{Written in May, 2011}

I had a counseling meeting with a very popular student yesterday. She was everything you would imagine popular to be; athletic, blonde, funny, beautiful and oh…suicidal.

Yep.

Seeing another broken heart has fired up my protective instincts and this blog gets the brunt of it today.

I’m mad at TV, movies, music, magazines … and all the people who selfishly produce them. The woman in me sees them as threat to my own emotional well-being daily because they confuse me too. But more than that the big sister in me just saw them victimize another one of my younger sisters. I’m not kidding, put me in the room with a producer of Glee or anyone who has anything to do with MTV right now and I would rip into them like a lioness fighting for her cubs.

It’s all so fake, the parties, the perfect bodies, the clothes and the sex. We hear catchy tunes and so we sing along not even realizing the words are “wanna be a victim, ready for abduction” (E.T. by Katy Perry) To be sexy and desired by all the boys is the pinnacle of success. That’s what we see and it looks fun, doesn’t it? I won’t even deny that, it looks fun. Why? Because they take the reality of sin and its consequences and edit out all the pain and leave all the pleasure.

It’s a perfect looking lie and it’s intoxicating.

As sinful beings and as woman we end up desiring that life. Some of us, like the girl I met with yesterday actually attain it.  She has it all, from the friends to the best looking guys to the attention. On TV, that’s the end of the story but in real life the credits don’t roll after a hot Friday night. The next morning comes and in the weeks and months that follow a deep emptiness that is unexplainable to most girls settles in.  Eventually that feeling becomes intolerable. Guilt mixed with desire and shame degrades her beauty from the inside out. The ones who let pain become anger get more addicted to the temporary highs. The ones who see pain for what it really is, sadness, come here looking for comfort.

Though it is my purpose and joy to give it them – or at least try – I’m tired of seeing it.  I’m tired of weeping over the deadness I see in her eyes when she says “I hooked up with another guy…”

This is what I deal with daily; this is reality. This is what is left of a young woman after the media has had its way with her.

I wonder why they never broadcast that.