What Really Matters

When my grandfather passed away I had lived through my first semester of University. 3 hours away from where I had grown up as a very sheltered, admittedly ignorant of life experience or maturity.
He was a lot of different things. he'd lived a lot of different versions of himself. Before I was born he had a problem with alcohol. when my father was a child, alcoholism was legitimately a life choice, where I'm from.
After a long time of being very unhappy, and abusing himself with alcohol, he realized how unhappy he made my grand mother and their two children, he stopped all that. Turned over a new leaf and became an entirely different version of himself. A man that I grew up with, who made jokes, and liked cartoons. Who always had candy, and some time for being silly with a child.
When I was a teenage my grand father got cancer. Sadly, there is nothing unique in that sentence. Hundreds of people, lose their loved ones to Cancer every day. It is soul crushing, to continue on filling the space in your heart left by a human being, with a handful of memories. memory is truly bittersweet in that it is always telling us that we can never go backwards.
I an a very fortunate person. My grand father went through radiation treatments. He got very very sick, and then he got better. He came home. He drove me home every single time i went for a run, stopped into his home for a glass of water, and didn't want to run home. The day he left my hometown, to come to the city, for his treatments, My Grand father smoked his last cigarette. He said, "Well that's it", and threw half a pack, into the garbage can. To this day, my grand mother swears that he never touched one again
But in 2008, after my first semester away from home, separated from my family, figuring out what was important to me, my grand father got very sick. he was gone within 72 hours. A few years before, he had undergone a hernia operation. Complications had caused him to quietly, painlessly and quickly, slip away from us.
When my grand mother brought home his clothing from the hospital, she emptied his pockets. for some reason, I took the money left there. some change, nothing bigger than a quarter.
I brought it home and put it in a black silk bag.
I never understood what it meant to me. I often wondered if it meant I was a material person. Was I a bad person, because I couldn't find any significance in anything other than money and stuff?
Today I understand what it means to me. As I clean my house on a rainy Sunday, I find my little black silk bag, behind a photograph of my younger brother. My Grandfather, My dad and my brother all share a lot of common features. so it seemed appropriate to keep family together.
Today I know why I kept the money. Not for the value, but for the symbol. The most valuable thing my grandfather has given me, is humility, awareness, and a willingness to start over.
Both literally, and metaphorically, I kept the closest thing I possible could. I kept Change.

Where have all the ladies gone?

This started as a Facebook post but I'm still irritated so it's spilling into being a blog rant.

The things I see on Facebook, and Twitter, and all over the internet, posted publicly for the whole world, is often absolutely shocking to me. I've seen young women, in my local community and all over the world, posting lingerie photos, as a display picture. Having boudoir photos taken* and posting them as an album on Facebook.

Is your self esteem so closely tied to Facebook Likes, and People paying attention to you, that you'll settle for Negative attention and compromising your integrity for it?

Surely even the most slow witted human being can grasp that degrading yourself for attention it's not a healthy thing to do. Even more irritating is when I see these girls complaining about having crushes on guys, and how lonely they are, and how guys are all jerks to them.  If you act like trash, and don't respect yourself. he's going to treat you like all other trash. Use you once and dispose of you as such. 

Maybe if you set the standards, you maintain for yourself a little higher, valued yourself and focused on being a good person with dignity and class, great guys would pick up on all those strong character traits and you'd meet someone who valued the things that make you happy.

I once had a guy friend tell me that any girl that is DTF in the first week is a great time, but she's never meet his mother. Ladies if you want guys to put you on a pedistle, why don't you act like you belong on one. Any intelligent person will realize if you gave it up that easily for them, that it's not your first, second, or third time around the block, and that's not a good look on anyone.

Now this is the part where these broads post pictures of them giving the finger, and saying they don't care what anyone things of them. Well sadly girls that is the truth, you don't care what anyone thinks of you. as long as their thinking about you. and that is truely depressing.

We can all tell how desperate you are for attention and you're embarrassing yourself. Is the attention you're getting really from the kind of people you want to be giving it to you? If you valued yourself enough, you wouldn't need any validation from the whole internet. You're own self worth would be enough to make you happy.

Now, go on and tell me again how you don't care what anyone thinks of you. I love that one. Try to maintain some dignity for Jesus sake, "ladies", you're making us look like idiots. Use your fucking brains.