PRECIOUS – remarkable. depressingly accurate.

I watch a lot of movies: some good, some bad. I try to fall in love with characters to escape my life for a little while. I love to hear stories, because it gets my mind off me and reminds me that the world is bigger than me. People have problems that I cannot fathom, I need to remember. I cannot forget. Sometimes it may seem as though life,love, aspirations are not going our way, but we forget that we have more opportunity (that includes YOU) than 99% of the rest of the world.

Precious was an accurate film. I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was all a lie. I wish that people didn’t live these types of lives. I wish that we lived in a utopia where children weren’t molested. Instead we live in a world where someone can be sexually, verbally, and physically abused over a dinner table. I wish that televisions didn’t dummy as part-time babysitters for single parents. I wish that single mothers would dedicate their lives to their children and not to finding a replacement for their first husband. I wish that children didn’t have to turn up the volume while watching Cartoon Network at night to fade out the sounds of police sirens. With their eyes closed many can differentiate fire trucks vs. police cars. Some are so keen they can tell the difference between the sounds that cop cars make when an officer has been shot vs. when they just want to run a red light…

Precious had a bigger heart than me. She was beat down and it hurt me to watch her on the screen because I have heard these types of stories before and I don’t like them. I watched the film in its entirety although it hurt my heart to do so.  I needed it to remind me of how comfortable my life is and how thankful I should be of the blessings that I have.  Although my memory is pretty accurate, I sometimes like to be reminded of the things I need to do – not only make a change, but to be the change that I would like to see.  Abuse is a sad disease because of how contagious it is. It doesn’t only happen in inner cities where people use welfare checks to finance their next hair appointment, abuse exist everywhere: from Lake Forrest, IL to Greenwich, CT and back down to Boca Raton, FL.

Abuse is a simple word, but we fail to accurately define it… Dad feels the need to embarrass mom at the dinner table in front of company – discuss how mom has a shopping problem, her aggressive drinking tendencies her bad college habits… Undoubtably, “DAD” came to the rescue and saved her from her sinking dreams of touring the world as a singer…

LIES.  

He says, “mom needs to pull her own weight around the house and she should be thankful that the, ‘BIG MAN’ puts food and shelter over her.” Well guess what, “DAD” that’s abuse, not only to your wife, but to your children and furthermore to yourself because you have LOST it to speak to the mother of your children in that fashion. You’re actions are detrimental to the growth of all that you encounter. You are bitter. You are cold. You are alone and need someone to step on to complete the lack of self you cling to. This type of household is just as dysfunctional as the one depicted in Precious, but society thinks this is normal because there’s a white picket fence outside and everyone can afford to attend college. We all remember what Alice said… “Everyone loves a big fat lie.”  We do.

I do. So do you.

So no more lies… at least for this post *wink*

“The divorce rate in America for first marriage, vs second or third marriage 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.”

Ummm…

So how many of these marriages are not abusive? How many children dread going home after school? How many students admire their teachers and wish they were their parents? How many kids are raised by the coordinators of their after-school programs? How many nannies tuck in another persons children to sleep every night? How many kids turn up their ipods in order to quiet the screams at home every night? The saddest part about this post is that I don’t have a solution.

How we can convince people to love each other? Real loving, not easy words that are as weak as the papers that they are scribbled on.

How can we convince a generation to respect each other?

Concerned,

F.