The World Without Us [dual post]

So I often watch documentaries to fill time in my day, often to learn or just be entertained. Sometimes I watch very slanted ones simply for amusement, but today I revisited one that I had watched some time ago called The World Without Us.

Now a lot of the people on Netflix have given it bad reviews, but I am guessing that very few of them have taken college level world history classes. So many points in the movie echo true. Many countries depend on U.S. military force occupying them or a nearby country, yet so often Americans are resented.

There was a woman who was very angry at Clinton over her son’s death at the hand of Serbians. Yet, the entire situation was that Dutch military had come into the area, handed over their uniforms and weapons to the genocidal Serbs and stood by as the Serbs used this to trick thousands of people to their deaths with a promise of protection, pretending that they were with the Dutch. It seems much more that if the Dutch had not come, or at least not helped genocidal radicals, her son could very well be alive today yet she is angry at the U.S.

It covered Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and the hostilities that the USA handles and what might happen if the USA pulled out. You even saw people from countries stating frankly that they depend on America to defend them.

The reason I decided to watch it again was to try to fire up the urge to seek justice for myself and find inspiration for my novel series. The horrible injustices in North Korea and China, nearly the entire Middle East, most of Africa… At the end as the credits rolled, someone from Taiwan said that Americans take their democracy for granted, and it is true. Most of us go about life taking many things for granted, food to eat, a bed to sleep in, and safety. I did for the first seventeen years of my life, but after I was kicked out because my gold-digger step-mom didn’t want me in the picture, I began to learn to appreciate a lot.

I suppose I should perhaps explain that a little more. I have been on my own since shortly after my seventeenth birthday. My mother was advised to abort me before I was born, due to pre-eclampsia, high blood pressure caused from pregnancy. She wound up getting eclampsia and it damaged her kidneys, and she later had full kidney failure. My father on a whim got tested to see if he could donate when I was 6, and he was a near perfect match. He hadn’t been tested previously because the odds of a married couple being a match would be like one in a million. So he gave her a kidney, and she had to be on immunosuppressants to prevent rejection. This essentially made her like people who had AIDS before the 2000’s.

She began to die on a Friday night on February 2, 2001, and died early in the morning on the 3^rd after the life support machines had been removed. She had been in a coma for quite some time. By the next Saturday my father was dating the woman he is now married to.

Manipulative does not even begin to describe Nancy, who is an ex-drug user. She seemed kind to me while my elder sister was in the house. My older sister ran with a bad crowd, did poorly in school, skipped classes, and would argue with my parents constantly, even destroying the last thing that I made with my mom.. Literally tearing it to pieces in her rage, and throwing it at our father and step-mom.

Once my sister turned 18, my father was going to give her a month to move out, but my sister left on her own accord before he had a chance to even tell her. Then suddenly my parents began to have the same “problems” with me. I was not sleeping around with guys, I hadn't even kissed one! I was getting straight A’s, applying into a gifted program to take college classes in high school. Socially I was involved with church youth group activities.

Many times I was randomly taken to a doctor to have my blood drawn and tested for non existent drugs, that still to this day I have never partaken in, but my father travels to Narcotic Anonymous meetings internationally and claims that I did. I got a part time job once I turned sixteen, saved up and bought a car. Once I was seventeen I had church, job, school, theatre, and I cleaned the entire house and did half of the cooking, although I was not allowed to eat with my parents any longer.

The day I was kicked out my father attacked me, I blacked out for a second and I remember the water bottle that hit my head and him punching me, I curled up, trying to protect my head, when my step-mother’s sister finally yelled for the both of us to stop it. I was committing a wrong by doing nothing? It was all because I was told to find a second job, and I hadn't found one yet.

The school program I was in actually told parents to try to keep us students from even getting one job during the school year, the courses were so intense. It had nothing to do with money, as I mentioned he has spoken internationally, my father is well off.

I then learned how much it meant to have a bed, food, shelter, safety, warmth, health, and much more. It was then I decided that I wanted to be able to effect people for the good. In some of the documentaries I hear about people who have escaped from North Korea and they talk about how they only ate rice, and I recall when I would only have a bit of rice as a meal for the day myself- if even that. Perhaps that is why I watch so many of those films, even though those countries as a whole are so much worse off, I can sadly relate to many of the people.

Sleeping with several pairs of pants on, sweaters, and a coat, and you are still cold is not fun. You wake up in your bed, under your blanket, you are cold and you see your breath despite being indoors..... 

When I came to California and I received help from my now-ex boyfriend’s family, I was so grateful, to the point that they were often confused. Eating food everyday had become a novelty to me. Then when I began to work, a job that was dollars above the minimum wage, it was even more amazing. But they would ask me, why was I so happy just to have food offered to me? Why was I so happy to have new clothing? Why did it make me so overjoyed to get shoes?

Even now, after I got hurt, although it is difficult to survive off of only food stamps and the generosity of others, food stamps offer more than I ever expected from when after my mother died, until when I moved here. Then when I got hurt and I got state disability, I did not have money for food, ironically I got too much money from disability for food stamps, despite my medical bills leaving only around $20 a month for food. Food stamps now gives me $200 a month for food, and I don’t have medical bills.

What is wrong with our government? People who really need help do not get it, just because of numbers.