Day 7: Megan

Megan...

Since the start of the revolution when Marji was about ten years old, she always believed that she would be the last prophet. She wanted to change all these things like having her maid sit at the table, have everyone would own a Cadillac, and her grandmother couldn't suffer since she was elderly. Seeing all that makes you think that of course she wouldn't be able to be one but regardless of the odds, she still believed in that. But as time started to pass and she saw the revolution creating more and more havoc in her country, her hopes of this higher power or this major great change slowly diminished every day. She would see people getting killed or injured during demonstrations and asked herself if it was God that was letting all of these things happen. When her uncle Anoosh came to visit, there were so many stories he told to Marji. All the adventures he had hiding from the Shah and she was just so overcome by all this. She saw him as this big hero and he had this very special place in her heart for him. But the day she found out about his execution, her faith was finally cut off. On page 70, she lies in her bed and thinks about how Anoosh promised her that everything would be alright but now that he was dead, she had lost hope. God comes to ask her what is wrong and she gets up and tells him to leave and that she never wants to see him again. She felt that God had the power to change what happened to Anoosh but decided to do nothing about it to stop his execution. It was a negative change because she was losing one of the major things that helped her believe and have faith that things would get better. Now she would just think negatively and not really want to set herself u again. I was raised in a religious home so I know how it feels to believe differently than what they do and be seen badly for it. I was born and raised in a Pentecostal family that had to follow the rules of wearing skirts, no make, no earrings, no nail polish, no sex before marriage, no drink, no smoking; just a bunch of things you couldn't do. You also had to believe that all gay people were going to hell and that abortion was extremely out of the question. Even though at first I believed in all those things and followed them, as I grew older I started to hate being that way. All the girls around me would wear pants and wear cute nail polish and I would long to be like them and dress like them. But every time I even tried to ask my mother to let me wear pants, she ranted off on how I was a Christian girl and that it didn't matter what they wore to her. So after a while I never really complained about it till about middle school. That was the time where I had started to see that a lot of the things that I started to like, was not what everyone else liked. While I hid to wear pants at school and heard punk rock, all the other girls were listening to pop and hip-hop. Slowly but surely coming into high school, I was able to wear pants but still had to occasionally wear the skirt. Another thing my parents always conflicted with me on was on my views. To them, gays were going to hell and nothing could be said differently. But me on the other hand, I knew lots of gay and bi people at my school and I found it so exciting. Just thinking that they had made the choice in the first place made me view them as heroes. But there came those times when my parents would shun their choices and I would praise them in front of them. I would say how I thought it amazing and how much I supported love regardless of the sex. Being the society that we're in, we can take either side on this it just comes down to how we let it move us. For some, they can come from a very clean cut society where they love how things are and wouldn't change them. All because you are born in this society, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to conform to that mentality. It's just like my situation and how even though I was raised to have certain views, I came to have opposite ones.Another way is you can come from a family where they treat everything as whatever and maybe not a lot of those people go far with their lives. You can have a different mentality and sort of think to yourself that is many things that you can do than to be like them. Society is one of those things in life that can either make you or break you. It's on you where ever you let it lead you.Not trying to peg on all adults. I know that even being in school can make it hard on a person.School shows you a lot about society just based on the way cliques form and people always tend to try and find their group of friends or the people that they know they can get along with. And sometimes there is that peer pressure that kind of takes you in sometimes; Like gangs for example. The whole idea of it is luring you into thinking how they do and sort of manipulating you in a way to join their gang. After a while, you start to see them as these "supporters" and people that seem to have a righteous cause but in reality have given you this messed up mentality that you start to have on everyone you meet. They rival against other gangs just for the simple fact that they're in the same area as the other. When you look at it, being in a gang has never really benefited anyone in the long run. It was kind of like what Richard said one day about gangs. That in a society like that it's either get down or lay down. Simple, but defiantly life changing.