Everyone Starts Somewhere

Sooooo, it’s no secret…I’m not that great of a blogger….. not because my writing is bad, but because I totally suck at keeping it regular LOL! I have ADD, and I get caught up in making all the yarny things that I forget to come back to my blog until it’s way late at night, like bedtime late. Sooooo now it’s almost midnight here, and I realize I’ve not blogged in forever, yet I have so much I want to share and so much to put down in writing….soooooo late night blogging it is 😉

Everyone Starts Somewhere

Well, I know it sounds a bit cliche, but everyone starts somewhere….and to start in this life, we have to be born, right? So while I’ve shared a couple pieces of my later life with you…….you can’t understand the full story unless I go back, back to where I started. So, strap in…take a walk with me down memory lane and take a peek into how I began……

Rough Start

I’ve heard the phrase “rough start in life” quite a few times in my life, but I think for each person, that phrase is very much subjective. For me, it was quite literal.

This is the beginning of my story as I know it, as told to me by my mother for some parts.

Once upon a time, there was a gal and a guy….and this guy apparently wasn’t man enough to be a father, so he jumped ship when my mother told him she was pregnant (at 16) with me and was keeping me. Ouch, right? Add to that that I was born a preemie….two months early, in fact…. and I literally started my life fighting for my life. Perhaps that’s why I’m so dang stubborn now.

Anyhow… as I grew older, I learned more about my family and my life. My mother was born to Catholic parents…my grandfather died when I was very young (when I was 2 or 3 I think), so I don’t remember him at all. My grandmother was in my life until I was 12…and she went to meet her Maker. My mother somehow discovered this church that was not Catholic, and as you can imagine, this upset my Catholic grandmother (perhaps grandfather, but I don’t really know). My grandma and my aunts (my mom has 2 sisters) believed my mom to be leaving the fold, as the Catholic church didn’t look too favorably upon other Christian denominations at this time (again, as I was told….I don’t really have any knowledge of how the church felt/feels on this). I don’t know how old I was when we moved out of my grandma’s house…I know I was born in Cleveland, so I’d imagine we still lived there at the time of my birth at least. When my mom left the Catholic church for this other church (known then as the Worldwide Church of God, WCG for short), it caused a riff in the family. Even with this riff, my grandmother and my aunts were a part of my life for a while.

Since my biological father decided not to be a part of my life, my mother was left to be a single unwed mother. I’m told that my biological father had been taken to court for child support and that he had seen me up to the age of 2 or 3…..and still this man decided not to be a part of my life, for whatever reason (I hated him for that for years….until I decided I grew up okay without him, so it was his loss vs my loss). So I grew up without a father in the home. My mother had dropped out of school to have me, so she didn’t have her high school diploma…though she eventually went back for her GED at some point. As a single mother, my mom didn’t work….we were on welfare for my childhood until I was 12. Because of this, we had to live in approved (read Section 8) housing. So whenever we moved out of my grandmother’s house, we moved into our first Section 8 home. I don’t remember this one because I was so young, but I remember my mom telling me about roaches and other unsavory things that ultimately resulted in us moving to another home. I was in daycare/latchkey type programs because I was young and one of my first memories at one of these places was someone’s home that was an approved daycare place. I remember we had programs and fun activities, but one day, one of the girls was running around near a chalkboard (the kind with the metal tray that held erasers and chalk), and she fell……she busted her head clean open with the most burgundy colored blood I’d ever seen. They made great efforts to keep all of us away from it, and they got her medical attention just as fast as they could….but that will always stick out in my mind as one of my first memories. This same location also had great snacks and blue mats for nap time. Funny the things we remember isn’t it?

To my recollection, my first move was from that ugly home my mom told me about to a place above a bar, halfway through my kindergarten year of school. This is also the first place that I knew as home in Lakewood, Ohio. It wasn’t a great place really, but I can still see it in my head….the roof was a tar roof. The living room and my mom’s bedroom looked out over a level of flat tar roof to another apartment (I’d even seen people walking on this section of roof, though I don’t know why). I also remember this as the first place I ever experienced and earthquake, and I’m pretty sure I lived here when the Challenger disaster happened. My bedroom also looked out over a flat tar roof and the parking lot for the bar and neighboring apartments. When I’d walk to school with my mom, we’d go across the parking lot to another parking lot for some other apartments and then to the actual side streets that would take me to school. This is also the school I can remember having the nicest, yet craziest, teacher I’d ever had. I believe I was born a left-handed child…I don’t really have any proof other than my memories of this teacher because I’m now right-handed and have been for as long as I can remember, save this one memory. This teacher… she was nice as pie. Her name was Mrs Sharbaugh (not sure on the spelling). She was tall (who wasn’t at that time LOL) and had short dark hair. She was so nice…but when it came to left-handed kids, she had a different side to her. You see, she was a devout/old-school Catholic, and back in the day, apparently the Catholic church believed that left-handed children were children of the devil (or so I’ve been told anyhow). Whenever she’d see me pickup one of those huge pencils or ginormous crayons with my left hand, she’d literally smack it with a ruler and tell me I had it in the wrong hand. Eventually that school year, I learned to write and color with my right hand.

I was at this school until second grade….it’s also where I was bullied for the first time. We were poor, we lived on welfare and my lunches were paid for by the State….aka “free lunch.” We got groceries via food stamps and lived in Section 8 housing. I’ll never forget the day my school found all that out, simply by a small mistake in the cafeteria. I don’t know if it was first or second grade, but there was one day that I went through the lunch line, and I got my basic lunch as always – we’d been in school for months at this point – and while we had computers to play Oregon Trail and some other educational games, the cafeteria didn’t have computers…just the usual register. They had a list …. a list of all the kids who got free and reduced lunches. Most of the cafeteria ladies knew me…I went through the line every day after all. But sometimes there’d be someone new….and that happened this day. I’m not sure why, but my name wasn’t on the list that day. So when I gave her my name, she looked at the list and my name wasn’t there. She told me my name wasn’t there, and I tried to explain…but I was just a little kid…and by now, the line to pay is getting longer of course. And half the kids can hear the conversation. So a few nosy butts heard how I should be on the list for free lunch….and everyone knew the only kids that got free lunch were the welfare kids. So even though my lunch ended up getting straightened out with the help of another lunch lady that knew me….the damage was done. I was branded as the poor kid. The kid on welfare. I wasn’t popular to begin with, and this, this just sealed my fate as the outcast. From that day on, I got bullied on various days by various kids. Even when the Scholastic Book Fair came and I bought a book or two, I got bullied because I didn’t buy a stack of books. What’s even crazier, is somehow, when I would move schools in third grade, those kids would somehow learn I was a welfare kid too! Also, I’m pretty sure it was this year that my favorite dog…my grandma’s dog Buffy…ran away during Fourth of July fireworks, presumed to be dead.

As I said, the summer between second and third grade, we moved again. I’m not sure why, but as I remember it, all our moves revolved around rent cost and Section 8 provisions. So I’m guessing it had something to do with that or being sick of being above a bar.

Third grade was odd for me….for a few reasons…but the first and most notable at the time was that I now went to a school with a unique concept for learning — an “open classroom” design. This meant that each grade had their own sections of the building, but there were no walls for the classrooms. There were dividers of sorts, but there were no walls, and each grade had a common area for gatherings and special assemblies that weren’t school wide. Remember I mentioned my mom somehow discovered this other church, Worldwide Church of God? Well, this school would hold the first time I can remember being bullied for my religion. I moved there, so I didn’t grow up with these kids…so that was my first strike. I was the ‘new kid.’ I was weird. I didn’t have a dad. I had hairy arms (thanks European ancestors!). I had funny teeth kinda (not really, but they weren’t 100% proportionate to each other either). I didn’t dress in the latest fashions, and as I said, somehow these kids already knew I was a welfare kid, though for the life of me, I don’t get how because my previous school was across the city (so it’s not like these kids would have chance to really hang with the others from my previous school). I walked to school….which really wasn’t that big of a deal since I lived right next door, but somehow that got me picked on because I lived next to the school. I’d also gain my first “best friend,” Molly,….at least until the city would buy out that half of the street for a new strip mall in fourth grade.

So let’s go back to the being bullied for my religion…. as I said, this is the first time I can remember it….but it wouldn’t be the last. You see, WCG had some pretty strict rules/guidelines/beliefs for quite some time (until I was in 8th grade, in fact). When this church was ‘young,’ it focused on Old Testament principles. In fact, I got labeled as a Jehovah’s Witness more than once (which at the time, was an insult, though as I got older I learned to accept others’ beliefs…but as a kid, this was offensive since I wasn’t one and most people thought very poorly of them). We believed in the Old Testament holy days…and observed them. And while we took pieces of the New Testament beliefs to apply, some of the key parts, WCG failed to incorporate……including not focusing on the legalistic ways of the Old Testament. They took the observation of holy days very seriously….the whole sundown to sundown thing for starters. And the not being present during “pagan” celebrations to eliminate the possible temptation to join in. So as a kid, I didn’t get to participate in anything that was St Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Halloween, or any other holidays that were deemed “pagan….” somehow I got to still celebrate my birthday and Thanksgiving…and Fourth of July….but really those are the only holidays I remember being allowed to celebrate. My mom, wanting to be a ‘good Christian’ and follow the rules and beliefs of this church also took it very seriously….so when my class would have parties for these holidays, I was not allowed to even be in the same room. In fact, me and the library ladies got to be great friends because I was banished there while all the kids in my class got to enjoy the class parties. I wasn’t allowed to accept valentines or halloween candy either because that would be seen as ‘participating.’ Years later, I’d find out parents of some of the other kids in my church weren’t as strict on this and they got to be in class, accept things, get and give gifts….all which would chap my behind later. The cool thing about this particular school was the library was HUUUUGGGGE, and it had this cool room that was windowed in and sunk down in…. it was where we’d go when they wanted to read stories or have fun library activities. I loved that library….in fact, other than the open classroom, an assembly that I got to pretend I could Irish dance and ran the tape player in, the library and the playground are the only things that stick out in my mind from this school.

Speaking of playground…. remember the story of the kid that set my bushes on fire? That was while I was at this school. Also on this playground, I had another experience….. one that was reasonably traumatic. I was on the playground one day, in a dress with leggings (because I wanted to swing around on the monkey bars and they had this cool 3 bar thing that was like gymnastics high bar and two parallel bars, and I couldn’t do that if my underroos were hanging out), sitting on the parallel bars waiting my turn for the middle bar of the 3 bar thing….and a bee – well more specifically, a yellow jacket – somehow got up my leggings and was chilling on my knee. So when it was my turn for the bars, when I got up and unbent my knee, the yellow jacket took that as a hostile movement and stung the crap out of my knee. It hurt and itched and swelled up. I kept itching at it of course…..and it ended up being yet another trip to the ER (I can’t begin to tell you what a klutz I was as a kid). You see, my mom put this stuff called AfterBite on it..which normally wouldn’t have been a big deal…but I had scratched the bite open, and this stuff contained ammonia. Sooooo, it gave me blood poisoning on top of an apparent allergic reaction to the bite. So, I learned I was allergic to yellow jackets (and would find out later as an adult, wasps) and that the medicine they gave kids then for blood poisoning/allergic reactions tasted like orange pop.

Back to the church I was in and my forced library days…I got bullied so much because the other kids didn’t understand why I had to go to the library. They didn’t get why my church wouldn’t let me participate in holidays that pretty much everyone got to participate in. So I was a loner…outcast. I was too weird for anyone to really want to be friends with me. I joined the safety patrol in fourth grade…. I was at the same school….and because I got accepted as a safety patrol member (you see, this school gave fifth graders first rights to safety patrol, so it was a privilege to be a fourth grade safety patrol member), I got to hang out in the other half of our floor with the open concept school. Our side of the floor had third/fourth grade on the one side and fifth grade on the other. So even though it was a privilege, had I been any other kid this would’ve been a cool thing, but since I was that weird kid, this also added to reasons to pick on me and bully me. I got picked on because I was “special enough” for safety patrol but since there weren’t many fourth graders at all on it (I was one of three), it was added to my list of oddities.

I was also an only child….so somehow this also added to things to pick on me about. Because I was an only child and my mom a single mom, she trusted me to be home alone often and trusted me with more than most parents would trust their kids with. So I was quite independent for such a young kid. Not to mention at my church, because my mom was a single mom and we were poor, the other kids didn’t accept me the same as the rest. They accepted me because they had to (as adults, a few of us are still friends….but as kids, I was still very much an outsider, one they had to be forced to spend time with and include in their parties and sleepovers). I think most of it was because I was an only child as far as the other kids went….all the other kids had brothers or sisters, so I was the odd ball. For the adults, we were outcasts because my mom wasn’t married and she had a kid out of wedlock which, even in this church, was still taboo.

I also got my first bike…a hand-me-down, but my first… at this house. It was a blue and white banana seat bike (when all the other kids were getting the new/current style of bike – the mountain bike style). I also had roller skates when everyone else was getting roller blades…but it gets better…. my roller skates weren’t the cool kind. Mine were the kind with metal wheels.

As luck would have it, after fourth grade, we’d move again. This would be the final place we’d live under Section 8….it would also be the home that would see life altering events.

The summer between fourth and fifth grade, we moved again. I switched schools…again. This switch was the equivalent of moving before your senior year in high school. This school wasn’t all bad…. but it wasn’t that great either, and I’d see the worst bullying yet…..and unless my mother had the gift of sight, she never knew because I never told her. Fifth grade would be the last year of elementary school. I loved safety patrol at my other school, so I tried to get on patrol at my new school. They had already picked their patrol for the year, but because I had been on it at my previous school, they made an exception for me and allowed me to be on safety patrol here too. Fifth grade would also see my first ‘boyfriend,’ and my first away from school field trip. My first ‘boyfriend’ was a jerk really…. we didn’t kiss or go anywhere or anything like that….it was like being boyfriend/girlfriend in kindergarten really LOL. I don’t even remember his name. I remember he was tall, had dark hair, shaved haircut, and was popular kind of. I also said my first cuss word in fifth grade. I believe it was “damn…..” and I felt like such a rebel. This year would see additional bullying…..kids would notice my hairy arms more, my childhood mustache, I was the new kid…again, my religion…again, I’d start to develop boobs, I had a wart on one of my fingers, I was an only child who didn’t know her biological father, and I lived literally equidistant between all 3 middle schools in my city so I had my choice of middle schools when fifth grade was over. I became the butt of many jokes. My next door neighbor had a kid who was a grade ahead of me but had friends in my grade and he told them what a dork I was, playing in my yard by myself and making friends with the “odd” girl (Samantha “Sam” was her name, also a grade ahead of me and she went to the “bad” middle school in town) across the street.

My house was a quad-plex…. four one-level homes in one. Most places would call this a small apartment complex. Sam’s place was a duplex…two full homes (upstairs and downstairs) attached. I forget what homes that were one level but one was downstairs and one was upstairs was called….but that’s what was next to Sam’s house. The lady that lived there was old and died the summer of one of the years. I lived in the quad-plex 5th-7th grades. Sam moved away the summer before my 7th grade year and I was crushed. I actually liked this place we lived in (though the basement creeped me out)…. we had a nice sized, fenced back yard….and I usually had it to myself since I was the only kid in the complex. No one really hung out there. Behind the house was twins….Meghan and Erin. They were snobs, super popular…they pretended to be my friends in middle school. Then one of them got real sick and I never heard or saw them again. The railroad tracks were 6 houses away and I walked barefoot on those tracks all the time. I broke my tailbone when I lived here…..I was doing cartwheels by the stairs (don’t ask me why, I don’t know)…and I slipped the landing and cracked my tailbone on the bottom stair. I also had a few of the most accident prone years of my life here. Over the three years I lived here, I busted my tailbone, bent my thumb back to the point of sprain, slammed fingers in the fridge crisper drawer (twice in the same day) to the point of bruising the bones, got crazy sick time or two, aaannnd my favorite —– got “plantar fasciitis” in my foot from always wearing those oh so cool canvas shoes. Apparently they weren’t good gym or cheerleading shoes, and your arches will pay for it. Also during this foot injury (6th grade), one of the boys in my class would think it to be funny to sweep my crutches from under me (since I couldn’t put any pressure on my foot because it felt like permanent pins and needles). By the time these three years were over (on top of previous years), the nice nurses in our local ER knew me by name.

One of my favorite things about this place was I was so close to the lake and our city had a great park that had a playground, swimming, and a fabulous place to sit and enjoy watching the lake (Lake Erie)….it had a pier, but because they made it of concrete and didn’t really give it a good support, the concrete slabs got incredibly messed up in a couple years with the waves beating against them so they had to close the pier. But it was fun to watch the men fishing when it was open.

At some point while we lived here, my mother would begin dating my “step-dad…..” the man I call dad today. Also while we lived here, my life as I knew it ended…. in a variety of ways. I was 12 years old when my grandma died. It happened in the summer, but close enough to the start of school that it still was a source of major sadness. I got picked on when I’d remember her and cry….mostly in choir class because a song we did reminded me of her. It also meant the end of my family as I knew it. My grandma held the family together. She had so many strokes and heart failures, I can’t believe she didn’t die sooner really. She was stubborn…true Irish blood ran in her veins for sure. Doctors told her after the last bit that she would never walk on her own again. You know what that crazy lady did…..she proved them wrong. She walked on her own, completely unassisted, until the day she died. She’s the first death in my life….but I don’t think that the pain would’ve been lessened if I knew someone else who had died before then to be honest. My grandma was the reason my ma and her sisters still talked. After my grandma died, everyone went their separate ways. No one thought that I might like to keep in touch….everyone was focused on the fact that they didn’t have to pretend anymore. Even as a kid I knew my mom and her sisters didn’t really get along…. I don’t really know why, but when grandma died, I knew I’d never see them again. So on top of losing my grandma, I knew I was losing so much more….even as a kid. A huge part of me died when she did. I had guilt for a long time over it too……the last conversation she and I had was on the phone. I told her I would call her later that week….and over two weeks had gone by and I didn’t call. And then she was gone. I couldn’t call anymore. This was also my first exposure to a Catholic funeral mass….oh my goodness, it was awful! It felt like it was 4 hours long. I know why they do what they do….a mass with a funeral service, but for a kid like me, my heart kept getting ripped out over and over, looking at the coffin through the mass. My grandma was cremated…. My family thought they were doing me a favor/doing what my grandma would want and they asked me to scatter her ashes at Cook’s Forest (Pennsylvania). At the time, I couldn’t comprehend why they would think I’d ever do such a thing..throwing my grandma over a cliff and all. Ashes or not, this was unthinkable to me. So someone else did.

I’d move after 7th grade…..and a whole new set of tragedies would follow. My mom and my dad got married, and he had a job in a different city (doing awesome things….at the time it didn’t seem so, but it really was better), so we had to move again. So I moved the summer before my 8th grade year. This hurt so bad. Not only did I just lose my grandma, but I had to say goodbye to people I thought were my friends. There was one friend in particular that would haunt me for ages. His name was Carlos. He was one of the popular kids…yet he was actually my friend too. He didn’t care that I was the weird kid. He was my friend. My 8th grade year, not long after the school year began, I went to church and one of my church/school friends said “did you hear about Carlos?” I hadn’t, so she had to tell me…. you see, Carlos committed suicide. He had a friend over that day, and they were gonna eat lunch and then go do whatever. Carlos went to the kitchen to make sandwiches….and for whatever reason, that seemed like the appropriate time to take a knife and stab himself. I’m told he stabbed himself 6 times in the chest area, eventually stabbing himself in the heart…..and that his friend came in and found him when he didn’t come out with the sandwiches after a while. That was my first exposure to suicide….and I was insanely crushed. My mind couldn’t comprehend it. I especially couldn’t comprehend that Carlos would do such a thing because he was such a good kid, he was so nice, had such a big heart. His death was hard for me. Not just because I’d never known anyone who had committed suicide, but because I still had questions with my grandma’s death (feeling bad about not calling and such), and trying to grasp why/how someone would think suicide to be the answer. I never found the answers to those questions, but I hope he found peace anyhow.

That same year, the church I belonged to (WCG) would have a “crisis of faith,” shall we say. It was announced that the head of the church had come to the realization that we may not have been acting properly. That, while we can recognize the Old Testament ways that got us to where we are, the New Testament and Jesus had come, which changed things…that there was an updated way to believe. Basically, the head of the church had come to the realization that the New Testament and Jesus dying on the cross had done away with the old ways and the legalistic ways we once believed. Now, that was not a popular step. So many had focused on following the men/ministers of the local congregations that if the local minister said “I don’t believe this, but here is what headquarters says,” people followed the minister vs discovering what the Bible says and deciding for themselves.

That year, I lost a lot of friends…many people left their congregations…..because they didn’t believe this was the way. My parents gave me the choice — challenged me to find out for myself if I believed what the church was saying now or not. So I dove in my Bible and discovered for myself…I did believe these things to be true. It meant an end to following legalistic practices and being so strict on following Old Testament holy days. But it also meant I lost friends. It meant my life had changed even more. Some people who left the church believed those of us that stayed and agreed with the updated doctrine were the ones who were wrong. We were sinners. We were not to be associated with.

Eventually, I would tire of the years worth of “we’ve been hurt, we’ve lost people” mentality and I left the church I grew up in. My local congregation of that church ultimately ended up meeting in a Methodist church…which I attended a few times. After I left my church, I attended the Methodist church for a while….but I also took the time to evaluate what I believed and compared it to the denominations around me…… I’d go to a Methodist church for a while….but as life would have it, another change was on my horizon. I stopped going to church for quite some time.

But for now…….this is where I’ll leave you (I haven’t even begun to tell you about high school). A kid who was bullied. Who was an outcast. It wasn’t my fault. None of it was. Kids can be cruel. If you are a parent, please teach your children that not everyone has it good. Some people need help (I’m well aware that there are people who abuse the system, but some people genuinely need it). Teach your children not to bully others who are different. It doesn’t matter why they are different. Bullying is wrong. But also…and I know this may not be popular….but if you are a parent of a child who is bullied—- please please please, teach them how to ignore it. Teach them how to stand up to it. DO NOT teach them to just take it. Bullying is wrong, please don’t misunderstand that. It was wrong years ago and it’s still wrong. The difference is, my mom equipped me with the skills to be hurt by it yet be strong in spite of it. My heart still hurts over the bullying I endured. Right or wrong, kids need to be taught to be STRONG ENOUGH to address being bullied. It doesn’t make it right by any means. However, we do our children a HUGE disservice when we don’t give them the tools to withstand bullying. When we teach kids that “everyone gets a trophy,” we aren’t teaching them how to deal with disappointment or disagreement, and we certainly aren’t teaching them how to withstand a bully. No one should be bullied…but, there will always be bullies.

So today’s lesson from Mama Mantis: be strong. Withstand those who are cruel. Ignore those who don’t accept you for you. It’s hard. Life is hard. Life IS NOT fair. People can be jerks. Not everyone is going to like you. But that doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk back. You need to be strong for you. Eff others who can’t see you for you. Eff them who don’t like you for you. They are NOT worth your time. They don’t deserve your friendship. You are better off alone than accepting fake people into your life, and you need to be strong enough to recognize that. It doesn’t mean you won’t have hard days. It doesn’t mean that you won’t feel sad about the people who you thought were your friends but weren’t. It just means that you have the strength and ability to mourn it and move on. That you have the strength to realize YOU ARE WORTH IT. No one else needs to think or believe that for it to be true….only YOU need to think and believe it. And if you can’t believe it yet, hang on until the day you can….because YOU ARE WORTH IT. Anyone who can’t see that doesn’t deserve to have you in their life. Period. Stay strong y’all. Hang on until the day you can see the light…..I can promise it’s coming. I can’t tell you when because everyone’s life is different….but I can promise you it’s coming. Ask me how I know.

Also, please please please know that suicide IS NOT the answer. I have always lived by this… suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems. Truly. I’ve had a few friends who have committed suicide or seriously contemplated it….and those I’ve talked down, I’ve always stressed that suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems. I know the problems may not seem temporary now…but I assure you, they are. I know it can be hard to understand that your problems now are not the end all be all of your life….but I promise they aren’t. I’m not gonna lie….life is hard. It’s not meant to be easy. However, suicide is never the answer. We all have our demons…..but the only way to defeat the demons is to fight them. Show the demons that light wins, every time. It may take a while….but I promise the battle will be won. You just have to keep fighting. There are hotlines and such out there…use them if you need them. But please please please …if suicide is on your mind, seek help. Sometimes you just need someone to help you fight those demons. Let them. Let someone help you.

And if you are a person reading this, and you know you’re the bully… knock it off. For real. Bullies are jerks. I’m sure there is some fancy explanation for why you bully, but truly the bottom line is KNOCK IT OFF. There is no reason to bully someone else. People are different. That’s what makes our world extra fun — the unknown — knowing things aren’t always the same all the time..and that includes people. People have different skin, different eye color, different hair color, different accents, different backgrounds… but ya know what? That’s what makes us awesome…our differences. Our differences make us great. Our differences are what entices people. If for some reason you can’t see that, the truth is, if you cut us, we all bleed the same color. Our insides all look the same. So bullies, quit being jackholes and just be human. Just sayin’