You're Waving Goodbye, Well at Least You're Having Fun..

I'm reading a book right now titled "The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us" (don't ask why) which says that one in 25 people have no conscience.  One in 25 people have no sense of guilt or accountability and no sense of right and wrong.  One in 25...that's 4% of the population.  One is more likely to be sociopathic than to be anorexic.  The book talks about how unfathomable this is to the "normal human" because we're taught that a conscience is something that everybody instinctively has.  One of the hardest things for me to accept is that there is such a thing as a person who has no conscience.  It's even more unpleasant to accept that someone I trusted is one of those people.  I've been told that I have an "overly active conscience."  This makes me a sucker in relationships with these people because one can so easily appeal to my sense of guilt...which leads me to take responsibility for an irredeemable relationship and sometimes even feel guilty for my own hurt feelings.

NEWSFLASH TO MYSELF: Stop.

I get so passionate about things and sometimes that gets me into trouble.  My dad calls it "eternal optimism."  Eternal optimism is the reason why my dog, Bear, thinks that every time someone leaves the house he too will get to go, although 99.9% of the time...that boy's staying home.  Besides comparing myself to my dog, eternal optimism is also the reason why I can try for years to fix something that never wanted to be fixed.  Eternal optimism also causes me to do this with so much passion that it hurts.

I don't mean to sound bitter or cynical...I don't feel either of those things.  But learning that not all are good people is a difficult thing for me to accept.  I tend to put an insurmountable amount of faith in people.  I believe that people are good despite their mistakes.  To learn that some people genuinely don't care to redeem their mistakes because they don't see them as such is a tough pill for me to swallow.  But I also believe that knowledge is power and I have learned that continuing to participate in these kinds of relationships is simply not an option for me...now or ever.  THE GOOD NEWS is that on Sunday (that's five days away!!) I get to leave home, go abroad, and continue living my life the way I prefer to...in peace.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."


Side note: I'm handing out virtual high fives to those who picked up on the Something Corporate reference.

Take...Due!

"Even when I have pains, I don't have to be one."

Yesterday I wrote a post about my family issues that after re-reading a few hours later, I had to remove.  Not because I didn't mean everything I said, but because I don't want my blog tainted by all that anger...and also because I didn't want you to have to read that shit.

SO TODAY I downloaded GoogleEarth and looked at where I'll be living, which turns out, is right smack dab in the middle of heaven!

If you can see the blue square in the very center...that's my apartment.  Yep, that's right, the blue square that's right in between the two huge churches!  That's the Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) in the right corner.  I'll be walking by this every day to go to class.  In the left corner is the Basilica di San Lorenzo.  I'll be walking by this every time I go to my cooking class or my wine appreciation class.  Not to mention that my writing class is right on the river and is a block away from a different church.  Yeah...life is going to be AWESOME!