humanity

For better or for worse, relationships reveal the core of the human condition.

We Meet Again
I’ve been dreaming of this moment forever. She actually texted me back. And she wanted to meet. It’s winter now and I plan to meet her upstairs at McLaughlin’s this time, not on the patio. I brought her another bottle of her favorite wine. A $60 bottle about two feet tall as a joke. Gawd I have missed this woman. It’s been 8 months since we last met. Then she ghosted me. None of the pain and frustration of these past months matters right now though. I’m about to see her. I order my wine and have half a glass down before I hear footsteps on the wooden stairs. I’m so lucky right now. The six tables around me are empty. We have a balcony view of the restaurant below and I chose to sit at a table in the middle, not too close to either the balcony or the stairs. Privacy matters.
By Marie Lavender6 years ago in Humans
The Double Standard of Halloween Hype vs. Christmas Hype
As the exuberant rays of the summer sun begin to set, I grievously await not only the cool breeze and the prismatic mortality of the trees’ foliage (anyone who says fall is beautiful is a sadist), but the beginning of the social media epidemic “it’s almost Halloween season.” This year, I saw these types of posts as early as August 29th! It always vexed me to see posts like this, not only because I just never liked Halloween or October (for reasons I will discuss below), but because these very same posters had a lot of negative to say when someone DARED make a post about Christmas before December 1st. People acted as if it was so distasteful and offensive, meanwhile they shared their excitement for the spookiest day of the year months premature. So don’t get your jack-o-lanterns out yet, because we’re going to explore this double standard of holiday hype and why it should not exist.
By Mark Janz6 years ago in Humans
Thank You for Your Honesty
So often we, as a collective human race, shy away from being completely honest with one another for fear that we will hurt someone in return. In all actuality, not being completely honest is more hindering than being honest. Because you see, in honesty- there is growth. There is opportunity, strength, betterment, teaching moments, laughter, and there is hope.
By Emily Christyson6 years ago in Humans
Why Everyone Should Be Learning About Relationship Intelligence
It’s easy to underestimate the importance of caring about the relationships in your life. There is a misconception that those connections that the most important to us must withstand all challenges while the others who are not as integral to our well being might not matter that much. Both of these statements discard the complexities of relationships and our basic needs as well.
By Inga 6 years ago in Humans
What Color Are You Seeing?
Like many people you’ve probably heard phrases such as ‘never give up!’ Truly a powerful phrase, although you can only keep tackling the same situations with the same approach until it comes back to bite you in the butt. This in turn becomes stressful and very hard to keep up with especially if it’s scolding your kids every time they don’t finish their chores. Why does this happen? Ultimately, when situations arise that aren’t ideal we tend to emphasize things in a way that takes power away. I have witnessed this myself with how people talk to each other expecting things to be ‘done’ correctly. This color of seeing something as ‘wrong’ and fighting to fix it creates two opposing sides. With two opposing sides the reaction is to defend yourself and fight back because it’s human nature! Of course a child will fight back, they might even cut deep with their words which perpetuates this duel further. Wouldn’t it be swell if there was a way to skip that stress and extra fight just to make sure your child not only gets their chores done, but also learns mutual respect?
By Jackyys_6 years ago in Humans
Life Lessons from a Straight Shooter
The older I get the more I see people’s true colors, I’m not even sure if a truly “good” person even exists at all. Sometimes it really affects me. I want to see the good in everyone and I can, but then as time goes on the not so good surfaces and you are left to wonder if the “good” is good enough?! So you weigh things out and try to explain why a person might be this way or that.. what/who helped create these “bad” parts? Can you help them? Can you support them? Take their abuse? Love them anyway???
By Sarah Morin McAuliffe6 years ago in Humans
The Old Man Who Looked Out the Window!
“Pass it here. Quick!” Billy kicked the can over to Donny. Donny kicked the soda can through an imaginary goal, “Score!” So caught up in their play, the boys didn’t see Brent Flanagan watching them from his picture window.
By Don Feazelle6 years ago in Humans
What Does It Mean to Be Human?
What does it mean to be human? It's a question I have been thinking about for a while now, and I just can't seem to find a solid answer for it...
By Osana Lindsay6 years ago in Humans
Relationships and Addiction
Now that she had healed from the accident and trying to move on with her life Kristi wanted to find a friend to go out with occasionally. The only problem is that she wasn’t one to go out to bars alone and her old friends had moved away. Kristi wasn’t looking for a serious relationship when she joined the dating site; someone to have fun with.
By Kristi Wright6 years ago in Humans
Dating Politics as a Black, Queer, Trans, Hiv+ Since Birth
Positively Positive Education Productions is a black, transgender person living with HIV since birth; dating is difficult even more of a challenge when you are aromantic and asexual too. For starters, my HIV is not a death sentence; I am a longterm non-progressor, sometimes called elite controllers who are individuals infected with HIV, maintains a CD4 count greater than 500 without antiretroviral therapy with a detectable viral load (Kumar, 2013). Basically, my immune system is like a normal person without HIV; I never had to take medicine; however, I still go to the doctors twice each year to complete labs to make sure my viral load is manageable (I've been doing this since I was born). Currently, now I take a HIV medicine called Genvoya (a $1,000 a month medicine for 30 pills) and I've been taking it for about a year now at the age of 29. I'm glad I have health insurance or else I would be struggling.
By Its Positive Positive6 years ago in Humans
Primary
Waging wars begins from a land of hate. Passion is left beyond the aftermath from a life that once could have been saved. Picking up the illusions seeing the harsh tones of the shadows in the depleted black. Decades to witnessing the silence towards the deeply wounded expressing the ways of finding heaven. A world filled with separations of non-gender equality to the bare minimum towards the right to fight for your loved ones. A man’s sexuality can be tested through lengths of hatred by the same race to the one’s who held many ancestors for the sake of their strengths that were led to a misfortune. From every aspect to never getting the recognition from his birthplace, imagining the days it took to bring him to this very point. Some will never experience the care they needed combing hatred in his presence leading him in the darkest epiphanies living through another dream. Yet the clouded judgement filled with a six-foot hole and his everlasting regrets. Taking his life in his hands, her savior needed protection from the state of mind corrupting what she once called mine. The love from a woman returned as a natural essence of her character. Never to second guess the anti-social requests from a family member. She was lost, from being judge day by day for living a simple truth, or simply because she would never live a lie. Carving the healing wounds deeper to the root of her actions, masking in the fact that there were no options. Paled faces exist in her reflection, her secluded areas turned into the shallowest of rejections. She fell in love with the animations of her features. Holding in no boundaries in between both parts of their separation. Love came at the price of loneliness, it came with a heavy heart. But it left with nothing.
By Aniliyah Richardson6 years ago in Humans
Understanding Distraction
Letter to my friend… How can I make you understand that my phone is not an addiction, but yes, a distraction, from the pain? I know what I know about you, and the many others that have no idea about my pain, and I realize there is absolutely no way to explain it in a way that you could grasp this anguish; the days and nights without his touch, the dreams, the nightmares, the memories, and now, the worst yet, the inability to remember certain things about my late husband. Oh, I remember him, because he’s unforgettable, but in my efforts to distract myself from the pain that made me want to die a thousand deaths to avoid the waxing and waning from emptiness to sorrow, the sharpness of certain things dull. Ironically, now I mourn for the loss of the feeling, though cerebral, of his hand in mine in the middle of the night when my sleep was disturbed. I mourn for the reassurance from the times, in our beginning, when I still had the horrific nightmares that had plagued me for years. He bore it with me, and held me, even as I fought the invisible demons of the night.
By LP Steinbeck6 years ago in Humans