http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/pulse-orlando-nightclub-shooting/os-orlando-shooting-survivors-hostage-20160614-story.html
I have a few friends I love who are gay. One of them I've known most my life, my best friend's older brother Steve. Steve and Monty have been married for years and adopted a baby boy from Vietnam who is now about nine years old. They are wonderful people and amazing loving parents to their son. I am very LGBT-friendly. Because I see "gay" people as people. Just people. With no label. I feel we should be free to love who we love. We don't really "choose" to love people. I feel our souls probably choose for us. And gender does not matter. If it is mutually consensual then in my opinion it is not my business and I just want everyone to be happy and to be able to celebrate the love they have for one another safely and freely.
The recent events in Orlando make me so sad. I am sensitive and even though I don't know any of those people directly I do think we are all connected on some level and my heart goes out to them. I should not read about it. I don't have TV for a reason. I hate the media. All the bad shit in the world hurts me so I avoid a lot of it. I try to be a good loving person in my own community, and when I get irritated or whatever I try to correct myself and be better. I am far from perfect but overall I am a "good" person and stuff like this massacre breaks my heart. It does not have to be like this, and while I am not against total gun control, and I have no answers for this problem, my opinion is if people are going to own guns then it should be a gun that fires a few bullets and then needs to be reloaded. Not a semi-automatic or automatic weapon that shoots a bullet every second. You don't need 40 bullets in a minute to disable an intruder or hunt a deer.
My son is currently not allowed to play with guns. And before you groan and think I am "one of those moms" it is because he started off Kindergarten with a "bang" no pun intended. He told a girl in his class, one he has a crush on, that he was going to "shoot her in the head." And all Hell broke loose. The police came to school to speak with him. He had an out of school suspension. He was interviewed by the school counselor. We had a meeting at the school and I talked with the mother of the little girl who was, to be expected, very alarmed. Turns out, and this is no excuse, the little boy who lives with us had also been hassling my son at home, throwing things at him, and my son was getting more upset about it than I realized. He kept telling people at school that this boy, the one who lives with us, "keeps throwing stuff at me and it is making me very upset!" No excuse for him to go to school and tell someone he is going to shoot her in the head but at the same time I can see how he was getting frustrated and I didn't understand how much it was affecting him. But then after this incident he was at home playing with the kids with the Nerf guns and they were talking about killing each other and dying and I was like, "Oh fuck no!" DONE with the guns for now. I will admit I was not happy, got pretty upset and got rid of every fucking toy gun in the house. My house. My rules.
Thing is my son does not know what "death" is. I talked with him deeply about this. He thinks if someone gets shot or "blown up" or ran over or whatever- then that person can go to the "hostible" {hospital} and get bandaged up and be just fine. He has no idea that people die and do not come back. He does not understand that "shooting someone in the head" means blowing her brains out. Sadly he HEARS about shootings all the time. He didn't understand why not long ago some mean person went into McDonalds and killed people. He did not understand why someone went into a school and shot a bunch of kids. And he gets very confused about the police when he hears about the police shooting and killing people. It can be very confusing raising a child! So anyway. We have no guns in the house. He is not allowed to play killing violent video games either.
And guess what? He's exceedingly loving and kind. He loves to help people. He is so caring and empathetic. And I firmly believe limiting his exposure to violence helps in this regard. Luckily we had no other experienced with shooting comments. Buy my God it started out Kindergarten in an interesting manner. I spoke to the mom of the little girl and assured her we do not own a gun and neither does PJ's dad. My son repeated something he does not at all understand, and he got into some trouble for it for sure. But I more tried to explain to him what violence is, how to be a good loving person, and not to say things like that. Hard to explain to a six year-old who does not understand what dying means! His teacher told me it is totally out of character for him because he is so sweet and gentle. *sigh* I have no idea where he heard it but he heard it somewhere.
Guns. Killing. Violence. Hatred. I do my best to keep him sheltered from this at his age, six, but I also try to educate him so he is aware. I can't keep him sheltered forever and I know this. But it's a sad day when I have to hope I don't need to try and explain to my child why "gay" people are hated or why other countries want us all to die or why teens use social media to bully one another until someone wants to take his or her own life over it.
It just hurts my heart so much.
Being a parent is such an important job. I am not a perfect parent at all. Just last night I lost my shit because they went outside to play and I told them, "Please do not get muddy and dirty because you are coming in soon." Next thing I know the water is on and mud is everywhere and they had an Ipad out there too. *grrrr* I expect more from my son even though he is "only" six years-old. He absolutely knows better. The very difficult part about raising my child is he is IMPERVIOUS to most everything! And I refuse to beat him. I don't really want to even spank him because I don't believe any of us as human being have the right to inflict pain on each other. Pain hurts. If I do something "wrong" I don't want you coming over to beat my ass for it! So why should I do that to my innocent child? But I have spanked him before, out of frustration. I did once. And it did nothing. He was upset and cried for like five minutes and then bounced right back, and I was left feeling like a big pile of shit. So spanking is kind of out. Yelling does not do much. The best course of action for me is to take something away from him or not let him do something. And even THAT does not do much. I don't want to say, "Okay so you did this thing that you should not have done so now you have to go clean your toy room" because I don't want him associating "helping out" or doing his part to be responsible as punishment. I want him to like helping, and he really does. He loves being a helper because I always have told him, "Oh my GOSH thank you SO much for helping mommy! You are such a good helper! You really helped me out a lot." So he likes to help.
I dunno. Luckily for me I have a really awesome amazing kid so discipline issues don't come up much! I am blessed with him. I try to be a very pro-active parent in teaching him how to respect himself and other people and be loving and kind. And he is. So I am fortunate. But trying to raise him in this world today can be an interesting task. I am an 80s kid so I parent like they did back then- get your ass outside and play, lol! This Monday he and Ella who is also six played outside in the backyard with the hose and water balloons all day! I even fed them lunch outside and they were tickled. Only difference is I don't remember getting slathered in sun block when we were kids. I just remember taking care of the sun burn later!!! Must be why I have a ton of freckles now.
My child brings me a lot of joy and reminds me why we need to totally teach love and not hate. If we treat them gently and teach them how to love then they will grow to treat others gently and know how to show love. My worst habit as a mother is my potty mouth. I will admit that "fuck" is one of my most favorite words. My son clearly knows not to repeat it, as I said it is my worst habit as a mother. He will ask me, "Mom can I get my bad words out?" and I will tell him yes. In private. And then he will smile and say things like, "Shit. Damn. Stupid." Because "stupid" is a bad word too- but he knows never to use these words in public or else. He holds doors for people. He loves to help others. He compliments people all the time. He knows how to make conversation and ask people how they are doing. He will comfort someone who is hurting. He is SO loving and greets everyone he sees like they are his best friend, and he always says, "This is my best friend!" because he is just so loving. And I know I am bragging but it makes me happy because there are plenty of things in this life that I don't always get right or even close to right or I totally fuck up altogether. But being a mother is the ONE thing in my life I feel like I've done really well. Really really well, and if you are gonna do something right it might as well be raising another human being. And I KNOW he is here for me as much as I am here for him. He's helped me through a lot.
In the last like 35 months my mind has been consumed by this twin soul journey but luckily I've managed to still be a great mom through it all. My son helps me a lot though. We make a great team. But now I am at a point where I am a bit exhausted. I really really want to be easily happy now. Peaceful and not always TRYING to be happy. I hope something shifts for me and James soon. I want James to be part of our lives. I want to share my life with him. I realize I've been going through this process but I am ready to be on the other side of it now. Happy. In a loving happy relationship with James. I know James does want to be with us, loves me and wants me in his life. And God knows I want him too. I want him with me, with us, because he is a wonderful loving kind man and I adore him. He treated me with total love and respect and he was kind and thoughtful to my son. I just really wish... it could happen now. With so much crap going on in the world it sure would be nice if two good people who really love each other could come together and share life. Seems like that would be a most wonderful thing, a dream come true.
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