Xoxkitkat wonders why we hurt one another.

"No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee." - An excerpt from "Meditation 17" by John Donne

Have you ever sat down and thought, really thought, about life? Birth, marriage, poverty . . . death? These are the things that really complicate and confuse us. These are the things that can bring us together or tear us apart. These are the things that identify us all as human. The question is, though: why, if we truly are all human, do we deny and put down one another? Why do we choose to hurt one another? Other humans who are just like we are.

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Bluebag realizes how much she has changed in three years.

Here I am, sitting in my room, wearing my Steelers sweatshirt and jeans, surrounded by political science notebooks, biology lab reviews and old math tests. My eyes hurt and I have a headache, and here I sit, drowning in papers, highlighters, pens and textbooks. I decided I needed a break. I open my Yahoo e-mail and my school e-mail all at once and sit down to read the seven e-mails from my English professor and one from my mom. I scroll down the page and notice a folder on my Yahoo e-mail. "Times Articles" I laughed that I still had that folder in my e-mail, but opened it regardless.

I started reading a few of them, and one in particular caught my attention, and for several reasons. For one, it was written by myself as a sophomore in high school, freaking out about how I was going to miss the town I grew up in when I moved to go to school. But the even bigger coincidence was the date I wrote and submitted it. I e-mailed it to the Editor on March 6, 2008, exactly three years ago to the date. I clicked the link to open the e-mail and read it through, and it brought me back to who I was in high school, and how much I've changed.

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