This seemed to warrant it’s own separate entry:

As I said, I have been depressed in gerneral, lately.  It’s largely a timing issue – Saturday would have been Minuette’s 9th birthday, and I wonder about her…  if I would have bought her art supplies for her birthday…  if she would have been an artist like me, or maybe a writer…  would she have liked coffee at a young age the way I did?  Would she sip out of her own mug, in the early a.m. next to me, the way I used to with my dad?  Would she look like me?  Or would she have looked more caucasion, like my ex?  She had my  nose.  I noticed that, right away.  Would she have been a quiet, awkward child, like me, or would she have been loud, and vibrant? 

I would have taught her to be as bold and bright and loud as her will and lungs would allow. 

I would have taught her to value the things that really matter.  I would have taught her that we can usually figure out what to do, in any given situation by asking ourselves how we would want this handled, if we were on the other side of it.  I would have taught her that when it comes to violence (both personally, and in the world) there is almost always another way.  I would have taught her not to judge others, and not to doubt herself.  I would never have stayed in a loveless relationship – if I had been with someone, while I had her, it would have been the kind of relationship that shows a child how IT SHOULD BE.  I was building a life for us.  I did not plan her, but SHE WAS WANTED.  And, when I held her… 

there’s no pain like watching your own child slip away.  It seems like some cosmic correction should be allowed when life gets that unfair – like some bargaining should be allowed to go on.  I would have gladly given my life for hers – in a heartbeat.  But, the world isn’t one that allows for supernatural deal making.  And, even in the storybooks, when people make such deals, it usually doesn’t play out well. 

I don’t believe in fate.  But, I do believe some things are supposed to happen.

I don’t think the attack I suffered when I was younger, or Minnie’s death happened for any real reason – I would probably want nothing to do with God if I believed he was sadistic enough to have planned all that for me, or to have planned much worse for countless others.  I think we (the humans) cook up evil, around every corner.  We create hell – hell being anyplace where we manage to create the absence of good – and thusly, the absence of God. 

It’s a vacuum of sorts. 

I think we make the ugliness, and God gives us each other, to make solutions possible. 

Maybe, even giving us a little nudge sometimes, in the direction we need to walk, to meet the people who will lead us back into the light.  We have everything we need to feed, help, and care for each other.  We’re just selfish beings.  If people spent less time focusing on the specific dogma of their faiths, they might realize the universality of certain ideas and feelings.  Things that could connect us all…  things that could help people to realize that all the differences are manufactured, and that we really are all brothers and sisters.  Then, maybe…  just maybe…   people could realize that we never need to hurt each other.  We should be building our societies around sustaining the earth, and the human  race – but everything is so singular, and self-interested.  We have the means, but not the motive…  because we are short-sighted and horribly self-concerned.  As a specoes, we serve our immediate interests, and little else.  Everything else on earth functions with a certain harmony, but not us.  And, seeing that we are destroying it all, do we even try to men our ways?  Mildly, but probably not enough to make change the course we’ve started.  We really are a selfish race of beings, aren’t we?   

I don’t know if I could consciously choose to bring another child into this screwed up world.  It seems like it might just bea selfish move.  What would this child inherit?  The world that we’ve been left is pretty unfairly screwed.  I don’t want to hand my kids something even worse.