I read their letter, which enlightened me that obviously they didn't have the courtesy to more than skim mine.

     Dude are you serious?! I actually sat down and composed, not simply wrote, composed a letter. Then I butchered it to shit and STILL managed to keep the purpose- I made a meme for the sake of cheese! And what I get is a generic form-styled response. It lent a very broad-spectrum response, a finger point, and a closure. Very disappointed Uncle Sam.

As another stone silenced in the pond-
Night Rose

I swear I'm not a "Social Warrior"

     Now that you are crying bullshit and calling me Pinocchio allow me to clarify that title: I am not what the wonderful internetz have deemed a "Social Justice Warrior". A "Social Justice Warrior" is, as defined by the Urban Dictionary:

Social Justice Warrior:

A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation. A social justice warrior, or SJW, does not necessarily strongly believe all that they say, or even care about the groups they are fighting on behalf of. They typically repeat points from whoever is the most popular blogger or commenter of the moment, hoping that they will "get SJ points" and become popular in return. They are very sure to adopt stances that are "correct" in their social circle.

The SJW's favorite activity of all is to dogpile. Their favorite websites to frequent are Livejournal and Tumblr. They do not have relevant favorite real-world places, because SJWs are primarily civil rights activists only online. 

   
     I'll be the first to admit- I do 99.9% of my activism online. I could list off a million excuses reasons for this but the primary ones are that I am selfish and lazy. However, if I bother to post about something you had better believe it's important to me. And unlike the SJW's, I don't give the pass of gas if people agree with me- on the contrary I prefer that they think for themselves. I despise sheep and think herd mentality to be the ultimate offense to human intelligence there is. Question your world, create your own opinions. Even if they aren't entirely perfect at least you're conscious enough to HAVE an opinion. Unfortunately, the majority of our peers are more content to take the road well-trodden and not risk the status quo. 

     Given the trend my recent posts have been on, and given the one pounding in my head for release seems determined to continue, I felt this was an important point to make. The topics I flare up about are extremely close to home- the state of our school systems for example. My aspirations in high school were cut short when my school was forced to cut courses and teachers- I couldn't use my art classes to earn scholarships because there WERE no art classes. Now, nearly a decade later my own children were put on waiting lists to get into school. My daughter just got the call today that she will start Kindergarten on Tuesday- nearly a month into the school year. My son still awaits placement for Pre-K, and it's likely they won't be able to find a place for him in the same school my daughter will be attending. 

     I could just bottle it up. I could sit by silently and let the world run its course. But it's just not me. While I am not a "Social Justice Warrior", I am an advocate. I advocate progress, I advocate awareness, I advocate social development. I support expression, and strongly encourage involvement in one's natural world. I cannot be satisfied with the status quo. Rather than just allowing issues to slip by I will be as the rock, forcing the stream to change its course or at the very least interrupting it. Complacency is killing our country and our culture and I am done participating in it.

Be less afraid of making a ripple with action than drowning because you chose to sit still.

~Night Rose