I'm putting most of this entry in the Extended section. It's a bit more personal than most things that show up here from us Guest Posters, and it contains some harsh language, and it's a bit on the serious side. Read on at your own discretion -- you've been warned in advance.

J.

"She made me do it."
"Anyone can become a drug addict."
"Sorry, dude, I was drunk."
"The Palestinians have been driven to such acts of desperation by the brutality of the Israeli occupation."
"The US started the chain of events that led to 9/11."

BULLSHIT.

One of the things that absolutely drives me nuts about the world today is how nothing is anyone's own fault, how no one is responsible for their own actions, how the first instinct of anyone in trouble is to find someone else to blame. Doesn't ANYONE have a sense of personal responsibility?

I'll use myself as an example. My life is a total mess.

I'm in a dead-end job that granted me a 1% raise this year.

I have a crappy car that isn't paid off.

I am rapidly losing my hair. Every morning after I shower I brush my hair, then comb my brush.

I have almost no friends, no family I'm close to, no social life, no romantic life in the past year, and my most constant companion is a cat my last roommate left behind.

I am overweight and out of shape.

I have a chronic, incurable medical condition that will eventually kill me. First, though, it will cripple me though various and sundry complications, some of which have already started to manifest -- both mental and physical.

I am severely in a financial hole.

My apartment would be rejected by pigs in favor of the filthiest sty.

My neighborhood suffers from severe drug and gang problems.

I once started alphabetically listing the ailments that I have in my family medical history. I covered every letter up through L. (Damn, couldn't someone have developed liver failure, leishmaniasis, or lymphoma?)

What I don't have is anyone else to blame. I can trace every single one of these problems and countless others to either bad decisions on my part or simple shitty luck. There was no grand conspiracy to screw me over. No one set out to ruin my life. God doesn't hate me.

I'm in a hole, but I acknowledge that it's largely one I dug myself. I own it. The only way I'm gonna get out of it is through my own efforts, and even that isn't guaranteed. Either way, I'm not gonna waste my effort looking for someone to blame. And maybe it isn't fair.

Nobody ever promised me that life was fair.

So, to all of you looking to find someone else to pin your problems on, GET OVER IT. Suck it up. Own your problems. All that energy you spend looking to find who or what to blame your problems on could be much better spent FIXING them.

(And no, this is not part of some grand "fix myself" project. I probably won't be doing much any time soon to fix my problems. I've joined a gym and am going 3-5 times a week, working up a hell of a sweat each time, but that's about the extent of my self-improvement thus far.)

Thanks for letting me rant.

J.

Addendum: How the hell, on the day of the huge abortion rallies, could I omit "I got pregnant" from the opening diatribe? Sigh...