Dat Nick

Mm... yes, that is the sad, bitter truth of it, and by far the biggest obstacle... Ah, this was the character in the story, sorry for not clarifying... There's definitely some truth to that, to find comfort in those whom are more open... the problem lies elsewhere though, where sometimes there just isn't anyone to relate to... I will talk to him about this and see if he's okay with it, probably when he leaves for college. Yeah, that's right... and I've no problem with the concept of that, and I've no problem with wanting to continue believing in that, but some of those teachings carry a lot of hate, and I wish more people could see that... Mm, there's a lot of that too. Racism, homophobia, everywhere... it truly is sick and it's painful that it'll always exist in some form... Story of my life... no matter how minor, I want to do what I can about all of this... but I don't know what to do. I don't even know if I can do anything. Even if it's a minor contribution to the problem... ...My god... that's horrible. But yeah. I don't know how strongly I came across otherwise, but it's not religion I despise, as I think something's up there myself... it's just the intolerance that comes with it. Well... I don't mean to justify his current attitude... but I see how it was influenced. That does frighten me. Will try to abide to that should I ever meet such a person. Will do. I know they're not all bad. I don't think I emphasized this enough in the post, which is my fault. My mom's boyfriend goes to church and I do love him, he's sort of a distant father figure and he's helped a lot through the divorce. But well... you still need to take the bad with the good, you know? It's the bad I have a problem with... Yeah... I know. Perhaps I should rephase, it's not the organizations I hate, it's the "consequences"... Thanks a lot for the posts, guys. Especially Datia and Helios, you two had a lot to say.

Hi. Prepare for a wall of text. I was talking to a really close friend of mine last night about the Kony thing, and how the Invisible Children organization is probably a lot more self-centered than it should be... it left me with no one to really support on this, and I was really confused on how to help... I didn't just want to sit and do nothing but... I really didn't know what I should do. Just hope? Hope doesn't really help in the end. And that realization is what prompted me to make this topic... about another serious issue that I truly want to do something about, but... I don't even know if anything CAN be done about it. Read my post, tell you what you think. So, we're just gonna get this out of the way RIGHT now. I have nothing against the concept of religion in and of itself. You folks have something you believe in? Good for you. I believe there's something up there myself: After all, I met someone who changed my life for the better, and I don't believe it was coincidental. What I don't like is that this mindset isn't so much taught to people... it's forced onto them. And that's why I despise organized religion. Because it isolates people. It makes them feel different. It makes them feel hated. All because they don't believe what others believe. And that's a horrible thing. I'd like to talk about this a bit more... but first, I want to talk about my best friend. The most important person in the world to me. Very same friend I was speaking about the Kony issue with, actually, and that probably has a big part in why I'm posting this now. Seems like a drastic subject change... bear with me, please. Relevance will enter this. I met someone last May, on another site. He seemed pretty cool. I wanted to get to know him better. Spent quite a bit of time talking to him on the main chat of said site. One day I quit the chat for a bit to focus on other stuff, but I did like him and didn't want to lose touch with him... so we exchanged Skype IDs and we talked there for a bit. We got pretty close over time... we disagreed about tons of stuff but at the same time had lots of common interests. We talked to each other on a daily basis for hours and hours on end, and still do today. We got on so well he even got me something on Steam for my birthday. Course he was the generous type that used to give EVERYONE Steam gifts on their birthdays but... One day, my sister was kind of stressing me out. She wanted money for alcohol. She was in a sorority at the time... a sorority that treated her like shit. Will cover that in a bit. So anyway she wanted money for some pledge party. Money I could barely spare, but I have a hard time saying no to her. I blurted this out while we were talking one day... this will become relevant. Soon after this, my sister was arrested for petty larceny. The sorority made her do it. I was outraged. My sister can be a little rude at times, but she's NOT a god damn criminal. I was infuriated at the people who drove her to this. And at the same time... I was scared. She's not a bad person. She doesn't deserve to be in jail. I couldn't sleep that night. I did try, but... the nightmares wouldn't stop. And I had already told him the gist of things so... I told him she was arrested and why. It was obviously connected to the liquor after all. He calmed me down... I could sleep again. You see, my friend has a gift... a gift for knowing people. How they work. How to make them feel better in bad moods... I admit, it's a gift I'm very envious of. I WISH I knew people better. I don't... at all. Anyway... I would be using this gift a lot. There were a lot of issues left unresolved in my head that I never truly accepted weren't my fault... things about myself that I always felt made me different. And strange. Personal issues as well... I gave away all of my spare money. I'm still feeling the damage today. He was the only one I felt comfortable talking to about all this. He was the only one who helped... I had talked to lots of people about one particular issue before. And it never helped. It never made a difference. He was the only one that made me think that it may not have been my fault... that's how I knew he was special. Around Christmas time... I fell into a very bad rut. My parents were divorced this year. It would be my first Christmas with a split family. It was just my mom and my sister for Thanksgiving. I was so afraid Christmas would be just as lonely. I started to reflect on a lot of things... how I had pretty much fucked up my life when I was younger. I got put into a special ed program when I was younger because I was a little shit and I let my autism get the better of me. It's very humiliating... to walk around with that label. Everybody thinks you're different. So much different than everybody else. When you're not... you're just as good as them. Better perhaps. But nobody gives you the chance. All because of a mental condition that only controls you as much as you let it. I live with this goddamn disorder. I know how much it affects you. But that wasn't just it. Because of this, I didn't really make any friends because I was so isolated from everybody else. What I did about it was I spent my free time being a complete jerkwad on the internet. Particularly with you guys. It made me realize that everything I do has been a screw up. That even if I could accept that all of my family holidays from here on out would be with a split one... what difference would it make? I'd still die at the end of the day. I'd feel better about myself just to get punched in the face and die. Why bother fighting? Why delay the inevitable? I wasn't at the stage of considering suicide... but I was running out of reasons not to. I went to him about all of this... I needed more reasons to live. We talked, and I realized I had a very big one... him. I loved talking to him. I loved playing games and watching stuff with him. He was what life was worth fighting for, to me... even though we live many states away, I didn't feel alone with him with me. Then... something happened. I got out of my rut... but he began falling into one. He's a high school student. Yeah, I was shocked as hell when he told me, too. Always assumed he was at least my age, likely older... he didn't really tell me much about his personal life for a while. But well... eventually he had to. And here's where relevance enters the conversation. About religion. And how it isolates people. You see, he's an athiest. In Missisippi. Southern state. Yeah. It's difficult to find people with a relation to that in that area... not even his own family knows, because his mom is a religious fanatic. Called his sister a heathen on her wedding day... yeah. It translates to school too... he doesn't have any real friends there, so he's told me. Because they all love their god and haaaate their athiests. They were reading a story in literature one day, and one character mentioned he was an athiest in the story... and he tells me you could feel the negative aura in the room, how they all hated that story all of a sudden for the sheer mention of the word. And it did make me sick, hearing that... there was someone else close to him over the internet, who he was not in contact with at the time due to real life issues with that person... so I was the only one he really had to talk to about all of this for most days. It caught me completely off-guard that someone who had done so much for me had so many personal issues that were impossible to resolve due to the harsh and unaccepting environment... I still tried. I loved him like family, and I did try to make him feel like he wasn't alone, that I was always going to be there for him even if nobody else was, that I would accept him for his beliefs, even if they did conflict with mine... but it wasn't enough. One night, it all got to him... his cat was diagnosed with an incurable disease, school was getting bad, and there was just nobody there for him in real life, who he could be his real self with... and he completely flipped out. I... can't even bring myself to tell EVERYTHING that happened with him that night. But it was all very shocking, very disturbing... I was crying my eyes out nearly the entire time, to watch this happen to someone who I loved so much. I can give you a brief excerpt, to show you how bad it was... I sat through the entire tirade, as much as it crushed me to do so... Because I knew none of what he said was true. I knew he still cared about me, I knew he was just hurting too much, I knew it all had to come out, I knew he was damaged... so I watched the entire thing. And I tried to help... obviously nothing reached, but it was my obligation to try the best I possibly could. Eventually he did calm down, though I likely didn't help with that... but that only hurt more to hear. Before going to bed, he got fired up over something else, said "FUCK YOU, FUCK EVERYTHING, I'M DONE", and logged off. I didn't get any sleep that night. I spent the entire time staring at the ceiling with tears flooding my eyes. The worst part about the entire experience... I felt it was all my fault. I felt like it was my fault he felt alone. I felt like it was my fault I couldn't make a difference. I felt like I wasn't a good enough friend to live for... ...If the transitioning here is a little off, it's because, well, this is really painful to talk about. I spent a good few minutes trying to regain my composure to continue typing. He was even more serious about it the next day... wouldn't stop talking about it. How he didn't deserve me to be there after he wanted to hurt me. How I shouldn't be clinging onto him anymore. How not doing it wasn't the right path, just the one I didn't want him to take... I tried. I said every single thing that I possibly could. We talked for a good six or seven hours before I was too physically and emotionally drained to say anything more... and none of it helped. I hated myself for not knowing what to do... I couldn't stand the fact that I couldn't help someone who meant so much to me. The entire time this was going on, people on the site with the chat I mentioned at the start of this were all trying to comfort me, to say this wasn't my fault, et cetera... and I appreciated the sentiments from each and every one of them, I did, but it only helped so much... I was still completely broken during that time, because I was so afraid of losing him. Nobody could have replaced him... I don't think I could have moved on. He was everything in the world to me and then some. And I still would have blamed myself for it the entire rest of my life if something... did happen. Thankfully... someone who's better with people talked some sense into him. And it took a while, but eventually, I got this message. And even though that nightmare was dealt with... I've never truly healed from it. And even though it doesn't hurt as much now, I doubt I ever will. The whole experience does haunt me rather frequently. Anyway... that's my story about Organized Religion. Why I want to do something about it. Why I don't want anyone to feel that kind of isolation and pain ever again. Why I want everyone to love and accept each other no matter what they think about the subject. Because... I've seen firsthand what intolerance does to people. And it's sick. I truly want to do something... but is there even anything I can do? Is there any possible measure I could take that would make a difference, no matter how small or insignificant? Some of you probably think I'm selfish, wanting to do this only just now because I've been hurt personally by it. And I don't really give a damn if you do. I should have helped earlier, but I want to help now. And some of you probably hate me for coming back here just so I could make you all deal with my bullshit. And hey, I'm fine with that, too. I don't deserve the fast re-acceptance that I got. But, look... the point is... if any of you know a way that I could possibly do something about the pain and isolation that organized religion causes... please. Tell me. I've seen how horrible this problem is... I don't want anyone to have to experience it again. And I know there probably isn't, but... I just wanted to see if anybody thought anything.

Who else has read this letter? It's a real eye-opener... there was a critism video but I dont know how much of this it addressed... The bolded part is what really gets to me... can anyone honestly say that they're doing this for all the right reasons after hearing that? After reading that letter... the Invisible Children doesn't seem a whole lot better than Kony himself. Those who would do good only for the praise and not the deed itself... it concerns me, you know...?

I WANNA WATCH NASCAR SORRY WAIT DUH TODAY NOT TOMORROW EH SURE THEN ILL BE THERE FOR A LITTLE BUT NOT LONG

Damnit, don't fix the so bad it's good NEVER fix the so bad it's good. REmake? It should have had the original voice clips, think of the hilarity!

I'm not bottom tier, I need to lurk more

MEH I HAVE TWISTED METAL PS3 ANYWAY ANY OF YOU JACKWAGONS WANNA PLAY SOME MOTHER FUCKING TWISTED GOD DAMN METAL?

Hmmm we'll see

Sorry about that guys, internet girlfriend is more important than all of you

Id download it if I still used FireFox

Totally not gonna make it for the weekend parties if that's the case. I have a significant other to spend time with.

I'll also be distracted, as there's someone else I want to talk to.

jportsman1

But I can't play SC2 online with my BFF. :(

Kinda funny that a new game's out, as soon as I have a reason to get over my SC hatred. Meh.

I remember you. Just not from debating. Dat Mia, huh?

No, I actually do remember stuff about Bishop Moulder. Kinda. Maybe a bit of Wallace, too. Don't 100% recognize your screenname, though. And no. 100% retired from debating. Even if I wind up staying, which I am starting to consider, I'm not going back to that. Never would have gotten as close as I am to someone outside of Serenes if I stayed the way I was. That life's behind me. I hate debating and I hate what it made me. That thing I posted in the OP, that's what I do now, that's where my heart is.

Didn't even realize you left me one, this system's kinda weird. Also what how have more people not seen that. It's a meme everywhere on the internet. Or do you mean real life? I actually was Tommy Wiseau for Halloween. I got a wig. Spreading the word.