Maybe a lot of you are too young or too straight to remember the AIDS crisis. I’m not.
It took my cousin, whom I loved deeply.
He was one of the few people in my life that I felt really understood me. It wasn’t until after he was dead from a horrible disease that I knew why. I named my daughter after him. He meant that much to me. And it took a long time for her to come to terms with being named after a gay man who died from the HIV virus in the 90’s, since we lived for many of her formative years in a small, conservative town in rural Iowa.
You see, a lot of people there didn’t much care that my cousin was dead. Many of them thought that he deserved that horrific end—it wasn’t a pretty one. He didn’t even want us to visit. He didn’t want us to remember him in that state, but to remember him full of life and color and joy. And people thought he deserved to die in such a violent way because he was gay.
Tonight I heard a neighbor outside my window saying some bullshit about more people dying in chihuahua attacks than will from the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. I’m certain that isn’t a true statistic. First, because those are some tiny dogs you could just kick into oblivion. Second, because we have no idea what the ramifications of this illness will be in the end. That is why it is called “novel”. It’s new. We don’t have data that is reliable at this point. We do not understand this virus fully, and we don’t know how many people will lose their lives because of it.
But one thing that I have noticed about the response to this virus, much like the one that took my cousin’s life, is that there are many who don’t seem to care what life is lost, as long as the right people die.
Those that are most susceptible to dying, as far as we can tell, are the old and infirm. Those that are most susceptible to dying, as far as we can tell, are the ones with preexisting conditions. Those that are most susceptible to dying, as far as we can tell, are the ones who are already in the categories that our current society—this consumerist machine we pretend is a democracy—does not value. The right people are dying, for the most part. And as long as that is the case, those that do not value them will not make the changes necessary to safeguard the society as a whole.
It is history repeated, but a different set of people are now waiting for the spin of the barrel, and the fated shot, and the moment to reveal itself. Will they live or will they die?
The lesson, if there is one to be learned, would be that all that death didn’t stop the LGBTQ+ community from thriving. In fact, in some ways, it helped inspire us to rally and organize and become stronger. And that illness didn’t just take gay men. It spread far and wide, becoming a leading cause of death for some time. It is still considered pandemic in some countries, where medications that are easily obtained here are not available. I
t still takes lives, even with all the advances we have made and our current ability to make it undetectable in some. It still frightens us. It is still a threat and a life-altering diagnosis and an automatic disability.
It stopped killing the right people. It started killing everyone.
You might not be a high risk individual. You might not know a high risk individual. You might not care about a high risk individual. But know this: you cannot control this novel thing. It might decide that it kills Tom Hanks as quickly as it kills a homeless diabetic. It might decide that getting it once doesn’t make you immune, but makes you more susceptible to reinfection. It might decide that it gives no care to malaria drugs that Trump likes, or to the economy, or to race, or gender, or age, or preexisting anything. It might mutate again and again, creating countless cycles of death on a yearly basis. It might never leave. We may never find a treatment or a cure or develop a vaccine. We may be at its mercy forever. We simply don’t know.
And if you are counting on this being fine because the right people are dying, then you are a monster who deserves not one death, but a thousand. To decide that you are more valuable than another human—that your pleasure or freedom or agency is more important than their life—is the worst possible thing I can imagine. The most heinous of crimes is to imagine yourself a person of greater importance than another, and to sacrifice them in your service.
I remember when I found out that my cousin was dying. I was grieving and distraught. The few people I told about his contracting the virus all asked the same question first thing, “Is he gay?”
Why did that matter? What was their fascination with his sexuality?
I didn’t really understand the question until today.
I saw the man who lives out behind my apartment complex and he asked if I had anything to eat. I told him to wait while I went inside and bagged up some breakfast bars and crackers and bottles of water—whatever I had around that he could easily transport and keep relatively fresh for a bit. I brought it out and handed it to him. I didn’t hug him like I usually do, because of social distancing, but after I went back inside I cried for the first time since this pandemic began. He is the type of person that so many others are unconcerned with. He is the expendable extraneous drain on society that we can let go.
And so am I.
So was Terry.
So were millions of men and women just a couple decades ago.
And yet, somehow, we have already forgotten that our callous hatred then is a blight on our history that we should not be repeating. We are going out to Spring Break or to see cherry blossoms while we let the right people die.
People asked if my cousin was gay because it justified his death, in their minds. It made it reasonable and righteous that an out of control, unknown virus was ravaging his body. They didn’t need to be afraid of AIDS if it was still letting the right people die.
I was taught to believe in a god by people who don’t care if he lets me live or die, so I’m not sure I am a believer in that, exactly, anymore. But I do have a system of belief that includes a Divine. These days I pray often. But I don’t request what you might imagine—health and for my loved ones to make it through this unscathed. Obviously, I want those things. But I find that I am begging that the Divine have mercy upon us, for allowing this lack of empathy and this sociopathy and selfishness and self-aggrandizement to go on, unchecked, for so many generations. I beg forgiveness that we continue to choose races and classes and groups that we deem expendable, as long as our own needs are met.
There is no person that should be sacrificed for our comfort. We should never be comfortable while others around us are losing their lives or freedom or resources. We should be fighting for their lives as if they were our own.
We are all human and we are all equal.
It is time to start treating one another as such, before there are none of us left to watch the others perish, because our greed has swallowed us all.
care
Singleness is Scary
In the wee hours of the morning, I went up to the bar owner and bouncer at my regular watering hole and told them that I have no idea how to be single. Now that I have officially declared my independence from Bill, I have attracted all sorts of attention that is unwanted from all sorts of men.
And my declaration has been quite public only in the last 24 hours.
I had to be walked home to my apartment last night. There was a man stalking me, and I live frighteningly close to the bar for stalkers to be allowed to simply lurk outside the bar and possibly follow me home. Thankfully, the love and care is strong among this community, and they made sure to have me escorted safely to my door. One crisis averted.
Another crisis is still brewing. A new friend whom I love spending time with has a boy who suddenly has only eyes for me. He kept trying to touch my face. Clearly, he was drunk. But touching a woman’s face is seriously intimate, people. You don’t just come up and start touching a woman’s face. And you certainly don’t do it to a woman who is developing a friendship with a woman with whom you are already involved! Are you trying to create “Housewives” level drama in the corner bar?? Also, I find you not at all attractive and don’t like your personality.
Man number three is married. His wife understands (or so he claims) that Saturday is his day to do what he wishes. The rest of the week he is home, and Sunday is for family, but Saturday he apparently flirts with, buys drinks for, and asks out to dinner other women. I kindly explained that I am not interested in dating someone who already has a wife and family. I’m not looking for a side guy. I’m looking for a long-term love. I’m looking for serious, settled-down life with one person in a committed and monogamous situation. That explanation didn’t seem to deter him. Luckily, he disappeared when it was my turn at the karaoke mic, so crisis averted, for the moment.
There was another man who watched me across the room for hours. He didn’t approach me. But he didn’t approach me because the night before I was still being attended by Bill, for a portion of the evening, at least. While I had told Bill that I needed freedom to find what I desire in a relationship, and therefore he would need to back off, he hadn’t accepted that reality. But at one point during the night, this man came up to talk to me. He continually told me how beautiful I was and made what he thought were successful overtures. I was polite but did not encourage his advances. But some men don’t understand that not encouraging their advances is a “no”. You need, I guess, to tell them to “fuck off and leave me alone”. But I hadn’t done that. And then this weird event took place where there was a mix up with beer bottles and Bill threw a childish fit, even after Olga poured out his old beer and I bought him a new one, undefiled by the man who had been hitting on me. Bill disappeared after that and I haven’t heard from him since. The man who had been hitting on me, and caused the mix up–touching Bill’s beer bottle, and more importantly, I think, invading the space around “Bill’s” Christy–stared at me the next night for hours. I wasn’t sure if he was angry because I was clearly not with Bill tonight, and approached by many men without consequence, or if he was desiring me from afar but not willing to risk the rejection of the previous night. But it was a bit creepy–being watched.
And then there was the one man who I did want to see. Apparently he had been in the bar at some point. I have no idea where I was at the moment he was present, but I didn’t see him. I’m still disappointed by that. I’m also a bit worried that I was being pressured by one of the other suitors at the moment the man I really wanted to connect with was nearby, and he may have gotten the wrong impression about my engagement with one of those other men–not realizing that I simply haven’t figured out the art of telling people to “fuck off and leave me alone” in an effective manner. Singleness is scary, people. Being a beautiful, intelligent, capable woman who isn’t attached to a man makes you feel like dead meat among vultures. And somehow that seems like a terrible association to make, but it feels really true!
I like to imagine that in an anarchic situation I would compile all the good and fight like hell to secure my safety. And that is probably true. I am a fighter.
But I am also really nice and really innocent in ways that can get me into trouble. I have a compassionate heart. I don’t like to hurt people. I want to help people. So, telling them that I reject them seems hurtful. But you can’t be nice to vultures. You need to scare those beasts away! Finding my way to the compassionate fighter may be a difficult road to travel. And I may need friends and bouncers to walk me home on the regular before I get it figured out.
I suppose I will look at this like I look at most things that scare the crap out of me–as an opportunity with unknown benefits. Learning to navigate this scary single way of being will likely teach me skills that I can use in other areas of life. And while I never want to become the jaded one in the room, and will run toward the bloodied man on the floor to administer first aid while everyone else moves away, and still don’t want to break spirits with harsh rejections, I do need to figure out how not to be followed home by creepy dudes. That is a useful skill. And I also need to learn how to fight away the distractions so that I have space in my life for the people whom I want to know more–the ones that I potentially won’t wish to say no to, and will want to offer my time and attention and affections. Maybe, someday, they’ll even be allowed to touch my face or follow me home. Or both!
Payday
I’m busy printing out proofs to attain a payday loan. It is a long shot, last resort sort of move on my part. There aren’t any options left beyond a ridiculous interest rate over 50% and steep penalties should I not meet the strict requirements of repayment of that criminal amount of interest. It should be a crime for such life crushing loans to exist. And yet I am working to get one, and desperate to hear them approve me for this loan that I believe to be criminal.
It is nonsense, really. But it makes all the sense when you live in the margins, where there is never enough, and you are treated with contempt and barely considered human, much less treated with the grace and kindness and compassion that humanity should garner.
These days, I don’t know what “humane” means. I don’t know that “humanity” exists in the way it once did. Or, more correctly, I don’t know that it exists in the way that I had imagined.
I was running very late for a doctor appointment the other day and needed to take a Lyft instead of a bus. My driver, a Somali native, said something along the lines of “selfishness is human nature”. I wanted to argue that was not true. I wanted to express the compassion and love that humans were capable of offering one another. And then I thought better of it, knowing that I was suffering needlessly an economic situation that could be eliminated with just a few dollars from the people who call me “friend”, and knowing that this man, having emigrated from Somalia, knew selfishness and pain and racism and judgment and xenophobia and messed up fucking shit that I, an already despairing woman, cannot even imagine. Who was I to tell him that humanity has something better to offer??
Instead, I made a statement about perspective and how much we are shaped by what we experience in our lives—hoping to avoid agreement that hurting those whom we can place beneath us so that we might rise is human nature, but also not arguing that we are better than that, because I don’t feel like we are better than that very often of late.
I sit at a desk covered in images of Wonder Woman. I built it. I covered it in these images deliberately, because I found it inspiring. Not only do I sit and work atop a work of art when I am well enough to do work, but I also have a deep sense of justice and love and giving of myself to improve the state of the world, and she embodies that for me, and reminds me that my end goal is a world filled with love and justice. What I do at this desk should be focused on that goal. And to a great extent my work is focused on that goal.
But more and more my focus is fear. There is worry over finances. There is stress over what I read in the news. There is the sadness and the horror that comes from seeing the world become more broken, fractured, confused, and afraid as a particular world leader creates xenophobia, insecurity, unrest, racism, and general hatred and chaos. There is pain and struggle and the fear that the future will become even more difficult than the present. And that isn’t just my personal fear, but the fear of millions, which is even more heartbreaking, because of my deep empathy. Wonder Woman and her ideals seem worlds away while I work atop images of her from generations of comics.
I wonder if Donald Trump ever watches super hero films or reads comics. Do you suppose he sees himself as the hero or the villain? He certainly doesn’t have the ideals of the hero, so he must be delusional if he identifies as one.
I know that I am not the hero in any story. I sometimes get painted as one. Ask my brother-in-law about Christmas Day in Seattle and he will tell you a tale that makes me the hero of the story. But I am not the hero, because I only did what any human should do—I helped a woman in need. I felt her pain, I met her in it, and I made certain that she was safe in the hands of professional medical personnel before I left to attend to my own needs. That is the least that we should be doing for one another. The absolute least.
There is so much more.
So. Much. More.
Recently, I had dinner with my “brother”, Adam. We were talking about need and giving and enough and excess. He talked about aid that he had offered our nephew, and the way that he had added a component of “paying forward” part of the funding that had been offered to him. Give to another, the way Adam gave unto you.
It sounds a bit biblical, right?
It is a bit biblical. Because there is a verse in the bible that is pretty much the same. It is found in the Gospel of John, Chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. It says, “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
I suppose that means if my nephew pays forward a third of his college aid, he is a disciple of my “brother”. Haha. There are definitely worse men to be disciples of, so this is probably a good thing.
The point I am working toward here is that the goal that we as humans are meant to be working toward—according to Jesus, and according to Adam, and according to Wonder Woman, and according to the feeling in my gut—is offering love and compassion and physical needs and grace and equality and honesty and kindness and more than enough. And I don’t know when or where we lost sight of that, or whether we ever truly had that in our sights as a society at large. But our heroes—the embodiments of the best of us—have always had that in view. We need to cling to that view.
I should be focused on what I can do to continue living out the ideals of Wonder Woman, not on what I need to desperately print out to prove that I am worthy of a criminal payday loan! No human being should be forced to sell their soul so Speedy Cash out of fear that they won’t live from the 28th to the 1st, and will lose their home, contact with their family and friends, and the ability to obtain sufficient calories to sustain their body. And when some of the people are in this state while others are jumping off of fancy boats in the waves on a weekday morning, we are not loving one another as we have been loved. We are not giving to one another as Uncle Adam gave to us. We are being selfish. And we are letting Somali men believe that this is just the way we are as humans—that this is just who we are and will always be: selfish bastards who trample one another to elevate ourselves.
Are you a selfish bastard who tramples others to elevate yourself? Is that who you want to be? Is that what you want to be known for and what you want others to believe defines the human condition?
I cannot abide that. I cannot tolerate that. I cannot accept that.
I won’t let humanity be a giant game of “king of the mountain” where the ruthless climber is the winner. Not if I can do anything to help it.
And I can do something to help it. You can also do something to help!
We can all stop accepting the idea that selfishness is a part of our DNA and refuse to let humanity be defined by anything but the heroic ideals of love and generosity and compassion and care and grace and good. We get to define who we are, as individuals, as a society, and as representatives of the human condition. We decide.
So, decide now. Are you the kind of person who lets payday loans take the souls of disabled, poor women struggling to make ends meet, or are you the kind of person who changes the narrative and refuses to let this be the way that we treat the people in the margins? Are you the kind of person who is ready to stand up and work hard to eliminate the margins?
It will be difficult work. Change always is difficult. You need to learn, you need to change the voices in your head, you need to assess the things that you believe and challenge the beliefs that you have held for many years. So much of our bias is unconscious, and it takes a lot of self-reflection to work out what we think, and then to consider the ways that thinking might be incomplete, inconsiderate, or just plain wrong. But if the choice is between doing hard work or letting down humanity, I choose hard work every single time.
Today, I still need the payday loan. And it breaks my heart to know that I need to sacrifice in this way. It is a terrible choice. But there aren’t good choices in the margins very often, unfortunately. Maybe at some point I will have better options, or there won’t be margins, and humanity will not be seen as selfish, but as loving and generous and compassionate. Maybe on that day payday loans won’t exist—they actually will be criminal, as in illegal—and disabled women will not be afraid of starving or living under bridges because of financial challenges. If enough of us choose care over selfishness, this will be reality.
So, choose heroic ideals instead of payday loans. Don’t let Somalian Lyft drivers believe that this is who we are as humans. Don’t be this as humans.
We can do better.
I know that we can do better.
Follow Jesus, or Wonder Woman, or Adam. Choose heroism over selfishness and do better.
As I have loved you, so you should love one another.
Toxic 2.0
I don’t know how to do relationships.
Don’t get me wrong. I know how to advise about relationships. I’d make a great family therapist or marriage counselor. I marry people—to one another, of course—in ceremonies, as the ordained minister with credentials recognized by the state. Ask me about your relationship and I will give you fabulous advice about how to do your relationship well.
But the second I get involved with another human in an intimate relationship, I turn into a raging lunatic.
I literally chased a man the other night.
Ran after him.
Ran.
People, I don’t run. If a bear chases you, you lie down in a ball and protect vital organs. If a person with a gun demands something of you, you give it to them. If bullets start flying nearby, you get your body as flat to the ground and as behind cover as it can get, and you stay there. Fuck running. I have not run in years and I don’t intend to start now. But I ran to catch up with a man who was running away from me. Literally.
It’s like I give out some sort of inaudible and unintended signal that can only be heard by people who will help me create crazy in my life. A dog whistle of sorts emanates from my person. (Granted, we usually also create crazy in the bedroom, which is amazing and which I love with an intensity only matched by that of my orgasms. So, there are definitely perks.)
But I cannot figure out how not to be the most insecure woman on the planet when it comes to being in a relationship of a romantic nature. And even if the person I start the relationship with is totally secure, normal, and stable at the beginning, I make them nuts by the time we are a couple of months in, because my crazy is so intense that it spreads like a virus. And I’m not sure how to stop that.
I can keep you from getting my herpes, but not my insane, obsessive notions that I am unlovable and not good enough and being “punked” every time you attempt to love me well.
I constantly think I am being tricked into something. Into what, I do not know. But I am convinced there must be some form of deception happening. How could there not be, given my history?
It’s strange, because I see great models of what a “good man” is all around me. And I don’t mean that bullshit “real men _____” that accompanies toxic masculinity and the vomitorium that is men’s rights groups. The last thing I need in my life is some controlling, machismo, hyper-masculine ass. I’ve been with that. It didn’t go well.
When I say “good man”, I mean a balanced, thoughtful, feminist, who cares about the world and the people in it, and treats all people with respect, but offers an extra layer of that care and love to the partner in his life. My dad is one of these people, though he might not love that I call him “feminist” (I mean that you believe in equal rights for all people, Dad—which I know you totally do.) My “brother”, Adam, is one of these people. My friend, Luke, is one of these people. Andrew, Allan, Josh, Brian, Bryan, Matt, Joshua, Dan, Phillip, James, Ted, David, and the list goes on. Not to mention the long list of good women out there who model great personhood and great partnership for me to follow.
So, I see these good men and women, and then I think I pick one of these good men or women out of the lot of single people out there around me, and then things go really well for the first month, and then…
Then my mind starts to play the game where it thinks that I am not enough, so I need more and more evidence that I am enough. So, I cling and I push and I beg and I get all sorts of unreasonable. I know I am doing it on some level, I think. I used to try to deny it and to believe that I was constantly being gaslighted. (Not that I was never being gaslighted, because there was lots of gaslighting going on in my history, just not at the times that I was creating the problem.) Now I am more aware of it, and I have come to accept that I have a nervous attachment style—I need lots of assurance that the person I am with wants to be with me and considers me enough.
It has taken a long time for me to consider that valid—that need for assurance. But it makes all of the sense that I would need extra assurance, given the fact that I was locked into abusive cycles for much of my relationship history, and those cycles told me repeatedly that I was not worthy or enough. Now, I just sort of wait for the person I am with to start that cycle of abuse. And when they don’t, I start to become confused and anxious and weird.
That sounds stupid. To put the words on the page feels really strange.
To admit that I become confused, anxious, and weird when nobody starts a cycle of abuse is terrible.
It is sad.
It is devastating.
But it is so true.
So, I think that I have started it myself. I have convinced myself that now is about the time that my partner should start to treat me poorly, so I make comments or do things that cause conflict. I get angry that he leaves to go to his on-call job—even though I know he is on call. I ask if he is embarrassed to be seen with me, when he and I have just been walking down the street hand in hand. I push when he asks me to pull. I go when he asks me to stop. I accuse him of not wanting to be with me when he is with me. I do the weirdest things, because I think that conflict should happen now, and he isn’t starting it.
I’m breaking my own heart and blaming him for doing so.
Let’s be fair—bad men broke me. The toxicity of relationships prior to now was all their fault, and not my fault at all. I was captive, beaten, raped, assaulted, and abused in all sorts of ways. They are responsible for that. And part of that toxicity is seeping into my present, so they are also partly responsible for what is going on with my relational challenges today. There is no doubt that the breaking that was done before is still affecting me now, and some parts might always stay broken.
But what worries me now is that I fear that I have become toxic. What worries me today is that my only way of being in relationship has been the way of toxicity, and I might not know how to be other. I might not know how to be the partner I expect my partner to be, because of the brokenness that lingers and the places that are still wounded and scarred.
What if I have become the face of my enemy? An enemy that I was in love with, and whom I thought was in love with me, by the way, so I somehow tie love to the war that we were fighting inside our home—inside our life together. What if I can’t figure out how to love without warring?
How do I love without warring?
I suppose that is the question for which I need an answer.
And that question isn’t easily answered. Because you can give me the facts and the formulas, and you can tell me how to move forward without warring, and you can tell me how to love well, but that doesn’t mean that my psyche knows how to follow that instruction.
We all have certain areas in life where we act somewhat automatically. Muscle memory is an example of this. You don’t keep thinking through the way that you are swinging a bat or whisking some eggs or signing your name or rocking the baby. Your body remembers those sensations and it starts to do them automatically, without you having to use up conscious thoughts about how or when you perform particular movements. Your body does the things.
And I have some sort of “muscle memory” about the way I do relationships. Doing them differently takes rewriting the code that is already imbedded in my brain. It’s like trying to become left-handed after 44 years of having a dominant right hand. It’s nearly impossible, and it is excruciatingly difficult and hella frustrating.
It sucks. And I’m not certain that I am capable of making such a huge change. I am certain that making that change soon enough to salvage my current relationship will be some sort of miracle, because I have already pushed it beyond a point where anyone should decide to continue trying to love me, know me, or understand me. Once you literally chase a man down the street, things are likely beyond repair. If this man returns and states that he wants to keep trying to be in relationship with me, I will likely wonder what is wrong with him, and only become more suspicious. What kind of man would date someone so crazy??! Not a balanced, normal, secure man with healthy boundaries, right?
See, I am already planning the next wave of mistrust before I have cleared up the chaos of the last one. I’m a fucking mess when it comes to doing relationships.
Was I single for twenty years because I was focused on other things, or was I single for twenty years because I knew that this was how messed up inside I was feeling, and how poorly dating would go once I began to pursue it? It was definitely simpler to have short-term affairs with people in close proximity whom I didn’t find attractive as long-term partners. It was also morally ambiguous at best, and using people to fulfill my needs in a selfish and terrible way when you didn’t put a positive spin on things. But it got me through and kept me from having to address all of the things that I am putting on paper now.
It kept me from having to face my insecurity, my dependence on cycles of the past, my inability to move forward in healthy ways, my desire not matching my state of mental health, and the deep and difficult work that I still need to do to find balance and some semblance of “normal” in my life and relationships. Letting go of that buffer and finding myself leaning into loving someone has opened up all of those things and put my face right up in that shit. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to deal with it.
It isn’t that I don’t want a healthy, long-term relationship. I do. It is just that I have been doing the hard work of dealing with the effects of my past for so many years now, and I am very, very, very tired of doing that hard work. Opening up my heart to someone means opening up a new set of vulnerabilities and challenges and problems and ugly truths that I need to work hard to overcome.
I am so tired of having to overcome shit.
I am so tired of having to overcome shit.
That wasn’t a typo. I literally needed to write that twice, because it is doubly true.
It isn’t fair that I am forced to overcome all sorts of evils and errors and offenses and other things that other people placed upon me—things that I did not and would not choose. I keep fighting to clear away terrible things that I never gave consent for in the first place. I have to work to fix what other people broke. I have to deal with things that were forced into my life, and the perpetrators who forced this upon me, for the most part, work at nothing. Most of them have jobs, partners, good health, financial security, and what look like lives of happiness and fulfillment. Granted, things aren’t always as they seem, so I won’t claim with certainty that none of them are haunted by their past or struggling in some way. But I can say that they have much that I do not, and that I do not have those things because of the consequences of their actions. I need to overcome the consequences of their actions. And it looks as though they need to overcome very little.
I know that life isn’t fair. I can hear my mom’s voice saying it each time I think to myself or say to someone, “It isn’t fair.”
My mom would always be quick to remind me that life isn’t fair.
But maybe it should be fair.
Maybe those men who did the bad things should have to make reparations of some kind. Maybe those men should have been punished for their crimes against me, instead of rewarded by a system that honors the white man above all things and casts victims to the curb as though they were not human. Maybe I should have been protected from the abusers, or given an opposing perspective, at the very least, so that I didn’t grow up to believe that I am worthless and unlovable and cursed and terrible and shouldn’t be alive.
But life wasn’t fair, and none of those maybes became realities. So, I muddled through the unfairness with my toxic thoughts until I became the maker of my own chaos. When nobody else was here to tell me how worthless I was, I told myself.
And now that a person is getting close enough to love me, I am showing him that I am too messed up to be lovable. He didn’t say it, so I said it for him, by chasing him down the street.
He came by to check on me the next day and asked me to forgive him for arguing with me. He asked me to forgive him! He took the blame for my actions.
I offered him forgiveness. Things have been strained and he has been a bit distant since then.
I text him periodically, asking if he still wants to be with me. He replies by saying that he is very busy at work and very tired, but he will call me as soon as he can.
I’m trying to choose to believe that he is very busy with work, and that this is all there is to the story—the truth being the text taken at face value. But there is a part of me that wants to create all sorts of scenarios where that text isn’t true, and he is using work as an excuse to keep his distance until he can fade out of my life without fear of some sort of crazed retribution.
And, honestly, this post doesn’t end with a nice little resolution and a happy, encouraging anecdote, because the story here is just what I stated: I’m trying to believe what he told me is true when the “muscle memory” inside of me is screaming objections at that belief. My mind is shrieking mistrust, and that is how it will continue, unless or until I can find a way of changing that part of my mind and the perspective on my history that leads it.
The truth of the past and the truth of the present are warring. So, no, I haven’t figured out how to love without warring, because a war is happening inside of me every moment. Even if I don’t fight with the one I love, I need to fight with myself to keep on trusting and to not let the ones who broke me in the past break my present, and my future.
At the end of this post I am still where I was at the beginning:
I don’t know how to do relationships.
…but I am trying to find a way. And that is progress of some kind, I hope.
UPDATE:
Last night the chased man (definitely not the chaste man–to be clear) called and asked me what I wanted for dinner. I chose burgers, and he took me out to the best local spot for burgers.
While we ate, I was telling him about the article I wrote about our wild night and big fight and how I feel about being incapable of positive, healthy relationship where I don’t push him into madness and create chaos. And he said, “I’m going to stop you right there. No. No. There was rum involved. And nothing you did created that situation. You didn’t do that. You didn’t do anything. I know that I shouldn’t be drinking, and I have not had any liquor since the moment I left you that night, and you didn’t … no. Just no. Don’t put that on yourself. Don’t even think that for a second. I heard you say to me you forgive me, is that still true?”
I nodded in agreement, a tear rolling down my cheek.
“And you did nothing wrong, but if you feel you did I forgive that too. I think that we can work through this. I think that we are going to be fine. I still want to make this work, and I believe that it will. Unless you don’t want me around anymore?”
“I don’t want that,” was my quick and impassioned retort. “I want you with me.”
“Then I am with you. I would never deliberately abandon you. I would never try to harm you. I am with you.”
And all of the anxious attachment needs were met, and all of the wrongs felt righted, and dinner was lovely, even with tears in my eyes.
Maybe I overestimate my power to destroy things, and maybe I underestimated the power of this man to care for me well.
Later he took me up on a rooftop, high above all the neighboring buildings, and we watched the fireworks. It was the most amazing display I have ever witnessed! Perched above the city, as we were, we could see the shows put on at each beach, downtown, in the suburbs, and in the nearby neighborhoods. It was a 360-degree canvas bursting with light and sound, the winds starting to come up off the lake cooling our bodies, stripping down to our skivvies and dancing to his music and lying on my blanket and laughing. It was one of the most beautiful nights of my life.
The truth of the past and the truth of the present may still be warring. They may always be warring. But nights like these—when someone meets my fear and my failure and my feelings head on and not only answers with the best response but shows me something so positive to replace the negative in my mind—can do something that I hadn’t considered before now.
Nights like these can rewire the brain. Nights like these can form new memories.
And enough of these nights, added together, can make new muscle memory.
They can reform my system of beliefs about relationships and brokenness and trust and truth and love and commitment. They can rid my body and my mind of the toxins and replace them with healthier things.
I couldn’t imagine that before last night.
Now I can.
I guess there is a happy, encouraging anecdote after all!
I See Stupid People
There’s this M. Night Shyamalan movie that has an monologue that a friend and I once transformed a bit. We took the word “dead” and inserted “stupid”.
I see stupid people. They’re all around me. They don’t know they’re stupid.
Today I have been dealing with the frustration of not being able to express my frustration at what I consider stupidity.
I should be ecstatic right now.
After months and months of waiting, my housing situation is finally resolving, and I am signing a lease on an apartment!!!!!!
And I am ecstatic, but I am also feeling assaulted by constant texts and calls and questions and threats by the owner of the apartment that I have secured. It isn’t that they are intentionally being hurtful or aggressive. They just don’t understand anything about this process and they are continually looking to me for answers. And I am frustrated to the point of tears, because it isn’t my job to hold the hand of my landlord while they figure out how to deal with a leasing agency or the Chicago Housing Authority for the first time. They should be looking to the leasing agency or the housing authority for that assistance. But they are not. They are basically harassing me because they don’t understand shit.
I see stupid people.
This morning, after assuring the landlord last night that everything was on track with the housing authority, and that the leasing agent would be connecting with the processing department regarding funds I put aside in December and how we would disperse those funds, and saying that I would be in touch as soon as I had news, I got a 9 am text: Any news … on when we are meeting
Shortly after, I got a phone call, and when I explained that we were trying to iron out the details, but all would be fine, and we could sign the lease later in the day, once that was done, I was told, “as long as this happens today”, “we have waited way too long”, “I’m very unhappy with their [the leasing agency’s] service”.
And while I held my tongue and gave all sorts of kind and cautiously worded assurances on the phone with the landlord, a few minutes later, my best friend got a text that said, “I’m just getting upset because suddenly the landlord is like ‘this happens today’ ‘we have waited too long’. And I am like, and I have been waiting since October! I’ve been discriminated against and turned down and stressed out and screamed at and living in fear. You’ve what? Waited through February for me to pay you for your fucking empty apartment with cash I begged friends and family for? What right do they have to be so indignant and demanding?”
Then I apologized for letting the feelings that were coming up from the interaction with the landlord come out toward my friend.
But at least they came out … because I went for acupuncture for the first time yesterday, and my acupuncturist was telling me about how acupuncture helps release the emotion and stress and trauma and unvoiced stuff that gets trapped in our body when we hold on to all of that shit. However, if we keep holding it, the problem will remain chronic, because the problem is holding down the shit, and acupuncture can’t stop us from doing that. We need to learn to stop the cause, not keep treating the effect ad nauseum.
Anyway, the financing was worked out, and the housing authority once again expressed to me, in detail, the situation with the case, and assured me that all is well with moving forward and signing the lease today. The leasing agency, whose services have been AMAZING, by the way, said they would call and explain the payment details to the landlord, so I don’t need to stress over that anymore and can focus on finishing up packing and getting the lease signed so that my move can happen in two days.
All is well, and I am moving back toward the ecstatic end of the spectrum.
And as the calm sets in, I start to think on my own moments of being a “stupid person” this week.
I got a different phone this week. In an effort to save money, I switched wireless carriers. Switching carriers was easy (and saved me a load of cash!). Transferring my data from one phone to the other, however, proved far more difficult. I know that the lovely young man in the store told me to take the phones home, update the old one on my computer, reset the new one, and restore. Somehow that doesn’t work. I don’t know what I am doing wrong, but I cannot make that work. I know what should happen when I work through that process, but that isn’t what actually happens. And in the meantime, I can’t keep carrying around two phones, a watch, and a tablet that are all alerting me to different things and have bits of critical information that need to combine to create a functional Christy.
So, I simply downloaded and signed into and reorganized and started over with apps and calendars and accounts. But that means when I go to check in with my lovely young man on Saturday to see how I am getting along with my new phone, he can’t even do the restore thing for me, because then I will lose all of the new things that I have done on the new phone if we restore from a tabula rasa. I no longer have a blank slate to start with. I’ve worked to create a slate full of organization and function.
Am I a stupid person when it comes to updating phones? Absolutely! Am I a stupid person when it comes to advanced mathematics? Absolutely! Am I a stupid person when it comes to any number of things that I am not skilled in and do not understand as well as another person? Absolutely!
Here’s the thing: I’m really fucking intelligent. I am. I’m not ashamed of that, and I should never have to hide that so other people don’t feel less intelligent than I am. It is totally fine that I am smart. It is great, honestly. But I am not skilled in and informed about every subject. There are lots of things that I am not good at and plenty more that I am not educated regarding. Sometimes I am the stupid person.
At one point or another, we are all the person who is stupid. And at one point or another, we are all the person who has perspective, information, and guidance that another needs. What is most important is not whether we are the one needing guidance or offering it, but how we are treating one another in both of those situations.
When I am in the phone store, and the lovely young man is assisting me to figure out the new technology, I am kind, apologetic, and grateful. I listen. I ask for him to write things down on paper if I can’t follow along in my head. I thank him repeatedly and tell him how valuable his skills are, and how appreciative I am for his assistance. This is how I be the stupid person.
When I am the person offering the guidance, I hold my frustration for another space and time. I ask for another to call and explain, since it shouldn’t fall to me to handle the situation. I say things using different language, and I repeat things when needed. I offer encouragement and assurances. I try to remain calm and keep my voice soft, metered, and sweet-sounding. I send documentation, source materials, and copies of proofs. I do whatever I can to make things clear and calm. This is how I am when I am the one who is dealing with the “stupid person”.
Somehow, the way you act and react in the situation makes all the difference. And that is how we get through life without harming one another in all sorts of ways—by not being stupid or smart in ways that are indignant, threatening, stubborn, superior, rude, harassing, demanding, ungrateful, or hurtful in any way. We manage to learn from one another, and to help one another through the challenges, by being grateful and kind and patient, and by caring for one another through these interactions.
I think that much of what is wrong with America in particular, and the world in general, these days is that we have forgotten that basic common decency. We have forgotten how to care for one another through these interactions. I’m not sure how that is possible.
Because we all seem to be crying out to be cared for while we refuse to care for anyone else.
This is a two-way street, people. It goes both ways. If you want to be cared for, you absolutely need to start caring for others. You don’t get one without the other.
It required an amount of gratitude, patience, support from others, meditation, self-care, and self-soothing that I almost could not summon to cope with persons who wanted me to guide them without offering me the care and gratitude and patience that I required from them. When they didn’t offer me that, I needed to find it elsewhere. Most people don’t have a wealth of gratitude and support and patience and Zen to draw from. I’m lucky to have found the value of amassing stores of such things as a tool for maintaining mental health and managing chronic illness, so I have it to call upon in situations where others forget to care in our interactions. But most are not amassing stores upon which they can draw. Most are pushed beyond breaking points and that frustration and anger and pain of not being offered respect and care and gratitude fly out into the open, creating volatile and even deadly situations.
What would the world look like if we offered the care and avoided the open expression of that pain?
I think it would look very different. I think it would look much better, much more kind, and much more beautiful. I think it would offer us freedom and would decrease our anxiety and fear. I think that it would bring many of us the peace and the positive feedback we needed to keep on going through the challenging moments. And it would let all of us breathe a big sigh of relief.
This is the first time that I have the insight that I am the stupid person all around someone else, and that understanding how I am stupid, and how I am smart makes a huge difference in my interactions with others. I hope that my insight might offer you the opportunity to consider your own interactions.
How do you act and react when you are “smart” or “stupid”? What ways can you add care to those interactions, and what difference might that make?
I’ll put it out there so none of the comments need to … I used to be an asshole about being smart! I loved knowing stuff and being smarter than others. But I think that was largely because there was so much pain in other areas of my life. I was terrible at relationships. I was keeping devastating secrets. I was living in constant fear. Pain fueled the way I interacted then. I’m not the same person now. I’m not the same person in this moment that I was at 9 am, frankly. The insight I’ve gained while writing this post has literally changed who I am. But, the last 4 years of therapy, and study, and mindfulness, have changed the place from which my interactions originate. They don’t always come from fear and pain any longer. I have new spaces—better spaces—from which to draw.
We don’t need to keep interacting in the same ways we always have. It can take a lot of difficult work to change how we interact and from where we draw that gratitude and fortitude and support. But it is worth it. I believe it can change the world. That is so worth it.
Up Again
It’s been difficult to write.
That’s not entirely true.
It’s been difficult to write something that doesn’t sound like suicidal ideation blended with complaint and condemnation and a little bit of protein powder to make an “I fucking hate everything and everyone and can’t remember why I keep trying at life smoothie”.
And I am relatively certain that nobody wants to read that. Or taste that. Or whatever.
On the bright side, I’m not literally suicidal. And all sorts of pop songs are cycling through my brain—not death metal—so, all is not lost. Though I did tell my dad yesterday that things were going to get very Dantesque around here if I don’t get a ruling in my case soon. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.
But for the moment, I am only a depressing mess in written word, not in other facets of my life.
Today I have been wondering about that a bit. And I am wondering if there is an element of true self and false self, or of seen and hidden, or of private and public, that is expressed through the writing and being. Is there a tie that binds my writing with my deepest feelings, and keeps it honest? Or is the best of me brought out in person, leaving the struggle for the page? Is there some way that my craft expresses only one bit of me and not another?
I don’t know how to answer that.
And now I am tired. Tired beyond all telling or explaining.
Just considering one or two questions exhausted me. And my splint just hit buttons without my consent and tried to send my document over the internet for translation? What the fuck, splint? Why are you acting out? I know why the dog and cat and offspring are cranky—not enough play time, no fresh litter liner, and no access to cigarettes or boyfriend, respectively.
And I am cranky because everything and everyone else needs and wants my attention and affection and compassion and concern. But I don’t even have enough of that for me. I can’t give what I don’t have. But I keep on trying. I’m a fucking bleeding turnip. I’m a fucking bleeding stone.
So, while the dog is fed and the cat is sleeping in the window and the temperature is below 80 degrees and the daughter is out, I’m going to stop trying to express my thoughts and start taking a nap.
Because the one thing I know for certain is that no matter how many times I fall, I’ve always gotten up again, and I think that is the truth for all of us in this household—whether I hold us up, or whether the others lift me up, or whether we all take turns dragging one another from the depths. And lying down this afternoon gives me an opportunity to wake in an hour or two, and get back up again. Rested a bit, I hope. Ready to fight—in the good and righteous way where we make it through life no matter what challenges are thrown our way. And the longer I have fought, the more I have learned that you stop the monsters by throwing back love and kindness and good. So, I need to regroup and give myself the attention, affection, compassion, and concern—the care and love and kindness—so I can keep putting it out into the world and overcoming the challenges. That’s right: We fight with care and love and kindness. It’s the only way to win. It’s the only way to get back up again.
Too Much
There has been so much to say that I haven’t been able to say anything.
It’s one of those things that seems inevitable for me. The more there is, the less I do. I have heard others speak of this phenomenon. I’m, apparently, not the only one who suffers this problem. And I have read a bit about how decision-making gets more difficult with each decision, so having too many things to decide leads to a sort of fatigue or paralysis for your will.
I think I currently have some fatigue or paralysis of productivity, because there is just too much I feel like I must produce—or do, in other terms.
I have this long list of things that I am working on completing … so I spend no time completing tasks and all the time bingeing on The Mysteries of Laura and The Killing on Netflix. The sheer volume of tasks makes me unable to choose a task. I am overwhelmed before I even start.
There is this thing that they call “uniform dressing”. It is basically taking the school uniform into adulthood, and removing wardrobe decisions from taking up your precious decision-making energy. Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, and Vera Wang all practice(d) this way of dressing. When you think about it, they wear the same thing all the time—not the actual same clothing, but the same basic type of outfit. Vera Wang wears a legging for her everyday, and Steve Jobs used to be in a black turtleneck at almost all times. Obama has a white button down and a grey pant for every occasion—dress it up or dress it down, he is always wearing the same thing.
I’ve been thinking about trying the uniform dressing out with my own closet. I don’t know about everyone else, but I stand in front of that damned closet for way too long. And it doesn’t matter where I am headed or what I need to do that day. I spend twelve minutes in front of the closet even when I am choosing joggers and a tee for a reclusive day in my apartment. And that time staring at my clothes or trying on and taking off items increases in direct relation to the amount of “fancy” associated with the event.
The concept of uniform dressing seems like a good one, in terms of reducing time spent considering clothes. What I wish for is a similar concept for the rest of the tasks in my life. How does one “uniform clean” or “uniform pay bills” or “uniform consider the state of the union and freak the fuck out”? How do all those decisions and determinations and actions become rote and leave my brain less fatigued and less paralyzed?
I’m not sure there is an answer to those questions. They are mostly rhetorical—unless someone reading this has a solution, in which case, please share your wisdom!
So, yes, there has just been so much to write and so much to think about and so much to plan for and so much to accomplish that I have been stuck not writing and not thinking and not planning and not accomplishing. I’ve been in this sort of non-being—walking around and appearing to be handling life, but being completely stymied by all the things inside my head.
And being overwhelmed is not new to me, sadly. But this is different, because every aspect of life seems overwhelming, not just one or two.
I have worries about all the parts of my existence, because the world has changed in significant ways over the past few months, and my view of the world has changed in significant ways over the past few months. I’ve had all sorts of experiences where what I thought was true, turned out to be false. I thought that people were reasonable. I thought that Spring brought security. I thought that my worst fears were never to be realized. I thought that life had a certain level of sense attached to it, and that nonsense couldn’t become normative.
I was wrong.
And the world that I have been cast into, by my realizations, isn’t the whimsical Wonderland that Alice gets to explore, but the opposite. There is no whimsy here. There isn’t joy here. There isn’t hope here. The only thing that my world shares with Alice’s world is the irrationality—the senseless replacing the reasonable.
And the chaos is too much.
I have degrees in philosophy, religion, and social justice. I understand well the ways that thought and belief and social problems shift and form and reform throughout history. But I have never experienced a time when that shift happened with such force and velocity that I could see the change happening—feel the pendulum swing.
That force and velocity made the pendulum swing right into my gut, and throw me flailing across the room, proverbially speaking.
The worst of that flailing was in response to the emotional connection I made with the change in thought that I was experiencing. The knowledge that people whom I have connected with, stood with, and related with believed in and supported this swing of the pendulum was painful. It still is. Those who would claim to love me, on one hand, promote ideals that would kill me, on the other. And the cognitive dissonance isn’t the thing that bothers me most. The thing that bothers me most is the knowledge that I am the Other. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty truths of the matter, I am not the person who “deserves” care and kindness and assistance and love and life. I am the expendable “drain” on society. I am the margin. I am the fringe. I am the problem, and the solution to fixing me is denying me basic rights and basic needs—effectively exterminating me. Let’s all hope and pray that the literal extermination of people doesn’t become normative. But we also need to be honest about the fact that denying anyone basic rights and basic needs casts a death sentence upon them. And I feel like many in my nation are not being honest about that.
Paint the world with your fascism, if you must. But don’t pretend that you have painted it with hope and love. Admit that you have painted fascism. Admit that you are making my life a challenge. Admit that your actions are placing so much undue stress upon my brain that it cannot function normally—being paralyzed and fatigued by the hopelessness and fear that weights the synapses, slowing them to a crawl. Admit that you have painted a picture that doesn’t include me, or at least puts me in the dirty, decrepit corner where the others cast out the “problems” they don’t wish to acknowledge or deal with.
And now all the Trump voters are freaking the fuck out because they believe this is a political post. It is only partly such, because making the presidency a reality show cannot be ignored as a part of the dilemma. But, it is mostly just me looking at what is happening in the world right now, and acknowledging that I no longer have a place in it, in the view of many. I don’t deserve a space on the board when we are playing this game. I’m continually told to not pass go and not collect $200. I’m stuck in a world where nonsense is sense and reason is replaced with weird tweets and executive orders that can only serve a handful of people.
(Wait. Are we literally in a game of Monopoly right now? That would explain so much. I fucking hate that game.)
So, here it is: a post with no wise expressions and no neatly packaged solutions, but just the admission that I am overwhelmed and that I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t even know how to begin to fix that. This post ends in the same place it begins. It ends with me paralyzed and fatigued in ways that make me completely ineffective and incompetent. It ends with the pain of betrayal, and the questions about how and why my experience is invalidated and ignored. It ends with me having too much to say and too much to do and too much to fix and too much to think about. It ends with a plea to be heard falling on deaf ears.
Because that is exactly how it started.
And it is too much.
I Have No Gift to Bring
As I was printing out boarding passes this morning (the beautiful gift from my sister that means I can spend the holiday with family), I was listening to some holiday music. The Little Drummer Boy carol caught my attention, and I wondered how many times over the years that same carol has caught my attention.
I have no gift to bring; to lay before a king…
This sometimes feels like the story of my life. And I would welcome you to the story of my life, but you probably don’t have a ton of experience that would help you relate, and I definitely do not want you to gain a ton of experience that would help you relate.
There have always been reasons—totally valid and important reasons—for my inability to afford the gifts that most in North American society consider requisite around the holidays. And while gifting and giving look really different in different households, there is usually a component of the holiday season that involves offering gifts.
Obviously, the first reason for not giving gifts is childhood. Kids don’t have money, and when they do have money they usually spend it on stupid shit, like cotton candy or collector cards or fluffy pens. So, as a child, giving was done on my behalf by my parents. And while my parents were not “well off” and very far from wealthy, they saved and budgeted in ways that allowed at least a bit of gifting.
After you transition from childhood to adolescence or adulthood, other people stop adding your name to their gifts for others. And while some of us are blessed with good jobs and parent-provided college tuition, leaving us cash for gifting in this season of life, I was not. I had the opposite, in a way. It wasn’t that my parents were not supportive. They were supportive. But I was not just transitioning from childhood to adolescence or adulthood. I was on a downward spiral to total meltdown at the rock bottom. I was tortured by challenges that most need not face, and this transition meant something intense and painful and confusing and hard. I didn’t have resources to offer gifts to others.
I can say that I have always been a generous giver. The lack of resources didn’t always mean that I was balled up into a severe self-interest. I gave my heart. I gave my body. I gave my ideas. I gave my support and care. I gave in myriad ways, but not in ways that our society usually recognizes. Love isn’t considered a good gift, for some reason. Stuff you spent money on is somehow what defines giving in my society. Which is sad, because I truly believe that love is so much more valuable than even the most expensive and extravagant stuff.
The rock bottom that I spiraled toward left me in a difficult situation. A single parent, an addict, and a mentally ill but undiagnosed and untreated person, I was left with few resources to offer others. I poured my energy and my love into my daughter, into my education, and into my “dead end” jobs that left me still dependent on others to get by and pay for the basic necessities of life. I still gave my heart and my body and my ideas and my support and care. But I still felt insufficient due to my lack of having and my lack of giving in this monetary sense that Americans hold so dear.
I pulled my way out of the pit of despair time and again. Many times because a hand was outstretched to meet mine, and give me aid. Many times because I forced out the energy needed to climb out of desperation or out of hope—they both push you toward a goal, even though they are such different feelings. There were moments when there was finally “enough”, and I gave thoughtful gifts to my family members and friends. There were moments when I was unrolling the toilet tissue from a public toilet onto an empty cardboard roll and putting as much as I was able into my purse—stealing the most basic of items to survive.
Today I find myself in a position of need once more. And this threatens to be a position that I never get out of—a situation that cannot change. Disability and all sorts of vulnerability leave me without the resources that I need to survive. I’m not yet stealing toilet paper, but I am on the brink—the temptation to take what I need when others refuse to give it is strong on some days. So is the urge to drink too much or start smoking again. It is desperation that pushes me forward these days. And I am not in a position to give. I’m in yet another season of need.
And this gets us back to the start of this post—the little drummer boy.
He has no gift to bring. He has nothing of worth. He has no resources. But he places himself at the altar, packs his love and his talent and puts them under the Christmas tree—or maybe not at the tree, because Christians who would consider the nativity and a lighted tree in tandem didn’t exist during the nativity. Honestly, nobody considered the nativity on the “actual” nativity, and lighting trees was a pagan ritual that was adapted by people who began to believe in a nativity but missed partying on the solstice. Instead of giving up the party, they created their own reason for the party.
Pardon the tangent. But people really should research what they celebrate and why. It might be both scandalous and helpful, because it would help some see that people of different creeds are not really all that different, when it comes down to ritual and celebration and basic systems of belief.
So, the little drummer boy throws down with his little drummer talents. He smacks those bongos like nobody’s business. And all who hear him are pleased with his performance and it is deemed worthy.
I have lost a lot of my “talents” over the years. My voice doesn’t work, so I don’t sing with the beauty I once did. I’ve spent many years away from a piano, so that skill has slipped away from me. I can’t run or dance or throw myself into a role on a stage. I’m a good writer, and a good artist—maybe even exceptional in those fields—but with my physical and mental limitations due to illness, it can be very hard to complete pages and fill canvas. I can’t smack bongos like nobody’s business. I can’t even do the things that I am good at doing anymore.
I used to hear the carol about the little drummer and feel like I could relate. I had no resources from a financial standpoint, but I could still offer my talents, like that little boy who somehow ended up in a barn with his drum. I still found value in what I had to offer.
It gets more and more difficult to feel valuable. Ableism hits me hard at times, and I begin to see that challenges are stacked one atop the other, filling up all the space where the value I once placed upon my life and my self once rested. There isn’t as much room for feeling like I have something to offer. Even though I still have much to offer.
Love and care and support and kindness and equity and a voice and a vote and intention—all of these are things that I have to offer. I don’t need to have anything to place before the king.
I also don’t need to perform for the king.
The mistake that the little drummer boy makes is believing that he needs to offer a performance if he can’t offer stuff. He doesn’t consider that just being present is, in itself, a gift. He doesn’t consider that his existence alone has value. He thinks he needs to bring something monetary, and when he can’t manage that, he thinks he needs to bring some offering of talent. Why, I wonder, doesn’t he believe that he can just go over to the barn and hug the parents and hold the baby and offer his love as a gift?
Is it because we don’t think that love is a gift?
Love is a gift. Presence is a gift. Existence is a gift.
I don’t have extravagant gifts for my family and friends. I didn’t send out holiday cards, and I don’t have any packages wrapped and placed under the tree. But I am beginning to realize that I don’t need either the presents or the talents to have a valuable contribution to the holiday. I AM the valuable contribution. I AM a gift.
I’m not trying to say, “Look at me! I am awesome and you should want my presence as your gift!” I am attempting to convey that the value in this scenario is value inherent in personhood. Giving things is great. Sharing talents is great. But existing—being present—is the greatest.
Being present is the greatest gift that any of us can offer.
Yes, I want presents. Yes, I want donations to my fundraiser. Yes, I want contributions to my start-up that help me open a business. Yes, I want to hear beautiful songs and embrace the talents of others. But more than these, I simply want presence. I want to be there for others and have others be there with and for me. I want to share existence, and honor the gift of being.
I know that is a bit ethereal a concept, and it can be difficult to comprehend my meaning. In simplest terms, I want to be and let be. I want to live and let live.
And that, for me, means embracing that I am a gift to those around me. My open and accepting and loving and helpful and generous self is the only gift I need be concerned with giving.
Having money and resources is wonderful. I would love to have more money and more resources. But I don’t need more money and more resources to offer an amazing gift.
I am gift enough.
Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.
Bully
When I was a girl, I suffered from a medical condition that made it impossible for me to maintain control of my bladder. I had a major surgery just before my tenth birthday that corrected this issue, but up until then, I was tortured by classmates and neighbors. I was less than ten years old, and I vividly remember one neighbor picking up a rusty nail from a parking area across the street from our homes and suggesting that “we shove this up there so you can stop peeing your pants”. I remember the taunts of “Christy Pissty”. I remember being isolated, depressed, ashamed. This is what children did to me. Children that were seven or eight years old did this to me.
Where did they learn that hatred and violence?
In the fifth grade, after the surgery and the pant-wetting had stopped, there was this girl, Tammy, (her name is not changed to protect her identity, because she was a fucking terrible person then and she doesn’t deserve my protection). (Also, I may be spelling her name wrong, but I have no desire to remember the correct spelling of the names of those who tortured me.) Tammy was friends with Shawn. Shawn had been my friend for many years, because our parents were friends and we grew up together. Tammy had the strange idea that three persons cannot be friends together. I’ve never understood this whole “best friend” thing, and feel like there is more than enough love to spread around. Lots of girls somehow get an impression that this cannot be true, and that they need to secure the best friend status of one other, and eliminate any competition.
Tammy convinced Shawn to run from me on the playground. Tammy took the time to create hand drawn cards for both Shawn and I, and then to deliver the whole cards to Shawn through the Kindergarten “mail” that was teaching them how to address letters. I received a very large package through the Kindergarten mail service. Everyone crowded around to see what I had been sent. It was the cards, identical to Shawn’s, ripped into tiny pieces—a pile of hatred on display for everyone in the room. Everyone laughed and taunted me.
Where did she learn this hatred and violence?
In high school, I became a nomad of sorts. I didn’t connect with a single group of peers, because I had grown to mistrust people. (Shocking.) But I still wanted friends, obviously. And many people failed me in this stage as well. I would hang out with a group of boys that were nice and fun to be around, so people called me a slut. I still had the influence of Tammy. One Sunday night, I waited by the cold, drafty window that faced the street for my friends to pick me up to go out. They never arrived. “There wasn’t enough room in the car” was the reason that Shawn gave. But they abandoned me, without a word. Shawn felt the guilt and told me the excuse, but the rest didn’t seem to care. And somehow I had been singled out as the one who wouldn’t go along. I was the one crying tears of pain and loss and confusion all night.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
I thought college would be my respite. New friends. New opportunities. It was going to be new and different and better. And it was for a few months, until I started to have memories of childhood sexual abuse. I confided in a few people. Those people told other people. Those people asked friends of my abuser if he had abused me. They asked him. He said no. (Shocking.) And I was immediately called a liar and a fraud and all sorts of other things. I was once more isolated and shamed and abandoned. I had failed my way out of college by the 3rd semester. Not only was I finding it very difficult to find and maintain healthy relationships, but the lack of support made the weight of dealing with the memories and nightmares heavy enough to break me.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
I proceeded to live out my pain. Drinking, sex, drugs, harboring runaways, and finally marrying a man who was violently abusive. He never hurt me while we were dating. It wasn’t until a month after our wedding that I was first physically smacked—backhanded in the kitchen while I washed dishes. But the ways that he harmed me weren’t just physical. Cycles of abuse include manipulations that most cannot imagine. It is more akin to a cult than a relationship. Isolate, degrade, shame, and then, once control has been gained, violence against your person. Getting pregnant gave me the reason I needed to leave. I would have stayed until I died, I suppose, were it not for the fear that my child would learn to be like me, or like him.
After I left him, I continued on the path of addiction and struggle, even getting involved in a less violent, but just as controlling and unhealthy, relationship. But even after I left this second relationship, and I worked to regain control of my own life, and to find some peace and some safety and some stability, people kept being bullies. Church friends would judge me. Family would challenge me. Poverty became a reason to treat me poorly, and being a single parent became a reason to shame me. There was always someone, somewhere actively working to harm and humiliate. There was never a place where I was safe from harm. I was always attacked, in some form.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
I’ve gotten to a point where I can mediate between the world and my heart in more effective ways. I’ve been in therapy and on medication for a few years now, following my diagnosis of PTSD. I’m learning to care less about the things others say and do. I’m learning to find self-compassion and self-definition, instead of relying on others to tell me who I am and what I am worth.
I still have the occasional bully in my sphere. It is difficult to get rid of them altogether. There are so many who are pursuing their self-interest at the expense of all others. There are so many who are looking at their decisions only from their perspective, and ignoring the impact that exists beyond their own interests.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
And it is hatred and violence to ignore the plight of others in order to gain more money or status or freedom or stuff for yourself. It is hatred and violence to isolate, to shame, to deny equal rights, to deny basic human rights, and to ignore the pain of others.
I was raised in a conservative religious setting, and I obtained two seminary degrees, so I often default to the bible when I look to quote something that expresses the ways that actions are rooted in hatred and violence. The Good Samaritan parable of the enemy of the harmed caring for him when his own religion and state and race abandoned him to death is one of those very easily quoted parables. Your own interests are not good excuses for not caring for others is the basic lesson in that story. But there are also many passages that talk about putting first the interests of the poor and the refugee and the sick and the imprisoned and a host of others who may be marginalized. There are also many that speak to the judgment that will come down upon those who do not have love as the basis of their actions.
I often find it ironic and sad that the place where I grew up, and the people I know from my history, were often so filled with hatred and violence while they assumed they were in the role of the good Samaritan. They thought they were the hero in the story. But they were not and are not. They are the villains. They are the bullies.
Since the election the other day, there have been numerous reports of hatred and violence. Swastikas and n-words and the simple moniker “Trump” have been graffitied everywhere from the sides of cars to the doors of prayer rooms. Muslim women have stopped the religious practice of wearing burqa or hijab out of fear. Children are taunting other children, with deportation or isolation or death being named as the fate of brown and black and Muslim students.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
They learned it by watching a bully become the president-elect of their country. They learned it from the rhetoric they hear in the news and around the dinner table. They learned it by watching the adults in this country make the grave error of choosing a man who spouts hatred and incites violence at every turn as their leader. They learned it by living in a society that places self-interest above the health and vitality of the society. We would rather burn with big screens than live peacefully with one another and share resources.
Donald Trump is the Tammy of my current situation.
The threat to end healthcare for millions is a real threat for me. I am chronically ill. I qualify for Medicaid under the expansion required by the ACA. I will not have healthcare if that is repealed. And, without the other ACA requirement of insuring people regardless of pre-existing condition, I will likely be uninsurable. I’ve had about 200 appointments and four surgeries this year. I take 18 medications right now. I see between two and seven doctors per week. All of this care keeps me in a state of disability, but a rung or two up the ladder from death. Without this care, I will drop down to the death rung. I die.
Without food stamps, without insurance, without housing assistance, and without disability, I die. Losing any one of them will potentially cause the loss of all others. My life is in danger, because we (and by “we” I mean the electoral college and don’t include myself at all) elected the bully.
When I was left crying that night by the window, left behind by my “friends”, I am relatively certain that all the people present didn’t want me to be abandoned and harmed, but at least one of them did. And by following the lead of that person or persons, friends that had been such for a lifetime were lost. The effects were devastating, and each person who went silently along in that car was responsible for my pain, because they didn’t put an end to that pain.
Taking stock of my life, and seeing the ways that bullies operate, and the ways that their actions affect others, I am trapped in a serious situation once more. After living through all the things that I have lived through, and enduring all the struggle while another profited from my demise, I see clearly the ways that electing a bully will impact the nation. The people who have let this go on, and who have elected a bully, are committing themselves to the ideals of bullying. They are allowing hatred and violence to win the day, and to rule the country.
I need to ask you, are you going to be the boy with a rusty nail, or the Tammy, or the abusive husband, or the manipulator/cult leader/champion for hatred and violence?
My childhood, my teens, my adult life—every moment and every experience—could have been radically different if the people around me had not been conditioned to consider themselves before others, above others, and in control of others. The people around me learned it by watching other people (probably their parents) adopt and embrace individualism and reject care and compassion and empathy for others. Whether you are using the choices one makes or the color of one’s skin as the litmus test for whether you shame and isolate and judge and harm, you are doing harm. By considering only your own interests, you are doing harm. By leading with your fear and reactionary instincts, instead of using facts and thoughtful consideration, you are doing harm. By voting for a bully, you are doing harm.
Where did you learn such hatred and violence?
And why don’t you seek to unlearn hatred and violence and, instead, live in love and peace?
Why do you choose to remain the bully?
More Than I Can Handle
There is this common statement among those who choose a Christian religious base for their belief system. I hear it often. I hate it more every time it is said.
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
I call bullshit.
I am dealing with more than I can handle. I’ve been dealing with more than I can handle since childhood. And every day I wait for the moment when pretending at control is overcome by the chaos of being overwhelmed.
So, here is the thing I need to say: either the Divine absolutely gives out more than one can handle, or the Divine isn’t a part of the equation at all.
Please do not misunderstand and read that as “God doesn’t exist”, because I won’t challenge anyone on that point. I believe in divine intervention and live a spiritual, but not religious, life. The existence of some Divine source is a part of my belief system. And it does not need to be yours. If you are not religious, I suppose you could ignore this post altogether. (But I hope you don’t.)
The statement that the Divine will not let you be overwhelmed, however, is bullshit. I’m overwhelmed right now. I was overwhelmed two days ago. I was overwhelmed last week. I am consistently given more than I can handle. And if the Divine exists, and I am overwhelmed, then god does give you more than you can handle. If the Divine does not exist, then the statement is just bullshit from the very first word.
I’ll try to elaborate without getting into a weird rant or too many details. When I was a child, I was sexually assaulted repeatedly. I couldn’t cope with that. It was too much. And while my actions were often a cry for help, they went unheard or were misunderstood, so I was marinating in more than I could handle. I was feeling so much pain and shame and confusion that my brain literally stopped knowing about the sexual molestation. I had a complete dissociation from the events. My brain shut those events and any and all memories of those events down. They were tucked away in a place I didn’t have full access to, and they didn’t become known to me in a conscious way until my first year of college. And when I became aware of those events once more, it was more than I could handle again. I became depressed, suicidal, and easily enraged. I was a mess. I dropped out of college, moved away, dropped out of another college, harbored a runaway, became a drug addict, and got married. All of these events were too much to handle.
My husband was violently physically and psychologically abusive. I got pregnant, got divorced, had my baby, went on a blind date, and started a relationship with a man who influenced my return to drug use and eventually became physically abusive, as my ex-husband had been.
Too much.
And then, it would seem, I “got it together”. I worked hard, cared for my daughter, went back to college, got a master’s degree or two, and ended up working in Chicago. While these years seemed like the most excellent years of my life to the onlooking outsider, inside of me there was just as much struggle as there had been in years past. I smoked a lot. I ran often. I did everything asked of me, until I could not do it anymore. What most don’t know about those years is that my kitchen was a mass of dirty dishes half of the time, I was drinking too much, I was fired as a teacher’s assistant because I didn’t have enough time to read and grade papers. I failed a few classes. My daughter resented me for leaving her with others and not hearing her needs often or well. I was struggling to keep it together, and looked fabulous on the outside, while the inside was being ripped and torn into ugly, bloodied chunks of flesh.
I had become a master of pretending at a very early age. It took a lot for me to fall apart in front of people.
But behind closed doors, nightmares and weeping and screaming and praying and begging for the pain to end kept on happening. They didn’t stop as I grew up and developed and became a “responsible adult”. They just got pushed under layers and layers of façade.
Around 2010 was when things stop staying hidden. I couldn’t control it anymore. Tears would come at the most inopportune time. The lack of sleep from nightmares and insomnia was causing my body to suffer. I started experiencing chronic illness, and I started to look and sound like a person without hope—crazed with the desperate state of my psyche and the onset of more and more symptoms of illness. I was breaking down in front of people, instead of doing it behind closed doors. And people ran away rather than be sucked into my despair.
It’s hard for people who are not given more than they can handle to watch you crumble under the too much. They don’t understand it. And it is frightening. But what I think is the hardest thing for those people to come to terms with is that the platitude they have believed is not true. Some of us are given way more than we can handle.
Because some of us are given more than we can handle, we need help. Help, need, care, and the like are not things that most want to offer, so they cling to the lie and insist that god won’t give me more than I can handle. But I know that is just an excuse not to get involved in the pain of others.
Empathy hurts.
Walking into the center of another person’s trauma is painful. Feeling what they feel is terrible, because it is completely and utterly too much. And nobody wants to feel what I feel.
Nobody wants constant physical and emotional suffering. Nobody wants to face fears and be struck down and struggle through depression and suicidal thinking and destroy relationships through mistrust and sob with such intensity that you need to sleep for three hours to recover the ability to stand. And, on one hand, I don’t blame you for not wanting to experience what I experience. On the other hand, leaving me to suffer alone and offering me platitudes that I know are lies makes me despise you for not standing in solidarity.
Because if you cannot handle what is coming at you every day, and if you are overwhelmed, you need others to help carry the weight. I have approximately six people who help carry the weight in a consistent and generous and loving way. One of them I pay, because she is my therapist.
I understand more than anyone how heavy and exhausting and painful carrying the load of my life is, but I don’t have the option to step out from under that weight. I have to cope, shift, manage, and try not to be crushed forever by that weight.
There is another saying—less religious and more true—that I sometimes use. “Many hands make light work.”
A heavy burden becomes light when there are twelve people lifting, and not just one. I would love for us to acknowledge our avoidance of the burdens in the lives of those around us. I would love for us to accept that the only way to make things better is to add our hands and help carry the burdens of others. I would love for us to admit that there is a lot that is overwhelming, and that it won’t go away because we pretend that god makes life easy enough for us (or hard enough for us, depending on your perspective) in relation to our ability to be weighed down.
You don’t keep placing items in a grocery bag until it breaks. You open and fill a second bag. You disperse the weight, balancing things out and making certain that there isn’t too much pressure in one spot.
(Yes, I just unintentionally made a grocery bag analogy to suffering. But I can’t really think of a better analogy right now, so it stands.)
So, we are given more than we can handle. Which is why we need others supporting us. All of us need others to carry a bit of the weight at times. That looks different at different times and in different spaces. But none of us is immune to being overwhelmed.
My life has had too much to handle for a really long time. I get better at handling it through coping strategies. But I still haven’t worked through all the burdens or had the weight lifted. I still make valiant attempts at handling it all. I still pretend I am well while I am carrying immense pain just under the surface. But I fail all the time. I hurt all of the time. I feel too much. I need too much. I falter too much.
And my only hope is that others might find their way toward helping, and that hands would be added, and that my burden may become light. Help me Obi Wan Community, you are my only hope!
I hope that empathy might become something that we embrace, despite the hurts, because it also brings shared joys. I hope that generosity rules the day. I hope that we start to dissect the lies that the platitudes reinforce, and come to understand that we need one another to survive. I hope that we find the strength to share, to respect, to dignify, and to accept. I hope we leave behind individualism, judgment, marginalizing, and rejecting.
I don’t know that this is an eloquent post. It is a needed expression. Mostly, I need to say it, because it is boring a hole through my mind. But I also hope that it is heard and accepted. Because I have always known that the Divine isn’t giving me any number of things to handle or not handle. The Divine gives me an assist when all the things are too much. The Divine doesn’t give anyone burdens for the fun of watching us struggle. And the Divine doesn’t give burdens to prepare us for assisting others in their burdens. The Divine is the opposite of burden. The Divine is love. And whatever is burdensome is what we need to fight against, not for.
When racism tears apart a community, we fight against that. When illness strikes a body, we fight against that. When fear creates divisions, we fight against that. When poverty leaves people in the streets, we fight against that. When little children are violated, we fight against that. When women are not given a voice, we fight against that. When gun violence steals lives every day, we fight against that.
And we fight together, in solidarity, and as one entity. Because there is more in each of those situations than we can handle, and ridding our society of these evils requires our many hands, working together, to unburden the most vulnerable.
I happen to be one of the most vulnerable, because life tossed all sorts of challenges at me, and so my plea for justice—the unburdening of the most vulnerable—ends up being a plea for my welfare also. I beg for hands to help on a regular basis through my fundraising site. But I want, today, to express that there are so many more burdens than mine. And there are so many who do not have hands helping at all, where I have a few. So, I’m not just advocating for myself. I’m advocating for all the poor, disabled, homeless, captive, imprisoned, endangered, devastated, depressed, and unsupported victims of all the ills within our society.
Lend them a hand. Live in solidarity. Challenge your assumptions and preconceptions. Dig deep into your heart and your mind, and figure out why you let burdens continue without intervention. Smash those excuses that keep you from moving toward empathy and solidarity and understanding and care. Do things that change lives. Do things that save lives.
And stop saying that god doesn’t give us more than we can handle. Stop spreading that lie. Start spreading love.
Learning To Be Whole 