Granted

“ you don’t realize how fast things can fall apart until they do, makes you never want to give up anything good again.”

This is a quote from a movie I am passively watching with Ruby. What If starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan. Ruby is mostly watching it, with me moving in and out of the room. But for one of the few moments I was watching it, I caught this line. Which is what I’m going to talk about next, taking things for granted. It’s very easy to take things for granted, we do it everyday, all the time. When we get upset, annoyed, sad, etc. we take what is around us for granted. After my dad passed away, I obviously started to not take things for granted, especially my family. The idea with taking things for granted made me extremely sensitive and led to creating divides between people around me who I noticed were taking things for granted. When people would make comments about hating their parents because they did something, when people would call their parents vulgar names, when people would tell me they wish their parents were dead. Now, I want to add joking about death is completely fine with me. People always get super awkward when they say something like “ I want to die I have so much homework” and “ I want to kill my sister she keeps taking my shirt.” You absolutely do not need to apologize for anything. Trust me, I wanted to kill my professor this semester for all the work he gave us, and I could throw myself off a bridge during finals week. These are not the same thing. I don’t care what it is on earth your parents did, unless they are physically or mentally putting you in a dangerous state, they have given you the world and you should not take it for granted. Say it to someone else but my god, don’t tell me how much you genuinely hate your mom or dad repeatedly. You know what I would give to have my dad yell at me to do my homework? Or scold me for having a party without his permission? Anything on earth I would do for my dad to be here and teach me things. In moments of hot heat I understand we can say things we regret. But there are people, people who I am very close with, who relentlessly have to talk about how much they hate a parent for the most arbitrary things. Calling them vulgar names, ignoring them and treating them with disgust for no reason, ranting about how much they loathe them with no real reason why. Why waste your time hating someone who loves you so much? Someone you’re so lucky to have? When millions of kids don’t have what you have, the love you have, why are you spending all of it with so much hate? Do not blatantly treat your parent with disrespect with absolutely no justification. You have not earned the right to treat your parent with such disgust. They feed you, give you a roof, pay for you tuition, take you on trips, they’ve given up so much for you. It gets me so insanely riled up to the point where I have to literally cut people out of my life because of it. Just be thankful for what you have, it’s so much less work to love than to hate. There’s a lot I could say about taking things for granted, and we’re all guilty of it. Just take time out of your day to say thank you and I love you to the people around you. I get it, i’m writing an essay about spreading love with a massive amount of anger spilling out of my fingers. Stop wishing for something else, something different, something that you can’t have. Just appreciate what you have, and be thankful.

Me pretending to choke my mom on September 4th, 2014 because she said we couldn't have chinese food for dinner