life, death, dying fish, and horrible math grades

i am unhappy about my math grade.
for the first time in my life, i am getting a D in a class. i mean, it's only halfway through the first quarter, but i still feel inadequate. i've never had a worse grade than a B. i mean, it's AP calculus I, but still. it's a D.
it's not good, folks.

on a lighter note, i am leaving for mexico with my youth group in 3 weeks. i am so excited!

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i am struggling with an issue. i cannot stand the thought of killing, but logic tells me that killing is more humane in some instances. should i follow my emotions, or logic? obviously, you'd say logic, but this is an extremely important issue to me. i cannot possibly explain to you how hard it is for me to take life from anything. (i understand that if i had a gun in my hand, and some nut had a gun in his hand, and i was with a child whose life was in danger, i would shoot the guy to protect the child, but i would never forgive myself for it. i would never forgive myself if the child was killed as a result of my passiveness. i'd be screwed either way...) i cannot find a justified reason to kill, other than protection of the innocent. but still!

this issue came up because i had a fish that was dying. it was floating on its side, and it looked like the poor thing was in pain. i couldn't stand to just sit there and watch it die, so i decided that i would try to take its life. that was harder than i had expected. flushing it down the toilet would have been the same as keeping it in the fishbowl; it would still have to suffer. i couldn't just suffocate it; that would hurt it too much. my only other option was to try to stab it. i got the knife, fished the poor little hurt fish out of the tank, grabbed it (with quite a lot of effort), and i just broke down crying. i wasn't just crying, i was bawling. when i was sane enough to look around, i realized that the fish had crawled out of my hand onto the floor, and i'm assuming it suffocated.

you think i'm a nutcase.
i swear, i'm not! it's just so unbelievably hard for me to think of life and death being in my own hands. it's not that we can avoid killing. we either have to kill plants or animals for sustenance.

i realized today, more than ever, my view of the world is too romanticized. maybe life isn't what i thought it was. there is death all over, and not just mercy killings of dying fish; there are thousands dying every day in the name of one God or another; there are forests being clear-cut to make room for cattle (that are going to be raised under hellish conditions until they grow old enough to be burger king hamburgers), and there are people every day stepping on ants for fun (i'm being serious; stepping on ants is so rude and inhumane).

i love God, but sometimes i wonder why anyone can be happy in such a world.
i love God, but sometimes i wonder why i'm here. (i have concluded that i must be here for a reason. my intuition tells me that suicide is wrong. if i didn't have a purpose, suicide would not be wrong. is that illogical?)
i love God, but i just don't understand what makes the world go 'round.

that's all for now.