The following message was taken from www.hopeline.com ::
1-800-SUICIDE marks its tenth anniversary this year. It was founded in 1998 by Reese Butler in memory of his wife, Kristin who had committed suicide. The Kristin Brooks Hope Center has helped almost three million callers connect to help and hope.
As they enter their second decade of service to the public, continued support is needed to ensure that the confidentiality of every caller is protected. Because they are totally privately funded, they need to prove to the government that they are capable of supporting 1-800-SUICIDE to keep control of the line from being taken over by the federal government.
The money you donate will not only be used to pay the phone bill that connects about 50,000 callers each month to the Hopeline Network, but will also be used to pay for training of online crisis counselors who will provide the same support via online counseling. This is where the young people of today reach out for help. The success of 1-800-SUICIDE is based on individuals in crisis knowing that any personal identifiable information is kept strictly confidential.
The Hope Center’s volunteer staff and Board remain committed to preserving confidential suicide prevention programs. Your action today assures their sustainability!
The Kristin Brooks Hope Center and its national 1-800-SUICIDE hotline is a great asset to our society – one of those private-sector initiatives called a “point of light.” For reasons of their own, certain officials within the government tried to snuff that light. With your help and support together we can prevent that tragedy from occurring and help the Hopeline achieve success in liberating 1-800-SUICIDE from government control permanently.
I don’t really have anything to say except that life is different for everyone, and everyone deserves to live. The Hopeline gives second chances, and it saves lives everyday. It’s a cause that’s really important to me, so please look into it and see how you can help. There will be post sometime soon on To Write Love On Her Arms as a follow up.
Religion.
“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” (Brownie points for the person who can tell me who said that quote) It’s easy so please don’t be a skanky bitch and type it into google. Ha, kidding. I would so do that.
So. If only things were that simple. I often have talks about religion with two close yet separate friends of mine. One is a strong Christian slowly losing her momentum with the church. Another is an atheist in his own way.
Lets start with the Christian friend. Her father is a douche bag and her mother raised her and her two other siblings basically on her own. I think she got most of her religious roots from her mother, whom (or who?) as a single mom of three did something most would do – she turned to faith. When I first met her she was very open about it and very passionate. As the years have progressed she has started to see fault within the church. It has boundaries and it has guidelines. She still has her faith; she is just fitting it to her own practice. That’s mostly what this entry is about. (I’ll get to the whole bring it together thing for my point in a minute)
On the other hand, there is the atheist. He’s more a unique atheist though. He believes that moral values can come from religious texts and that they can be applied to life. He believes that lessons from religion can be applied to himself and his environment to make him a better person. He studies religion purely by choice as to find what lessons to reflect on him and to see how they work together in the world. It’s less of a “THERE IS NO GOD” and more of a just that he sees religion as guidance with the absence of a higher power. I’m not quite sure if I’m explaining it right, but it’s really interesting I promise.
I on the other hand am loosely agnostic, I guess. I find religion interesting because of its historical value, and yet I still have my own beliefs. I hate organized religion because it puts people into boxes with rules. “If you do this, you are going to hell.” I just don’t like that. Why should it be an ultimatum? Isn’t living enough? I don’t believe in hell. It feels like religion uses hell as blackmail to get everyone else to follow and that irks me. We should be rewarded for living to the fullest, not living in fear that something we do will damn us. I have a lot of strange beliefs that I won’t get into now =]
My main point is that I feel religion should be what you make it. No matter what category you can be placed in, religion should be different for everyone. It should reflect who you are as a person. Life is what you make it. The same should go for religion. And it’s not so much religion as it is faith. It drives me crazy when atheists look down on those who are religious and say they are stupid. Faith is a part of life. People need to look to something. If we don’t have faith in something, ANYTHING, whether it be in the fact that religion is for morals or that there is God and heaven and hell, then what are we?
As I sit here in my own personal shell at three thirty in the morning, staying awake only off my own insomnia and season two of Gilmore Girls, I am asking the question, what kind of life is there without faith in something?
I’m a fan of Freud. Not in the “I agree with everything he says” way. No, he’s a crack head, sorry. I’m a fan in the way that I find psychology interesting. Someone once told me it was probably because I’m so fucked in the head myself. Not the point.
I’ve come up with a new complex, hence the title. Damn, that kind of gives it away. I’m changing the title before I post so it doesn’t. So behold, the Gilmore Girl Complex!
Hear me out. I have spent the last…fifteen hours and forty-five minutes (the … was me using the calculator on my computer and it wasn’t all together, more like half yesterday, half today) of my life watching season one of Gilmore Girls. “Why?” you may ask. I have a list of many reasons:
- I have a soft spot for Luke in the first season (the whole lumberjack thing just woos me…that and I just fucking LOVE plaid)
- The line “Because I love you, you idiot!” is seriously too adorable and come on, the scene when he’s all “You’re with Tristan” and she’s all “No I’m not!” and he’s all “I’m leaving!” and she says that then he runs to her and makes out with her in the courtyard of the private school. Come on, it’s something I just can’t pass up.
- My Asian friend left me stranded to fight life on my own for two weeks and I miss her. She used to look like Lane a tiny bit and has the same uniquely amazing music taste.
- The witty banter that makes most people cry makes sense to me (most of the time) and puts a nice big smile on my face.
- I have no life. At all. (Mostly this one. Above all.)
Now that I’ve thoroughly confused any person who has no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll move along. So Rory and Lorelei have this great mother daughter thing going. They live in a cute town. They get the hot guys (who DOESN’T have a thing for Mr. Madina, seriously? Hotforteacher all the way).
So talking seriously now. Over fifteen hours of seeing a mother-daughter relationship like the two younger Gilmores have can be overwhelming. Because then I look at the relationship I have with my own mother and it pretty much pales in comparison. I’m not just talking about how they have the same taste in… everything, but the way that they can communicate. Communication in my family is like walking into the zone between two trenches of fighting countries. You don’t really know what the fuck you’re doing there. There’s no turning back. And there’s a good chance you’ll die a painful death via bullet or weird poison gas and not even know which side it came from. It’s also about the way that they can trust each other and just actually enjoy each other’s company.
To sum up this rambling as I sit here in my “It’s 82 degrees on the thermostat” suit (mostly nothing in case you were wondering), the Gilmore Girl complex is the severe need to feel like you have a bond with your mother when placed under the constant (fifteen hours) proximity of the actual Gilmore Girls (strictly speaking the younger two).
My question to the no people reading this is, does anyone know what I’m talking about or have any opinions on my newfound brilliant psychological discovery of the Gilmore Girl complex?
There will probably be some kind of Veronica Mars complex coming soon for the record. I have a feeling that a day watching season two is coming up soon.
