Avoidance

March 10, 2018 / christyterese / Leave a comment

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.

May 27, 2017 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I’m not certain if control issues were inherited or ingrained, but my mother was the pinnacle of having things in order, and bits of her need to control all the things all the time were handed down to me, and I handed bits down to my daughter.

It isn’t always a bad thing to want to be prepared. It isn’t always a bad thing to desire control over a situation. As a person who felt they didn’t have autonomy and agency at many times in her history—and even in the present moment—I am a big supporter of having some control over what happens in my life. I like to be prepared. I like to know what is coming, whenever possible.

But I also know that life isn’t controllable. Life isn’t boxed up neatly and organized and cleaned up and put into order. Life is chaos. Life is dynamic. Life is unpredictable. Choose your own adjective—but the point is, you cannot maintain control of all the things all the time.

For almost three years now, I’ve been living in a situation that magnifies a lack of control a thousand times. It has not been easy for me.

It isn’t that I am just like my mother, and need all the preparations and all the order and seek them in an anxious and worried manner that cannot allow for others to see the internal chaos—the private chaos that all the preparations are meant to hide. I also have, whether inherited or ingrained, my dad’s propensity for being laid back and letting life happen, while offering peace and calm and love to everyone around you as a counter-measure to life’s chaos.

One of my employers, many years ago, said of my dad, “Dave is the kind of man whose pants you could light on fire and he would say, ‘Hmm. It’s a bit warm in here.’” And that was one of the best descriptions of my dad’s manner of being that I ever heard. I’m not that chill and laid back, but I am at least, I believe, half that laid back.

But the other half. The half from my mom. The half that wants order and shuns chaos. That half is feeling tortured right now!

The living situation that magnifies my lack of control, and the dependence and humility and trust that not having that control forces me to develop, has, in many ways, helped me become less like my mother and more like my father. I’ve started letting go of control. I’ve started asking for help without shame. I’ve started to trust in divine providence. But the last few weeks of this living situation have brought out the control freak in the most unflattering ways.

After almost three years of waiting, I am now 25 days from my disability hearing.

25 days.

I’ve waited more than 25 months for this day.

And I am terrified, because I have no fucking clue what happens next.

The other day I emailed the paralegal that is working with my lawyer to prepare my case. I asked him what my next steps were. I asked him what I do now—after I dutifully went from doctor to doctor, asking if they agree that I am disabled and getting their detailed documentation on record when they did agree.

The paralegal said I do nothing.

Nothing.

Next I do nothing.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I am completely incapable of doing nothing with 25 days standing between me and the decision that determines how, or even if, I survive from this point forward. I can’t do nothing while a stranger—a man I have never met—looks over all of those detailed documents and decides whether I get the assistance I need to live independently, or whether I am forced into some other sort of situation, where I don’t have the right to the freedom and independence that people who are not sick all the time take for granted.

That freedom and independence might not be granted in that courtroom. Or maybe it will.

Either way, I don’t know what comes next.

This ominous unknown “next” is looming before me, and I am told that my response right now should be to do nothing.

I’m not doing well with that. All the parts of me that desire control and preparation and order are screaming out in pain. All the parts that need to know what to do and need to know how to best prepare for what is coming are feeling tortured. I forget to breathe sometimes. There is a tightness in my chest, on occasion, that I can’t be sure is from my current respiratory infection, because I have a suspicion that it is a sign of panic instead.

I emailed the paralegal again today. I asked him what happens after. What happens after I am awarded benefits? Do I get them right away? Do I have to wait even longer? Does my fundraiser need to sustain me for two more months? Eight more months? When do I get the $21,000 that the state wrongfully withheld from me while they argued that I wasn’t “disabled enough” and could do “some unskilled work”, even though my medical records and my work history told a very different story? On what day do I feel vindication and validation?

And what happens after if I don’t? What happens if the judge does not offer me vindication and validation and $21,000 in back-payments? What happens if I can’t work but the judge says I must? What happens if I can’t hold down a “real” job for any significant length of time? What happens when my physical and mental state deteriorate as I lose time for self-care and therapies and coping strategies that are essential to my wellbeing? What happens when I become what I was three years ago—a bed-ridden mess of pain and mental anguish? What then?

The part of me that needs to prepare and create order and keep things neat feels like she is being drowned. She is choking on the unknown as she tries to remember how to breathe. She is suffering and dying.

The part of me that is laid back and offers peace and love seeks to console her. She is nearly inconsolable. No amount of meditation and diaphragmatic breathing and coloring mandalas seems to quell the shaking of her frame. So, the peace-filled part accompanies the out of control part to my desk. Together they research and add and subtract numbers, experimenting with all the possible sums and trying to find a way through the chaos. Trying to determine what the next stage might look like—what “next” might be.

The two parts sit together on the yoga mat, trying to clear my head of negativity and fear and shame and confusion and stress. The two parts sit together and recount all the things for which I am grateful. The two parts sit together on the sofa, trying to distract from the chaos by watching Netflix and becoming invested in a fiction instead of hyper-focusing on my reality. The two parts sit together as I attempt to do nothing, and to go about life as usual—therapy, doctor visits, gym, pool, massage, yoga, meditation, food prep, cleaning, baths, walks, updating the fundraiser. They try to help me live my life as though it were “normal”, and try to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.

But they aren’t succeeding in any significant way.

I am stressed beyond comprehension. I half expect to have a stroke before my court date arrives. But then the other half reminds me that I have waited for 30 months, I can wait 25 more days.

And the decision on the 21^st isn’t necessarily the thing that I fear the most. It isn’t the thing that might make or break me. The thing that might make or break me is whatever comes next.

I don’t know if the making or the breaking comes next.

And I don’t know how to prepare for either.

I don’t know how to do nothing.

I am terrified of what comes next.

I’m not sure how to survive the next. Because I can’t figure out how to be prepared for next. And I have no control over what comes next.

There is this strange mixture of hope for the future and dread for the future that is happening within my person. And while I talk about myself as two halves to make the point that both of those are present, I am only one person, feeling all of those feelings, and being both the hopeful and the dread-filled woman, simultaneously. It is a strange feeling. It is terrible in many ways. I feel at odds with myself. I feel like I am out of control as I fight with my own psyche.

But today I realized that there is reason for hope. And that reason is my parents.

I get the worrisome and ordered parts from my mother. I get the laid back and love-offering parts from my father. And that combination of traits created a long-lasting marriage. It wasn’t always the perfect relationship, but it was beautiful even through the difficult times. And it worked. It lasted until death parted my parents. Those two parts made a beautiful whole, that endured all sorts of struggles with strength and grace.

My court date falls on the day after what would be my parent’s 48^th wedding anniversary. It comes just three days after the 2^nd anniversary of my mother’s death. The unpredictable chaos of life, and the melding of personalities into a loving relationship are both represented in this week in June. The caregiver, my father. The lost mind of one who never stopped striving for control, my mother. The ways that they stepped and swayed and moved toward and moved back made a dance of life. It made a dance of the things for which no one could have been prepared. It made a dance of the struggles, because the two sat together.

I see that which was passed down by my mother and that which was passed down by my father, the two seemingly competing aspects of my personality, and I know that all is not lost. I know that these two parts can work together to recreate that dance. To step, sway, move forward and back, and to find the way through even the most shocking and unexpected moments in life. They found a way. And I am a part of each of them, so I can find a way also.

Grief hits harder than you might expect in the second year after losing your parent. I’ve been avoiding that subject lately, preferring to focus on what I need to be doing to get through the next 25 days regarding my hearing, my livelihood, and my important planning for the future. But today, knowing that I am instructed to do nothing, and that the disability case is out of my hands now, I sink into the truth that it still hurts a lot to be without her—without them together, and the ways that they interacted. I still have my dad, of course. And I am so grateful for him. He is a rock of support that no other can rival. But I miss my mom.

That is a thing that I was not prepared for. It is odd, because we had years to prepare for losing her, but I never expected that the mother whom I argued with and struggled to understand and who I strived to please and never gained approval from would be so missed. That in the weeks leading up to an important moment in my life, I am looking back to the weeks that lead up to the end of hers. That I would have to look at her picture to remember all the details of her face. That I would suddenly be relieved that I have nothing to do, because I think what I should do—what I need to do for myself—is to be sad and grieve, and let this season be about more than the dance I am doing internally as I struggle toward my disability hearing, but allow it to also or instead be about the dance of my parents, and the overwhelming emptiness of the space next to my dad, where my mom used to dance beside him.

I’m so grateful that I am made up of the stuff of both of these amazing individuals. I’m so lucky to be a part of them, and to be their legacy in the flesh. (As an aside, I am the only one in the family who has a child that carries on the family name—and we are a little bit too proud to be the ones who bear the name of that legacy.)

I still don’t know what comes next.

And I’m still a bit terrified, to be honest.

But having witnessed lives that pressed on through the good times and the bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death parts them, I feel stronger. I feel a little less helpless and a little more capable. Because I am the product of those lives. I am an embodiment of those promises. So, if they could make it through whatever unexpected trial or joy might be coming up next, I can also do so.

I’ll meet what comes next. I’ll lean into whatever comes next. I will overcome whatever is next. Or be grateful and enjoy what comes next.

I am the dance. The two parts sit together and create a good life out of whatever comes their way.

The two parts sit together and discover what is next.

Bully

November 11, 2016 / christyterese / 15 Comments

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 3^rd 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?

But Some Lives Don’t

September 17, 2016 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I removed a comment from my Facebook post this morning. Its basic message was “ALL LIVES MATTER”. I was as kind and respectful with the one who commented as I was able, but I could not leave that comment on my page.

It isn’t that I think all lives mattering is a bad thing. I’m all for that. I would love to see that.

The problem is I see very clearly and close-up that some lives don’t matter. And that isn’t right, and it isn’t good, and it needs to be rectified.

I think that a lot of people miss the point of the Black Lives Matter movement, and other similar movements that are pressing for equity and safety and opportunity for those who are marginalized in our society. The point is not that these lives matter more than the “all lives” that some use to counter these movements. The point is that these lives already live under the oppressive and marginalizing weight of being treated like they don’t matter.

Last night I posted because I watched a young man be shot across the street. He was a black man, living in an underserved neighborhood—my neighborhood—and he was just walking down the sidewalk when he was struck with bullets and fell to the ground. There were lots of people out last night, on that same sidewalk on this block. Women, children, elderly people, and young men all shared the moment. We sprang into action. I called for the police and an ambulance. Several others ran to where the victim had dropped, peeling off their shirts and pressing against wounds, administering what first aid they could and keeping him conscious until help arrived. And after the event, I posted a plea for an end to this injustice, racism, classism, and access to firearms that transforms quiet blocks on the Westside into blue-lit, yellow-tape-covered, crime scenes.

Many responded with sadness, some with shock. One left the “ALL LIVES MATTER”.

They don’t. They matter in the sense that I believe in equity and that humans deserve love and respect and opportunity and safety and security as humans. They don’t in the way our society currently treats the brown and the black and the poor and the sick and the suffering. We are treated like shit. We are treated like our lives are not worth the air we breathe. We are treated as though our lives mean less to others than “rights” to have entitled and privileged and unfettered space for the most white and most rich and most cis and most male and most heterosexual. We are treated as though our lives don’t matter.

Here I will interrupt myself for a moment and clarify something. I’m not black or brown. I am poor and sick and queer, so I understand much of the marginalization that my neighbors experience, because I experience that too. But my plight is not their plight, exactly. I can pass for a normative, respected, acceptable person when I am not asking for money or ranting about the problems that disability creates. I can simply not share with others that I am unable to work and struggling to survive. But my neighbors can’t pass as white-bodied individuals. And no matter what other status or wealth or purpose or good works they may have associated with them on an individual level, they are judged first and foremost by the color of their bodies. And that judgement leaves them unsafe, disrespected, gunned down, impoverished, and more.

I live in an area where I am one of very few white people. It took me living here for over a year to even meet some of my neighbors. There was a suspicion that floated about me. Why was I here? What did I want? Why would I not live in a “better” or “safer” area? After all, I am white, so I should be able to easily find a place to be among the other white people. But I am poor and disabled, so I cannot afford to live among the other white people. And, as my neighbor so poignantly expressed last night, “None of them are buying you a house in the suburbs, are they?”

Nope.

Nobody has offered me a place to live in the relative safety that they live in. Some will help with finances so that I can continue to eat and heat or cool my home and stay alive in my marginalized state. Many will judge me and treat me poorly and say bad things about me to others in order to discredit my claims that the system is rigged against people like me and my black and brown neighbors. “Lazy, free-loading, welfare queens” is how they see us—not as hard-working people of integrity who just happen to have arbitrary traits that prevent us from being valued in our society.

I stood outside and talked with my neighbors for some time last night after the shooting had happened. We talked about how nobody wants this for themselves or the ones they love. We talked about how a teaching career and a host of graduate degrees and the love of god and fellow humans means nothing, because we have that arbitrary trait of ours that negates all of the good, purposeful traits.

We are good people, by and large. We are families. We hold down two or three jobs. We learn from a young age to appease the system at all costs, to prevent increased suffering. We learn that even appeasing that system all the time will not necessarily prevent suffering—it might still end in us shot on the sidewalk. It may even cause us to be shot by the people who are sworn to protect and serve us.

I’m not black or brown-skinned. But I count myself as “we”. I count myself that way because I have been immersed in this culture, in this neighborhood, and in this experience for over five years. That is but a fraction of the years that these others have and will be marginalized due to arbitrary standards, but it is enough time for me to know and to feel the pain that is endured here. Not fully, of course, but in part, I feel what those around me feel. I hear their cries. I listen to their stories. I relate to their pain and fear and frustration.

I had PTSD long before I began living in a ghetto-like environment where people of color are trapped for lifetimes, and living to age 50 is a landmark worthy of parties bigger than the reception after most weddings. But being here triggers much, because the traumas of being black surround me, even though I am white. I’m not afraid of or in my neighborhood. I am afraid for my neighborhood, and the people within.

Our lives do not matter to politicians or manufacturing companies or many of the police or “decent” white people living in large houses in nice areas where you don’t even lock your doors at night. Our lives don’t come with the assurances offered to others. Our lives are lived moment by moment, challenge by challenge, and triumph by triumph. And we value life more than most, because we see the fragility, and we understand how quickly and without comment we can be removed from this world.

There were no news vans or helicopters last night on my block. There were only those who live here and those paid to come here and help. This young man was gunned down in the street, and only those who live and work here even know about it.

Sure, there might be an article on Monday about how many shootings and homicides happened in Chicago over the weekend. But this young man may not even be mentioned specifically, and all the people with power to change the situation will pass over that article and give it over to statements including drugs, gangs, “black on black” crime, or “ALL LIVES MATTER”. They will give it over to excuses, and not to the truth of the matter.

The truth of the matter is that we do not matter. The sick, the aging, the black or brown, the woman in hijab, the man with prison tattoos, the person with the name you don’t know how to pronounce, the mother who has three jobs to provide for her children, the veteran on the corner with a sign and a paper cup asking for care and respect and the ability to live—we don’t matter. And we feel the weight of that every day. We know you don’t believe we matter. If you did, you would change your actions and fight for our rights and stop saying that “ALL LIVES MATTER” to justify your ignorance and lack of care for the most vulnerable in our society.

If all lives really mattered to you, you would stop purchasing fast fashion to save the lives of Bangladeshi men and women. If all lives really mattered to you, you would demand that social security support those who are disabled without years of suffering and waiting to be heard and offered care. If all lives really mattered to you, you would be screaming at your representatives to put an end to the sale of handguns and assault weapons in our country. If all lives really mattered to you, I wouldn’t be trying to crowdfund my existence because you would be generously donating funds or making certain that there were safety nets for those who need them in this country. If all lives really mattered to you, you would reassess your views regarding women and birth control and safe access to abortion to make certain that you were not looking at the issue from a privileged viewpoint. If all lives really mattered to you, you would fight for the rights of the formerly incarcerated, sex workers, and juvenile offenders. If all lives really mattered to you, you would call for an end to the “war on drugs” and private prisons and mass incarceration. If all lives really mattered to you, you would celebrate love between people, regardless of their gender, and use the pronouns and names that transgender or queer individuals have chosen for themselves, and stop looking sideways at men in dresses, or women with shaved heads, assuming that they are “wrong” somehow, for being who they are. If all lives really mattered to you, you would be outraged by the oppression of, marginalization of, or limited rights of any and all people or groups. If all lives really mattered to you, they would matter equally.

I can hug a homeless, mentally ill, prostitute on the corner and wish him a good day and ask how he is doing. His life matters to me, regardless of anything he does or does not do. And if all lives matter, then he should have healthcare and medication and safe housing and opportunities to make money in other ways than selling the only “capital” he has—his body. If you wouldn’t go near such a man, then all lives do not matter to you.

If you would not sacrifice a portion of your own comforts and securities to make certain that all others had equal, or at least basic, comforts and securities, then all lives do not matter to you.

And if you cannot admit that you treat lives in a hierarchical manner, placing some lives higher than others, then you are in no position to say “ALL LIVES MATTER”.

This post is harsh. But I won’t apologize for that, because it is necessary.

People with extreme privilege need to stop pretending at care for all lives. Instead, all people need to care for one another in a manner that demonstrates we want a world without privileged status—we want a world where each life matters as much as our own.

I don’t see that from most of the people who say things like “ALL LIVES MATTER”. I don’t see that from many of my acquaintances or my Facebook “friends”. I don’t see that from most of my family members. I don’t see that in my neighborhood or in my city or in the way that the problems we are facing are addressed. I don’t see equity. I don’t see lives that matter. I look out my window and I see a sweet young man, who passes my home almost every day, bleeding on the sidewalk—shot, wounded, and not mattering much at all.

So, please, for the love of all that is good, stop pretending and making excuses and going forward without challenging the systems that are oppressing others. Grow. Think. Listen. Consider. And then change, so that you are participating in a society that offers equal rights and equal benefit and equal status to all.

Don’t say all lives matter until you are doing everything you can to honor every single person living on this planet, and have your actions be intimately tied to the care and concern for every single one of those lives. My guess is that following this suggestion will create a situation where only a handful of people I know—maybe less—will be able to say that all lives matter. The rest need to sit and study and wrestle with the concepts of privilege and oppression and injustice and equity for a longer time and with more intent.

Yes, all lives matter. But no, we aren’t treating people in that manner. So start treating people as though they matter, or stop fucking saying that they do.

This morning the blood is washed away and people are out doing work. The men across the street are working on fixing a car. Next door to them is a man working diligently to rehab a house that has been boarded up for about four years. I’m sitting in my office, overlooking the children and the young people and the men and women moving about. We just go on. We just keep on doing life in the best way we know how, in the midst of trauma and terror and task forces and terrible social support systems. We are resilient and we are strong and we are good. We keep fighting for change and working toward peace and summoning hope and praying for better situations.

Even if you don’t show us our lives matter, we know that they do. So we live our lives, in the best possible ways we can. Our lives matter to us. We hang on to one another, and we work together, and we keep telling our stories, hoping the world will one day hear and respond. Hoping one day we will see that our lives matter, that all lives matter equally, on a global scale.

May that day come soon.

Too Much

July 9, 2016 / christyterese / Leave a comment

Yesterday was too much.

In fact, the too much started the day before, and I didn’t do a good job of mitigating it at the outset. But who is great at mitigating, really?

On Thursday, when I took the bus to the doctor, there was so much chaos. There was a woman who insisted her daughter, who looked to be about 10, was 6, so she didn’t need to pay fare for the girl. And she kept arguing with the driver long after she go to her seat (not having paid, and seemingly having gotten what she wanted). She would yell some angry assertion about his dumbness and him minding his business, which I am relatively certain he wanted to do, but she kept yelling out offending shit, and it is really hard to mind your business when someone is shouting theirs at you through the bus.

Not long after, a man got on the bus without paying. We waited several minutes while the driver tried to get the man to leave or pay, to no avail. So, finally, and with much frustration, the driver went on with the route. I was running late by this point, and getting internally frustrated by that lateness. And then the lady with the very-old-looking-probably-not-6-year-old started up again. She was now angry that the driver let the other man get by without paying. Even though she had gotten by with not paying fare for the child. It became a mess of people yelling out random shit about the offenses against them, when the only person who could rightfully be upset, in my opinion, was the driver of the bus.

It got to be too much. I quickly snagged a seat that let me curl up toward the window and cranked the volume on my headset. But too late. Tears started forming, for one reason or another in the corners of my eyes. Was it fear? Frustration? Stress? Anxiety?

Whatever it was, it threatened to pour down my cheeks, which would not have been a great thing and would have added to my emotional upheaval. So I pushed it back.

There is and has been a place to push things since my childhood. I know it well. So many things were too much for my small psyche, and I could not deal—not just would not, but literally was incapable—with that excess. So, it got pushed into the place.

Obviously, the place isn’t a physical space, as far as we know. There are multiple synapses that stop firing or misfire or disconnect in the dissociative brain. It would be much easier if there was one spot that held all the excess. Maybe then we could zap that space into connection, or cut it out altogether, or some other frighteningly macabre way of coping.

As It happens, there isn’t an easy solution, macabre or no.

Once I got off that bus, onto another, and eventually to my appointment, the overwhelmed feeling should have dissipated. But it didn’t.

That question. The question. “When did you first become aware that your speaking was different?”

I was meeting with a vocal specialist. The troubles with my voice have kept me from living life in the way I would otherwise choose. I long for my singing voice. It is definitely time to address the situation. But, maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, or shoved into the place, there was the fear of this question.

I didn’t notice. Tony noticed. Tony mocked me, mimicked me, publicly shamed me. He told me, in the most hateful and terrible ways, that my voice was different—a strange way of clearing my throat, or making a guttural sound where there ought not be one for an English speaker, or the way that my words have a bit of a sing-song ending at times. He used that vocal abnormality to hurt me.

And when she asked the question, and I tried to respond, I cried.

The thing is that the place sometimes overflows. No amount of strength or determination can keep all the too much things from spilling over at times—usually at very inopportune times. And the place overflowed onto my face and neck in the voice doctor’s exam room.

She was kind. She was understanding. And she let me get through that little moment when the place door creeped open a sliver and stuff spilled out, and then she got on with our work. She showed me the inside of my throat while I was speaking and singing. She referred me for voice therapy, changed up my meds, and referred me to neurology. Seeing my throat and my tongue and my voice box in action made the moment when I cried seem miles away. There are reasons. They can be addressed. And that brought all sorts of relief, and shoved Tony’s asinine behaviors back into the place. Those behaviors might come out in next week’s therapy session, but for now they are not overwhelming anymore.

You might think that is the end of the story. I faced the overwhelming events and got on with my life, yes?

No.

The feeling didn’t lift. I watched Netflix. I worked on crafts. I took a shower. I took a nap. I went for a swim. I got a haircut. I took a walk. I wrote. I entertained the dog. I texted with friends. And through all of the really good coping strategies, the feeling still stuck. It wouldn’t leave.

And it became more and more pronounced. It became more anxious, more desperate, more affecting. Until last night when the place sort of exploded into the forefront of my brain.

Here’s the thing. The place scares some people, but some people take it in stride. I’m forced to take it in stride, whether I want to or no. And I know that the preference for others is to not take it in stride. There are only a few people in my life who can and will and do stick around when the place shows its face.

Last night, it unleashed itself in full force upon the “bae of the day”. (I call him that not because he is expendable or will be replaced tomorrow, but because I’m not going to use his actual name here—too early for that. Plus, it rhymes, and who doesn’t love that?)

I think that I was a bit shocked when all the overwhelming feelings channeled into me having crazy anxiety over what and how and why we were connecting with one another. I am experienced enough to know that it is best to let things play out in new relationship of any kind, and not to force it. But the place doesn’t know that as well as I do. The place might be in my head, but it doesn’t usually communicate with the other areas in the brain, so it doesn’t act with reason. And this irrational fear that I was misreading all the signs and that I wasn’t important and that I was secretly being played came flying out of the place. And bae of the day has NOTHING to do with all that shit that escaped the place. He has in no way acted in a manner that would make the place’s emotional outburst reasonable. But, again, the place doesn’t act with reason.

But here is the beautiful part of the story. He met the place with unflinching care, kindness, and understanding. He engaged the place with honesty and respect. He accepted the place, and he honored it, and in doing so he accepted and honored me in ways that I don’t even fully understand. Nobody has ever met the place with as much grace as bae of the day met it. And because he did, he immediately shut it down.

He shut it down not in a way that made me force my feelings and overwhelmed state back into the place. He shut it down in a way that let me leave it out. He shut it down in a way that allowed me to let it be, let it show, and potentially let it go.

And this morning I was thinking about it, as I woke in peace and felt lighter than I have in many days, and I wondered what life might be like if all the people met my place in like manner. I’ve spent about 35 years managing and monitoring the place. I’ve been trying to stuff more and more into that place as more and more things turned out bad and wrong and painful. And I can count on one hand the number of people I trust to meet the place with the grace, kindness, and understanding that is required to process, and to make the place a bit smaller. But what if there were more than a handful of people who allowed the place and its secrets and its struggles to come out into the light?

That would be earth-shattering. That would change everything. That would be a total life-altering experience. And that would heal so much that is broken. The place is filled with brokenness. That is its hallmark. That is its purpose. That is its truth. It is filled with every shard that ever broke away from my heart and my spirit. It is filled with every hurt I cannot bear.

But when someone else bore the hurt with me, everything changed. That hurt couldn’t hurt me quite as much anymore.

I’ve learned over a lifetime of keeping the place stocked with secret pain that people don’t like to bear the hurt with me. I’ve seen the little cracks that open up end relationships, create dangerous situations, and bring shame and judgment upon me. And I cannot imagine EVER opening the door to let everything out at once. That might be downright lethal.

But I have more hope today than I did yesterday. I have more hope that there are people out there like bae of the day. I have more hope that the place could potentially be emptied bit by bit, shard by shard. I have more hope that there is healing, and that my whole life doesn’t need to be defined by this PTSD label (though some of it will always be there—my brain scans will attest to that).

And if you are a person who has quit me or threatened me or judged me over the place, I forgive you and I understand that. I have days like yesterday, when I cannot even cope with what lives inside of that place, so I certainly have no hard feelings toward others who cannot cope with it.

If you are a person who understands this post, and feels the weight of the place in your own spirit, know that there is help out there, and you need not be ashamed or afraid—but you are also totally allowed to feel ashamed or afraid, you are entitled to those feelings.

And if you are a person who has faced the place and stayed in my life, you are fucking amazing. And I will cling to your responses, continually holding on to the hope that the place might empty, and my heart might heal. I love you like crazy.

There are these challenges to living with a dissociative disorder. There are these struggles with managing the rage and the depression and the isolation that such disorders cause. There are these outcomes of loss and further pain that accompany the misunderstandings about and the actions precipitated by such disorders. But there are also these people who understand, and who love, and who respect, and who assist, and who offer chances and graces and changes.

I am so grateful for the people who support me in any and all ways. But I am most grateful for those who let the place be a part of me, and don’t shy away, and let me work my way through it and toward an integrated brain and a more balanced life. Too much suddenly becomes a tolerable amount when you find those who would bear the weight alongside you.

I’ve found another who will help me bear the weight of the place. I’m grateful I have the opportunity to know him. I’m grateful for what he carries.

Today is a tolerable amount.

When The Pain is All That Is

December 8, 2015 / christyterese / Leave a comment

When I was younger I used to write late at night often. I was a single mother, trying to raise a child and finish college and figure out life all at once. The late nights and the early mornings were the times I could write without taking time away from my little girl. Early mornings were usually reserved for assignment completion, since my brain was fresh and unencumbered by the thoughts of the day to distract me. But at night, the emotions were what flowed onto the page.

I used to write with ink pen and notebook … I suppose most of us did. But for me it was an emotional expression that needed the feeling, the movement, the flow. And you could tell whether I was feeling nostalgic or angry or confused by the way the letters formed and the speed with which they formed and the strength with which I pressed the pen to paper. I wouldn’t have made it through those years without pouring thoughts on paper.

Now I rarely stay up past ten at night and can’t use a pen or pencil for more than a few minutes at a time, so that pouring out has largely disappeared.

But tonight is a different story.

Tonight I am letting it flow, in lots of ways.

The past few days have been an ongoing assault for me. Early December reminds me of death, and death reminds me of my mother’s death, and my mother’s death reminds me of all the other deaths, and so it goes with grief. The more loss you have experienced the more deeply each loss is felt, because they tie themselves to one another in some strange cosmic or cognitive way that none of us fully understands. But I don’t need to understand it to feel it—deeply.

So, I am in the middle of this grief spurt, of sorts, where feeling anything seems difficult and feeling something means feeling loss and pain. And of course, that is when I jump on the bandwagon of organizers everywhere and comment about the social problem that plagues my country now: gun control. (I actually could have chosen from any number of social problems. I wish that would have been a self-evident choice, but there are too many issues here to not name it specifically.)

And then the judges rule.

And by judges I mean people that are not at all qualified as judges or to make any particular judgments about the issue. Some of them put out a string of falsehoods. Some of them accuse me of “name-calling” because I use “stupid/classist/racist” as reasons one might think more guns would be better while simultaneously commenting on the number of shootings in Chicago. None of them do, or have ever to my knowledge, lived in Chicago, mind you. I do. In an area where gun violence is a constant. So, I am well aware and educated regarding what may or may not be helpful in ending this violence. And when I tried to fight back and stand up for my views, I was called a bully and treated like I am being a terrible person, or morally corrupt, or some other form of bad. Except those things arose after multiple people basically said a whole bunch of stuff about how wrong I am and how dumb my ideas are, and I responded with reasoned arguments and strings of facts. The idea that I am being mean, or bullying others by stating facts and reasoned arguments is ridiculous. The idea that a bunch of people ganging up on me to say how wrong and dumb and morally bankrupt I am, for expressing factual information about gun violence, seems a lot more like bullying than anything I have EVER done, in my entire existence.

I am, by the way, the opposite of a bully. I learned how to behave politely in the midst of great struggle and to pretend that my world wasn’t spinning out of control from a young age. I was the one who was bullied, repeatedly and viciously, by others. I was crying myself to sleep by age 9 and suicidal by the time I was 18. I’m not the oppressor, but the oppressed. I always have been.

I remember a time when my daughter was struggling with asserting herself, and in therapy this was something she was working on. One day, on the playground, she called a boy a name and told him to leave her alone. That boy had been bullying her for months on end, and she finally stood up to him, and she was sent to the principal and I was called to come get her because she refused to follow a teacher’s instruction to apologize. When I picked her up, I got angry with the principal, and said she most certainly would not be apologizing, and that we had been working all year to get her to voice her frustration and stand up to this bully. This was a moment of triumph, not a moment of failure, for a timid girl who always ended up under the sole of someone else’s boot.

She learned that by watching me.

There are things you don’t mean to teach your children. They are a part of you, so they become a part of them. I always bent to the will of others. I always hid the secrets. I always played the part. I tried and tried and tried to be the perfect daughter, and I failed. Because perfection isn’t actually a thing. Nobody is perfect, we say, but then we try to force people to be exactly that, and we strive for exactly that. It makes no sense. I taught my daughter to play the part too, and to not ruffle too many feathers and to not rock the boat, and I didn’t intend to, but she was subject to the same consequences I had been—being abused and manipulated and taken advantage of by others.

So, here is how I know I am not the bully. I can’t be that. I never learned how, and I am still trying to learn how. Every week in therapy we talk about how I deserve to be happy and I don’t need to care what others think and I don’t have to live up to any expectations and I get to choose whom I wish to be. Every week. I don’t know how to be a bully. But I am learning to voice my opinion and not back down and say things without sugar-coating every single word. And that is met with all sorts of opposition.

It occurs to me tonight, after enduring days of negative comments about me and my thoughts and my action and my words and my ideas and probably the size of my ass, when you get right down to all the comments I have heard in the past week or so, that maybe those other people—the ones making me out to be the bully–are actually the bullies themselves. Maybe they are so accustomed to people telling them what they want to hear, and to me being polite and diplomatic, that they lash out the moment that is taken from them. Or, perhaps the converse is true, and those people are the ones being abused by others, and my insistence on maintaining my views without any pandering or trying to be perfect opens up a view to their own insecurities. I’ll probably never know (especially because I unfriended most of them on Facebook, and I don’t think they have any other way to contact me).

It doesn’t really matter why they reacted in the way they did. It doesn’t even matter if how I was speaking made them think I might be a bully. Because the thing I can see, even in the midst of much pain and loss, is that I am not the kind of person they described, even at my worst. Anyone who knows me well knows this to be true. My good friends have watched me in the darkest and worst moments, and they know that I am love to the core, and that frustration only comes with pain, hunger, exhaustion, or injustice. It doesn’t live in my core, but it assaults me from without. I have the best of intentions, and the kindness of a saint, and love enough to pass it on to even the most desperate and marginalized among us. Hugging homeless prostitutes isn’t something that you do when you are a bully, or morally corrupt, or without character. That depth of love and understanding and that level of acceptance is a rare gift, and I am one of those blessed with that rare gift. And I don’t need someone else to tell me this. I know who I am.

Even though pain is all I feel and struggle is all I can seem to find these days, I know who I am. I am not what those people who haven’t seen me for the last 7 to 20 years believe me to be.

Even when the pain is all I feel, I am still looking inside for my value and my worth, not to the outside. I am finding the voice within and letting it out. I am the girl on the playground who is fighting back with her words against an onslaught of injustice and being called to the principal’s office for doing so. And that is fabulous and amazing and good. That is a triumph!

I know that few to none of my friends throughout the years struggle from C-PTSD, so I understand that they don’t get how important it is to find value in yourself and to let go of the expectations of another and to stand on your own, even if the other doesn’t appreciate you doing so. But it is extremely important. Earth-shatteringly important.

The PTSD mind is a mind divided, and often accompanied by a confusion or a lack of knowing the self. You can’t always—or maybe ever, in the beginning—trust what you feel to be yours and to be true. Those core beliefs that you have held for your whole life are false, and it takes so much work to root them out, recognize them, and respond in ways that help to break those down. To find your worth and to let go of shame and to release anger and to love yourself are nearly impossible.

I’m doing those things. In the face of all sorts of criticism, I am holding on to me, and letting myself feel what I feel and believe what I believe and stand up for both.

When the pain is all you feel, it is really hard to have breakthrough moments like this, or to find your footing at all. Today I am stomping with confidence, not just finding my footing. And if other people felt on the bottom of my boot sole, I suppose that saddens me a bit, but not enough to let up right now. Because I didn’t actually do any intentional harm to anyone, but others did do intentional harm to me.

Earlier this evening I posted that you cannot offer violence and expect peace in return. This is how I feel about my whole life, not just the past couple of days of comments. I was offered year upon year upon year of violence, and it is a wonder and a joy to know that I was not so damaged by that to deliberately harm others, or to deliberately harm myself, or to end my life, or to lose my mind completely. I was repeatedly offered violence, and ninety-nine of a hundred times, I respond with peace. That is a lot of peace, under the circumstances.

I am not a bully. Even when the pain is all that is.

So, I end the night and begin the morning having peace within once more. The assault of depression might linger for some time, or it might lift in a matter of days or weeks. Eventually I will find ways to feel joy again. I know, because I do it time and again. I always will. But, I rest in the knowledge that my strength is being found and held and kept against that which would seek to define me against my will. I am still me, even when me is a pile of grief and loss. And I will keep on being such, no matter who opposes me.

And it is a triumph.

In the Mood

September 19, 2015 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I can’t seem to stop listening to Rachmaninoff. I’m just in that mood. Or so I thought when I first turned my Spotify account in his direction a day or two ago. But the more I listen, the more I wonder: What mood is that exactly? Because one thing I am noticing about his music is that it has a thousand moods, not just across the entirety of his compositions, but in one work there can be angry and playful and lilting and intensity and struggle and peace and fun and frustration…the list goes on. There isn’t usually one space where your mind and heart remain while listening to this diverse and divine music.

I think, at present, I am drawn to the urgency and the drive of many of the pieces to which I have been listening. Life feels like that lately—like there is more urgency. Urgency for or toward what has yet to be determined, but I suspect that it may be tied to the death of my mother.

Life just seems like it needs to be lived, and I feel as though I might not be making enough of my moments.

The other possibility is that the angry parts of me are connecting with the angst-filled phrases of the movements Rachmaninoff has written. It lets me feel anger, without acting upon anger. It is easy to be angry, and easy to displace anger, but it isn’t very easy to cope with angry thoughts and feelings. Of course, I know that anger is always a secondary emotion. It isn’t actually anger that you experience, but hurt or fear or rejection or some other thing, which then comes out as anger. And usually my anger is from hurt or abandonment or betrayal or fear. Lately, I have been wanting to tell myself that frustration is what makes me angry. But frustration is not an emotion, per se. You get frustrated, but you don’t really feel frustrated. My frustration is a result of anger, which is the result of hurts and betrayals and fears that I don’t wish to acknowledge. This is not surprising.

Few of us want to acknowledge our hurts and fears. Few of us want to be vulnerable in that manner. Few of us want to accept what really goes on inside our heart and mind and spirit.

But in order to stop feeling that angst-filled frustrated feeling, I need to acknowledge that it comes from pain. Lots and lots and lots of pain.

No one could know the depth of that pain, because not one single person has ever heard the entire story, or all the little stories pieced together into a lifetime, I suppose. Not even my therapist of the past one and a half years has managed to root out all the moments and combine them into a reliable accounting of all of the pain that my body and mind and heart and spirit have suffered. There are ways, however, to notice what ties those experiences together, and what struggles trigger the strongest reactions. And this week, many of those triggers were set off, and I (like any good PTSD sufferer) went on high alert, and began to tie all of that pain together and swing it around like a sword, desperate for a sensation of, or even the illusion of, safety. And then, once the sword of hyper vigilance fails you, you shut down.

I am an expert at shutting down. My body and mind have found ways to disconnect that I stand in awe of, and my whole person is very capable of shutting out the world through isolation or through what I, for lack of a better term, might call “pretending”—the sense of being physically present without connecting in any real or meaningful way with your surroundings. I can act like I care, or act like I don’t care, or both, depending on the situation. I can adhere to social expectations without being the least bit engaged.

But Rachmaninoff makes you feel. He is turning me back on—giving me the ability to engage with something that resembles human connectivity and emotion, before I can connect with my actual emotion and engage meaningfully with actual humans. He gives me a mood, when I cannot find one on my own.

Eventually, I connected with what I feel, and the reasons I turned off. I was triggered by an idiot employee at a sandwich shop yelling angrily and calling out “HAM AND TURKEY” when I was distracted by an older man with a walker who dropped his change and didn’t notice that the employee now wanted to know whether lettuce was required to meet my sandwich’s completion. He reduced me to my sandwich toppings when he treated them as though they were my name, which reminded me of the times I was called “woman” or “my old lady” or “bitch” or “dumb cunt” or “crack whore” or any number of marginalizing terms that refused to acknowledge my complex identity, but reduced me to an action or a gender or a role. That hurts. Being marginalized always hurts.

I was triggered by the knowledge of the divide between rich and poor, and the continued struggle with accepting that my career has been ended by my illness, and that I may always be poor. This trigger happened in the waiting area of the dentist’s office, when I was waiting to have my teeth cleaned for the first time in five years, since my state-managed insurance plan just began to pay for such services. And, while I was thrilled to be able to have a dental exam and cleaning, I knew that the exam might result in the determination that I must lose my last molar on the lower right side, because this dental care came far too late, and it can be taken away again with a pen stroke–resulting in a face of gaps and gum recession that will make it impossible for me to pass as a person of means, or get a decent job, or be taken seriously by many. I am poor. I don’t want to look poor. I want to continue to pass for someone who isn’t poor. And it hurts that poverty is my situation. And it hurts that I feel continually shamed and sometimes attacked and often trivialized or marginalized because of that poverty. It hurts that poverty is considered downright criminal in the minds of many, including lots of my Facebook “friends” and those whom I once believed I could trust with my story. And it hurts that I recognize all of this and that I know I am complicit in the shaming by desperately wanting to pass more than working harder to end the stigma and embrace myself, even if my self has no money and no teeth. But that work is difficult, and the stigma I carry is already a heavy burden.

I was triggered by the feigned “concern” of others. It is gaslighting that was truly happening, and not any sort of true concerned care for my wellbeing (unless you count the worry over my eternal soul not being allowed into heaven because I am evil and misguided as care … and I don’t). In this particular case, a person misinterpreted and misrepresented the information in my previous post, and expressed that they didn’t sleep well and spent time in prayer and god apparently gave them a “devotion” in reply, which basically said that uneducated people know more than me about god…so I am evil and misguided (but apparently considered very educated, which is true and complementary). It would seem I am meant to be shamed by the person who mangled my ideas and misquoted my post and to recognize that my views are wrong, thereby causing concern for my soul. This feigned concern and this gaslighting have been ever-present for me, starting with childhood sexual molestation, and making stops at domestic violence, victim blaming after sexual assault and rape, shame for pursuing education rather than work as a single parent, blame for the infidelity of a partner, and expressions that discount my sexual identity, before ending once again at the church and its deep concern over my soul (which has appeared many times along this journey). I am not insane or misguided. I need to tell myself this repeatedly in an attempt at self-compassion, because the idea that I don’t know what is right, but another does and will tell me how to be or act or think, was deeply engrained in my psyche after years and years of abuse. When people I once counted as friends begin to use this very abusive tactic, I am deeply hurt. We rarely consider moral, church-going ladies as abusers, but perhaps we should—they are often the worst offenders when it comes to gaslighting. Gaslighting hurts.

So, yes, I am connecting with Rachmaninoff because I am working at getting back to feeling, and because the secondary anger comes out in his music, but so does the calm and peaceful, and the joyful and playful, and the anguish of the pain that is truly behind the way that I am feeling deep down, in a place with which I am still unable to fully connect.

It is difficult to connect with our brokenness.

It is difficult to acknowledge pain. Our society tends to mask or cover or hide or control pain. And it certainly doesn’t want to take ownership of the pain that is caused, personally or societally. We have been taught that pain is owned by the one who suffers, and not the one who causes the suffering. We refuse to admit or confess that we hurt others, either by our active oppression or by our passive inaction to correct situations that produce suffering.

However, if the first step to solution is recognition of the problem, we need to face that hurt head on, and look at the ways we are causing pain. I often think this begins by accepting that we, ourselves, are wounded. The most broken among my friends have become the strongest advocates for others. My own passion for justice was borne from the injustice I felt as I journeyed through forty years of struggle and pain and abuse. This isn’t uncommon. This is the way to bettering ourselves and becoming a better society—this recognition of our own wounds fuels our desire to spare all others from similar wounding.

I think that this connection between my wounds and my areas of passion is key to how I have been struggling the past couple of days. When someone begins to attack those areas about which I am passionate, they are, in a sense, also attacking my wounds.

I fight for the rights of women because my rights to choose what happened to my body and in my life were stripped from me. I fight for reproductive rights because I suffered a lack of care and compassion when dealing with the loss of a pregnancy and a lack of care and compassion as a single parent, and also experienced the failures of birth control and unintended pregnancy. I fight for LGBT+ rights because I know and love many who don’t conform to the standards and structures that the gender binary and the heteronormative patriarchy deem correct and good, and because it took many years for me to even consider my own sexuality, and even more to admit to people that I don’t fit that heteronormative mold. I fight for the end of mass incarceration and for racial reconciliation because I love and live among black men and women who are being violently abused by not only our stereotypes and individual assessment of race, but by the laws of our country and the limits of our compassion to those who look and act and speak and live in ways identical to our own. I fight for a limitation or prohibition of firearms because I see the bodies of boys and girls and men and women who needn’t have died and wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for ridiculous access to what nobody, outside of law enforcement or the military in most cases, should need. I fight for the homeless, because I spent years of my life as a homeless woman, and some as a homeless mother, and I ate from dumpsters and had sex with people just to sleep in a bed for a few safe hours and stole food and toiletries in order to survive, and nobody should ever have to live under those conditions, no matter what else they may have done or not done in life.

I fight for those who are experiencing what I have suffered (and in some cases still suffer).

Saying my fight for these causes is evil and misguided is saying that I am evil and misguided, because these are not just some nameless and faceless people whom you can criminalize and marginalize and oppress. These people are me. And saying that these causes don’t matter, in essence, says that I also do not matter. (But apparently my soul does…just not the rest of me.) That hurts.

So, today my goal is to allow emotion. I intend to acknowledge these feelings, and to connect with these feelings or to let these feelings go, as I choose.

Because we cannot control what we feel, we can only choose how to react or interact with what we feel.

Mindfulness practice has taught me much about how to let the oppressive and hurtful things that others say and do affect me less, or sometimes not at all. I’m learning, slowly and surely, how to leave behind what harms me, and to embrace what loves and holds and builds me. I am the only constant, and even though everything around me changes, I can choose to remain as I am. I am the mountain, as Jon Kabat-Zinn and my therapist are teaching me to remember. So I choose whom I wish to be and to become. Gaslighting church ladies, and poor public policy, and abusers and offenders of all sorts, and the money in my bank account (or the lack of, more truly) do not define me. I define myself, so I am free to acknowledge the comments of others about who I am, or I can let them float away. They need not hurt me anymore.

So, Rachmaninoff, thank you for all the feeling that you have offered me, and for the connections that you allow me to make. Your thousand moods have reminded me that I only need to be in one mood, and that is one that I choose—no one else may choose it for me. And I choose self-compassion and love and grace and peace and truth, as always. I choose to embrace my poor, disabled, non-hetero, non-religious, highly educated, thick and sexy, fighting for equal/human rights continually and with passion self. And I choose to embrace the person I am becoming as well, and know that I will continue to grow in grace and in truth and in love, because that is what I will accept and allow into my life.

I am now in a great mood. 🙂

In Jesus’ Shame

September 17, 2015 / christyterese / 1 Comment

I grew up going to church. Not just going, but religiously so…attending every single Sunday morning and Sunday night, unless terribly ill. And I hated church, largely because I was forced to attend without my personal consent. Any part of life you can’t consent to can be a struggle, especially for the naturally independent leader that lived deep inside of me, but when other really important decisions are also made without your consent (like the bodily choice of surgery or testing or sexual contact or any number of things that I struggled with over the course of my formative years) then being forced to go to church just becomes another area outside of your control that makes you feel diminished and marginalized. So I hated it.

And at some point I got over that hatred of church because later in life I was given the choice to go, and I chose to attend and participate, not only in church but in the pursuit of multiple degrees in theology. Church became my life, in many ways. But the longer I stayed, the more I knew that I wasn’t really wanted there. Inside my head the “if people knew” clause started to pop up over and over. If people knew that I was an addict… If people knew that I have sex on the regular… If people knew about my molestation… If people knew I was pro-choice… If people knew I get food stamps… If people knew my personal view of eschatology… If people knew I don’t believe [insert some sort of popular religious belief here]…. If and if and if and if and on and on it went.

I started to feel like I had to hide myself from the church. I started to feel the weight of shame, even while I wasn’t personally being shamed (because I was hiding my true belief and experience). I began to know that I wasn’t welcomed “just as I am” in any church that I had ever attended. I began to search for churches that would let me in, even if I were just me—as is and with no hiding and no apologies. I have yet to find a church sans shame. So I have yet to join a church again.

It has been a little over three years, I suppose, since I last attended church, and I have never been more free.

I was always taught—from Sunday school classes as a small child to my seminary training—that Jesus brought freedom. Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I am free at last. But the only time I was actually free to study and believe without shame was when I left the confines of religious communities and went out into the world.

Ah, the world. That damnable expression of all that is evil and to be feared. Or so one would think, given the reactions of Christians in the United States. But the world, you see, is open in ways that the church had never been for me. The church confined and constricted. The world let me investigate and study and try and experience and discover in ways the church never would.

The world didn’t try to shame me as much or as often as the Christians tried to shame me.

Eventually, I came to the realization that the church isn’t usually practicing in Jesus’ name. It is often practicing shame.

Sex is bad and you are bad for having it. Poverty is bad and you must be doing bad things to land in that state. Being gay is bad and you are messed up if you love people outside of the parameters that we express. Rape is bad, so if you have been raped you must have done something wrong to deserve it. Women’s butts are bad, so you mustn’t let them be out in the “open” with revealing yoga pants. Being single is bad, because you are supposed to make babies. Abortion is bad because you are supposed to make babies. Birth control is bad because you are supposed to make babies. You are bad if you don’t make all the babies all the time. Except if you have a baby and not a husband then you are bad. Drugs are bad and if you are addicted you are bad. Depression is bad, and if you are depressed you are not good at trusting in god. Disability is bad, so you need to suck it up and get back to work or you are bad. You are bad. You are bad. Christy, you are extremely fucking bad.

And then one day, I decided I am not bad. Because every religious text I have ever encountered promises hope and renewal and the “becoming” of the person. The promise is that shame disappears, not becomes the defining characteristic of the church. The promise is acceptance and love without conditions and grace and a forgiving spirit and a love of peace. All of these things require that we kill all this rule-making and fear-inducing and humanity-stripping, damnable shame!

“I love you, but…” cannot be a part of our language or our thinking if we are going to be the love and grace and peace that every single religion I have ever encountered says we must or shall be. “I will love you if…” cannot be a part of that language or thinking. “I love you because…” is not a religiously accepting statement unless it is followed by “you exist”.

There is a passage in the Christian biblical text that I once had to translate in a seminary course. I was shocked to read and to learn and to begin to hold the belief that “anyone who loves is of god”. This transformed all for me, in the sense that love becomes the definitive aspect of what is right and good, and of who belongs to and with and in god. So the impoverished woman who helps me up when I fall is of god, and the prostitute who always asks about my day and shows concern for me is of god, and the person to whom I am not married, but who shows me love and care both in and out of my bedroom, is of god, and my Atheist and Muslim and Jewish and Hindu and Buddhist and Pagan friends are all of god, because they all love fiercely and choose peace and show grace all of the time.

I am of god because I just reminded myself, during the interruption of my short time in which to write by a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door, that I need to show even those who interrupt my theological expressions or blog posts the grace and the love and the promise that is god.

And because of this discovery, I have moved away from the term “god”, for the most part. I choose to use the term “the divine” or sometimes “the universe”, depending on the situation. (Because the word “god” carries so much weight for so many…and usually not in a positive way.)

Anyone who loves is of the divine. Anyone who loves….without qualification, without exception, without condition, and without being shamed into compliance with the normative religious ideal of the day…is of the divine.

Shame is not discipleship. Shame is not beneficial. Shame is not helpful in any proven study regarding any desired behavior. Shame is not love. And love is god, and god is love, and those who love are of god. So, if you insist on shaming others, you are not of god.

Love = divine. Shame = not divine. (For those who would like this boiled down to its most basic expression.)

So, let’s all stop trying to shame others and call it something we do in Jesus’ name.

And let’s all recognize that trying to shame people like me, who have come to understand the will of the divine in this open and free and beautiful way, is a waste of precious time. Maybe hug your grandkids or knit a scarf instead, or do something that expresses love and grace and equity and peace to those less fortunate than you (as Jesus also suggested), but without superiority and judgments and shame (which Jesus never suggested, and instead taught against). Let’s spend less time assessing my yoga pants and sex and spend more time assessing ways to reduce violence against women and inequity in our justice system and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the ways that our current support system isn’t supporting the people who need the most support.

I sometimes wonder what troubles we could eliminate if we put into Alzheimer’s research, or new mental health care facilities and programs, or access to fresh vegetables all the same energy I see being spent on demanding less yoga pants and decrying the (very legal) right to choose what happens inside a person’s own uterus. What if we cared about the 2,114 people who have been shot in Chicago (as of yesterday…today it will likely be higher) this year as much as we did about the shape of a buttock or the type of birth control a couple chooses or the number of meat packers who happen to have come from Mexico? What if we spent our energy on loving meat-packing Mexicans and loving couples and loving my buttocks? How would that change the world? (I do have a rather amazing ass, by the way. It deserves much love.)

I would much rather express love than refrain from sex. I would much rather choose peace than promote conflict. I would much rather be the divine than shame the poor or the addict or the disabled or the person who has less understanding on a subject I may have studied extensively or any that may be deemed “less fortunate” (though when you begin to be love and grace and peace, your idea of “less” can be transformed in myriad ways).

So, I leave you with this question: Do you speak in Jesus’ shame, or are you of the divine?

Learning To Be Whole

Letting my traumas speak, so they might be silenced.

peace

Avoidance

Next

Bully

Too Much

When The Pain is All That Is

In the Mood