There were days that strung into weeks, maybe years where I had convinced myself that all I needed wasme, myself, I. I would occasionally let people in only to be reminded that the gift of friendship always came with a steep price, especially for me as I opened the door so wide after going without the gentle breeze of human intimacies for so long that I was easy prey for my so-called friends. It may not happen after a month, or six, sometimes not even a year, but sooner or later the hammer dropped and something was stolen from me – both materialistically and emotionally and I would retreat back into myself, promising never to let anyone close again. What a fool’s oath! We do all need each other in the end but bonds of trust are living, breathing things.
This next subject is as universal as the human experience and spreads throughout the world in many different forms, both legal and illegal, friendly and stolen, and in the mere disappearance of one child and unannounced appearance of another – no questions asked. There are so many other on the black market and simply sold children for economic reasons in the poorest of regions and the wealthiest of communities as if a child is a simple commodity, not a living, breathing life. In between there exist the most vilest of the child trade for sex, work and any other whim an entitled person might feel to any other thing on the market place to be bartered over as if it were a trinket in the world’s largest flea market. I grew up an adopted person amidst these images and one pondering what made me so fortunate to get the luck of the draw, ending up with upper, middle-class, phenomenal parents through a Los Angeles Superior Court County Adoption, is a tale of randomness in the extreme.
As Alice blindly and without much forethought ran down the rabbit hole into Wonderland (or was it?) so do children born of their parents follow them into the family’s religious fold. It is a predestined plan, one the child has no control over and once indoctrinated will fight to the death for those beliefs as strongly as their parents before them.
First, let me just say up front I AM INDEED, a SORE LOSER when the odds don’t seem to have been even going in. I had no huge expectation going in as the winner in the Best New Blog category since I launched at the end of November 2009 giving me hardly three months to collect a following. I have to say it was a shock that I made it into the final three. Once there, however, I came to believe my competition would be other singular blogs as the word in the award is BLOG and that some voters might actually review each if they were not familiar with them before making their pick.
I know we were all taught as children not to call each other names and we know how much racism hurts us as a culture (or at least I hope those reading this blog do) but there as so many more ways we use labels in our lives that shut us off from groups, from information, and from individuals and if you are anything like me, it takes someone pointing it out every now and then for a real wake up call to happen in your life so change can begin to rebuild your way of interacting in the world.
