1:05 pm, June Eleventh, Two thousand and Eleven <3

I'm sitting her, listening to Safetysuit's "Gone Away," having just watched the saddest video known to YouTube, that actually brought me to tears- about the mistreatment of animals, which did not help provided by the fact that I have the weakest stomach ever and am the easiest person to make cry EVER, I decided... I haven't written in forever.

VEGETARIANS-

I never understood why people went vegetarian. I mean yeah yeah, Animals, we need them-whatever, let's not eat and deprive our bodies of the iron and all that good to it needs and suffer from malnutrition- but it's so much more than that. It might sound ridiculous the way I related to it, but I felt it from the perspective of being someone's mother having to watch her own children, flesh and blood, suffer. I'll give you the link to the video I watched, which I couldn't even completely play through, but it is absolutely horrible. Removing limbs from beaten, tortured, still breathing animals, how could someone find it in themselves to do that? Sure we don't walk on all fours, but I would have to say that we are more relate-able to the word "animal" than any cow, horse, pig, dog, cat, etc. ever will. What if that was your child, that some serial killer got a hold of? You wouldn't be so up for that, now would you? Animals fighting for their lives, and us, the "humane" doing the most inhumane thing possible- taking a life. Or two. Or a million, and going UN-punished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paCy-ZXg4T4

So, so far this summer I have learned or am in the process of learning-

-You never know what is going on in someones life. You never know how they feel about themselves, or the world around them, or what is happening to them. You can be the nicest person in the world or the cruelest person there is- nobody will ever understand why you're that way, but you. You can't expect everyone else to know what's going on, but you can't expect them to understand what is going on in YOUR life either.

-"I am not my skin, I am the soul within." People can and will talk about you like they were born to do it. If you won't stand up for yourself, then who else is going to? If you're doing it, then it's just giving them the right of passage. You're not your body, you are not the lies shoved down your throat, you are not the opinions of insecure teenage girls and boys, you are not all the disappointments you've caused your parents and you are not by any means, the level not met by other people's standards. You are beautiful. You are unique. You are always changing, and never once, not even for a minute, will it ever matter more than anything what you mean to someone else, than you mean to yourself.

thanks, Bri.