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.
empathy
Accidentally
My dad left only about two hours ago, and already I have realized that I accidentally left my handicapped parking placard in his vehicle. I suppose this is one accident less than the two from his visit just weeks before, when he accidentally took my spare keys and accidentally left his air mattress and pump. Regardless, it seems there is always something left or taken without us having meant for it to be so.
While he was here I accidentally got him a parking ticket. I meant to move the car from one street to another, since one is free at night and another is permitted parking only at night. I was late in my duty and saw the ticket writer moving along the street as I went out to move the car. Too late. The ticket was already written and he wouldn’t take it back and offer a warning instead.
A few hours later we were off to lunch in the backseat of the vehicle of my friend and his husband. It was snowing out, and we were all pleased that the “snow” function on the new Range Rover worked exceptionally and kept us from sliding into the intersection where the road was slick from precipitation. Unfortunately, the vehicle behind us was not a Range Rover with a snow function to choose, and we were struck from behind. Nobody was hurt, thankfully. (Though I have had a headache since and am inclined to claim that being jostled has thrown my vertebrae off center–but know that my physical therapist can just push those babies back into place next session and likely fix the problem, so I’m not ready to file an injury suit just yet.) But it took some time to exchange information, and our friends needed to go to the police station after lunch and file reports for the collision, and will need to take the car in for repair.
Accidents happen often.
And not just the collision kind, but the kind where you aren’t paying attention to your things or your words or your actions with enough focus to make certain that you aren’t saying or doing something that is potentially harmful.
My dad and I also discussed, at length, the type of accident where people’s words are accidentally stupid or hurtful. Because people don’t seem to pay close enough attention to their surroundings to understand that they are leaving something out. And generally the thing left out is compassion for a person’s situation–empathy.
There are so many statements that have come across our paths that are unintentionally hurtful.
I understand how you feel. You must be lonely. When are you going to find a new partner? You should [insert obvious medical advice we have already tried]. Your partner/parent/child is in a better place. You’re young, so you you’ll find someone new.
All of these things are meant to be kind, but they accidentally cause even more wounds. They aren’t helpful. And what would be helpful is simply to not try to identify or give advice, but to say that you don’t understand, but that you are ready and able to listen, to perform household tasks, and to help in practical ways that give a person time to rest, heal, and grieve in the ways they need to do so.
As a chronically ill individual, I have a whole set of ways that people accidentally offend, atop the normal process of grief and singleness. I have people who tell me to get well soon–which I won’t. I have the constant onslaught of home remedies and stories of “my [loosely connected acquaintance or distant relative] who did thing X and was healed of their illness, which are unsolicited and annoying, because I have a team of 13 specialists who oversee my care and some raw honey is not going to be the thing that all of them missed as a magic cure. The other night my cousin said, “If they keep looking around the doctors are going to find things wrong.” Later my dad laughed at me as I recounted that statement and how badly I wanted to reply that medicine doesn’t work that way, and I am not a used car. Things must actually be wrong for them to diagnose me with an illness. They don’t make up illnesses so they can bill you for a new pancreas! It was another accidentally, really weirdly, delivered comment that made me feel like my situation isn’t one that others take seriously or treat with validity and respect.
I am not saying at all that my cousin, or others, don’t take me seriously or treat me as valid and respected. Quite the contrary! But somehow, when it comes to these statements, their care for me and their understanding of and care for my situation don’t align. They accidentally get it wrong.
So, how do we change that?
I wish I had a clearer answer. Because I can shout empathy, listening, and validation from the rooftops all day long, and people will say, “I’m a great listener and your feelings are totally valid.” But the disconnect remains. I think there is a big difference between hearing what a person says and feeling what a person says.
My dad is of the mind that until you go through grief of this depth, you can’t understand and will continue to view things in a way that is incomplete–and, therefore, will continue to say the wrong things.
I’m not of that mind. I’m not of that mind because I know people who suffer physical pain and still don’t have empathy for my physical pain. And I’m not of that mind because I have a few friends who are deeply aware of what I am feeling, even when I am doing what I believe is a good job at hiding my true feelings–they see through my act. I’m not of that mind because people who have suffered similar experiences to mine can shut down in ways that I cannot, and can ignore the past in ways that I cannot, leaving no room for empathy, even though they know exactly how it feels to experience that pain.
Instead, I think that we all have the capacity for empathy, but very few of us have the strength of will and the courage to open ourselves in that manner. Because doing so means deliberately seeking to feel the pain of others. It means to share in their sorrows–not just on some surface level where you offer the accidentally insensitive platitudes, but truly feeling that sorrow. And why in the world would we want to add sorrow to our lives??!!
But the thing that is important about sharing in sorrows is that you also get to share in joys. When you share in the sorrows in deep and meaningful ways, you also share in joys in deep and meaningful ways. So, letting in the suffering means letting in the celebration. Letting in some darkness means flooding the space with light! Who would want to miss out on that??!!
The people who see me in my darkest moments also are invited to share in my brightest and most glorious moments. And those are really fabulous! I pour so much love into the people who love me truly that it is almost ridiculous. I’ve probably loved some people so well that it has frightened them away, because they were not accustomed to such unfettered, unconditional love and it felt awkward or foreign. But those people also dealt with me in the depths of my despair, which was extremely difficult, I know. And the reward isn’t likely to be equal to the expense, but that is just the way that life works out, I think.
The risk in life is often greater than the reward. But that does not mean that it isn’t worth it. That doesn’t mean the experiences and the people and the adventures are not worth it. Because the idea that we shouldn’t move forward unless the reward is greater than the risk is one that was manufactured by the modern man, not one that has always been a part of humanity. It is an accident of our economy that we weigh the risks and decide that the safe bet is to not open up. We keep closed our bank accounts, our doors, and our hearts because the risk seems to outweigh the reward. But in doing so, we have made a grave error. Because life happens in the accidents, more often than not. We cannot plan for every outcome. We cannot keep “safe” by keeping distant. And keeping ourselves closed off from everything and everyone just makes us more susceptible to being left alone in our tragedies, should they arrive accidentally.
We need to open up and find that empathy and feel for others and with others. We need to share sorrows and joys. We need to stop weighing what we think will be the consequences and throw the risk/benefit analysis out the fucking window. Life isn’t a series of rewards assessments. Life is often a challenge. But it is often an adventure!
So go out there and make your accidents be ones that aren’t based on selfish, closed-hearted living that causes offense to those who are suffering. Make your accidents be the kind that are derived from throwing caution to the wind and running headlong into feelings and actions that let you know the deep lows and the exhilarating highs that life has to offer us as human beings. Because that is amazing and wonderful, and, I believe, what we were designed to experience.
Use that empathy. Feel deeply. And experience a full life.
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.
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.
Wide Awake
I woke to a crash at 5:00 this morning. My daughter’s cat has finally managed to do what I have been anticipating for some weeks now—she broke some shit.
I investigated the crash and found that the beautiful orchid that was thoughtfully gifted to me after my recent hip surgery was currently lying on the living room floor, surrounded by chunks of clay that now resembled an exhibit in a museum rather than a pot.
Thankfully, the orchid itself was mostly intact. Though, being a living thing, it has the opportunity, as do all living things, to experience shock, so we shall see if the trauma of being knocked to the ground has a negative effect in the coming days. (Fingers crossed that it stays beautiful and blooming for a long time.)
I swept up the bits of pottery and a bit of dirt. I put the orchid into another pot and placed it back onto the television stand where it resides. And then I tried to return to the warmth and comfort of my bed to sleep again. But the cat had started a chain reaction. Because I was awake, the dog assumed it was time to be up and about, so he continually nudged me and licked at my hands until I gave in to his demands and took him outside. And then, because we had begun the morning routine, he decided he should also have food.
While feeding him, I realized that he was out of water, so I filled that. Then the idea of water alerted me to the extreme dehydration that was causing my tongue to stick to the roof of my mouth. I drank two glasses of water and, when that didn’t seem like enough hydration, I downed a Gatorade. And then, after using the bathroom, I went back to my bed once more.
But sleep would not come. I was now wide awake.
As is customary, I began to think about all sorts of things while I laid there hoping for sleep. I have medications that help me sleep at night. I take the first at 7:00 pm, and take the last at 9:30. There is a complex system of getting my brain and my body into a sleep state. Sleep doesn’t come easy for me because of a few illnesses that I cope with, but I have developed a great system over time, and most nights sleep comes with relative ease.
Morning is another story.
Once I had begun the routine of the morning, I couldn’t get back to sleep. And, while my brain wasn’t as functional as I would have liked—I sent a text to my daughter that said “don’t gorget” when I meant to remind her “Don’t forget to ask about time off for xmas”—I decided that if sleep would not find me, I would simply get up and do things.
The words “wide awake” kept returning to my mind in the semi-dazed moments when I was still struggling to sleep. And while I can understand the connection in the literal sense—my inability to sleep—there was something beyond that use of the phrase that kept coming into my consciousness. I couldn’t help but think about what being wide awake means in a more proverbial sense. I couldn’t help but think of how I became the person that I am today, and how that person is one whom I consider “wide awake”.
People often use the word “enlightened’ as an insult when they respond to what I post on my blog or my Facebook page. Many seem to take offense when I express my views, and they react by making sarcastic and rude comments. A fair amount of those comments includes mocking my “enlightened” state. This past week, I had multiple people slinging verbal attacks at my blog comment section. And those attacks included that term “enlightened”, used as a pejorative and not a compliment.
But as I laid in bed, and remained wide awake, I had the overwhelming feeling that enlightened is exactly the correct statement to describe me. I am wide awake.
Let me elaborate.
I have been through transformation after transformation. And some of those transitions were not easy or came at great personal cost, but life doesn’t easily become other. We like to stay in our little bubbles of safety and familiarity and commonly held understanding. We don’t like change. We certainly don’t like change that takes deep thought, definitive action, and amazing strength.
I never had the luxury of a bubble. The place that is safe and familiar and commonly held never existed. And that safety and familiarity will likely never come to fruition. Mostly because the amygdala doesn’t heal after long-term exposure to abuse, fear, stress, and captivity in developmental stages. You just keep on being in fight or flight or freeze mode for what seems like eternity, but is actually a lifetime. Some people might comment here about how devastating and sad and sorrowful that mode is, and how it needs to be fixed. But they would be wrong.
Here is why:
I’m always afraid, but that fear has made me capable of enlightenment—not in the pejorative sense, but in the literal sense. I have been given this strange and difficult story to live out. But because it is strange and difficult, it offers me reflection and recognition that many do not experience.
I’m wide awake.
When you see things in the light which I have seen things, you need to change the way you think. You cannot come into contact with new ideas and different experiences and come out the other side with the same thinking you had before those things happened. You cannot see what I see and know what I know and not change the way you participate in life.
I’m an addict. And many people I know would say that this is a choice—a moral failure on my part. But those people are not addicts. Addicts know better. We know that there is no amount of choice and will power that can keep you clean or sober in an environment where drink and drugs are present. We know that this is a chemical imbalance in the brain, and a weird reaction in our pleasure center hastily throws us into the rock bottom of substance abuse. We can manage this disease. We cannot cure this disease.
I’m a divorced, single parent. And many people would say that this, also, is a moral failure on my part. But those people weren’t living in my household, with my abusive partner, and experiencing the terror of never being able to control what happened to me. Domestic violence survivors know that you cannot go back and start over. We know that the violence escalates, and it doesn’t reset at the beginning when you reach a terrible end and decide to “try again”. Instead, you pick up where you left off—in a terrible state and creating greater and greater catalysts for further violence. Sometimes you just need to leave. Sometimes your life, and the life of your children, depends on you leaving the violence behind. But that isn’t easy. Domestic violence survivors know this. And those still in abusive relationships know this too. Because when you have been manipulated and conditioned in ways that leave you isolated and without resources, there isn’t a safe place to go or to be. It is much harder to start life over with nothing than it is to stay and suffer through the abuse, in many cases. We know this. We cope with this. We cannot “fix” this.
I am disabled. People constantly misunderstand or deny that fact. “Get well soon”, is an offensive statement. Because I know what it is to be in pain every hour of every day and night. I know what it is to have to mourn the life you planned and worked for and ran toward. I know what it feels like to always be unable and to always feel insufficient and to constantly be in need. It doesn’t feel good. And the people who say “get well soon” and who suggest I edit my life or my lifestyle in particular ways do not know that feeling. They don’t have to mourn the loss and feel the pain. So, their “solutions” are not only impossible to carry out, but they are reinforcing the idea that I am faulty, not good enough, and not accepted as I am. I understand this disability in ways that most never will. (And thank the Divine for that, because I don’t wish this experience on anyone.) I manage this disability. I work to be my healthiest self. I cannot get rid of the disability. I can’t “change it”.
I am pro-choice. This is one of the things that makes so many people use the term enlightened in sarcasm and mockery. This makes so many people think I am a moral failure. But I live in spaces where choice is essential. I live in a space of poverty. I live in a space of fear, of scarcity, of abandonment, and of desperation. And I should never be forced to bring a child into that space. I was molested, assaulted, and raped. I know what it is to not have agency in your life. I know what it is to not have agency over your own body. I know what it feels like to be used and owned and threatened and left alone in shock and disillusionment, because other people didn’t listen when I cried out for help. So, I know what it is to need control over your own body and your own life and your own choices. Because I cannot let another determine what happens to me. That cannot happen again. I cannot have someone else control me—not after all that I have endured.
I’m wide awake.
I understand why people reject my ideas. I understand that they cannot see from my perspective. I get why they don’t want to hear and accept and work through the things that I say or write. It is hard work to change the way you think and behave. It is hard work for me too. But I know that I need to keep living my life with eyes wide open, and accepting even the most difficult and dangerous of facts and stories.
I didn’t get where I am today without struggle. Struggle was often the catalyst for change, because I was shoving myself forward in ways that meant I met many others on my path, and I encountered facts and stories that I couldn’t have encountered if I hadn’t been on that path. And my path is a rare path. Not many travel through all the levels of hell that I have walked through. So many have not had the terrible blessing of a hard life with life-altering experience. It is awful and wonderful.
There is a quote that I think might be helpful to increase understanding here: “It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.” ― Stephen King
For those of you who prefer religious text to horror and suspense novelists, there is also this passage from Ephesians 5: “but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore, it says: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light’.”
I am wide awake.
Many people look at the darkness that is expressed in my posts. They think that these supposed “moral failures” and the challenges that I face are evidences of evil, and of a need for change. And maybe I got to this place because of darkness, in some sense, but that darkness made the light possible. I shine out all the brighter because of the dark. Darkness isn’t necessarily a thing on its own, technically speaking. It is the absence of light—or of light perceptible by the human eye, at least. Light shows up, and then we can see clearly, because of the reflective and refractive rays that show up as colors and shapes that we could not discern in the darkness.
Everything that becomes visible is light. And light is what makes everything visible. Yes, I know that is circular reasoning. It is also true.
Here’s the crux of the matter: I believe that my life is full of light.
I’m wide awake, and the sun is shining down upon me. It took a while for it to get here, and I watched it rise over the city this morning, but it is now shining down upon me. And the light shines out all the brighter because of the contrast against the darkness. Was it devastating and sad and terrible to be harmed in my history? Yes. Was it difficult to find my way beyond the pro-life stance that I adopted to fit in with my friends and neighbors and to step into the truth that science and experience offered, becoming pro-choice? Yes. Was there much that seemed dark and damaging and defeating in my life? Yes.
But there was also light.
There was love, support, grace, the voice of the Divine, strength, fortitude, passion, and purpose. There still is. It just looks a bit different than I had imagined it would.
I’m wide awake, because I let the light of truth transform me, over and over again. Each time I encounter something that doesn’t make sense, or challenges my current belief system, or shakes me out of dissociative states and requires I be present and thoughtful, or offers a story that has new perspective, I let the light shine upon it. And that light transforms my ideas, my actions, and my person in many ways.
Last week there were people who called me names in my blog comments, and made all sorts of assumptions about who I am and how I think and what I do. But today that doesn’t bother me. Because this morning I was wide awake, and saw clearly (with help from some insights borrowed from a friend) that the upsetting thing about these interactions was not that I am morally bankrupt or doing life wrong, but the upsetting thing is that these people are not letting light shine in darkness. They are not stepping into truth and letting it transform them. They are not listening to my story, even though they may be reading my words. And they are not doing so, because it is very hard to do.
Darkness gave me what others lack: the opportunity to distinguish the dark from the light. Darkness pushed me toward the path of the light of truth. Escaping the suffering meant moving toward a new way of thinking and being. And that way of thinking and being is better than the way of my past. Truth and light shine in my present and my future.
I’m wide awake.
I understand my situation, and I know my value, and I feel my emotions, and I acknowledge my weakness alongside my strength. I live in the light, and I seek truth. If you believe that you can know better, and understand more about my life and my history and my current situation or actions, feel free to make your suggestions, but please do not be angry when I tell you that I don’t need your input right now. Because I am walking the path of light, shining out in the midst of the darkness, and I don’t necessarily believe that your comments are contributing light.
I know what I am doing. I know when what I am doing is helpful and when it is not. I can own the times that it is not helpful. But I have an awareness regarding my life and my situation that you do not share.
I was recently reading a book from the Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones series. I was talking with my physical therapist about watching the show versus reading the books, and I told her what I have told others: I like reading the books, even though I know from the show what is going to happen, because the books offer you internal monologue that the television series cannot portray.
I think that this applies to my life too. Others can share my experience to a degree, but they are not allowed the privilege of being inside my head, and feeling and knowing and understanding the depth and breadth of who I am and what I believe and why. You are missing the monologue that shapes the story in important ways. You are reading from your perspective and not from mine. And if you do not seek my perspective when you read my words, then you are not practicing the empathy that is required for change and connection.
My perspective is important. And yours may be too. But insisting that I do not know my own situation or life experience or whatever else pertains to me, and that you know a better way of being me, simply because you say so (with no facts to back that up whatsoever), is not only uninformed, but it is offensive. It is offensive because I am an aware, educated, experienced, adult.
There’s more to me than people know.
And I am wide awake—shining light on my life and my surroundings to continually seek truth.
Whatever I am, and whatever I do, I do it wide awake.
And now, I think it is time for a nap. 😉
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.
Shocking
I am shocked and amazed at times with the way that threats and insults have become commonplace, and even overwhelm the encouragements and niceties that society once held in high regard. Americans are assholes. It just keeps on coming up as a truth in my experience. I can’t deny it anymore.
I was online and saw this photo posted with “I bet you don’t know what is wrong in this picture” trying to challenge you. And I knew what the person posting thought was wrong with the picture immediately–the man was standing to the inside, not the outside near the street, as he walked along with a woman. I pointed out that this is a really misogynistic sort of view of women…that you need to claim or protect them while they walk on a sidewalk expresses they are weak or in danger, at best, and that they are your property on a more nefarious sort of level.
And I was immediately met with ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and people trying to “educate” me and people making comments like “wow” (which denotes crazy) and “poor child” (which denotes ignorance). The assumption that these are appropriate responses to a woman voicing a feminist concern is not necessarily surprising anymore, because I see it happening so often. What does surprise me is that the “schooling” offered by these people, who were hurling insults, was directed at teaching me that a man flanking your street side is “A SIGN OF RESPECT”.
Wait a moment…the people who are trying to tell me how I need to be respected are doing so with blatant disrespect?
What is the world coming to?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love blatant disrespect in certain contexts–sticking it to the man, refusing to adhere to standards that harm you, ranting in your kitchen when only the dog is listening–but trying to tell me that I need to accept a misogynistic practice in order to be respected, by being disrespectful, is a practice that I will not accept. And being told that I need to feel a certain way about an action that makes me uncomfortable and angry is something I also will not accept.
You see, the offense is two-fold here. Not only am I told that I am ignorant and crazy for my view of this practice, I am told that I need to view the practice through their eyes. I’m not allowed to be offended by it because they like it and see it as good. So, I must practice niceties, while they insult my intelligence.
Really?!
It has taken me many years to begin to understand the way that the niceties practiced in the small, religious, conservative town I grew up in has left me damaged. It has taken many more to learn skills to cope with and combat that damage. I will always, likely, have a life where I fight against the tendencies to maintain the status quo and not offend and not insult and show respect at the expense of my own health and safety. And these strangers on the internet are seeking, by insult and injury, to force me back into that place and accept things that make me feel sick as things that are really just confused in my perception, but actually really good for me.
When did internet strangers become the voice of the patriarchy, the right-wing fanatic, and the media interest for the degradation of women, all rolled into one? Where do they find these people who are so ignorant of their participation in the machine of oppression that they claim it proudly and with gusto and insulting language?
And the most important question, I suppose, is how do we wake people from this participation and help them see that asking me to kindly accept my oppression is really messed up, and not something they want to participate in any longer?
The whole issue of the guy on the outside isn’t really the point. (Though I still find it offensive and one of those patriarchal heteronormative practices that refuses to die but does us no good.) The point is that when we use insults and shaming to attempt to validate our actions, we immediately invalidate our argument….even when we might be correct.
If you need to harass me into accepting your view, then I never really accept it. If I cannot accept it without insult or shame, then I am not accepting it at all. Being a bully does not make you right. Being an asshole does not make you right. And trying to convince me that what or how I feel is wrong, instead of using a rational argument to make your case, is not right.
I still abhor the practice of a man walking to the outside of the woman. Calling me ignorant and crazy hasn’t changed that. Calling me ignorant and crazy hasn’t changed the misogyny inherent in the practice–the way it treats women as less capable of handling life than men, and in need of protection. But calling me those things has changed something. It has eliminated any respect for you, the ones who called me names. It has actually, then, made you LESS convincing, not more. It has eroded your arguments and not strengthened them.
So, what I find shocking is that people who consider themselves more psychologically balanced and more informed than me would not have the keen awareness to know that name-calling doesn’t secure a debate victory. What I find shocking is that those who would observe the niceties of the patriarchy would observe no niceties of other human interaction. What I find shocking is that people still think calling me stupid would make me view them as smart. (It didn’t work in Grade 5. It doesn’t work now.)
Perhaps, what I find most shocking is the way that the shaming and blaming aspects of our society stand strong while the kindness and the understanding and the encouragements of our society are washed away. I am not certain why this is. I intend to find out. And, in the meantime, I encourage you all to use your intellect and your kindness in interactions. Feel with others and hear their stories and seek to understand the ways that their perspectives are shaped and influenced. Challenge ideas without bullying people. Accept knowledge for the sake of knowing, and not for the sake of using it to support your own agenda. And learn how to observe empathy in the place of niceties, so that you are not forcing people to swallow their feelings in order to maintain your ideals.
In other words, stop being an asshole!
Learning To Be Whole 