The Betting Pool

There's a terrible thing happening right now. It's not truly terrible because it doesn't involve murder or subterfuge or any other horribly bad things that human beings seem so casually able to do to each other. All I really need to say is that it's a terrible thing because its function has nothing to do with the actual nature of the thing but more the impact it's had on me. Because this terrible thing has kind of been lurking around the corner's of my day and, like terrible things seem to make people do, I've pulled wool over my eyes because that was an easier way to deal with it. But it kind of showed up very obviously and obnoxiously in front of me today and it makes me want to crawl into bed and bawl like a baby. Feelings are being crushed and people are being necessarily hurt. I wondered about a situation like this when we learned about Utilitarianism in Ethics class because a great number are being amused by this terrible thing while really only one or two people are being hurt. This amusement isn't what Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mills called "pleasure" as in the "pleasure as the greatest good" kind of pleasure. It's the very human kind of pleasure that can only be called cruelty.

You see, a very good friend of mine is being dangled above a cliff by an angry mob of immature idiots. That line doesn't give it justice at all. You'd have to know her. In third grade, my friends and I would go into the bathroom and bitch about this girl all lunch long and finally, we got in trouble and she was informed and it was all very clumsily dealt with (like things usually are when grown-ups are involved) but regardless of that, she forgave us and most importantly, she forgave me and we became friends. And then again in sixth grade I left her probably when she needed a friend most and in eighth grade she forgave me again. She's forgiven me too many times to allow me to forgive the people who are putting her in danger of feeling the worst kind of pain. Betrayal mixed with self-loathing and all the things that one feels when one finds out that everyone they thought were their friends were very un-secretly laughing behind their back. She's in the middle of something that should be amazing but it's being tainted by this horde of ignorant fools who should know exactly what they're doing. And everyone is involved.

Everyone who I've known for the past year and who this year I thought were good (or at least not bad) people. They've thrown themselves willingly into this situation and laughingly made their way to the forefront. Most of all I feel horrible for her and for what she will feel when she finds out but a lot of what I'm feeling right now has to do with the fact that I genuinely thought that these were people I could trust. If not trust then at least trust to act like decent people and not a pack of hyenas. I didn't think stuff like this happened anywhere but Hollywood or those lame chick-lit books but I was wrong and I don't think Dick Wolf or whoever else attempted to, really managed to portray the feelings as they are.

In addition to that, I'm locked in a very strange trio of a friendship that I've kind of realized is incredibly unhealthy. Because I just realized today that the friend in the center of this trio gets nicer and nicer to people that she bitches about the most and she's been very nice to me lately. I was so happy earlier. I felt like I had a bunch of friends who were nice and funny and comfortable to be around. Is everyone in the world as two-faced as the kids in my class? Will I ever meet someone who I can really trust with myself? Because when I let things slip (which is stupid, I know but people let things slip! It's part of being a non-French aristocracy member.) it seems like it always seems to get back to the person I slipped about. Like... express route within the next hour. I know that's not a good justification but honestly, ask yourself when you last said something you shouldn't have. Doesn't the whole situation just blow up with the person you said that something to went to the person for whom it's the most detrimental to know. Did that sentence even make any sense?

The world became a very dangerous and unstable place in the last 24 hours and I hate the feeling that everything you counted on and cherished just got flipped upside down.

Burfdays.

So it was my birthday yesterday and I got no less than eighty posts on my facebook wall from well-wishers, most of whom I don't talk to at all. In addition to making me incredibly happy, it was kind of a demonstration of how birthdays, and all holidays for that matter, are so powerful. All these random people suddenly have this thing in common and it's like a uniting force.

Like on the Fourth of July when you find yourself on the ridge of the Rose Bowl, essentially prostrating yourself in front of the mosquitos for slaughter and feast, to watch a fireworks show that you've probably already seen five times. Or when you haul a 7-10 foot tree into your living room and proceed to wrap electrical wire around it and whenever you look at it, you feel happy. I guess what I'm trying to say is that holidays and birthdays make people doing crazy things and that makes them happy.

Anyways, other than that whole... realization. I do feel older. It's kind of weird cuz on most other birthdays, I'm just like, "I feel the same as I did yesterday." But I legitly feel older. It's kind of cool.

I'm also much happier this year than I think I've been since I hit puberty and even though I'm stressed and kind of irritable, I know that this past year has brought me so much satisfaction and happiness and like... self-discovery. (lame right?)