It was a couple years ago when one of my closest friends attempted suicide. When I saw the suicide note online, I was skeptical. I did not think he would try. That was until the next day, when I returned to school. The teachers and principal brought everybody in my grade to talk about my friend’s attempted suicide in private. I was stunned. Thankfully, his attempt was a failure, and he was unharmed.
Suicide is a very dark and sensitive subject. In 2012, 40,600 suicides were reported that year. In case you didn’t know, suicide is the act of one killing him/herself. It affects everybody, whether they liked that person or not. Nobody deserves to follow the route of suicide. As somebody who is suicidal, I know how difficult it is to try and push away the horrible thoughts. I understand how crappy one can feel when all you want to do is curl up and disappear. This may sound extremely cliché and impossible, but you can overcome these feelings. You are important, special, and you are brave enough to get through this. If you are suicidal, I, someone you may or may not know, believe you can get through this. You just need some help. It’s okay to have feelings like this, but when it gets too serious, then it needs to be helped. Okay, let’s take the place of somebody who knows a person who is suicidal. What do you do? Talk to them about how they’re feeling. Also, tell a counselor or the person’s relative about what is going through this person’s mind, that way they have some kind of “warning” and could help this at an earlier stage. If this person begins to show signs that they will hurt him/herself or attempt, tell someone IMMEDIATELY. Whether you think they’re actually going to do it or not, just tell somebody. I was cynical when I first saw my friend’s suicide note, just like everybody else who read it. I didn’t say or do anything. Only one person took action, and they did the right thing. Everybody else believed that he was just saying it and wouldn’t actually attempt. Obviously, that was a big mistake that could have taken a life. I know it’s difficult to escape from the demons, I know you’re ready to give up, but just hold on for a bit longer. This one time when I was feeling really suicidal, and just about ready to give up, my one friend said: “None of that makes you any less wonderful or brilliant. You’re still a creative, brave survivor with so much ahead of you. … You’ve got a million reasons to keep going. Stuff’s bad right now, but it isn’t always going to be. It sounds like such a cliché, but I promise it will get better.”
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the girl in the red and blue dress.
the girl in the red and blue dress who thought that her life was a mess, she held her head high she tried not to cry the girl in the red and blue dress. Note: This article addresses sensitive subjects, including rape.
My Bar Mitzvah was not only a celebration or a scheme to make money, my Bar Mitzvah was about the transition from childhood to manhood. This transformation meant that no longer would my parents be responsible for the sins that I committed or the actions that I took. As large of a burden as this was, it was a necessary one on my way to adulthood. Today, however, far too many youths are stopping short of adulthood and wrongly concluding that their actions have no detrimental consequences. An absence of true responsibility has stagnated development in our youth and thus created a liberal orthodoxy in which even the most heinous of things goes; it is for this reason that rape culture has become so pervasive at our colleges. Until college students learn to grow up or at least reason that they’re responsible for their own actions, the status quo will remain the same. Click the Read More link to finish this article. Many of us have wondered: why can we tickle each other, but not ourselves? Many studies believe that the answer to this question may be a key to understanding our own “consciousness and self-awareness.” Therefore, many universities and laboratories were willing to go to “extreme lengths” in order to enable people to tickle themselves in the lab, overcoming unconscious barriers.
The interest with “self-tickling” stems from the idea that the ability to separate the movements of yourself and the movements of other people is a sophisticated aspect of our “sense of self.” While many aspects of our actions illustrate this idea, tickling is often used as an example because it is “easily replicated in the lab.” Additionally, it is easy to demonstrate because the reaction from tickling oneself contrasts greatly with the reaction from being tickled by an outside source. One lab, in University College London, conducted an experiment in which subjects’ brains were scanned as scientists tickled the subject’s hands, and then again when the subjects tried to tickle their own hands. This study concluded that as we move our limbs, the cerebellum predicts the body’s movements, and then sends out a dampening signal to the place in our brains where the sense of touch is produced. As a result, when we tickle ourselves, our brain has already anticipated this tickling sensation, and has blocked it from causing the usual discomfort or pleasure that many people receive when being tickled. It was in my bowl. Staring at me, this happens every year I thought, this year was hopefully the final year of my thanksgiving torture. The bright orange soup looked like radioactive waste that my grandmother put in my bowl. My parents were telling me I would like it, and how wrong could they be? I put some on my spoon and bravely lowered the slime into my throat, the taste flooded my tongue destroying the homes of my taste buds. Or so I thought, it tasted...FANTASTIC! I couldn’t believe that I had mistrusted this wonderful allie for more than a second. My grandmothers squash soup was the best form of squash I had ever had.
I see America posting, the varied posts I see,
Those of keyboards, each one tapping as it should be blithe and strong, The teenager texting as they do their homework, The boy bands posting his as he makes ready for concert, or leaves the dressing room, The cats yowling on the screen, the youtubers talking on the laptop face, The Kardashians doing nothing as they sit in their palaces, the gamers gaming as they sit, The google’s words, the selfie’s on it’s way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The cutsie posting of the mommy blogger, or of the young women at work, or of the girl blogging or texting, Each posting what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Posting with open fingers their strong melodious posts again and
again, over and over. just wait. one day, some day. direct your attention, hold on. continue waking up. morning after morning day, after day. one day soon. some day soon. it'll all be over Mariska Hargitay was born January 23, 1964 in Santa Monica, California. Her parents, father, Mickey Hargitay and mother, Jayne Mansfield, were both actors. Her mother tragically died in a car crash when Hargitay was three. Her father remarried, and they raise Hargitay and her brothers and gave them a normal life. Hargitay attended UCLA and majored in theater. Her first motion picture was Ghoulies(1984) where she played Donna. Her current role is on the popular TV series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit(1999) where she plays Detective Olivia Benson.
Mariska Hargitay is an inspirational woman to me because of her work in the Joyful Heart Foundation and No More, which as both foundations that have a mission to end abuse of all forms. The Joyful Heart Foundation is foundation that Hargitay started to “heal, educate and empower survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse, and to shed light into the darkness that surrounds these issues”(Joyful Heart Foundation Website: Vision and Mission). After Hargitay started working on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, she began research into her role and was shocked by the statistics: “One in three women report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. Every two minutes in the United States, somebody is sexually assaulted. More than five children die everyday in this country as a result of abuse or neglect, and up to 15 million children witness domestic violence in their homes every year”(Joyful Heart Foundation Website: Founder’s Corner) Before Hargitay started the foundation, she was receiving letters from viewers, and they would reveal that they were victims of physical or sexual abuse. Hargitay was so moved by the fact that the viewers had reached out to her, and she wanted to do something to help them: “…I felt a great responsibility to these brave women and men and wanted them to know that they had been heard and that they could have hope. I studied the subject, trained to become a crisis counselor and used my visibility as an actress to become an advocate. I knew I wanted to play a role in healing that pain, ending the isolation, and honoring the great courage survivors were showing by reaching out for help”(Joyful Heart Foundation Website: Founder’s Corner). As a result, she started the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004 to help these victims. The foundation helps victims by providing a network of resources. They also have their own groundbreaking retreats that provide traditional counseling and therapy. At the top of the Joyful Heart Foundation website’s home page is a quote from Mariska Hargitay- “It’s simple physics: the greater the number of people willing to lift, the lighter the load that each individual must carry”. |