saige

So I'm about to watch the VP debate...

My 19 year old best friend is getting married in November. When she first told me, I laughed and said yeah right; lovesick girls say things like that all the time and then nothing ever happens, because in reality they just aren't ready for that. Plus, they've only been dating for a month. How can you possibly believe that you know ANYTHING about someone after having known them for only a month??
Today she asked me if I would be one of her bridesmaids. I said, "Of course! In about 6 years!" and she said, "How about in November?"
I said you have got to be kidding me...
But she's serious. She has a ring. She's shopping for a dress.
I decided if she's really convinced that they're going to go through with this, and there's nothing I can do to make her change her mind, I might as well just bite back a my cynicism for now and be the supportive best friend. I said everything I can possibly say to her, she's admitted she's very codependent that she feels the need to constantly be in a relationship, and she seems to know that there's something wrong with that, but she has made her mind up. I told her that sometimes when you really really want something, like a good long-lasting relationship, you try so hard and push it so early that you end up just completely destroying it. But this is what she wants to do...
Whatever. I guess.

I've been talking about this topic a lot lately, because it really has been on my mind A LOT. It seems like every other week or so I hear about another one of my friends that is pregnant. It absolutely blows my mind, because these are not cases of failed contraceptives, but rather a complete lack thereof. I can't believe these girls are out there fuckin like crazy with no birthcontrol whatsoever, just crossing their fingers and hoping nothing bad will happen. I can't believe they've been allowed to hold such dangerously naive and unrealistic ideas about how things work in this world.
When I turned 13, my mom came to me and talked to me. I already knew a lot, I wasn't ignorant, and she knew this. She told me that if I'm even thinking about having sex, she wanted to put me on the pill, and that made an important impression on me. It made me think about things, it made me want to protect myself-- always.
It really saddens me that parents don't talk to their kids like this. That so many of them seriously think that teaching safe sex in schools will somehow make their kids turn around and have more sex, when in fact schools that teach abstinence-only actually have some of the highest pregnancy rates. You can't stop teenagers from having sex. They're gonna do it no matter what, because it's natural, it's what our bodies were designed to do. If it wasn't meant to be done it wouldn't feel so fucking great, right? What I'm saying is that, like I said, they're gonna do it regardless of what they are taught, so they should at least be protected while doing it.

I guess what I'm so upset about is how fast we all seem to be growing up. Or at least, having very grown-up things happen to us, regardless of how grown-up we really are. That's my point, really. Why are all these young women around me trying to grow up so fast? We're so young. We don't need to be getting married and having babies. We have our whole lives to do that. Right now we should be having fun-- going on road trips and staying up all night with our friends, whether or not we're drinking or doing drugs we should be partying. I don't know, I guess not everyone feels that way.

Well that's enough for now, I have to watch an ignorant Alaskan woman get her ass handed to her