...And there's ALWAYS a downside. Maybe a ferret?

I've been watching Season 4 of Warehouse 13. I did it originally because I wanted to get my mind off something I've been thinking about lately. Of course, it's MY life, right? NOTHING gets my mind off of what I'm thinking over. One line really hit me. I mean, it disrupted my thoughts like the mental equivalent of dropping into a sinkhole.

"We don't know the downsides of the Metronome yet! When you find out the downside...and there's always a downside...I just hope it doesn't end up killing you...or worse."

...and there's always a downside. Of course there is. To everything. Change one thing, and you can never un-change it. That's what I was thinking about. I have something to say to someone, and potentially after I say it things could be great.
The downside? I could push this person away, and...well...pretty much ruin one of the best things in my life.

Or things could be like the Wishing Kettle. I could get a ferret, and nothing else. That's what the thing does. If you run up against an impossible wish, the Kettle produces...a ferret.

And sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't prefer the ferret. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't WANT this to be an impossible wish, if I want what I say to end up as a ferret. Then I realize...I'm scared. I want this change, this thing I say, to end up great. I do! But...I'm scared that this thing I say WON'T be like the Wishing Kettle. I'm scared that the downside won't be a ferret. I'm scared the downside will be like, say, Pandora's Box. That the downside would be my life would be worse off, that my friend will act differently.

Well? What should I do? I don't know. Should I risk everything? Or should I hope that, whatever happens, if the downside happens...that it's just a ferret?

Trashing an apartment? Nothing wrong! It's perfectly acceptable! Oh, and Big Ben uses batteries, and what's this about panthers?

Why is it that the people you care about the most always are the first to be left behind? Why is it that when you grow, the one person you want to stay with is the one who seems to backslide instead?

I was hosting someone, and asked them a very simple thing. "I need to give a cat a bath. Would you help out by doing some dishes?" And of course they said yes. It's not like I asked them to give a bath to a cat with a front paw full of needles, no that was my job.

I came back to the kitchen over an hour later to find all the dishes...still in the sink. I was furious. It's not like I asked my guest to remake a bed or run a malware/virus check and purge onto my computer. He'd been there three days already and I'd fallen into my mother's old trap, sorry Mom. I'd let him NOT LIFT A GORRAM FINGER. Well, okay, I let him make his own tea, but that's more the fact that everyone likes their tea/hot beverage of choice differently.

So I go into the (trashed!) living room and there he is. Reading. READING! I confront him, and he said he did do dishes! HAH! So we went back into the kitchen and he points out three small plates. Three small plates. In an hour?! No, he says. He just wanted to finish his book, and anyways, they're my dishes.
Sure, I say to him. Sure, there are a few in there that are mine, but look, there's all SEVEN mugs you used for THE SAME TEA, and look, you cooked last night because you wanted something you could cook and I could not, and don't forget who used two oven bowls for his pasta the day before instead of reusing the one you'd just eaten out of, and just LOOK at this room, and the other one!

It was at that point, as I nearly-scream at him on the same subject for the second time, hear more promises most likely just as empty as the first set...

This was going nowhere. I loved him, but the things he did...or rather that he didn't do. I left the ability to be comfortable in my own mess and filth behind at a school with people I loved but teachers and staff that hated me, one where I was socially in the best position I'd even been in(still applicable, too), where I'd left the, to quote a friend, "meh" moods that led to me not seeing anything wrong with sitting in a puddle in driving rain. A place where I was happier than I'd been in years but also more miserable than I'd ever been in my life.

If I left that behind before I'd met him, I'd also left behind being okay with others making a royal mudpit of my own home. I may not be the best at cleaning up, but I'm nowhere near making my living room cat-repelling in just a few days.

And that? That's something I cannot tolerate. The ability to not only sit as a place gets trash but to ACTIVELY TRASH IT and wonder why that's a bad thing.

There is a large difference between being an inefficient cleaner comparable to a solar car running out of energy on a sunny day...and someone who willfully ignores cleaning up in the way of a gas vehicle's engine malfunctioning in the way of its name. I, like the inefficient solar car, at least TRY to clean up and often can keep my apartment from "running out of sun" for several months, theoretically, and I get better at it all the time, if very slowly. However, the one who is an over-compliant combustion engine? If I cannot completely keep up with my own cleaning I do not need an explosive anti-cleaner around. Eventually(okay, really not so eventually) I'd go insane, or wear myself out, or something like that.

No one needs that. And as much as you may like someone, if they cannot see they have growing to do, and before age 23 at that...it is unlikely they ever will see it, no matter what they say. Superficial acknowledgement is only as lasting as the memory of what they wore that day.
There are very few days that I can say I know what I wore on them without lying. One was the worst day of my life. One was honestly pretty fun, but sad too because I had to throw out the bottom part of my best work yet because the knees of my jeans didn't fit...and that was only the jeans anyways that I remember.
And the last? It was the last Christmas with my grandfather, and I wanted to sleep outside because Naples was closing down all the non-private-residence-or-hospital lights around and in Forest Glen and the surrounding area to funnel power to an orchard that would have frozen otherwise. Street lights, outside lights, Christmas lawn ornament lights, golf course lights, restaurants and Wal Marts and Kohls and Targets and Pubixes, and even gas stations. The stars were so bright I thought I was out at Misery on the boat for a minute, until I realized I wasn't actually on the boat, or on any boat.

But that's beside the point. The actual point is that...as much as you care for someone, if they refuse to see that they actually need change...there isn't much that can actually be done, is there? If they cannot see that their actions and beliefs are harmful to others, and also to themselves?

I refused to have to babysit my boyfriend. I refused to have to walk him through thoughts that shouldn't be THAT hard. I refused to clean up after him, when all he did was fight it. I refused to sit there and fight with someone who obviously only ever COULD learn through rote memorization, someone who couldn't even begin to guess how to start a mechanical clock, even though a further "suggestion" proved he wasn't beyond thinking "batteries did it." Yes, Big Ben used and uses batteries, that's exactly it. A several-hundred-year-old clock tower, and you just put a couple AAs in, maybe a C-cell or D-cell. Maybe a Baghdad battery? Oh! I know, plug it into the thousand year-old power grid from the Roman construction of Londinium.
And that's just on GRANDFATHER CLOCKS. Ask me about "non-melanistic panthers". That's a hoot! Please, it's hilarious!

The world is sick...can we heal it?

Some people seem to be picking religion, delusions, and objects over family. It makes me sad to see friends unable to even talk to their immediate family, or attacked by siblings, or destroy relationships with children because of disagreements over clothing blown way out of proportion. This is why the whole world is sick and dying. This is why family is thrown aside when ideals become indoctrination and brainwashing. This is what happens when the world itself makes sickness that alters our very minds.

I once heard something, a long time ago, that to this day makes me think that maybe there is hope. I heard someone say that everyone has value by being alive. That by being alive an living our lives we make change, even if just with the ones we meet, our friends, family, someone we say hi to on the sidewalk. That we're all born with the same soul, that we are born without hate, without prejudice, without bias. That there are things that can't be changed in us, that we cannot choose our family, our eyes, our skin color, our bodies. That if no one can choose that, then why the hell can't we see that the person we hate couldn't choose base facts about themselves? If we can't choose things like appearance, gender, family, country, culture...why hate that we can choose other things like clothes and friends and what movies and shows we watch?

A while back, after this but well before now, I was told that in our souls are two wolves. One is made of darkness and hatred and war and violence. The other is made of love and friendship and happiness and peace. They battle constantly for your soul until one loses.
The one that wins? It's the one you feed.

We all are born with the same soul. If we feed it peace and acceptance and love, that is what we will be. If we feed it darkness and hate and us vs. them, that is how we will be.

I won't tell you how to live your life. Your life and thoughts and feelings are yours. All I can do is tell what I feel, so that others can read it and decide how reading it makes them feel.

Whose fault?

So, there's this guy out there, right? He likes this girl, who is pretty much oblivious. She's happy being oblivious. To her, this guy is a very, very distant relative. Turns out her cousin is his second cousin, on opposite sides of the family. But to this one girl, that's MORE than enough. I mean, her family? Not one person she knows is related to her by blood. Doesn't matter, they're FAMILY, you know? Mom, Dad, Grandfather, Mimi and Papa, cousins, brothers, aunts, uncles...not one blood relative among them. Some people made a huge deal about it. She said, "Why? My mother brought me home, changed my diapers, and fed me that pharmacy her kitchen became when it turned out that all she could stomach was ground lamb. Her dad took her camping and boating EVERY summer, and for all that she didn't see him every single day of her life, she thought he was the best dad ever. I mean, he got her two cats, right? And kept them because her mom is deathly allergic, for almost 12 years, until she could take them to her own place? Yeah! And he WAS there, right? Yeah! Her dad was awesome.

Anyways, back to that guy. He got tired of her being oblivious, and just one day called her his girlfriend.
Point 1

And so things went on, and events happened, and all the while he started getting pushier and pushier, and she tried to ignore it as best she could.
Point 2

And then, one day, he pushed so hard that, not wanting to, she agreed.
Point 3

And then she said, "No." Nothing had happened. Yet. But she said no. He ignored her. She said it, yelled it, screamed it...and he ignored it.
Crack.

He said, 'Oh, it won't happen again, I'm sorry, give me another chance.'
And she did.
Break.

And so time passed, fun was had, it was summer. She saw a friend's band play, was fun.


And it happened again. Much the same way. Wore her down, and she agreed...for all of about a minute.
"No. This happened before. I told you no, you said you'd listen next time. This is next time. No."
And she walked away.
She didn't make the door.

She fought and screamed, tried to get away. Screamed bloody murder. But for all there were other people home, her bedroom was out of hearing. Yeah, both times in her own home, in her own room.
For once she cursed the fact that she kept her nails cut to the quick. Biting did nothing. At the end of it, she told him one thing: "I am going to walk you to the door, to your car even. You are going to leave. If I ever see you again but for chance, I am going to go to the nearest phone, press one button once, and one more two times. If anything comes of your idiocy, I will tell everything. And if you try to contact me blatantly, I will tell everything. I expect you will try once or twice, and I will give you that...but do not keep trying."

And that was that. He called for over a week. Send a package. That was, I expect, the last straw, having something sent back so coldly.

The guy had said before that he could twist any marks left to be her fault. She believed him. The second time, she didn't care.

And so that ended.

But she was silent. She told only three people. Two were her friends. The third was too. But something he said, you know, put anything that might develop beyond mere friendship, however close, out of any thought that developed about it later.

"Are you sure you want to say that? I mean, something like this could ruin his life." Ruin. His. Life. Ruin HIS life? Ruin his life, when he ruined MINE?! I stopped speaking about it. I never brought it up with him again.
Shatter.

I later told a few others about it. Not many. I had to choose carefully. So scared of something like that happening again, I never even told the person who had become my sister in high school until recently. For someone who knows all too well that family need not be blood, that family is entirely about love, acceptance, a bond closer than any other, she is the only family I've ever told.

His family owns a relatively widespread business, involving deliveries and essential dry goods, non-food, and I still shudder every time I see a truck belonging to the business. Because of him, I see parts of life so much differently. Some of them I never had the chance to ever see WITHOUT that creep's interference. Yeah, I'm not putting this in third person. Why? Because as hard as I try, this happened. It was personal. And I can never stop blaming myself. If I'd stopped him just calling me his girlfriend without even asking, if I'd stopped it when I realized he was wearing me down, even if I'd thrown him to the curb the first time instead of the second. What would have happened then? Maybe I wouldn't have all this to deal with,

I can never un-live what happened. I can never un-do what he did to me. I can never forget. Even now it's not, and can never be, something that happened.


And let me get this straight: THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I ASKED FOR WITH MY WORDS OR MY BEHAVIOR! I NEVER wanted this. I NEVER asked for it. And guess what? HE IS AT FAULT! It's not him being "young" and it's not him "not having the brain development to know it was wrong". People are WELL past knowing right from wrong by late teens. People are WELL past NOT knowing that rape is WRONG. And people are WELL past thinking it RIGHT to, once refused this, hold her down and do it like that anyways, with the screaming and the tears and the begging for help.

Ruining HIS life? What? What would I be doing to ruin his life that he's not already done? I know, letting people know he did it, letting them know he's MORE than capable of doing it again! And this instead of what, keeping quiet and giving him the opportunity to ruin another woman's life?

Yet I kept quiet. Why? Because I couldn't deal with what would happen. I couldn't deal with the attention and the people hating that I'd told what happened to me and kept this guy from being able to do like in the future. To another girl? Another woman? I wouldn't ruin his life. He'd already ruined his own by committing a violent and sexual crime. All I'd do was not let him hide it.

And even though I'd let him hide it, it doesn't mean he didn't do it.

And even though I'd kept quiet, it didn't mean it hadn't happened. That he'd done this to ME, that he'd ruined my whole life. The way I see things, the way I act around people, the way I live.

All ruined because he couldn't take no for an answer, couldn't take the fact that he wanted this and yet it was still my RIGHT to refuse it. Couldn't take that I DID.

So, people, think: who takes the blame? Not the pointed fingers, but the REAL blame. Was it my fault? Was it MY fault I said no, I fought tooth and nail, and I...lost?
Or is it his fault for forcing me? His fault for thinking that "No" cried and screamed and begged and fought for meant, "Go right ahead and take what you want by force!"?

It's not up to me to decide what you think. But as someone who has been through that? Been bruised and forced and held down? Screamed my lungs out for help, to stop, to please, just stop....I can tell you now, that it's his fault, and he had a few bruises to prove it, too.

Fulya Rant Time! - Subject: Flash Carts

I get it, okay! Under normal usage, flashcarts are indeed illegal. Please also know that I do have...slightly illegal things(okay, very illegal) on my cart. Yeah, okay, point taken.

Yet...
What about people who use them for games such as...umm...well, Tetris DX, Pokemon Gen 1, or Pokemon Pinball? What about people whose only way of playing imports is to NOT shell out $25+ EXTRA, PLUS insanely high shipping costs? What about the people who cannot afford to pay $100+ for old, out-of-print games or whose older systems have died? What about them?
What about the people who used their flashcart to BACK UP data from games that are in extreme danger due to battery acid leaks? What about them?

WHAT ABOUT MY POOR TROPIC AND SWAMPER!? WHAT ABOUT THEM!?

Yes, I just had two of my prize Pokemon die due to a battery acid leak. Poor Tropic the lvl 26 Tropius and Swamper the 36 Swampert, who took down the Hoenn Elite Four almost by themselves(the rest were heal-time-buyers), who survived a massive, world-burying flash-flood only to be grabbed at the last minute(almost lost the game down a storm drain), whose cart I "lost" at boarding school, only to find them being sold by the person in line in front of me at the last EB games in New England(who actually believed you if you said a game was yours and could tell them your Hall of Fame team[Tropius, Swampert, Kyogre, Breloom, Ninetails, N/A]...), the game I spent money to have someone back up for me...BRICKED! And it's not the cart. The data on the SD itself is locked down. I was really slow about putting that data on my new computer because I thought it was safe enough...and now not only is the cart useless(yay extra microSD cards!), but all that data...two gyms from the Elite in Red, my poor precious ONLY! Hall of Fame team, quite a few high scores in some non-NA-releases, all my progress in Tales of Phantasia (S?)NES version...all my hard work in one of the SMB re-releases for GBA, and half a game done of FF6.

It's not right! Some of us use flashcarts because we REALLY don't want to re-buy games and/or shell out a lot of money for old, out-of-print, or non-localised games.

I understand why it's done...I just don't get what makes it seem RIGHT to these people, these companies.
Any thoughts?