I really don't want to become...

[otherlander]

...one of those people who can only be honest when they're drinking. But after you're laughed at for telling the truth enough times it becomes difficult. I don't just mean truth as in not-lying, I mean really speaking to the nobility and beauty of the world around you, fearlessly, in hopes that someone else will recognize it too. Too many people I know only do that when drunk or high. I know this one guy who's a political activist, pretty radical, has some pretty awesome visions for how he wants the world to be, but he only talks of them in scientific terms, means of production, sustainability, to the point where spirituality or love becomes a forbidden word. A couple of times when he was really stoned I started to see another side of him, and once, he jokingly told me about one time when he was on 'shrooms, how he was just thinking, why can't we all just get along and love each other? "And I never say that kind of shit!" he proclaimed. Well, I wanted to say, maybe you should try it sometime. Maybe it would be good for you.

But now I, also, am starting to understand why some people wind up silencing the most beautiful parts of themselves, a bit like the protagonist in Darkness at Noon, doubting the value of that "oceanic sense," and only dare to give a voice to it when they have the excuse of intoxication allowing them to laugh it off later. And I really don't want to become one of them. Any advice?

[otherlander]

1. These things scare the hell out of me

How can people live in them? I went to register voters in one earlier this year, and everyone was still in their separate little boxes, and I thought to myself, why aren't they at least visiting each other? And how do you stay sane so far from the earth?

[Deja Q]

3. Depends on the individual

I stay away from people. As a kid, I probably got the wrong information and experience of what people are (bullies, molesters, cheats, shallow...)

It's amazing I recovered. I did, but the scars won't heal. Nor do I recognize that some people really do like my personality. I can't even see that without constant reassurance. If you grew up constantly being heckled and told you're God's joke, how would you react?

[otherlander]

4. Okay. I hear you.

I actually did believe that someone did but then it turned out that they didn't.

[Deja Q]

2. A coworker went that route.

When she knocked on my door (same apt complex), plastered, she went off on the economy.

After 45 minutes of cajoling her to lie down, she had. I called 911, even though she kept saying not to.

Turns out she's had something of a history.

The night I called authorities to get her to hospital, I later found out her blood alcohol level was .385. Legal limit is .08. She could have died.

With her list of violations and other issues, she later went to jail. 6 month term, she got out in 3. That was about 3 weeks ago.

Within 24 hours, she got plastered and is back in the pokey.

I think she has a death wish, but even trying to bring in community services/counseling, she refused it.

Then again, she's responding to the ambient environment as much as any internal mental illness; one exacerbating the other.

The system is wrong. Especially a "pro-life" system that summarily stops treating people as life once they slide out of the vagina.

Incidentally, relatives still lease her apartment. She has no money and was fired from her job (and management went out of their way to try to help her too.)

She's in prison.

Relatives are still shelling out $700/mo for rent, will be for some time, and rumor mill has it that they don't think she has a problem and she's falsely accused.

Pity we live in a system where people have to get addicted to something as means of "escapism". There is positive stress and there is negative stress. Our society has too much of the latter and somehow deludes itself into thinking it's the former.

That is what people want CHANGE for.