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.
compassion
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!
Can’t Find a Better Man
The half growl/half crow of Eddie Vedder has long been a part of my own, personal war cry. It both fed and poured out my teenage angst—my frustration with the things that were senseless, wrong, and unjust in the world, and my desire to be free from all of the pain and confusion and devastation that those things caused me. I felt deeply. Eddie did too. You could sense it. And you could echo it as you sang along.
Better Man was one of the songs that I connected with on a spiritual sort of level. There were others. And some even more deeply felt than this one. But this one came to mind today, because I still feel the same angst at times. I still know the challenges of being that one in the song—that one who can’t find a better man.
If you don’t know it … well, if you don’t know it you are either too young or too old or just plain Amish, I suppose, because Pearl Jam has been around for longer than my child has been alive (21+ years), and they keep putting out new music and touring the world with old favorites in their sets as well. But, in case you have decided to go the way of Patrick Star and you live under a rock, I will let you know a bit about the lyrics, and the basics of the song.
She lies and says she’s in love with him; can’t find a better man.
It’s a woman, waiting alone in bed for some man who clearly sucks at being a partner. She practices what she will say—what boundaries she will set, and what angry rant she will set forth when he finally dares to come home in the wee hours of the morning—but when he actually arrives, she pretends she is sleeping. She keeps his failure and her misery to herself. It feels like her fault that she chose him, and she does love him. And somehow, they have this symbiotic, albeit unhealthy and unfulfilling, relationship that they both continue to choose. And she echoes over and over: Can’t find a better man. Can’t find a better man. Can’t find a better man.
If you’re like me, you can’t help but sing those words instead of simply read them. They come to life in your head, in Eddie’s voice. And if you are even more like me, you remember singing those words and meaning them with so much truth that it pained you, and you weren’t entirely certain how to feel when the song came on, because the pain of the truth and the release of the singing it were also tied together in this strange way that worked so well. Turmoil and beauty connected in a way that only the most broken of us can see, acknowledge, appreciate, and even love.
I felt Better Man so deeply not because I was in a relationship with someone at the time who mimicked the song’s poor partner, but because I was somehow already identifiable, before the terrible partners started lining up in my life and experience, with that woman. Can’t find a better man. Can’t find a better man.
Like a fish knows swimming is his mode of transportation, I knew that I deserved to struggle through bad partners—I would live this out, and this would be my pain.
How did I know that?
Pearl Jam, Ten, was released on August 27, 1991. Twenty-eight years ago, I was still in high school, and I hadn’t had a “real” partner at all. I would start a relationship with my first “boyfriend” not long after this album’s release and have sex for the first time about six months later—if you could call it that … it was more like awkward penetration with mutual dissatisfaction. And throughout that year, even though I was coming of age and starting to figure out that sexuality was even a thing, sheltered in extreme ways from all its forms and expressions, I had no concept of bad partners the way I would just a handful of years later. Yet, before it happened I knew. Eddie sang it the way I felt it, and I still understand it as deeply and with as much truth today. Can’t find a better man.
Part of the challenge in my own situation, I think, is that Calvinism and the last bits of Dutch puritanism were so pervasive in my little sub-culture. I knew, even when my conscious mind had repressed every single synapse of sexual abuse, that I was “damaged goods”, impure, unclean, sinful, tainted … you could say it a hundred different ways and it all hurt the same way. Something in me knew that there was this stain on my reputation, according to the religious and cultural views that were held by those around me. Of course I would not be worthy of a better man. I was sullied by debaucherous sins. “Good” men want “pure” women. Obviously!
The other part of the challenge was the terrible partners that did start to line up in my life. They only reinforced the idea that I deserved crap partners who treated me with disrespect, put hands on me in violence, didn’t give me the option of consent—either by force or by coercion and manipulation—and generally just acted like assholes.
How did I end up with this line of losers? It’s a chicken/egg conundrum that we may never solve. Either my low esteem attracted the sharks, or the sharks lowered my esteem until I was weak enough to pull under and drown. But the how and why don’t matter a whole lot, unless you are an anthropologist of some sort. What matters more is the effect, which was proving to me the stain on my reputation must be evident to all, and I am being punished for it, and given what I deserve.
I can’t find a better man. I don’t deserve a better man.
And eventually, having remembered the abuse and having been flooded with images, feelings, flashbacks, nightmares, and all of the confusion, rage, and fear of childhood trauma returning to my memory from the deep recesses of my mind, I didn’t want better men. I wanted dirty, dangerous men who would offer me the opportunity to use sex as a tool for inappropriate coping—reliving traumas through promiscuity and increasingly risky sex. Better men didn’t pull your hair and pound their pelvis against your ass and call you names and do all of it while another couple had sex in the same room—the other man getting off on watching your face as you were being ridden like a bronco and his own partner looking on, infuriated that everyone in the room was focused on your pleasure and pain. Better men didn’t pass you on to their friends after they had finished so that another could take advantage of a woman still in the throes of passion when the first man was already spent. And I happily climbed atop another penis, grinding my pain into men as if my hips were a confessional and thrusting organs were penance I needed to endure until I felt clean again.
But no amount of sex brought me to a place where I felt clean. I still felt undeserving of the love of a better partner. So, I settled for partners who claimed love but offered insecurities, control, abuse, lust, addiction, avoidant behaviors, and a plethora of negative and damaging behaviors that reinforced the idea that I didn’t deserve love, and a soulmate was somehow outside of my reach, while everyone else around me was allowed to find that “perfect” lover.
Can’t find a better man. Don’t deserve a better man. Unworthy of a better man. Incapable of a better man. The list of disordered thoughts goes on and on. And the disordered thinking continues to this day.
I’m still settling for a man that needs “fixing” and babysitting and diagnosing and repeated forgiving for the same error. I’m still not taking my own good advice, and I’m dating “potential” instead of finding a fully actualized man who exhibits the fullness of his potential in his current circumstance—he doesn’t have the potential to get his shit together; his shit IS together. I still date men who aren’t the men I want to have and hold as lifelong partners. And in some way, this must be tied to the idea that I don’t deserve that partner. I cannot achieve that relationship. I don’t get to have the better man.
Can’t find a better man.
Some part of me longs for the better man. Some part of me has all sorts of desire for being in relationship with a loving partner who treats me with respect and equity—a person who offers me compassion and kindness and honesty and love. And then there is this other part that cannot shake the Dutch Reformed purity bullshit that says I am not white like snow with an untouched vagina and therefore cannot find happiness with a partner who offers me those things. The dirty of Calvinism doesn’t wash off, and the damage of childhood sexual trauma isn’t something that I can recover from with my PTSD diagnosis, so I sit in the muck of disordered thinking nonstop. I sit in that muck and I get sucked into unhealthy relationship after unhealthy relationship, because my conscience is a liar and my good advice extends outside of myself and not inward.
The fact is, I won’t find a better man until I find the better in me.
It is here—the better in me.
In fact, good and better and best should define me. They probably do to most others—the non-Dutch Reformed ones—who encounter me. I’m not covered in stains, as Calvinism would have me believe, but am a woman who does now, and has always, fought for equality, love, goodness, kindness, rights for all, life, grace, freedom, justice, and all sorts of positive qualities. I’m overflowing with love and compassion and care for others—all sorts of others, and not just those who look like, act like, and believe like I do. There is so much better in me. And such better deserves to be met with better. This amazing woman definitely deserves a better man … or a better woman, as the case may be, because letting go of my early religion also let me grab hold of the truth that my sexuality is extremely fluid and not fixed. Regardless, a better man or woman belongs in this picture. The previous pain that Pearl Jam helped me express is not a pain that I should have ever felt, and I should always have believed that a better man or woman was waiting just around the corner for me, and we would share a beautiful life.
But I didn’t believe that. I wasn’t taught that. Eddie Vedder saw or knew or related with women like me, who didn’t believe that and were not taught that, and he sang our pain. If only he could have offered a correction instead of a correlation and showed me that this wasn’t my anthem but a lie to which I was listening. Maybe he did mean to show me that, but I didn’t see. Instead I held the belief that this was my plight and my burden to bear. I didn’t have people who were correcting my error or replacing that lie with the truth. I had more and more affirmation that I was a stain and stains deserved to be tossed to the trash bin and left there with the rest of the unclean things.
Can’t find better. Can’t be better. Am not better—ever. No amount of goodness can transcend the one bad thing, even when the bad thing was your victimization and far beyond your control. Give up now, Christy, because there is no redemption here. There is only purity and not purity here, and you are not pure.
I recently had the amazing opportunity to visit with a young woman who is living in a situation near to the one that I grew up within. She mentioned to me an abuse that she suffered, and then said something along the lines of not letting it ruin her. “Some people let it mess up their life.” She said she wasn’t one of those people. But later in our conversation tears welled up in her eyes and she told me of challenges with feeling unheard, and like her parents were not dealing with issues affecting the family, and a number of other things that I felt after suffering abuses as a child. It is messing up her life, whether she intends to let it or not. And part of why it is messing up her life is the same reason it messed up mine—the inability of others to find empathy, compassion, and understanding, and their insistence upon seeing the world in black and white, instead of recognizing and honoring the fact that we all live in complex circumstances and hard and fast “rules” or dichotomies of good/evil, or virgin/whore, or right/wrong don’t make sense. Beyond not working, those strict dichotomies harm innocent people, and reinjure those who are already victimized. They mess up lives. They destroy lives. They convince young girls (or boys) that they will never find a better man (or woman), because they are not deserving … because being a victim has left them stained for life—dirty, bad, and impure.
Not only do I deserve a better man than the ones that have been in my life in my history, but I deserve an amazing man or woman as a life partner. I deserve that because I am not stained and dirty and impure. I am an amazing woman, with talent, grace, empathy, passion, perseverance, love, and beauty that are unmatched by most. I don’t say that to brag or because I am egotistical and narcissistic. I say that because it is a truth that was hard to learn and needs to be remembered. I also say it because it is something that many others need to hear and accept.
I am not impure, dirty, damaged, and stained. I am a victim of horrific and terrifying crimes against my person. My brain was literally malformed as a result of childhood sexual trauma that was ongoing and created captivity-like conditions, making my brain nearly identical to that of a holocaust survivor. My hormones, my stress responses, my gut health, my brain chemistry, my bladder and bowel control, and more were harmed by this trauma, and more trauma happened as I was retraumatized when people didn’t believe my claims of harm, doctors broke confidentiality, I was forced to interact with my abuser, my family refused to allow me to speak about or address the abuse, gaslighting and victim-blaming became commonplace, violent abusive relationships resulted from my deep need for connection tied with my inability to form healthy connection due to my complex post-traumatic stress symptoms, and more.
All of this was me being victimized. None of this was me being impure. If there were lines that were crossed and bad things that were done they were done by my abusers, the people who didn’t listen when I cried out for help, the doctors who didn’t know how to help and didn’t refer me to someone who could, the family who refused (and still refuse) to address the issues afflicting me and us, the church that pounded the drum of purity so loudly that a young girl was shamed into silence about sexual assault and rape, the “friends” who chose to support the denial of the perpetrator and not support my claim of abuse, the people that told me to “give it to Jesus” and it would be gone who made matters worse by not getting me the help that I needed from medical professionals, and the many people who refused to give up their dichotomous thinking in the face of my pain and struggle and confusion and help ease my suffering.
But if you are one of those people, I don’t judge you, and I don’t blame you. You were likely (and perhaps still are) stuck in a space where that black and white thinking was affecting your judgment. You didn’t mean to wrong me, I am sure. You didn’t know better. And when you know better you will do better.
I hope that what I write here today will help you know better. I hope that it will help you move toward doing better.
I don’t want a young woman to come to me and tell me her secrets because she can’t be heard in the space where she lives, just as I couldn’t be heard in the space where I grew up, and where the worst possible things happened to me. I don’t want that beautiful woman to be holding on to those secrets until she is 40 years old, because she feels impure and shamed by a community that sees things in such black and white terms that it cannot give love to the wounded and the wronged.
I share my story, in part, to heal my own wounds. It helps me to get it out on “paper” and to release it from the places where it has been hidden for all of these years. But I also tell it for all of you. I tell it so that if you are the young men and women who have also been harmed in this way, you can know that you deserve a better man, or a better woman. You are not impure. You have no stain. You are perfect and pure and good. Someone did something terrible to you. You deserve justice for that wrong, not shame. And if you are one who hears of a person or from a person who has been harmed in this way, listen and support that person. Fight for justice on their behalf and be certain that they receive the aid that they need. Never support the perpetrator because it is easier than supporting the victim. Never place blame on the victim. Never treat a victim as though they should carry some shame. They do not. They have been wronged, and they deserve better from you than what I received.
I’m dating someone now. I’m not always certain that he is my better man. He has a lot of challenges. I have a lot of challenges. It makes things volatile at moments. But I don’t see things in black and white, and I know that he was a victim of lots of wrongs, just as I was. So, we work at loving one another, the best way we know how. He cares for me and he tries very hard to be the best he can for me. And he is open, honest, and working very hard to be the man that I deserve in my life, because he knows that I am an amazing woman. That is much more than any man has done for me in the past, so I am happy in this relationship now. If that changes, I no longer feel tied to shame and insecurity and the idea that I am not enough, so I can walk away without reservation and seek out a better man or woman. And that is miraculous, given all that I have been through.
I still love to listen to Vedder croon out the words to Better Man. I still sing along with my teenage angst somewhat intact, but it is more a memory of what was than a feeling of the moment. I know that I have a better man. I know that I can find and that I deserve better. I am not the unclean and impure that should be shamed. I am the overcomer—the strong, the determined, the loving, the understanding, the one who learns and shifts and grows and fights and finds life, no matter the circumstances she is offered. And no matter the circumstances you have been given, you can fight to overcome in numerous, amazing ways as well.
We don’t win every fight, of course. I’m still disabled and suffer from PTSD. I still have several family members who refuse to discuss the events of the past. There are many who would still shame me for my actions—like having sex outside of marriage, or smoking weed to manage my fibromyalgia pain. But what other people want to consider shameful doesn’t matter much to me anymore, because I know my heart and my intentions. I know that I am a good person who does all that I can to promote equality and justice. I love deeply, I seek to respect all, I honor the beliefs of others as long as they do no harm, and I work toward creating a better world in any way I am able. That is what matters. Lines in the sand, black and white thinking, and rules that shame and harm the innocent do not matter. Your heart matters. Your intent matters.
So, let go of shame, call out victim blaming, call out gaslighting, and speak your truth. Bring evils to light and bring justice to every situation you are able. Don’t hide. Tell your story. And, of course, find a better man—with or without the Pearl Jam album in the background. (Just kidding—definitely with the Pearl Jam album in the background!!)
Thanks, Pearl Jam. Thanks, Eddie. And thanks to everyone who helped and still helps me to step outside of Calvinist shame and to step into the love and light of who I am over and above the victimization that I have experienced. I am a better woman every time I take that step.
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.
Avoidance
I’m supposed to be paying bills.
But there isn’t enough money.
So, I am doing this thing that I do. Some like to call it procrastination, but I’ve started to use terms that are more honest wherever possible, so this thing is called “avoidance”.
When the thing cannot be done comfortably, efficiently, without stress, or with relative ease, I avoid doing the thing. “Avoidance”.
Right now it is about the bills, because there is stress, discomfort, inefficiency, and a bit of struggle involved in trying to figure out how to make money multiply without a magic wand or the art of alchemy to assist in the task. I don’t know what to pay and what to leave unpaid. I don’t know who might be gracious and who might attack the credit score I have been working so hard to improve. I know that all of the things need to be paid, eventually. And I know that one way or another, through begging or borrowing or more high interest loans that bury me in even deeper debt, things will be paid, but that doesn’t make the job of maneuvering and managing a too small budget less uncomfortable or less stressful, so I still want to avoid it.
A long overdue blog post is better than an attempt at bill payment … even one that details the stress I feel over the bill payment attempt.
I think that part of this avoidance is built into our DNA. We didn’t survive as a species by running headlong into danger with great stupidity and zero planning. We avoid situations that seem like losing scenarios as a matter of survival. Avoidance helps us stay alive, in many ways, so it can be an excellent mechanism for the continuance of the human race—which is likely a good thing.
But there may also be a negative side to this tendency toward avoidance. That negative side is the part that I think frequently trips me up and leaves me face down on the proverbial pavement of life. It is the tendency of our culture to avoid any sort of suffering, pain, or pretense of unease—or dis-ease—whatsoever. It is the glossing over of the lament in favor of pretending that all is well and good and easy, all of the time. It is the lie that we don’t just avoid the things that are uncomfortable, but that the things that are uncomfortable don’t exist—and if they do exist, that something is wrong and needs to be “fixed” and fixed immediately.
If you’ve read anything else that I have ever written, you already know that I suffer from chronic illness, both mental and physical in nature. Something will always be “wrong” with me. And the desire to either “fix” or deny the existence of the problem is, therefore, always with me. I’ve found, through many therapy sessions and lots of searching of my own spirit, that this desire is based largely on cultural perceptions. It is shameful not to “work”, “have a job”, “do something with your life”, “have a purpose”, and it is shameful to “beg”, “live off other’s hard-earned money”, “take what I didn’t earn”, “play the victim”, “act sick”, “sit on my ass all day”, “be lazy”, or not “suck it up”, “get over it”, “take some Tylenol and get off my butt”, “push through the pain”, or to be like “my friend”, “my husband’s cousin”, or any number of other people and “run 5k’s”, “go to work every day”, “take care of five kids”, even though they have [insert one of my illnesses here] “just like you”.
Not only do I cope with my illness every day, but I deal with the public perceptions and the cultural shame that goes along with being chronically ill.
A court has determined that I cannot work—that there are no jobs that I can do given my particular limitations, diagnoses, skills, educational background, work history, symptoms, and the way that those things intersect with the job market in my geographical location. “There are no jobs.” That is literally in the court transcript for you to read, if you were to read through the lengthy hours of Q and A that were required for us to get to the point where a judge determined that I am disabled.
But that transcript doesn’t matter to probably about 85% of the people who I come into contact with in my day to day interactions. It doesn’t matter because of this negative sense of avoidance. I’m supposed to avoid suffering and illness and flaws and bad shit. I’m not supposed to acknowledge that, but fix it, and fix it fast. I’m not supposed to admit that I can barely sit at this desk right now because of the pain in my back. I’m not supposed to admit that I’m at this desk and not a “work” desk because I am disabled. I’m not supposed to BE disabled. I’m supposed to take some Tylenol and get off my ass and run a 5k like aunt Janet from West Virginia!
Because we avoid suffering. We get over that shit, or we lie about it, or we become the kind of people who complain all the time but only a small, acceptable, mundane amount of complaining that is socially acceptable around the water cooler at our jobs. Because we are allowed to be moderately miserable all the time if we are still productive. But real, serious, deeply affecting problems are not socially accepted. Those we avoid.
I sometimes wonder who decides which challenges are acceptable and which are not.
When all the women have ovaries that stop producing more eggs, we call it menopause and call it normal. When all the men start having limp, less adept penises and lower sperm counts, we call it “erectile dysfunction” and make a billion-dollar industry out of making them hard again, instead of accepting that aging men can’t always perform sexually on command. It’s normal for a woman’s sexual function to change, but it is a problem to avoid and be “fixed” for a man? Who decided that? The pharmaceutical companies? The medical professionals? The sex work industry? Who made this a thing?
And who made being chronically ill unacceptable but being terminally ill perfectly fine? That question makes me sound like an asshole all the time, I know. But it only makes me sound like an asshole because of the perceptions already infused into those terms. Chronically ill. Terminally ill. One is a drain on society. One is a sainted state worthy of all the compassion. We all know which one is which. I’m not the sainted one worthy of all the compassion. I’m the other. And I am an asshole for pointing out that there is a bias. I am an asshole for pointing out that dying faster somehow makes you worthier of care. (At least in the eyes of many in our society, that is—it doesn’t actually make you worthier of care.)
Who decided that I need a “real job” to be treated like a “real person”? Who decided that I am allowed to be treated poorly because I am in a state of poverty—or that I deserve to live in an impoverished state if I cannot work due to illness? Who decided that $750 per month is the amount that a disabled person who has less than 40 work credits should be forced to live on, making this entire post even a thing that exists? And why do I not get any credits for the early years of my work history when I was delivering papers and babysitting, or for the years when I was working two part time jobs and going to school and raising a daughter as a single parent. That was more damn work than I have seen most anyone do—ever. And that doesn’t “count” for anything. Who decided that doesn’t count as work? Who decided I get $750 instead of $3000 because of those years? Who decided that my life isn’t valuable enough to be offered what I need to not be sitting at this desk, in pain, avoiding my bills like the plague.
If I had the plague, I would get more benefits. Because it would kill me. If you are dying they let you have a better quality of life than if you will live. Oh wait … not socially acceptable. We already went over that.
So, this avoidance, this thing that was written into our DNA as a positive survival instinct has somehow become a thing that we use to cover up and shame and deny and harm whatever is connected to our socially unaccepted suffering. And I don’t know that I will ever get a complete, straight answer about how that came to be, or who determined and decided what was or was not acceptable, but I do hope that I will someday begin to shape the conversation around why we do this, and why we need to stop doing this.
We need to stop avoiding suffering and pain and bad shit that happens, because it happens to all of us. It is part of the human experience. And it is an important part of that experience. While much of my suffering was regrettable, and I obviously would choose to go down another path if I could, the person I am today was forged in the flames of that suffering. Those challenges shaped me. And they made me a better person.
They didn’t make me a better person right away. In fact, they led me down a dangerous road to some very dark places. But that happened when I was trying to hide and avoid and stuff away all of the bad things. If I had been able to and allowed to cope with what I had experienced as a child, or a teen, in positive ways—expressing the pain and the betrayal and the confusion and the suffering openly and in a safe space—I would have avoided that road and those places altogether. I might have avoided mental illness and chronic pain altogether. (Nobody knows what causes fibromyalgia, in distinct terms, so I cannot know that for certain, but it is linked with stress and often presents in tandem with post-traumatic stress, so it is possible that without the PTSD there would be no fibromyalgia.) Our society’s insistence that pain be hidden likely caused me more pain.
But now that I am in a space where I am able to process and cope with and express all that I should have been allowed to express all those years ago, I am becoming strong and wise and good in ways I might not have were it not for the experience that I went through.
Lament shapes the spirit in beautiful ways.
Pain makes us compassionate, kind, understanding, gracious, loving, connected, and strong. That is not something that we should hide. And that is certainly not something we should avoid.
We still shouldn’t run, stupidly, toward danger without a plan. But there isn’t a need for us to hide and avoid something that makes us compassionate, kind, understanding, gracious, loving, connected, and strong. Frankly, hiding that seems like a stupid run toward danger … it probably is. And that is probably why so many things about our society today seem so messed up, in the sense where one person refuses to lay down their “right” for the lives of, potentially, thousands of others.
We are in danger, and we are being stupid. Because we have hidden so well and avoided so effectively the thing that makes us compassionate and kind and understanding and gracious and loving and connected and strong, that we have become the sort of society that breaks apart and leaves individuals to be slaughtered as “they”, somehow apart from us and without our compassion, rather than feel the pain of the truth—that we have become so unfeeling that we cannot mourn our own brokenness, so we deny it again and again.
We have put some imagined dessert to rights of the individual above the conscious collective of the society. I now becomes more important than we. And that is a grave error.
We, the people—that is how it begins. Not, I the individual who wants a gun and an erection despite the compassion and the biological facts that are required for me to understand the world around me.
“I don’t suffer. I don’t have pain. I take a Tylenol and go to work. I have rights.”
But that isn’t true. We all suffer. We all have pain. We all have days when no painkiller will dull the ache we feel—be it physical or emotional. And, most importantly, WE have rights—all of us together, in concert, and being accountable to one another. The only way to accurately see that, is to start to uncover the pain and suffering and to acknowledge it, to express it, to cope with it, and to begin shaping yourself and your life into one that has compassion, kindness, understanding, grace, love, connection, and collaborative strength.
Stop the avoidance. Embrace the lament. Feel. Suffer. And come out the other side a better version of yourself.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to suffer through paying my bills.
When Comes the Night
“There are low points. There are going to be low points. And if you can take me at the high points, then you also need to take me at the low points. That’s what I have to say.”
My daughter uttered these words with passion and much arm movement a few moments ago. She was preparing to go seek out a job. An acquaintance told me to have her come in and talk with him about a possible position at the business he manages, so she was on her way there to see what that talk would bring about. We both have high hopes that it brings about a job!
She has been looking for a while now. And the longer you look, the harder looking becomes. Many of us have been in that position. The more rejection you suffer, the more difficult any risk of future rejection is to attempt. You start to feel tainted or insufficient in some manner. It’s not a good feeling. And she has been feeling it.
Today she was expressing what I have been feeling as well.
I’ve been struggling with my mental health. I’ve had suicidal ideation—not active plans for death by suicide, but the hopelessness and the feeling that there isn’t a reason to keep living—for a few weeks now. I’m working hard to use my psychological “tool box” of coping strategies to keep myself from slipping farther into deep depression and to find some hope. But it is a huge challenge.
And life keeps moving on, even though I am feeling this way.
Bills keep coming in. Appointments keep popping up on my calendar. Responsibility still beckons me to take care of things and be an “adult”.
I’m at a really low point.
I think that the last time I was this low was more than three years ago. And the time before that, maybe another four. And then two years before that. And eight before that.
I can keep walking it back to age 19. And I know that there were extreme low points before that, but 19 is the age where I start remembering those low points with some detail.
Age 19. Phillip. Night work at the bakery. Drinking—so much drinking. Jealousy. Sadness. Remembering, and nightmares, and not knowing how to understand or cope with any of that. Dropping out. Being called a liar. Weird interactions with men. Being called a slut. More drinking. Breaking up. Wanting to be dead. Learning to use wanting to be dead as a manipulative tool. (Something I would later need to work hard to unlearn—and that tempts me even today, because people finally seem to give a shit when you say the word “suicide”.) Crying. Lots and lots of crying. William. Feeling sick. Not the flu kind of sick, but that empty hole in the center of your being feeling of sick. More drinking. More crying. Running away to find some sort of escape, but framing it in a “new beginning” or “starting over” or “opportunity”, only to run to the next place and the next thing a year later.
It isn’t always as bad now as it was that first time that I remember in detail. Mostly because I now have that psychological “tool box” to draw upon for coping strategies, and I have medication, and a concrete diagnosis, and a weekly therapy session. But it is still bad.
If you take me at my high points, you have to take me at my low points.
But people don’t, do they?
Time after time I am left alone when the low point hits. Time after time the bottom falls out of the relationship when I hit a deep depression. Time after time I am alone when the bank balance hits the red “danger days” of overdraft. Time after time I am raising that child alone—okay just one child, one time, but it feels like a thousand times because you keep doing it every day, and keep doing it long beyond childhood, because the words uttered today were uttered by a 20-year-old daughter, who is an adult, fiercely independent and desperate to prove she can make life better than life was when it came to her.
When my daughter was young, we had a rule for birthday invites. She was only allowed to invite to her celebrations those people whom she believed would also show up to her moments of greatest sorrow. That rule always led to a house filled with random people from all the corners of our lives. Family, my friends, her friends, people from church, people from school, people I worked with, people in our neighborhood. A diverse group who were not connected to one another except through their bond with us came together each year, and met and talked and learned about one another’s lives. It was always a great joy. Later, when she was a pre-teen, we abandoned that rule. Every birthday since has been a source of disappointment or challenge—people didn’t show up, or fought amongst themselves, or broke things in her room, or any number of weird things. The moment we stopped allowing only those who would mourn with us to celebrate with us was the moment that the parties started being stressors and not joys.
As I think about my life now, and I think about the joys and the sorrows, I look back to those parties. I remember that rule, and I wonder why I didn’t work harder to apply it to my own life and relationships.
I am a person who loves deeply, and without many prejudices. (We all have some prejudices, and being honest and forthcoming about those biases is the best way to combat and cope with them.) I offer love to all sorts of people whom others might fear or look upon with shame or judgments. And I think at times that openness has been a place where my armor is weak. Love flows out, and blades of dishonesty, violence, manipulation, or some other bad thing can be forced into that space with greater ease. Being open-hearted means being vulnerable, in some ways. And when I stopped considering who would be there in the low points, but let people join me in the high points, regardless of where they were when I was struggling, I left myself vulnerable in unhealthy ways.
Where were those people in the low points? I don’t really know. They had an excuse for not being with me, of course. But those excuses started to pile up to the point where I felt used instead of loved. And maybe I was. I probably was.
Because for some reason I give people the benefit of the doubt. I assume that they love in the ways that I love. I assume that they stay through joys and sorrows. I assume that they offer love without conditions and avoid judgment and shame. But they don’t.
I love that way. They don’t. (Or at least most of them don’t, or none of them have thus far in regard to my romantic relationships.)
I have people in my life who do love that way. When my mom died two years ago, there were people who came to the wake and the funeral who were there just to see me and support me. I hadn’t lived in that town for several years, but there were a few people who loved me deeply and truly—in joys and in sorrows—who knew that I needed them to be there in that low point. They wanted to be there with me in that low point. I cannot express how much that meant.
Lately, I feel just as my daughter has been feeling—like she was emphatically stating today. If you take me at the high point you need to take me at the low point. And the reason that statement came from her lips is because there are people in her life who are not there at the low points. There are too many people who want the joys but not the sorrows. I feel overwhelmed with the number of people who are not there in my sorrows.
And I should probably look on the bright side. I should probably see the people who are present and loving me through this very low point. But that isn’t what my mind and my heart focus on easily or naturally. What they focus on is the lack of support. What they see is the lone wolf, fighting her battle without a pack to cover over the weakness or the fatigue or the blind spots in her vision—leaving her vulnerable to attack and making it nearly impossible for her to win the fight and survive the day.
Or, rather, survive the night. Because day isn’t what I am struggling with. I am struggling with the darkness. The depths. The most difficult. And that is the space that so few will enter alongside me. That is the place that people don’t wish to go—the arena in which they cannot support me.
I always find it intriguing (and sometimes find it infuriating) that when I post on social media about my financial need or updates about my disability hearing, people do not respond in any way, but when I post a picture of my freshly cut or colored hair a hundred people will “like” the post. Pretty, clean, happy-looking Christy garners support. Poor, struggling, sick-looking Christy gets far less attention. But the poor and struggling and disabled me is the me that needs the most support, not the me on happy days with well-styled hair. People love my joys, and disappear during my sorrows.
When the night comes, people run and hide behind their doors in “safety”. When the night comes, people distance themselves. When the night comes, people offer platitudes in public and judgmental gossip in private. When the night comes, the needy are left alone on the dark street, fending for themselves. And “joy comes in the morning” for those who wake to step out the door (and didn’t have to face the night) with far more ease than it comes for those who were battling through the darkness while you slept in peace. Yes, we have joy that we survived the night. But it is always tempered with the knowledge that we will likely have to endure the fight again when night falls.
My daughter texted that she got a job! Our joy is inexpressible! But it took months of sorrows to get to this day. And those don’t leave us just because of this joy. They linger. We remember the night. We know that we are inches from it at all times. And we know that many who will celebrate this joy were not there to offer love and support during the sorrow that preceded today’s good news.
It begs the question: Where are you when night falls?
Are you inviting the stranger into your home to find safety behind your walls? Are you in the streets protecting the others, who have no supports in this fight? Are you cowering in corners? Are you behind your own door, somehow believing that you deserve the security you have from the darkness because you are better or stronger or worked harder or behaved with greater morality than whomever might be fighting through the dark night of the soul?
No matter what I, myself, am fighting, I always fight for others.
That seems a bit ridiculous at times. I should put myself first, right? I have problems that need solutions. I need money, so I shouldn’t give my change to someone selling Streetwise on the corner. I am sick so I shouldn’t be hugging and holding the hand of the “dirty” homeless and addicts. I can’t take care of myself, so I shouldn’t take in others that need care. Right?
Wrong. I don’t know why I know with such certainty that it is wrong, but I know it. No matter how difficult my own situation, I cannot and will not lose my empathy and compassion for others. I will always help. I will always seek to ease pain for those around me. I will always try to save lives, bring comfort, offer security, and radiate love. Always. Even in the middle of my own dark nights. Even in my own very low points.
If you take me at the high points, you take me at the low points.
Don’t pretend you care and then not offer care. Don’t tell me you support me and then not give me support. Don’t say you love me and then not show love.
If you wouldn’t stand with me during my deepest, darkest, and most devastating sorrows, then do not stand beside me in my joys. You haven’t earned the right to my joys. You don’t deserve my best if you cannot accept my worst. And my worst is bad. It is really, really bad.
I still have suicidal ideation and hopelessness at the forefront of my mind. I still have significant need that isn’t being met. I still have all sorts of stressors and difficult decisions and challenges along my path, and I do not know how to address them or overcome them or cope with them. I’m still in the midst of the low point.
But I also have the opportunity to rejoice with my daughter over her news of employment at a place she is so excited to work. I still have the joy of celebrating the birthday of a dear friend this weekend. I still have the joy of discovering the offending medication that was making it impossible for me to do effective strength training, and to eliminate that medicine, so I could finally get a decent workout in this week. I have so many joys! They simply live in tandem with deep sorrows.
What is the point of this post?
I’m not entirely sure.
Maybe it is meant to whine about the ways that humanity is failing me. Maybe it is to set a boundary for myself, in writing. Maybe it is to offer a lesson to one of those reading, and to help them see that they are being “fair weather friends” and not true friends at all. Maybe it is just something that I needed to get off of my mind and onto some “paper”, so that I could stop playing it over in my mind, and get on with other tasks.
But I suspect that much of it is to give voice to what I have felt for a very long time—that nobody dares to know, to tolerate, or to manage the depths of my pain. They don’t know how. Or maybe they have never felt that low before and it feels terrible, so they stop. They leave me there in that pain, because it is so intolerable. And it is intolerable pain. Which is why there have been so many low points.
But if nobody ever finds the strength and the will and the compassion to join me there, I might never overcome. I might be stuck with that pain forever, or it might overwhelm me.
It is low. It is so low. And I know it is hard, because I feel it every single moment. It radiates through my body, and it poisons my life, and it hurts everything and everyone around me. That’s how low it is. But if I am ever to have joys to share with you, you need to find a way to join me in that sorrow.
If you are going to take me at my high point, you need to take me at my low point.
That’s what I have to say.
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.
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?
Learning To Be Whole 