To Love, Or Not To Love; That Is The Question.

It's the one thing that we're all afraid of and yet crave for in our lives. We all need it in order to make it through life, but we don't want it due to the hurt and anguish that it causes us. It's this crazy little thing called love that I'm talking about.

I remember the first time that I fell in love. I was fourteen, a freshman in high school and the girl who finally got the guy that she had liked since seventh grade. I needed him by that point, and I had him. My relationship with him was rocky, confusing and very new. I had never been connected to a person like that before and I never wanted to be with anyone else, but him. His name was Zak and we lasted 13 months (January 2007-February 2008), though it felt longer for after our break-up, we were still close and we still got together sometimes. My young and naive heart was finally broken a few months after our break-up when I realized that he was using me after our initial relationship and he had gotten a new girlfriend who harassed me over the internet for many months. By then I was like, "I never want to fall in love again,".

Not too long after our break-up, I began to fall for this guy, whose name won't be mentioned. He was really nice, good looking, but he had an emotional dark side. It was really hard to get him to open up to me, but when he finally did, I began to fall harder. Nothing happened between us because he was ended up dating a girl right before the summer started and I had quickly gotten over him. This was when I, officially, declared that I'd never fall in love again.

Summer '08 was awesome. I went out all the time with my friends and had many great adventures and times with them. I grew up, but I was still naive about love and my past relationship with Zak.

The summer ended and my junior year began. This was the first time in my life that I didn't have a crush on someone since I began noticing boys when I was five. I was independent and I was becoming a more mature and better friend than I was before. School was normal and I was happy to see that I didn't have any classes with Zak. I only had lunch with him, which wasn't too bad because I could ignore him (he sat at my table because his friends are my friends and still are). I was pretty much over him by then, but it was still hard and weird, in a way, to see him and talk to him sometimes.

I tried out for my school's FAME group, which is a singing and dancing performance group that only accepts about thirty kids a year. I tried out with my choir friends, Mike, Luciano, Andrew and Christina, so it made it easier and less nerve wracking on myself. I didn't make the group, which everyone else from choir did. I was so heart broken, but during the whole freaking out about FAME, I began to have a little crush on Andrew. I had almost all of my classes with him and he was my chemistry lab partner at that time. We grew really close, especially after spraining my ankle in October, which led my to have to use crutches for a week and a half. He carried my school stuff between all of my classes and even to my bus at the end of the day. He was so helpful and that's when I really began to fall for him. I invited him to my Halloween party and he ended up being to only guy there, which was funny. He and I were attached for, pretty much, the whole night. My ankle was still a bit sore at that point and he still got me whatever I needed. It was pretty funny actually, now that I think of it, that he would get up to get my a soda or something and I'd argue with him about it, saying that I could get my own stuff. About a week later, he asked me out and I said yes. That was on November 6 and I still say that that was the most nerve-wracking and best day of my life. Nerve-wracking because I knew what was going to happen that day, but I wasn't sure if I was ready for it or not and happy for obvious reasons.

I'm in love now, but I realized that I've always been in love. Love isn't about sex, attraction or dating, it's about finding people whom you truly care about and know that you'd fall apart in your life without them. I'm "in love" with my family, my besties and the people in my life whom I'd do anything for. Yes, I love my boyfriend more than others, that's expected, but I don't need a boyfriend to show me what love is really about. We all have love in our lives. No matter how terrible our lives our and how much we think that no one cares, there is always someone there whom we go to that truly cares about us.

The point of this post was for me to show you all my view on what love is. It has taken me a long time for me to see this and I know that I've got a lot more to learn, but for right now, I think that I've found what love truly is for myself because love is such an opinionated subject and I know that some whom are reading this will disagree with me and I know that some will agree with me and have more to add on this. I'm sorry if anyone is/was offended by anything I've said in this post.

The title is a homage to William Shakespeare's Hamlet ,in which the original quote is, "To be, or not to be, that is the question." and the quote "...crazy little thing called love..." is from the song, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Elvis Presley. All rights go to whom ever the owners are.

War in Iraq; Barney for President

This is a sticky topic for it has many opinions and many answers, but I thought that I'd get my own opinion out there on how I feel.

War. What's the point of it? How can we retain peace by killing others? Why start one at all? How does a war start in the first place? These are questions that I've been asking since I was young, and even more now that I'm older and one of the hot topic amongst teens is this War in Iraq. I'm constantly hearing kids at my school argue about their opinions on this, and even teachers arguing with students about it. I try to stay out of these conversations, but now it's inevitable. Here's what I think...

To me, war is pointless. From learning about it in History class to hearing it on the news every night, no one or nothing has showed me the point of sending innocent people, even if they volunteer, to fight and kill other innocent people. I know that that's a general statement, but it's pretty much what we're doing. We're sending these men and women to fight in a foreign country and kill them just to try to make peace. What kind of peace is it if a country is losing thousands of soldiers and civilians every year? To me, peace can't be made this way. It should be made by compromise and talk, not violence. By sending our troops over to Iraq and those other countries in the Middle East, we're just pretty much doing the same thing that they did to us on 9/11. It's not justice! It's not solving anything. I'm so tired of hearing about these young people die in battle. Some of these people are two or three years older than myself! They had so much coming for them in the future and yet, they're killed trying to save our country. I'm also tired of hearing Obama and McCain say that they're gonna pull our troops out asap. I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen; we're too deep in this battle. When this war, this killing, going to end? I'll probably be old and dieing by the time that this war ends. That's nearly half of my life hearing about these young and older people dieing because of this. Why can't we just live peacefully with each other? Why can't we settle this in a civil matter? Because we don't know how to. It's because we're not sure how to speak to people civilly and non-violently.

So this brings me to a conversation that I had with one of my best friends. It was random and it was funny. We were talking about this topic, war, and about the current presidential election. I, personally, don't think that either of the current candidates are able to lead our nation. In joking, I said why not have Barney, the great purple dinosaur, be president. She laughed at me, but then I began to seriously think this. Not necessarily have Barney be our president, but someone who is like him be president. I mean, he teaches us how to share and care and how to be nice to others along with other basic things that we learn in our youngin' years. Someone like Barney could, possibly, make our nation a bit more peaceful and, possibly, help end some of the violence.

I know what I'm saying may be just or unjust to some people out there, but this is how I feel and this is my opinion. It may sound childish because I am, technically, a child. I'm sorry for anyone who is offended or bothered by this post and my opinion. Thank you for reading this. =D