Health + Wellness

Damned are the eyes that bear witness to its grin, the cold bloodied rabbit still ripe with its sin.

We never like to admit it, but there IS a part of us that actually care about what people think of us. If you're having trouble admitting that reality, let me tell you that it's normal and it's very understandable. All of us want to be known for something positive and not something disgusting. Yeah I know, disgusting is a strong word, but I can only speak from my own experiences. I've felt like others had built this whole character in their heads about me, for whatever reason. And because of that, it made me in a lot of ways resent those people. The crazy thing is that I never knew if those thoughts were actually true. So what if I was forming a story in my mind that was just my own assumptions? What if I was the reason I've always felt alone? What if I'm the reason why I can't trust nobody I surround myself with? What if I'm the reason I've built this hate for my life? These are questions that constantly ran through my mind. Then I think... What if I'm right? What if my gut is telling the truth? You know what they say, right? "Go with your gut feeling!" So let's say these things are true. Let's say they have built this idea of who you are, and even though it's not displayed publicly, it's definitely obvious. You then have a choice to make. Choice number one is that you can react, blow everything up in their face, prove you're not an idiot, and leave. Then there's choice number two. You can pray about it. Pray that your heart won't be harden and that you won't grow bitter, and pray that your heart will remain tender.

Jane pulled a purple composition notebook and purple pencil from her messenger bag. She didn’t particularly like the color purple. In fact, she had a love/hate relationship with that color. After her grandmother’s Alzheimer diagnosis, Jane went off the deep end of advocacy. She joined support groups, wrote and signed petitions to spread awareness, and ran fundraisers to raise money for research. Purple is the “official color” of Alzheimer’s disease, so naturally she collected everything in purple. She worked tirelessly as if her actions would somehow change her grandmother’s prognosis. When it didn’t work that way, Jane was stuck with a lot of purple junk.

It was a normal Thursday afternoon and I just woke up from that seem to be a eight hour shift from an overnight job I was doing in food service. I was energetic and ready to take on the rest of the day. Looking forward to going to the store, I got up washed my face, put on my socks, pants and a T-shirt along with a long sleeve thermal Top. It was a sunny beautiful day in western Pennsylvania.

As the coronavirus pandemic is sweeping the world and news outlets are saturated with death tolls, infections and scary predictions, it would be nice to focus on some good news. Besides the main benefit of avoiding infection and spread of the disease, we have compiled some of the good consequences the quarantine and social distancing orders around the world have caused. During these difficult and uncertain times, it’s always good to look at the positive while still being informed of how this situation develops.

It all feels so out of control. And, this lack of control feels different because there’s no real way to stop it at the moment. It’s like we’re all in a massive group project where the majority of the group is doing what they’re assigned, but the ones that aren’t are causing previously unimaginable problems and threatening to derail the entire project. I knew there was a reason I hated group projects!