Drugs Or Me

First of all I'd just like to say I never in a million years thought I'd have to ask someone to choose between doing drugs or being with me. Second, I certainly never thought someone would actually pick the drugs. Holy fuck.

There are so many questions I have because this seems so irrational to me. Of all the things you could leave someone for, of all the things better than having a girlfriend, or even all the things you could get in a fight over, a drug just sounds silly. I don't date people who do drugs. I don't get involved in drugs. I don't even want to know about it. I'm still shocked this happened.

This weekend made me wonder about the last few months. I'd spent a good part of this year working towards a relationship with this guy, and the last few weeks when it became pretty obvious we were essentially boyfriend and girlfriend I was excited. I liked him and I knew he liked me, and last weekend I wanted to make our relationship official. Only he dropped this bomb on me and then watched me leave. He asked me if I was sure this was a big enough deal that I was going to end the relationship over it, but I should have asked him the same thing. Obviously, though, we both knew it was. If I'd been thinking clearly I would have asked him if he was really willing to let me leave, if this one night was worth losing me. So what was I these last few months? What were we if it was that easy for him to let me go?

It's so hard to see someone you really like make a decision like that. There's no way I can look at him the same way after he tells me he'd rather have a night of drugs than a relationship with me; it's made me physically sick to my stomach to think about it and I don't think I've ever been more disappointed in someone I liked. I want to yell at him, make him feel like shit for making me feel like shit, to hear him say it wasn't worth it and he regrets it and wishes he didn't do it, but even if I do yell he won't say those things. I don't know if he realizes how bad that hurt me; he's apologized a bunch of times, but I still want to say everything I've been thinking to him to make myself feel better. "I'm sorry" isn't enough to make my complete embarrassment over wanting a relationship with someone who'd rather do drugs go away.

I do have to wonder, though, what he'll tell those who ask why we broke up. Anything he says will make him look like a dick (except to those who were doing it with him). Two of his friends watched me leave. I was holding all of my stuff in my overnight bag, visibly crying and giving him a hug goodbye when they came in, instantly saw what was going on and froze, just watching. I turned and left, trying my hardest to not start sobbing, and the three of them watched me go. When I made it to my car I couldn't hold back anymore and cried until I saw their taxi pull up, then I moved my car and cried some more. Never in a million years did I think that's why I would break up with someone, and never did I think it would hurt this much.

I'm a good girlfriend. I cook and bake, I bring you shit when you're sick, I don't make you watch chick flicks, I split the bill, I give massages and I'm willing to go do things. It doesn't seem fair that I was picked second to a drug.

You Think You Know

Being disappointed in people is starting to get a little old. Scratch that– being disappointed in guys is getting really old. Discovering major flaws in people just when you're ready to take a decent sized step with them really sucks. Hard. It makes it especially hard to have to make these discoveries twice in 6 months.

I'll admit I'm tired of being single. I miss being in a relationship, miss being in love, miss that certainty and comfortability that comes with a certain level of commitment. I get hit on all the goddamn time, in places I'm really uncomfortable getting attention (for future reference, all guys reading this, making noises at a girl while she's working out isn't going to make her want you) and... I don't know, I just don't like it anymore.

It's not that I thought this relationship was going to go very far, but finding out things you really don't like about people you really do like hurts, regardless of the relationship. And feeling like you came in second on top of everything is just depressing. So, here it goes again, back to looking for someone to spend my time with. Let the fun and games begin.

Dumb Animals

I'm not the only one disgusted.

Spoiler alert: the dumb animals are us.

Thanks to poaching for a completely made up reason, there are now 7 Northern white rhinos left in the world. One captive Northern white rhino died recently in a zoo in the Czech Republic, leaving the captive count to 3. And two of them are what some call reproductively challenged. Also, old. So there's no captive breeding, period. Those 4 that were shipped of to Africa a 18 months ago better be making babies STAT.

Angalifu likely represents exactly 1/3 of his species.

It's long been known that rhino horn is used as a traditional Chinese medicine, supposedly curing everything from fevers to AIDS. First, we can ignore the obvious logic that if rhino horn did cure anything, we'd be raising rhinos for the exact purpose of harvesting their horns. Now that all reason is removed, let's look at China, one of the biggest players in the rhino horn black market. One man, the retired head of the National Traditional Chinese Medicine Strategy Research Project, believes it's only a matter of time until rhinos are bred for their horn, and is actively trying to re-legalize the use of rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine. At least this guy (Jia Qian) is 70 and doesn't have his whole life left to see his goal realized, and if he does rely on rhino horn for his medicine he should be dead pretty darn soon. So that's good.

But in the meantime, Jia believes

"the reason the Chinese government hasn't used rhino horn for these diseases is because some people were Western trained and tainted by Western thought. Other people were weak and gave in to foreign pressure."

Fuck you, Jia. Western scientists have intensely scrutinized rhino horn to see if there is anything even remotely worth using for the benefit of our own species and there's absolutely nothing. It's just hair. Simple hair formed in an unusual way (no other animal has a horn made entirely of hair), but not miraculous and certainly not medicinal. But he, and others, believe strongly in its use and advocate breeding "endangered medicinal-use animals" to deal with the increase in demand.

However, and this is a big point, the only reason there's an increase in demand is because Jia and the Chinese government are encouraging its citizens to use rhino horn. There's already a rhino farm where 60 or so white rhinos are kept in concrete pens (under the guise of creating an African safari-type park for tourism, despite the fact that plans for this park halted over two years ago) and are used in horn harvesting experiments (under another guise of reintroducing the animals into the wild through breeding centers) which is 100% against CITES and definitely not why South Africa gave them to China. What does China gain by doing something the vast majority of the world disagrees with? Why does China eat dogs?

Nola, the sweetest girl to live out most of her species. She's 1/7 her population.

But here's some good news: South Africa just sentenced 2 poachers to 16 years in prison after catching them red handed - literally - with a freshly cut rhino horn that they later matched with DNA analysis to a dead rhino. And then in Kenya some poachers shot an elephant with poison arrows, killed it, roasted its meat, and then died from eating poisoned elephant. Serves you all right, you fucking assholes.

But You Could Be Anything

One of the things that makes humans different from all other animals is our ability to recognize decision making, especially bad decision making, in our peers. It's so obvious when our friends go for a relationship that's completely wrong, stay in a job that does nothing for them, or start or continue down whatever destructive path they're choosing. But it's fucking impossible to see these same things in ourselves.

One other thing that makes us humans different is that even if we do know we can do better in whatever aspect of our lives, it's an entirely different thing to know those close to you can do better but don't take the effort. It's so obvious to you, but they can't see it, or won't see it, or see it but refuse to do anything about it. There is someone who is (or was) in my life who refuses to earn his full potential, someone who was with the exactly wrong kind of guy, someone who pines for the exact wrong kind of guy, someone who has made every wrong decision ever presented to him, someone who makes poor financial decisions, someone who could be a great boyfriend but finds excuses, someone who lets one decision run her life, someone who hides behind the decisions of others and someone who makes decisions I'll never understand. And then there's me, who sees these people blindly making certain decisions, and recognizing how I make those same decisions every day.

Thing is, I know there are good things out there for me, and I know there are better things out there for those I care about. I know we have to want them bad enough to change aspects of our lives and go after the better things. That knowledge makes us different from other animals. Whether or not we use that knowledge, however, is a completely different story.