I seem to have two hobbies these days. The first is constantly reminding myself that I have a great life when I dare complain. I joke about it to others, how if I whine I immediately mock myself for my middle class martyrdom because, honestly, what is so bad about my life? The full-time employment with health benefits and paid time off? The loving husband? The affordable apartment? I belong to a mother fucking gym so how bad can it be? But, if you've read this blog for any length of time, you already know about this particular hobby.
The second hobby is reading books that make me openly weep. Two weeks ago I rented The Lovely Bones and watched it twice, sobbing in my unattractive way. Then I went to a used book store to buy the paperback, which I'd read years ago, apparently in order to weep some more. This weekend? 1,000 Splendid Suns. I'll warn you now - if you are susceptible to crying over books, you might want to skip this one. I purchased it at least a year ago based on the recommendation by my then boss. I picked it up randomly yesterday and started reading. I have about ten pages left and just a moment ago J said "Kitty honey, you need to take a break from that" because, as he watched the History channel, I sat next to him reading and crying, nose snuffling and vision blurring. This novel contains the most fucked up stuff I think I've ever read and part of what makes it all that much worse is that it is based on reality.
1,000 Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, follows the lives of two women born in Afghanistan beginning in 1959 through, I believe, 2002 (like I said, I still have a few pages). One is Mairam, the bastard child of a wealthy man. Mariam worships her father until one day, when she is 15, he rejects her and she realizes that all her life her mother had been right, that he wasn't a god full of love and that he would never welcome her into his 'real family.' Mariam ends up married off to an older man and sent to live with him in Kabul, where we meet Laila, who has a father who adores her and who encourages her to pursue her education, and a mother who spent all of her love on her sons, who have gone to fight in the war against the soviets.
I'm not going to give anything away but trust me when I say it is no spoiler to state that these women live the shittiest lives you could ever imagine. I've said for years that even though I may not agree with all the things the US does, I've always been and always will be, eternally grateful to have been born and raised here. I might bitch about work and joke that it is ridiculous to be expected to show up five full days a week but in reality I know that this is a hard fought privilege that I, as a woman, am lucky to have. This is why I get so pissed off at those women who tell me that it is their right not to vote. I'd like to know who fought and died for that right. I'd like to know how that is a right when so many women in other countries view their legal inability to vote a crime and a punishment. This is just one of the reasons that separation of church and state is so vitally important.
And so there you have it. Nice the way the latter hobby lends itself to the former, isn't it? I mean, now I can remind myself, when I bitch about something, that at least I'm not ruled by the Taliban. As important as I believe it is to be aware of other cultures and what is going on around the world, I think this will have to stop at some point before I go overboard.
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