As I type I'm at a friends' house doing emergency babysitting duty...she got sick and one of her kids is just getting over it.  I got my flu shot, though, so no worries.

A lot has gone on lately, and I can't divulge every little thing but here's what I can talk about.  First of all, getting over a friends' suicide never gets any easier.  This was the third time a friend killed himself but this time it was my best friend.  His father still blames me because I was the last person he spoke to. For a while I was getting a lot of emails and phone calls, and right as I was getting ready to change my number it all stopped.  It may still happen, though, so if you're on my contact list do not be surprised to get a text one day to let you know that I did.

I took a break from my work with the fire department to recover and got back to it in the first weekend of September.  Then, on the 11th, as I was headed to a doctor's appointment, I started having trouble breathing and nearly the worst chest pain I have ever experienced (perfect timing, right?).  The doc sent me to the ER and while at first they thought I might have pneumothorax (a collapsed lung), it turned out to be pleurisy.  They also discovered that I have hypothyroidism and am becoming anemic.  That could explain how I'm building enough muscle to push a truck but not losing the weight I've been trying to fight off.

Just before that incident, however, I went on a date.  I started talking to a girl who seemed to be very well put together, had her head on her shoulders, and seemed to be VERY into me.  We went out and had a fantastic time.  Then, I heard nothing from her.  I sent her a couple of text messages to no avail.  About a month later I ran her email through Facebook and found her under a different name--and listed as being in a relationship with a specific person who had left convincing messages all over her page.

There's been a lot of crap that's gone on this year.  As I said, there's a lot I can't talk about.  I will say that time and a lot of thinking have brought me to the conclusion that I have trusted people who never deserved my trust.  As I mentioned in another blog, I let a person back into my life after we hadn't spoken for three years.  When we parted ways she didn't know the truth about what had gone on.  She apparently didn't understand, however, that people change; words and deeds cannot be taken back, and once you've hurt a person you can't go back to the way things were.  I tried to start over but she wanted to pick up our lives from before the big meltdown and when it didn't happen that way, she dropped me like a hot rock again.  What floors me still is that she openly said that she understood that I had been hurt by everyone around me but she wasn't willing to be a part of the solution.  In so doing she, too, proved that she had never been a real friend.

I had one coworker tell me I should ask another one out because, quote, "you never know, Mel, it could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you!"  It turned out to be a disaster.  I didn't even get to the point where there was any asking out, because I figured out the truth the hard way.  Seems this guy just wanted some drama.  Then when I let him know I didn't appreciate him lying to me, he turned it back around on me and said, "people will talk, honey, you need to get used to that."

I've had enough of all the shit going on in my life.  I don't understand why people can't be the loyal friends they claim to be, why they can't be straightforward, why people would lie if the truth would do them better.  I'm no angel.  I've made my mistakes.  But I've also tried damn hard to make up for the stupidity of my younger years.  I do my damndest to do right by everyone around me and somehow I still get hurt in the end.  Either I have poor taste in friends or I really am still trying too damn hard to matter to people who will never really care. 

In the meantime...I'm getting ready to get back to school.  I'm taking advanced pharmacology and EKG this semester.  If I don't get accepted to the 2011 paramedic program, I'm going to start working towards finishing my criminal justice MA.  My dad picked up the guitar again and once he's gotten comfortable with playing a few songs we'll start jamming together. 

I'm really beginning to wonder when I'm going to get to enjoy life, though.  I don't want to live to be too old.  I'd like to think there will be something to look forward to somewhere along the way.

I found myself saying something just a couple of hours ago that I didn't expect to hear from my own mouth:

I'm afraid I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life because I have never in my life fit in anywhere and I don't believe at this point that I ever will.  And I don't see the point in trying to take care of myself if that's never going to change.

Everybody talks about being different.  When I was in high school, "being different" was all the rage.  It was cool.  It was the only way to be.  You had to find some way to be different, otherwise you didn't fit in.  I always thought that was a bit hypocritical; talking about being different, being a rebel, in order to gain acceptance defeated the purpose.  To me it was putting on an act just like every other group so you could fit in.

I was the kid who never fit in anywhere.  Not at school, not at church, not even at home.  I grew up and tried to pretend that I didn't give a damn--I got tattoos and piercings, played in several rock bands, and tried to convince everybody that their opinion didn't matter.  Truth was, it always did.  Today someone brought up a very good point linking that past with my present.

I always wanted to fit in, but when I was a kid the people I tried to fit in with were the popular ones.  I always wanted to be in the in-crowd.  That hasn't changed today.  I don't fit in with that crowd any more now than I did then, no matter how hard I've tried.  I have questioned my sanity for continuing to try to matter to people who don't give a damn, and as much as I remind myself that it's my mind and my life, I keep wishing it would change. 

I used to believe that God always had a reason for bringing certain people into your life.  I'm not sure I believe that anymore.  One person who hurt me deeply several years ago came back into my life last year, and I thought there was a reason for it.  She only ended up hurting me all over again.  I can't see any reason at all for our paths crossing.  There are actually very few people I've had "friendships" with that I really believe were in my life for any real reason now. 

I don't belong at either of my jobs, really.  I don't belong at home.  I don't belong in conservative circles because I'm gay, and I don't belong in the gay community because I refuse to toe the party line.  I really am different, and I'm not sure I like it.  I often wonder if it's everyone else or if it's just me.  But at the same time, while I wish more than anything that I belonged somewhere, there's a piece of me now that has been hurt so many times that I'm afraid of actually making that connection with another person.

Maybe I'll always be that walking contradiction in terms.  Maybe it's worth fighting.  Maybe it's not.  Being truly different isn't all it was cracked up to be to that rebellious group in high school.  At least they were happy in their fantasy.

It's Rosh Hashanah, everybody!  I'm with my family today, enjoying the day and their company.  I'm also--as usual--watching the news.  FOX News in particular.  (Liberals, roll your eyes now and start the familiar "FOX isn't news" mantra...face it, they're getting John Stossel, they've already gotten Bernie Goldberg and Chris Wallace, you can't just say they're making up their own news or get pissed about their "right-wing agenda".)

I just finished watching Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday section featuring ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis and Republican congressman Darrell Issa (don't tell me they're biased--you'd never see Issa or any other known conservative sitting next to such a die-hard liberal on any of the other major networks!).  Wallace was fair; he actually gave much of the floor to Lewis.  I found it very interesting, both amusing and at the same time irritating, that Lewis was completely incapable of addressing Issa.  Not once did she so much as look at him.  She didn't turn to face him.  She couldn't even speak to the man--any time Issa posed a civil and rational question to Lewis, using "you" and "your" and other direct, personal words and phrases, Lewis would ONLY speak to Wallace.  "What Mr. Issa says is interesting," she'd say, or, "I'm glad Mr. Issa asked that question."  She wouldn't even acknowledge he was in the same building, let alone sitting not two feet from her.

I daresay that behavior was absolutely outrageous.  Can you imagine if Darrell Issa had done that?  He'd have been tarred and feathered.  It's every bit as outrageous as Obama making a point to blitz all of the Sunday morning news shows...with the only exception being FOX.  He wouldn't give one second of airtime to FOX, yet he'd talk to every other big-name network.

This week, Andrew Breitbart's www.biggovernment.com began running a series of explosive videos in which two independent journalists posing as pimp and prostitute ran a sting and caught at every single office ACORN employees giving them advice on evading detection for their illicit activities by finding ways to hoodwink the IRS and others who might come sniffing.  In some cases, the ACORN workers gave tips on how to hide the fact that they were using underage girls from South America in a prostitution ring.  When the videos first came out ACORN threatened to sue and put pressure on the Maryland AG's office.  That AG first tried to threaten Breitbart and his reporters with an investigation into supposed illegal wiretapping for recording the sessions.  Today, after threatening FOX with a lawsuit for showing the videos, Lewis appeared with Wallace in a concerted damage control effort.  Obama, though, is trying to claim he didn't know what was going on and that he doesn't care.

I think Obama would rather have dental surgery without anesthesia than talk to a FOX reporter.  He'd rather talk to the reporters who fawned over him when he walked by because they won't challenge him--they'll ask him what appears to be a tough question, much like George Stephanopoulos did this morning on ABC, then once he's given his answer they let it go.  They won't ask him to elaborate, they just move on.  What happened to really asking the tough questions?  I seriously think everyone in the MSM has lost their balls.  I think they dropped off and rolled down their pant legs, and they didn't stop to think before kicking them away as little more than an annoyance.

Stephanopoulos asked Obama about ACORN, to which Obama stuttered and finally said that he wasn't paying attention to the ACORN controversy and the news about Congress cutting off funding to the community-organizing group.  It stopped there, though.  It went no further.  Stephanopoulos allowed Obama to deny being involved and didn't point out a single shred of evidence (of which there is quite a bit) that Obama is, in fact, heavily involved with ACORN.  He always has been.  Where were the challenges about Obama's previous legal work on ACORN's behalf?  Where were the challenges about Obama training ACORN workers for Project Vote?  Where were the questions about Obama giving more than $830,000 to Citizens Services, Inc., an ACORN front organization, for "advance work" on his campaign--work such as sound, lighting, lodging, polling and license fees.  Mind you, ACORN and CSI are both supposedly just community organizing groups that canvas for low-income families.  And the Obama campaign had to later revise their federal reports on the payments to CSI.  They lied about it on the report they initially filed.

Nobody in the MSM has dared to cross The One and ask questions about funding, ties to ACORN, or questionable practices.  Hardball my Texan ass--the MSM doesn't know how to do it anymore.  They couldn't even play real hardball with Sarah Palin!  What the hell kind of question is "what magazines do you read to get your news?"  Are you freakin' serious?

We need to face facts.  Bertha Lewis and ACORN are a criminal racket and Obama is up to his eyeballs with them.  He says he's not paying much attention, but the reality is that he's just trying to distance himself from his most ardent supporters in an attempt to save face.  Plausible deniability is the new chic with Democrats.  First Charles Gibson pretended to know nothing about the ACORN scandal, then Nancy Pelosi followed suit.  Today, Obama played dumb.  Obama and ACORN are frick and frack, folks.  You can't separate 'em.