1-Apr-2006

I’m having some serious issues motivating myself to do my homework and study this quarter.

Isn’t family history fun!

I found out something interesting about my family (specifically my Dad’s). Apparently, his family (and of course myself) has a genetic predisposition to clinical depression. My parents never thought to tell me… I found out through a cousin who told me that my Dad was on anti-depressants (which I also didn’t know).

Of course I had to ask for how long… she said, “off an on for as long as I can remember.” My reaction was slightly less than knowing, and her response was, “you didn’t know?”
“Clearly not.”
“Oh. Our entire family takes anti-depressants every once in a while.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, the doctors say our family is ‘genetically predisposed.'”
“Oh… thats nice.”
“It’s no big deal, really.”
“Unless you don’t know about it, then it kinda gets in the way of life.”
“Well, ya there’s that. Your Dad didn’t tell you?”
“Clearly not.”

For those of you keeping score… this is now 3 major life altering things that my parents haven’t told me about (albeit the only one that really effects me now). First, I had a better than most chance of having spinal or brain damage due to some unfortunate events in the womb. Second, in 3rd grade I had my brain tested for defects and toumors, the results of which put me on Ritalin and subsequently Aderol then Silert. And now I apparently have a genetic predisposition to a chemical imbalance in my head that makes me perpetually unhappy.

I have to say I’m less than enthused at this news… however, it does make a lot of things make a lot of sense. From what I’ve gathered from my cousin and somethings that I’ve been reading up on, the serotonin and noradrenaline levels in me (assuming I also have the condition, which is probably a safe bet) are only slightly out of balance making me more likely to enter a depressed state and remain there for a prolonged period of time. The levels aren’t so far off that my family is in a constant state of depression, its just easier for us to get that way and stay there. To me it reads like a mild form of bipolar disease, but I guess the mood swings aren’t severe enough.

“When the night has come, and the land is dark…”

I’ve learned something very interesting today. Anyone who says that different religions are just different manifestations of the same teachings from the same God and are just tailored to a culture are utterly and completely wrong. I went to an Islamic mosk today with a friend of mine. I had nothing better to do and I’m a pretty open person so I thought I would go and learn. It was pretty obvious that everyone there knew that I wasn’t Muslim, even worse they looked upon me with pitty. I realize later (from a “sermon” someone was giving) that this was because I don’t subscribe to the ideas and methodologies from the Koran and because of that they believe I’m doomed to “hellfire”. I thought about this for a second and realized that had my friend come to a Christian church with me, the congregation (if they knew he wasn’t Christian) would look upon him in the exact same way. Since a Muslim doesn’t believe that Christ is the son of God (in fact, they see Christ only as a “middle man” in Christianity), my friend is forever doomed to hell.

From this came two very sad realizations. First, if God manifested himself to different peoples differently but equally, we would not believe each other to be destined for an eternity of pain in the most unthinkable place. That just isn’t possible. If God meant for us to have our own customized faith, then we wouldn’t be called to bring others to Him nor would we find fault in another’s belief system. Second, and no less important but slightly more confusing, good and righteous people all over the world are condemned to hell because they were brought up in a belief system that leads them away from the truth and from which there is little chance of convincing someone that they are wrong. According to Christian ideology, I can not see my friend in Heaven… not because he is evil, immoral, unclean, or uncaring… but because he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ. This thought causes me to trip a little bit because my friend is a very good person. He does good things, helps people when they need it and sometimes when they don’t. I know this is kind of thing is not for me to question God about, but I want to.

This is directed at people who don’t actually read this… STOP CALLING ME JUST TO PITY!. I can’t exactly vent to them, it would hurt their feelings, but despite what ever people around me know of my past, I’m not the same person I was a year ago and I’m not going to jump off a bridge. Yes I’m hurting, but for the love of God you don’t need to make me feel worse. Talking to her consoles me more than some of the people who won’t leave me alone.

Congratulate me!

The class that I thought was going to bring down my GPA… yeah, I definitely pulled off an A- which has made my day amazing… only to be brought down by the daunting task of studying for my operating systems class which is basically all memorization of a very boring book thats reads like a technical manual written by Satan.

I’ve been reading random peoples journals lately. No one that I know (well, that isn’t entirely true, but the following doesn’t apply to anyone I’m actually concerned with) and I’ve noticed two rather annoying trends in peoples entries.

First, and the one that annoys me a lot in real life conversation is that many people in this world are sycophants. Seriously… I understand the need to have friends in high places even if it is only to elevate yourself, but do you people really need to do this to the detriment of yourself and your own friends. Ok… I have a few friends that have a lot of money and live in” high society”… but never (even when told these classy friends wouldn’t talk to me otherwise) would I ever risk a relationship with another friend to bolster a self serving, self edifying relationship that will likely lead me no where new in life. That isn’t to say that if I were guaranteed a change for the better that I would take that, becasue I most certainly wouldn’t. Loyalty and respect are “all important” in my world (as small as it may be).

Second, the teenage and young adult generations of today have mastered the severely annoying art of saying something without saying something so they can take a stab at someone without actually having ever said something so they have complete deniability should anything bad ever come of what they didn’t say. I truly love the people who say, “I have something really important to tell someone but I don’t know if I should. I mean, I want them to understand me, but what if it doesn’t go right?” (Really, read xanga to your hearts content, 90% of people will have something like that somewhere in their entries.) Its one thing to say what you want to without leaving details that could give some people too much information (i.e. names and dates and exact happenings), but do you people really think that who ever it is that you don’t want to say something to won’t know the second they read your post that you are actually singling them out trying to make them feel bad for not being a good enough friend for not know exactly what you wanted to tell them ahead of time?

Sorry, I haven’t vented in a while… I’m done now.