Goodbye 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/nyregion/14juvenile.html?_r=1&sudsredirect=true

"New York Task Force Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons"

Everyone read that!!

John emailed it to me and brought it to my attention, and I'm so thankful he thought of me and sent it because I don't read the New York Times usually on Mondays because I don't have work. I would have completely missed this reallllllllyyyy good article.

I bought my father a Christmas present (which is also a birthday present since that's his birthday). I haven't bought something for my father that wasn't like a pair of socks or dishes for his shitty "house" in about 4 years. I'm trying this new thing where I try to stop having such high expectations. He will never apologize for things he's done to me because he actually doesn't believe they were wrong....I have to realize that his childhood honestly poisoned him and if I grow up to be this hateful, bitter, scorned daughter, then I'd be ruined just like him. I will never let myself be ruined by some bullshit childhood I was supposed to have, didn't have, or always "wished" I had.

I bought him a basketball and a shirt. Basketball is the only good thing besides tea he likes.

I just got home from the grocery store, I needed toothpaste so badly. I bought pears too. Now I'm waiting to walk down the street and scoop my laundry out of the dryer. I love carrying it down my street, it fills my arms and I can barely see over the pile I'm carrying and it's so warm still from the heat of the dryer that I don't need a coat for that 2 block walk.

I bought myself an early Christmas present. A book to read for pleasure. I bought ....

I wanted to initially stay away from this book because it's some book Oprah recommends and it was reviewed as being a more grown up version of Lord of the Flies. Everyone should read this. I've had it for a little over a day (during finals even) and I'm almost done. It's about the world and a father and son traveling post-apocalyptic Earth, but it's not a week after, it's years and years after when the soil doesn't grow anything and people have formed primitive tribes that are cannibalistic. Even though I'm realllllllyyyy enjoying this book it reminds me about the scariest aspect of psychology. When people find out I major in psychology they think i'm constantly terrified of all of the diseases I'm learning about because welll...sometimes it makes you paranoid you have EVERYTHING, but the scariest thing that I have learned in psychology is that human beings are capable of terrible things, I'm talking, horrible, unimaginable THINGS. This book basically illustrates that catastrophe and desperation can drive people to lose all humanity. Humanity is not natural, in fact survival of the fittest turns the most humane individuals into animals and savages. Everyone has experienced this. Everyone has experienced looking at someone and seeing so much in them, so much infrahumanization, but moments later they are cold and abusive and that is the point when they are capable of anything. And that is what scares me most of all. I think this is why I don't really judge people when they are at their best, however when they are at their worst.

I can't wait to make a mental list of the bests and worsts of 2009. It's gonna be a doozy of a list.