FML, 2024 Version

 I am in a rehab. I am spending a second night on a bed too small for me because someone messed up. PT came to evaluate me, and they'd been lied to about my ability to stand, pivot, and walk. They also kept using the word "baseline" incorrectly. Idiots. So many stupid people. So many smart people annoyed by having to work with the stupid ones. 

A nurse ignored my pain pill request because it was too close to the end of her shift. Whatever, but she didn't leave a note or anything that I had requested them. The floor aide was shocked. 

I wanted to be asleep by midnight. It is 1:20 in the morning. I finally got some pain medicine, the lights are still on in here, despite my request for dark, and every time someone opens the door to my room, a disgusting plume of "gas station bathroom" smell wafts in to my room. 

Oh, and I don't have the ability to turn the lights in my room on and off. Gotta ask. Every time. 

One last rude jab -what the hell does the hair on these women look like if they think these cheap-ass, janky looking wigs are *better*? One of them had something in her head that looked like an imitation beaver skin. 

More… Positive Stuff?

Today, I didn’t feel well, in the grossest of human ways. Unpleasant to be around, pulling pain faces, being generally human body stinky. 

I had a date planned. Know what he did? Nothing I have is contagious, so he came to my house, and held my hand and got me water while I went through it. He distracted me with chatting about important and trivial things. He held my hand some more. He told me how pretty he thought my hair was. We watched a TV show, pausing it a lot to tell each other stuff. When he had to go, he kissed me gently and thanked *me* for really seeing him, and loving him for the whole person that he is. 

I’ve been so up and so down about him for so long, that this feels insane. It does feel real, though. 

I Hate Being a Secret

 I wanted so badly to put proof of my relationship on the Internet that I resorted to here. There are people out there who know this is my boyfriend, and there are people being kept in the dark on purpose, because it would hurt their feelings. I'm sick and tired of their feelings always being more important than mine. 

I like this photo, even though it's a little awkward, because he leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. It wasn't discussed in advance, he just wanted to. 

Afraid That Posting This Stuff Will Get Me Death Threats

I just saw a headline calling the Gaza conflict, which is terrible from every angle, "Israel's War". I am incredibly angry at that writer. It's not any one entity's war, you can't have a war with a single side. 

You *can*, though, have a country that is trying to work under very strained conditions with a group that wants to wipe them off the earth. You *can* have that country retaliate for being brutally and suddenly attacked en masse, at civilian sites, grabbing hostages, beheading people and parading corpses through the streets. 

Does Israel make the right choices in all of this? I don't think so. But I don't think that they're the only ones who own it, either. 

From the Al Jazeera article: “No child should ever be exposed to the level of violence seen on October 7 – or to the level of violence that we have witnessed since then.” 

I agree. But please, please do not forget that on 10/7, the violence was *against* Israel, on Israeli ground. 

Political is Personal

I'm going to get personal. I am anti-war. I do not want anyone shooting at anyone else, for any reason. I am pro human. Yet an American posting "Support for Palestine" feels like a giant slap in my face. 

There's not a nation called Palestine. It's an intellectual construct of a pre-biblical area that has modern country borders drawn throughout it. Israel may only be legitimized by some drawings that the British made after WWII, but it was an actual form of legitimacy of *some* kind on the international stage. 

You know what a Palestinian born in Jordan is? A Jordanian. Anyone born in Libya is Libyan  same idea for Yemen, Egypt, all of it.

I do not call myself a Jew Living in America, I call myself an American who is Jewish.

I do not wish for the IDF to wipe all Palestinians off the Earth. Jews don't have well-known chants calling for that. Are there some? I don't know them. There is a very well-known chant, "From the river to the sea", and the very meaning of it is promoting genocide of the Jewish people. Because they say that we're evil.

I'm not evil, I'm regular. I have some good points and some bad points, and I'm normal.

I believe that Hamas is starving their own people to death in order to convince the world that Israel is a genocidal evil entity.

If even one more person that I know shows a "support for Palestine" image, my head will explode. 

The minute Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip, the digging of offensive tunnels started, and bombs started flying in to southern Israel at random. 

Maybe I've been tricked, but these are the first hand accounts from old friends. I won't mind losing a few new ones if I have to. 

Still, all I really want is for people to give peace a chance.