Where, or when, does the Fourth Amendment come into play here?

You know, I'm really not looking forward to boarding that airplane in December. Not because I dread the destination, no I can't wait for my two week mini vacation.

Recently these new "Backscatter Full Body Scanners" and the new (and more intrusive) body pat downs have been all over the news, and the internet. I read in another blog today about a guy who was denied boarding his plane because he refused to be violated and then groped by a TSA Agent, then told he was going to be fined if he didn't go through the process before leaving the airport! I just saw another news spot about them on TV just now (which inspired me to post this subject), and how people are getting sick of these inconsistent and cockamamie security measures being taken. I mean honestly, how far are we going to let the government and it's "Homeland Security" violate our Fourth Amendment rights in the name of "security"?

They strip fliers of their dignity by first making them take off their shoes to be scanned, then these ridiculous body scanners that are insanely invasive and revealing, that some say aren't 100% in terms of picking up on everything! And to top it of, some of these bonehead TSA Agents can't even conduct themselves maturely and professionally amongst themselves, nevermind what they might be saying about innocent passengers. To top it off, checked bags going UNDER the plane aren't even scanned with such scrutiny. Who the hell knows what might be going under the plane? Why go so overboard with person security, which can easily be circumvented with cavity bombs, under folds of skin, under breasts, etc, and be so lax about everything else entering the plane? Look at the package bombs from Yemen recently. The only reason those were caught were because of an informer within Yemen, who had definitive information about exactly what packages they were. It's ludicrous that we think people who have real intent to do some damage won't find a way around these invasive procedures and technologies.

Don't get me wrong. I have no problems with security as far as keeping people with intent to harm us off the planes and out of our country. But the inconsistencies, and the intrusion that comes along with them, are too much. Being groped in the expanded pat downs is tantamount to sexual assault in my opinion, and quite frankly invades my Fourth Amendment rights. (If you aren't versed in these, look them up. You really should know your rights.) I'm also not advocating for lessening the security in airports. What I'd like to see are methods that would be less invasive but more effective. Dogs, for example, are the best method of uncovering what would be explosive materials on a person. Metal detectors and less invasive pat downs can take care of the rest. There's also pre-screening technology that requires passengers to give their fingerprints and retina scans, a background check is conducted and if they're considered a low risk, they're good to go. High risk people would be subjected to the more invasive procedures on the spot.

We can't keep everything off of planes. People will always find ways to get contraband on them. But the extent to which we've resorted is insane. I already am extraordinarily uncomfortable with being touched even lightly on a bus by strangers. Do you really think I'd appreciate being patted down up to my privates in front of 50 other people? I don't think so.

hmph.

You know what? He's right. You are crazy. Crazy for letting me go. I think of all the times you told me how much you loved me, how many times you (I guess jokingly, now) asked me to marry you, asked me to come live with you and wonder well, if all that was true, then how could you even stand to let me go? How? I mean, you called us soul mates. Soul mates, huh? I guess once your ex came back into the picture the process of waiting for me to get there seemed too far away, to long to wait, when you had people you could rekindle an old flame falling right at your door step. And to think you told me not to worry about them, that you'd never touch that again, told me to trust you. So what did it all mean, really? Did it mean anything?

letting go is the hardest part.

Last week, my boyfriend of a little over a year broke up with me.

I keep replaying the conversation over and over in my head, trying to think of things I could have said differently to make him understand that he didn't need to do this... I keep feeling like I missed some chance to prevent this from happening, that had I said something different, gone in at another angle, even said nothing at all that day, maybe, just maybe he wouldn't have pushed me away.

It's hard, when you love someone with so much of your being, get so comfortable with a person that you feel like it could never end, that they'll always be there for you and you'll just, be together forever, it's hard when suddenly it's all ripped from you in an instant, in the time it takes to say "I'm sorry." If feels like your stability is abruptly ripped out from beneath you. It feels like drowning and you can't get enough air, can't breathe with the suffocating weight that he's not there for you anymore, he's not yours, your not his. You feel empty, broken, like part of your soul has been cleaved away. It sends me reeling when I think back to a brief conversation we'd had not weeks earlier; he asked me about a book series we both had a dear love for, one of the things we first found we had in common, he asked "Wizard's First Rule or Faith of the Fallen?" I picked the latter, asking him why he asked, and he said "Just making sure we're still soul mates. You picked right, by the way." Quite literally we had these little moments all the time... And they send me reeling to think it was only a two weeks ago they still happened. And it astounds me that they're gone now.

A line springs to my head from a Shinedown song that pretty much prompted me to write this: " If you only knew how many times I counted all the words that went wrong; if you only knew how I refuse to let you go, even when you're gone." That's essentially what I've been doing all week, where I am emotionally right now. Despite the fact that he's gone, I can only barely admit it to myself that it's over. It hurts my heart with a deep and real pain to think about it. It's the first thing on my mind when I wake and the last thing when I fall asleep, no matter how busy I've been trying to keep myself during the day. Parts of me want to just let it go, wish I could just be free from the hurt that I feel. And yet I don't want to let it go, fearing the finality of such an act. I don't want this to be real, even after a week has past. I'm still waiting to get that message that says "I'm sorry, please take me back, you were right I need you." I fear I'll be waiting a long time. He became my everything in the year we were dating. Now I feel lost and hopeless.I wander about in a daze sometimes, lost in memory and dreams now shattered. Haha, how ironic, considering the name I chose for this blog. It would seem I'm now one of the lost who wander.

But then... part of me is angry. Angry because of how much I had put into this relationship, how much I had built my future on the fact that I had every intentions of uprooting myself to be with him, because he had asked, because he led me to believe that nothing would get in the way of that, not even distance. Angry because though he knew this he ended it for nothing. Angry because he quit, didn't fight for us. At the first sign of hardship he dropped it all. My mother gave me a little insight, when I told her why. She said men can't multi-task. If this isn't a good example, I don't know what is. Even when I was willing to sacrifice some communication with him to keep this together, he still rolled over and refused to fight. And so part of me is angry at him for giving up when he threw away one if his best tools for fighting through this... Sometimes I don't know how to deal with that anger. Should I say something? Should I let the anger overwhelm the hurt and push away any thoughts of a future together again? "If he can't handle a relationship through something like this what would happen if he got married and had kids and went through tough times? You're better off without him if these are his true colors when you apply a little stress." These emotions and thoughts confuse me, make me wonder what to do with what ever you would call our relationship now... I just don't know what to do.

The wound will heal over time, I guess. It feels good to be able to sit and sort the maelstrom of emotions out in my brain, visualize them in an organized way. Almost calming. I still love him though. I fear I always will. My hope right now is I'll never get the chance to know what it's like to truly have to finally move on from this...

I miss the days when I had the urge to write. I looked through a bunch of my old notebooks today, looking for some poems that might be good (turns out there were only two, the rest were... super depressing or, well super depressing), and I realized I wrote a lot in high school.

Granted, I was well... super depressed and had a reason. But that's not the point. >_>

Anyway. I love having a journal. I've got some really nice ones too. I always say to myself "Jessi, you're going to start writing daily in your journals again." But I forget. Sigh.

Now you're thinking "But you're writing on a blog, albeit irregularly, but isn't it the same?" No, you e-crackhead. It's not. You can't replace the sheer act of putting pen (or pencil, if you really like smudged fake lead and faster fading) to paper. You can't replace going back and looking at how your handwriting changes from day to day based on what you're feeling when you write. You can't replace the feel of paper under the side of your hand, the sound it makes as you form words. You can't write in your e-journal when the power is out and your laptop is dead. You can't see when you changed your mind about a sentence, a phrase, a word, and scratched out or erased it. There's just something about physically seeing chapters of your life in a bound stack of papers that makes you feel a sense of accomplishment. I can't really seem to get that out of a list of entry titles in a blog... e-journal... whatever you want to call it.

Plus, there's the added sense of security that comes with refraining from posting shit on the internet. Because well, we all know there's no such thing as privacy on the internet. What, someone told you different? They're an idiot, get new friends.

So, I propose to myself a new (late) years resolution: Daily journal entries. Even if they're one sentence. I could stand to write by hand more often anyway... you should see the notes I take during classes. My handwriting has gotten pretty shotty over the past three years, and it really wasn't that great to begin with.

Well hey, this blog has some use after all! Problem solver extraordinaire.

And no, you will not be seeing my hard copy journal entries. Dream on.

painful nostalgia.

It's so strange to look down at the scars on my arms. I almost have this weird out of body experience, like I'm looking at something someone else did. But at the same time I know they're mine, because I remember them all. I don't necessarily remember when, but I remember doing them. It's weird thinking back on the person I was at that time. I was so different. So hopeless.

Sometimes I wonder if given the option, I would choose to fade the scars, you know with those creams and stuff you can get at the drug store. Thinking about it now I don't think I would. They remind me of how low you can go and still get back up. You're never really lost. Even when you think you are, there's always some sign that puts you back on the right path out of all that darkness. Getting rid of them would be like trying to forget, and forgetting our past is how we repeat it, especially the mistakes we made.

I know there have been people in my past who've seen my scars and shied away from me because of them. I know there will be people like that in my future. But there have also been those who haven't in the past, and there will be those who won't in the future. Many people who are in my shoes hide their scars, but I don't. They're part of me, part of my past. It's a subject that will have to come up someday, in the course of friendship. If they can hack it, they're gaining a great friend. If not, it's their loss. I used to hide who I was, but I don't anymore. Life is to short to let a few scarred skin cells get me down.