God is Good

Oh my, do I have a story for you.  It starts about four months ago, with two girls- one is me, the other we will go by naming SHE and HER at the appropriate times.  Here we go.  SHE was my best friend for many years, over a decade actually.  We grew up together and to make a long store short, we are not friends anymore; we just grew apart.  

Of course, as it always seems to go this way, it was made difficult by HER.  SHE enjoys to pop up into my life at random times and try doing things- honestly horrible things- to ruin my day.  And SHE smirks the whole time doing it.  It's terrible.  It feels like I have to watch out for HER, because I never know when SHE's about to do something crazy.  She is extremely manipulative and has been able to win people over to HER side before; SHE loves to steal friends from.  

Last summer, SHE borrowed clothes from me.  I asked for them back around fall/winter time of the school year, and SHE said SHE would return them and never did.  Today my boyfriend asked HER if SHE was ever going to give them back to me.  SHE told him that SHE donated them.

Who f$^#&()$ does that?

It's not the loss of clothing that bothers me, although it's annoying to my mom because she paid for it.  Of course that's bothersome.  However, to me the worst part is that SHE even bothered.  SHE did this to try and ruin my day, and I know that it's probably been made into a huge joke for her group of friends, some of whom I am friends with, too.  It's embarrassing.  I know that if I tell HER off about it, SHE will somehow find a way to twist it to make it sounds like it's actually my fault.  I can hear her saying things like, "Well, you definitely have the money to buy new ones,", or, "You never asked for them back, so they were mine and I chose what to do with them, so I donated them".  Both of which things are totally false, but SHE'd use them without a doubt, and in the heat of the moment I'd panic and believe her.  SHE is crazy and manipulative.

When my boyfriend first told me earlier today what SHE said, I wanted to punch HER in the face.  I held back because a) that would make everything worse for me, and b) God wouldn't approve.  So I held back and let my mom calmly call SHE parents because she wanted reimbursement.  A few hours later, I took my brother with me to the Salvation Army to see if we could find a $45 pair of my high school sweatpants that SHE had supposedly donated.  They were ruined by paint I got on them and the bottoms were cut, so I didn't think anyone would have bought them if SHE donated them to the same store (in retrospect, they were also an extremely stupid thing for HER to steal).  

We never found them.

However, we did find another pair of sweatpants from my high school even better than the old ones.  They're dark grey, have my school name written in white down the leg, and are super soft- way softer than the others.  They also fit better and were $2.  So, hey, SHE can have my old crappy ones and SHE can reimburse my mom for them, too. And I know I wrote this story in a way that didn't revolve around Him very much, but it's true- God is good.

Survivors

There are some things about being an artist that aren't necessarily fun and carefree, like artists are sometimes depicted as.  For one, it's not all about wearing stretchy headbands around your forehead and wearing interesting socks.  Being a hipster actually isn't artistry at all, and if you're the someone who associates the two, you're the kind of person that pissed me off today.

So basically, here's what happened.  I have class called "History of the Holocaust"; the course subject is self explanatory.  Today my teacher brought up the controversial topic of the generation of Jewish grandchildren whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors getting their respective camp numbers tattooed on themselves as a symbol of remembrance.  You probably just read that and were like, "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard".  And I don't necessarily blame you; my dad and my boyfriend said the same thing.  Please hear me out.

I was the only person in the room who said they had ever considered getting one.  Three of my four grandparents are Holocaust survivors.  Only one of them was a camp victim who got tattooed, my grandfather on my mother's side (his name is Benjamin Kawer, in case you're interested in researching his story).  I would not get the tattoo because I feel like it would be favoriting only one grandparent, even though that isn't really the case, he's just the only one with numbers.  But anyway, that's pretty much irrelevant.  You probably think I'm stupid for ever even thinking about getting those disgusting, dehumanizing, Nazi-given numbers tattooed on my body for the rest of my life.  The rest of my class did, and made darn sure that I was aware of it.  But let me explain.

The Nazis didn't look at the Jews as people.  They stared at them as an "inferior race", a people that should not reproduce or continue to exist for the sake of preserving "racial hygiene".  The numbers they tattooed took away a person's name, background, and human qualities and turned them into nothing more than a subject, at best.  So why would I want my grandfather's numbers?  Because to me, having them on myself is saying, "Look, these are the numbers you gave to my grandfather.  You see them?  And do you see me?  Do you see how they are on me?  Do you see how I exist despite your efforts to keep me from being born?  Do you see how my grandfather's bloodline lives?  Look at these numbers.  You failed.  You failed and I want these numbers to always remind you of it".  And I want them to remind others of what happened, too.  Already, the Holocaust is being taught as something that sounds like ancient history, and it's not.  It is actually so recent and so relevant beyond what I think any of us can see, and it has already slipped into the background of people's minds.  To me, that tattoo would mean not letting people forget.  And yes, it would make other people, and probably myself, uncomfortable.  And there would probably be days that I would regret it and days that people would openly tell me what I did was disgusting, but I considered it because I don't want anyone to forget what my family went through.  I owe it to the victims to make sure they don't become forgotten.

And to the girl who said in class that whoever gets the tattoo "clearly doesn't care that much, because if you need a tattoo to remind yourself of what happened because you keep on forgetting, it isn't that meaningful to begin with.  You shouldn't need a tattoo to tell people what happened".  Screw you.  I'm sorry that you don't understand what it's like to live everyday remembering the atrocities my loved ones had to endure for the sake of life, theirs and mine, and the burden I carry because of it.  And to the other kids, who said, "People won't understand", "It will look like you're doing it for the Nazis", and, "It might start a bad trend".   You don't understand and you might never.  Maybe I'm a psychopath, but at least I'm one who acts out of love.  I'm genuinely sorry that you can't see any substance that is beyond skin-deep.