Even as a kid, I was horribly uncomfortable with the holidays. I never really understood why I got to have certain things and other people didn't. I had a friend in middle school whom I took home every day after school and let her have as much cereal and poptarts as she wanted, but I didn't really think about it further than "Well, I'm being nice." I didn't know until I was actually in high school (and not living there anymore) that she was living in a trailer park in a city--a term here which is loosely used--that had little to no running water. Her father was a veteran, divorced from her mother, and they were on welfare.
I know they're not in as dire a situation as Tony and Michael, but what you wrote got me thinking. It's just so easy to sit here with my clothes and home and computer and not think about anything outside of that, it's so easy to be blind and absorb myself into my little personal dramas and forget about the people who don't have that kind of luxury, and it just makes me feel guilty, shitty, even. That's why, just in the process of reading this, I couldn't help but feel my respect for you grow and I don't even know. I want to do something to help these people, even just locally. Thanks for reminding us that there's more to holidays than gross excess and getting the material things we want.
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on 2007-12-14 02:08 am (UTC)I know they're not in as dire a situation as Tony and Michael, but what you wrote got me thinking. It's just so easy to sit here with my clothes and home and computer and not think about anything outside of that, it's so easy to be blind and absorb myself into my little personal dramas and forget about the people who don't have that kind of luxury, and it just makes me feel guilty, shitty, even. That's why, just in the process of reading this, I couldn't help but feel my respect for you grow and I don't even know. I want to do something to help these people, even just locally. Thanks for reminding us that there's more to holidays than gross excess and getting the material things we want.