anyways i still miss her a lot more than i was letting myself believe a few weeks ago but it gets better every day. sometimes i think i made a horrible decision and would take it back if i could but lmao instead i just want to take care of myself for the foreseeable future and move on
tl;dr i’m deleting this blog. i may remake but we will see. one issue is losing all my poetry... but i’ll have another poetry blog if i do remake. its not so much about hating tumblr or it’s format or it’s posts because a lot of my sense of humor and my ideals came from posts/discourse on this site, it’s more about feeling weighed down by using this blog to be so personal. so i may come back but use it to be empowering instead of obsessive
i feel really conflicted bc i’ve had this blog since i attempted suicide in 2014 and posting on it has helped me to cope with a lot of traumatic events and it has a sentimental value to me? and it helps me to process events to reread posts no matter how long ago the event happened and thats just part of my processing. even this post is part of my processing
but at the same time, i feel that processing is part of the reason why i obsess over events for days and then act as if nothing ever happened? obviously me being mentally ill is part of the equation but i’m really not a fan of the way that i like, will spend time overthinking and analyzing every aspect of a traumatic event and then try to avoid talking about it ever again and acting like it doesn’t effect the way i behave. it’s like i try to skip actually healing or caring for myself and even outside of traumatic events, even wrt my mental illness i’ll make a ton of posts over the course of a panic attack and then try to pretend i am fine
lately i’ve been feeling like i am not being true to myself about what i want and what really matters, and i dont know if fixing this problem means coming out (again, but this time demanding to be understood), not smoking weed, deleting this blog, eating healthier, being on medication, etc. but i know i’m tired of repeating the same behaviors and i’m tired of being self destructive, i’m tired of not loving myself and treating myself like shit and living with such a fog around me. i’m tired of not being the person i want to be for my friends and my family. i’m tired of feeling guilty when i put myself first. i’m tired of being in relationships and being afraid, either because of past traumas or my own insecurities or not being able to stand up for myself.
i just want to get to a place of love and appreciation and optimism that i was at when i started this blog because i was so ready to take care of myself and love myself and put myself first. and i determined that was all returning as the theme of 2017 when i left my job and broke it off with a girl that, admittedly, i was completely ready to love. it took a LOT of strength for me to do both of those things and i don’t want to regret them because i know that. it took all the lessons i was forced to learn in 2016 and all the strength i didn’t think i had last year to make these decisions. i don’t want to go back anymore, i don’t want to revert to old behavior anymore. i spent an entire year being abused and not thinking for myself and not putting myself first and i don’t think i could repeat the journey that has put me in this place of being tired and wanting to change.
no matter what happens in the rest of the year, whether i go back to my old job for the money, or if i move in and live with my mom longer than we anticipate, or if i fall in love... i want to make these decisions with confidence and with the knowledge that i am putting myself and my priorities first. so i think i will delete this blog and all it’s messiness and all the depressing text posts and stop letting the things that have happened determine my character and be such a piece of my identity... i will remake and i may archive this but then there isn’t a point. we’ll see
Ask yourself before you down a Black woman that’s confident and secure why does it hurt you so bad to see that confidence, its it a threat, do you think she should suffer inherently, does it make you nervous, what exactly is the problem?
Question: if I see someone pull off a Hijab, what should I do? I know there are reasons they are worn so I want to if i should stand in between them and who did this, should i protect them from view somehow, or something else? This has been happening a lot so I feel it’s something everyone needs to know.
Good question! I cannot correctly and effectively answer, as I am a white, non-Muslim person; however, I will reblog in case any of my followers can answer.
I asked my Hijabi friend, so here’s one Hijabi’s answer:
“my opinion is, definitely try cover them or give them something to cover themselves with. And perhaps shoo off the person, without putting oneself in danger! God forbid, if that happened to me, I would like someone to come and comfort me and give me something to cover my hair with and then help me report it to the cops “
If u see it happen to 1 of us, pls cover our head + hair with a coat or shawl or any piece of cloth, while hugging us in comfort. Please don’t get hurt by lashing out @ the perpetrators in any way, coz if they dare to do that, they’re probably too far gone in their own hatred to listen to any reason. Much love + Thank You to anyone who supports us.
yes !! everything said here is important af. if you see someone pull off a girl’s hijab immediately cover her hair and provide comfort. don’t talk to the perpetrator but try to get the woman out of there if you can. maybe if you have a scarf on you at the time give it to her so she can wear it until she’s alone and can replace her hijab. please please protect muslim girls because we already had it hard before donald trump became president and now its gonna be worse with people going around thinking their violence and cruelty is justified
for my other white ppl who might have a hard time, it’s my understanding that a hijab is like a major item of clothing, not an accessory like a hat or a scarf.
so think abt it more like if someone just ripped someone’s shirt or skirt off. u don’t want to be left there exposed or have to walk home without it.
everyone, even outside America needs to protect our Muslim sisters in these times.
For men, yes please, we would prefer it if you avoided looking at our hair, and if we don’t have something to substitute as a hijab at that moment, anything you could lend us, a jacket, etc, would be very appreciated.
Also, since most girls avoid physical contact with men they’re not related to, please do not hug them, but rather shoo the offender away if you can, or at least escort the girl to a safe place. You can still offer words of encouragement and support. Furthermore, understand that the victim may not be very welcoming towards you because she’ll obviously be shaken, and won’t know where you are coming from. If that’s the case, please still give her something to cover herself (hijab is very important, think of it as someone ripping your shirt off) and stand some distance away until you are sure she’s in safe hands.
Thank you so much for your support, we really appreciate it, god bless all of you.
Mohamed Bzeek knew that. But in his more than two decades as a foster father, he took them in anyway — the sickest of the sick in Los Angeles County’s sprawling foster care system.
He has buried about 10 children. Some died in his arms.
Now, Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for a bedridden 6-year-old foster girl with a rare brain defect. She’s blind and deaf. She has daily seizures. Her arms and legs are paralyzed.
Bzeek, a quiet, devout Libyan-born Muslim who lives in Azusa, just wants her to know she’s not alone in this life.
“I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” he said. “I’m always holding her, playing with her, touching her. … She has feelings. She has a soul. She’s a human being.”
Of the 35,000 children monitored by the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, there are about 600 children at any given time who fall under the care of the department’s Medical Case Management Services, which serves those with the most severe medical needs, said Rosella Yousef, an assistant regional administrator for the unit.
There is a dire need for foster parents to care for such children.
And there is only one person like Bzeek.
“If anyone ever calls us and says, ‘This kid needs to go home on hospice,’ there’s only one name we think of,” said Melissa Testerman, a DCFS intake coordinator who finds placements for sick children. “He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it.”
Typically, she said, children with complex conditions are placed in medical facilities or with nurses who have opted to become foster parents.
But Bzeek is the only foster parent in the county known to take in terminally ill children, Yousef said. Though she knows the single father is stretched thin caring for the girl, who requires around-the-clock care, Yousef still approached him at a department Christmas party in December and asked if he could possibly take in another sick child.
This time, Bzeek politely declined.
Bzeek is a quiet, religious man who wants his foster daughter to know she’s not alone in this life. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
:::
The girl sits propped up with pillows in the corner of Bzeek’s living room couch. She has long, thin brown hair pulled into a ponytail and perfectly arched eyebrows over unseeing gray eyes.
Because of confidentiality laws, the girl is not being identified. But a special court order allowed The Times to spend time at Bzeek’s home and to interview people involved in his foster daughter’s case.
The girl’s head is too small for her 34-pound body, which is too small for her age. She was born with an encephalocele, a rare malformation in which part of her brain protruded through an opening in her skull, according to Dr. Suzanne Roberts, the girl’s pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Neurosurgeons removed the protruding brain tissue shortly after her birth, but much of her brain remains undeveloped.
She has been in Bzeek’s care since she was a month old. Before her, he cared for three other children with the same condition.
“These kids, it’s a life sentence for them,” he said.
Bzeek, 62, is a portly man with a long, dark beard and a soft voice. The oldest of 10 children, he came to this country from Libya as a college student in 1978.
Years later, through a mutual friend, he met a woman named Dawn, who would become his wife. She had become a foster parent in the early 1980s, before she met Bzeek. Her grandparents had been foster parents, and she was inspired by them, Bzeek said. Before she met Bzeek, she opened her home as an emergency shelter for foster children who needed immediate placement or who were placed in protective custody.
Dawn Bzeek fell in love with every child she took in. She took them to professional holiday photo sessions, and she organized Christmas gift donation drives for foster children.
She was funny, Bzeek said during a recent drive home from the hospital. She was absolutely terrified of spiders and bugs, so much that even Halloween decorations creeped her out — but she was never scared by the children’s illnesses or the possibility that she would die, Bzeek said.
The Bzeeks opened their Azusa home to dozens of children. They taught classes on foster parenting — and how to handle a child’s illness and death — at community colleges. Dawn Bzeek was such a highly regarded foster mother that her name appeared on statewide task forces for improving foster care alongside doctors and policymakers.
Bzeek started caring for foster children with Dawn in 1989, he said. Often, the children were ill.
Mohamed Bzeek first experienced the death of a foster child in 1991. She was the child of a farm worker who was pregnant when she breathed in toxic pesticides sprayed by crop dusters. She was born with a spinal disorder, wore a full body cast and wasn’t yet a year old when she died on July 4, 1991, as the Bzeeks prepared dinner.
“This one hurt me so badly when she died,” Bzeek said, glancing at a photograph of a tiny girl in a frilly white dress, lying in a coffin surrounded by yellow flowers.
By the mid-1990s, the Bzeeks decided to specifically care for terminally ill children who had do-not-resuscitate orders because no one else would take them in.
There was the boy with short-gut syndrome who was admitted to the hospital 167 times in his eight-year life. He could never eat solid food, but the Bzeeks would sit him at the dinner table, with his own empty plate and spoon, so he could sit with them as a family.
There was the girl with the same brain condition as Bzeek’s current foster daughter, who lived for eight days after they brought her home. She was so tiny that when she died a doll maker made an outfit for her funeral. Bzeek carried her coffin in his hands like a shoe box.
“The key is, you have to love them like your own,” Bzeek said recently. “I know they are sick. I know they are going to die. I do my best as a human being and leave the rest to God.”
“I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” Mohamed Bzeek says. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Bzeek’s only biological son, Adam, was born in 1997 — with brittle bone disease and dwarfism. He was a child so fragile that changing his diaper or his socks could break his bones.
Bzeek said he was never angry about his own son’s disabilities. He loved him all the same.
“That’s the way God created him,” Bzeek said.
Now 19, Adam weighs about 65 pounds and has big brown eyes and a shy grin. When at home, he gets around the house on a body skateboard that his father made for him out of a miniature ironing board, zooming across the wood floor, steering with his hands.
Adam studies computer science at Citrus College, driving his electric wheelchair to class. He’s the smallest student in class, Bzeek said, “but he’s a fighter.”
Adam’s parents never glossed over how sick his foster siblings were, and they told him the children were going to eventually die, Bzeek said. They accepted death as part of life — something that made the small joys of living all the more meaningful.
“I love my sister,” the shy teenager said of the foster girl. “Nobody should have to go through so much pain.”
About 2000, Dawn Bzeek, once such an active advocate for foster children, became ill. She suffered from powerful seizures that would leave her weak for days. She could hardly leave the house because she didn’t want to collapse in public.
The frustrations of her illness wore on her, Bzeek said. There was stress in the marriage, and she and Bzeek split in 2013. She died a little over a year later.
Bzeek chokes up when he talks about her. When it came to facing the difficulties of the children’s illnesses, the knowledge that they would die, she was always the stronger one, he said.
:::
On a chilly November morning, Bzeek pushed the girl’s wheelchair and the IV pole that carries her feeding formula into Children’s Hospital on Sunset Boulevard. She was wrapped in a soft pink blanket, her head resting on a pillow with the stitched words: “Dad is like duct tape holding our home together.”
The temperatures had been bouncing up and down that week, and the girl had a cold. Her brain cannot fully regulate her body temperature, so one leg was hot while the other was cold.
On the elevator, her face glowed bright red as she coughed, her throat filled with phlegm, screaming for air. People in the elevator looked away.
Bzeek rubbed her cheek playfully and held her hand, waving it playfully. “Heeeey, mama,” he cooed in her ear, calming her down.
For Bzeek, the hospital has become a second home. When he’s not here, he’s often on the phone with her many doctors, the insurers who fight over who’s paying for it all, the lawyers who represent her and her social workers. Any time they leave the house together, he carries a thick black binder filled with her medical records and pages of medications.
Still, Bzeek — who had to be licensed through the county to care for medically fragile children and receives about $1,700 a month for her care — is not able to make medical decisions for her.
Roberts entered the exam room, smiling at the girl’s frilly socks and brown dress with fall-colored leaves.
“There’s our princess,” the doctor said. “She’s in her pretty dress, as always.”
Roberts has known Bzeek for years and has seen many of his foster children. By the time this girl was age 2, Roberts said, doctors said there were no more interventions to improve her condition.
“Nobody ever wants to give up,” she said. “But we had run through the options.”
But the girl, who is hooked to feeding and medication tubes at least 22 hours a day, has lived as long as she has because of Bzeek, the doctor said.
“When she’s not sick and in a good mood, she’ll cry to be held,” Roberts said. “She’s not verbal, but she can make her needs known. … Her life is not complete suffering. She has moments where she’s enjoying herself and she’s pretty content, and it’s all because of Mohamed.”
Mohamed Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for the bedridden child. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Other than trips to the hospital and Friday prayers at the mosque — when the day nurse watches her — Bzeek rarely leaves the house.
To avoid choking, the girl sleeps sitting up. Bzeek sleeps on a second couch next to hers. He doesn’t sleep much.
:::
On a Saturday in early December, Bzeek, Adam and the girl’s nurse, Marilou Terry, had a celebratory lunch for the child’s sixth birthday. He invited her biological parents. They didn’t come.
Bzeek crouched in front of the girl — wearing a long, red-and-white dress and matching socks — and held her hands, clapping them together.
“Yay!” he said, cheerfully. “You are 6! 6! 6!”
Bzeek lit six birthday candles in a cheesecake and sat the girl on the kitchen table, holding the cake near her face so she could feel the warmth of the flames.
As they sang “Happy Birthday,” Bzeek leaned over her left shoulder, his beard gently brushing the side of her face. She smelled the smoke, and a small smile crossed her face.
Please consider donating to the GoFundMe set up in his name!!
who The fuck names meds “Zoloft” sounds like some dark wizard cursing me for not wiping my feet before I enter his house and “sertraline” is his snakewife
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
titsay
vaporwave
jbbartram-illu
