Maybe a lot of you are too young or too straight to remember the AIDS crisis. I’m not.
It took my cousin, whom I loved deeply.
He was one of the few people in my life that I felt really understood me. It wasn’t until after he was dead from a horrible disease that I knew why. I named my daughter after him. He meant that much to me. And it took a long time for her to come to terms with being named after a gay man who died from the HIV virus in the 90’s, since we lived for many of her formative years in a small, conservative town in rural Iowa.
You see, a lot of people there didn’t much care that my cousin was dead. Many of them thought that he deserved that horrific end—it wasn’t a pretty one. He didn’t even want us to visit. He didn’t want us to remember him in that state, but to remember him full of life and color and joy. And people thought he deserved to die in such a violent way because he was gay.
Tonight I heard a neighbor outside my window saying some bullshit about more people dying in chihuahua attacks than will from the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. I’m certain that isn’t a true statistic. First, because those are some tiny dogs you could just kick into oblivion. Second, because we have no idea what the ramifications of this illness will be in the end. That is why it is called “novel”. It’s new. We don’t have data that is reliable at this point. We do not understand this virus fully, and we don’t know how many people will lose their lives because of it.
But one thing that I have noticed about the response to this virus, much like the one that took my cousin’s life, is that there are many who don’t seem to care what life is lost, as long as the right people die.
Those that are most susceptible to dying, as far as we can tell, are the old and infirm. Those that are most susceptible to dying, as far as we can tell, are the ones with preexisting conditions. Those that are most susceptible to dying, as far as we can tell, are the ones who are already in the categories that our current society—this consumerist machine we pretend is a democracy—does not value. The right people are dying, for the most part. And as long as that is the case, those that do not value them will not make the changes necessary to safeguard the society as a whole.
It is history repeated, but a different set of people are now waiting for the spin of the barrel, and the fated shot, and the moment to reveal itself. Will they live or will they die?
The lesson, if there is one to be learned, would be that all that death didn’t stop the LGBTQ+ community from thriving. In fact, in some ways, it helped inspire us to rally and organize and become stronger. And that illness didn’t just take gay men. It spread far and wide, becoming a leading cause of death for some time. It is still considered pandemic in some countries, where medications that are easily obtained here are not available. I
t still takes lives, even with all the advances we have made and our current ability to make it undetectable in some. It still frightens us. It is still a threat and a life-altering diagnosis and an automatic disability.
It stopped killing the right people. It started killing everyone.
You might not be a high risk individual. You might not know a high risk individual. You might not care about a high risk individual. But know this: you cannot control this novel thing. It might decide that it kills Tom Hanks as quickly as it kills a homeless diabetic. It might decide that getting it once doesn’t make you immune, but makes you more susceptible to reinfection. It might decide that it gives no care to malaria drugs that Trump likes, or to the economy, or to race, or gender, or age, or preexisting anything. It might mutate again and again, creating countless cycles of death on a yearly basis. It might never leave. We may never find a treatment or a cure or develop a vaccine. We may be at its mercy forever. We simply don’t know.
And if you are counting on this being fine because the right people are dying, then you are a monster who deserves not one death, but a thousand. To decide that you are more valuable than another human—that your pleasure or freedom or agency is more important than their life—is the worst possible thing I can imagine. The most heinous of crimes is to imagine yourself a person of greater importance than another, and to sacrifice them in your service.
I remember when I found out that my cousin was dying. I was grieving and distraught. The few people I told about his contracting the virus all asked the same question first thing, “Is he gay?”
Why did that matter? What was their fascination with his sexuality?
I didn’t really understand the question until today.
I saw the man who lives out behind my apartment complex and he asked if I had anything to eat. I told him to wait while I went inside and bagged up some breakfast bars and crackers and bottles of water—whatever I had around that he could easily transport and keep relatively fresh for a bit. I brought it out and handed it to him. I didn’t hug him like I usually do, because of social distancing, but after I went back inside I cried for the first time since this pandemic began. He is the type of person that so many others are unconcerned with. He is the expendable extraneous drain on society that we can let go.
And so am I.
So was Terry.
So were millions of men and women just a couple decades ago.
And yet, somehow, we have already forgotten that our callous hatred then is a blight on our history that we should not be repeating. We are going out to Spring Break or to see cherry blossoms while we let the right people die.
People asked if my cousin was gay because it justified his death, in their minds. It made it reasonable and righteous that an out of control, unknown virus was ravaging his body. They didn’t need to be afraid of AIDS if it was still letting the right people die.
I was taught to believe in a god by people who don’t care if he lets me live or die, so I’m not sure I am a believer in that, exactly, anymore. But I do have a system of belief that includes a Divine. These days I pray often. But I don’t request what you might imagine—health and for my loved ones to make it through this unscathed. Obviously, I want those things. But I find that I am begging that the Divine have mercy upon us, for allowing this lack of empathy and this sociopathy and selfishness and self-aggrandizement to go on, unchecked, for so many generations. I beg forgiveness that we continue to choose races and classes and groups that we deem expendable, as long as our own needs are met.
There is no person that should be sacrificed for our comfort. We should never be comfortable while others around us are losing their lives or freedom or resources. We should be fighting for their lives as if they were our own.
We are all human and we are all equal.
It is time to start treating one another as such, before there are none of us left to watch the others perish, because our greed has swallowed us all.
racism
I AM PRO-THRIVE
Recently, I have noticed that many people on Facebook have a purple banner at the bottom of their profile picture that reads, “I AM PRO-LIFE”.
Now, I am not one to condemn free expression, since I love my own and hate when people try to silence me. But those little banners annoyed the crap out of me after a while, and I needed to say something about them. But I chose to say something here, instead of saying something on my Facebook profile, because I thought that my response required more explanation than a few sound bytes. It required something more fully reasoned and more fully expressed–with some history and some anecdotes, perhaps.
And as I started firing up the Chromebook and getting ready to respond, the first two songs on shuffle play were Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield and All I Want Is Love from A Great Big World, which just seemed to be signs from The Divine that I was on the right path writing this here.
I am not “pro-life” any longer. Lots of people assume that is because I am liberal. And I suppose, in many respects, I am.
But blanket terms like “liberal” don’t always describe what we think we are describing, and I would call myself progressive, not liberal, as a point of fact. Because I don’t agree with things along a party line, and am an independent voter, based on whatever and whomever I think follows what I believe is “right”–ethical, beneficial, and based in love, beauty, and truth.
This is the point where lots of people want to yell comments about killing babies not being ethical, beneficial, or based in love, beauty, and truth. But that assumes a lot of things. That assumes that you believe life begins at conception–which I don’t think is a true statement. That assumes that our society deems all life equal–and it doesn’t. That assumes that “benefit” and “love” are seen through the eyes of a fetus and not a pregnant woman–which I don’t believe it should be or can be, exclusively. And I understand those assumptions because I used to hold them as facts to be demanded, not assumptions to be challenged. I used to be pro-life and a supporter of anti-abortion causes and rhetoric. I hope that I will be forgiven for my narrow-minded, single-focused, self-righteous stance at that time in my life. Because I should have challenged my assumptions and listened to the stories of others and wondered at the courage of women who walked beyond a line of picketing jerks to get an abortion, and why it was so important for them to make it through that door–because it couldn’t be that they were just liberal Jezebels with no love in their hearts, if I had stopped to think on it for a few seconds. There were really good reasons. But I didn’t stop to consider those reasons for far too long.
I’m not entirely certain when the break came for me. It was a gradual understanding that things couldn’t be as I believed when I was back in high school and my first year of college. Maybe part of my consideration of women’s choices being valid came because I started losing my own fetus on a regular basis. One live birth out of six confirmed pregnancies–and a couple of suspected early miscarriages where I missed and then had heavy menstruation. My body killed one in six babies, at least, on its own, without any interventions. And that takes a toll on a woman, even when she doesn’t particularly want to be pregnant or give birth. Then the child that survived did so at the most inopportune time. And I love that daughter with every fiber of my being, and didn’t consider abortion for a moment of my pregnancy with her, but I did learn the challenges of adoption agencies and the choice that is offered to many women as an “opportunity” to place their child in a “loving family” that can “better meet his or her needs”.
I called bullshit on adoption. I would hear many more stories that called bullshit on adoption later in my journey, but most of you won’t like to hear those stories. You prefer the idea that adoption is always good people saving helpless children from lost souls. Bullshit. It’s terribly corrupt–especially when it involves children from overseas–and it is damaging for children in significant ways, but even more so for parents. The suicide rate for birth mothers is outrageously high, and their risk of substance abuse AFTER placing their child (not before) is also much higher than that of the general population. Placing your child harms you in serious and debilitating ways. But we don’t like to talk about that. We like to pretend that adoption is all about the babies and saving their lives. I’ve had more adopted children, as teens or adults, tell me they would rather have died than been placed where they were, than I can count on my fingers. But nobody wants to hear that part of the story. Nobody wants to hear that we took a baby and placed it with abusive parents who ruined the life of that boy or girl in really terrible ways. And we can’t say, “At least they are alive!” We can’t promise that not living would have been worse. We cannot prove that hypothesis!!
I’m always struck by the instances in the biblical text where there are cries such as “Oh that I had never been born!” There were clearly those who thought not living was better than suffering.
I’ve been there. I’ve been in struggle deep and affecting enough that I wished not only for death but that I had never been born to suffer this way at all. If I had a choice. If we went back in time, and The Divine laid before me life with all that I have suffered, or not living, it would be a very challenging decision. And if I knew that dying in the womb brought me straight to some afterlife, where living made me suffer first and then brought me to the same end, I would probably skip to the end.
There’s been a ton of joy in my life. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not discounting that joy. I’m just saying that the suffering has been far outweighing the joy for most of my existence, and other people don’t get to say that my suffering is better than not being around to suffer–joy or no. Other people don’t get to define the limits that I can tolerate, or the impact that events have on my person, or the way that I choose to cope with what I have endured and will endure. We don’t get to tell other people that they are better off alive and suffering than they would have been if their parent would have chosen to abort. We don’t know that. We can’t prove that. We want that to be true, but that doesn’t mean it is.
That sounds crass, but it is true. I can’t say that being born is better. I can say that I am glad those people are here and that they offer great things just by being alive in this world. So, it isn’t as crass as you might imagine, in practice as it is in theory.
I almost typed that I “would never express that a person is better off dead”. That would have been a lie.
Lol. Now some people are really stirred up!!
But I did say that. I thought that sometimes when my mom was suffering a lot from her Alzheimer’s and would cry uncontrollably and be confused and frustrated. It was hard to see her that way, and there were times that I said I wished her disease would progress, because I wanted that suffering to end. I, obviously, didn’t want my mother to be dead, but I didn’t want her to suffer. I felt that way because of how much I loved my mom. I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling–the love you feel that makes you let go of someone.
Earlier, I said that many would not believe that being pro-choice could be a thing that came out of love. But it can be when you consider that feeling–the love you feel that makes you let go of someone. And that is the love that lets women let go of the potential of a person. It isn’t yet a baby in the mind of most–because science. But even if it were a person, and it were a medical necessity to let go, love is still the driving force that makes that decision. It isn’t selfish. It is selfless, almost always, to choose to end a pregnancy. And often the challenge is that you cannot provide the home that this child will deserve, because you have other children to feed and care for and cannot take on the responsibility of another.
I know, the trope is the irresponsible, young girl who gets knocked up … and like all the tropes, it isn’t true.
I have hundreds of stories and all sorts of scientific facts that I could tell, and they would express my transition from someone who didn’t understand that most abortions are had by women who already have children, and that there is a decidedly racist and classist reason that black women are more affected than others by unplanned pregnancy, and that Planned Parenthood saves far more lives than it has or will ever end (my own included in those saved), and that the decisions of others regarding procreation are not anyone else’s business, to someone who now does understand those things. I am happy to share statistics and happy to share stories at any time. From the 12-year-old friend whose mom pimped her out for drugs who had 2 kids by age 14, to the friend who suffered trauma from placing her son with an amazing family, to the intrusions of others into my own choices about my body when I had to have a hysterectomy. I have people in my life who have had abortions, who have been placed or placed their children for adoption, who have adopted with relative success or adopted and been faced with a host of problems, and who have faced all sorts of choices and challenges regarding procreation, fertility, birth control, and similar subjects. But none of that is what I want to take away from this post.
What I want to take away from this post, is the ways that being “pro-life” tends to ignore the “life” portion of that statement once that life has gotten beyond the point of gestation. Really, many of those who have that purple banner under their name should say, “I AM PRO-GESTATION”. Because once that baby is born, it ceases to have any support or care from most of those same people who proudly shout at innocent mothers and spread propaganda against Planned Parenthood.
I found this out the hard way.
So many people were pro-baby Bloem before I had my child as an almost divorced mom. After I pushed away the baby-grabbing adoption agency and they essentially called me a crazy person for keeping my child, my parents offered their full support. Many others offered support as well. But my parents were the only ones to keep their promise. The rest were loving and supportive so long as I kept that little one gestating safely, and lots of people were also loving and supportive for a month or so after she was born. After that?
I remember crying as Bill Clinton addressed the country in his State of the Union in 1997 and promised reforms that would make life easier for women like me on welfare. I didn’t know then that welfare reform would mean lifetime limits and work demands that were impossible in my tiny community, and that would actually make life harder. It would toss millions off of the rolls, and pretend at success, but would actually disappear those families–many of them forced into homelessness, sex work, illegal enterprise, or fraudulent use of programs to survive. The laws still haven’t been reformed from Clinton’s crap reform, so the number of people forced to survive off the damaging and difficult circumstances that the late 90’s forced people into has stayed relatively steady, and the welfare rolls don’t increase much with the strict rules still in place. So, while this desperation and struggle continues, there are many who promote their pro-life agenda and also still call for cuts to spending on social programs. They think too many people get “handouts”. Too many people on food stamps. Too many people on disability. Too many people on welfare.
I wonder, how many is too many? How many is just right? Who is the fucking Goldilocks of social programming who decides what is the correct number of disabled and hungry people, and then how do we make that number equal with the number of people in society that actually NEED these services???
If you won’t vote for MORE social safety net funding, you aren’t pro-life. Because if you won’t vote for more such funding, you don’t want all people to thrive. Do you think life is worth living in a state of constant need and hunger and suffering? Do you think it is great to sell your vagina to buy formula? Great! You do it! Otherwise, vote for equal pay and equal rights and more funding for every program that helps people who are not you. And if you will not, then do not say you promote life. Say that you promote gestation and birth, but not life, per se.
Let’s move beyond that subject to another aspect of thriving–prison! The most obvious thing to bring up here is the death penalty. If you support killing people who break the law, but not a fetus, I call bullshit. And you can quote the Old Testament until you are blue in the face, but before you do, let me remind you that I went to not one, but two seminaries. So, I can not only quote the bible back, but I can explain why the New Testament offers an alternative to the penalty of death and asks you to extend mercy, not judgment. Does the law allow for death? Yes, in some cases. Should it? Absolutely not, if you claim you are pro-life. You can’t ask for life on one hand and death on the other. If life begins at conception, then once god conceived of you, regardless of your sins against him, you deserve life. If not, then we can talk. But you can’t have the cake and eat it too, people. Pick one and stick with it.
Secondary to this is the treatment of humans in general. Being beaten, raped, tortured, etc., is NEVER acceptable if you are to claim you want life for all. What kind of life is that?? Nobody deserves such treatment, and if you aren’t supporting an end to mass incarceration, rights for foreign detainees, and just treatment of prisoners everywhere, then you don’t want life for all, but you want gestation and birth for babies. Once they are born, and make a mistake, you don’t care who does what to them. And that is NOT the will of any god that I will ever serve. If you are fine with the rape and torture of anyone, anywhere, you should seriously evaluate your heart.
Please don’t tell me, “Those people committed crimes!” So did you. Every last one of you has gossiped, or committed adultery, or lusted, or lied, or, at the very least, driven over the speed limit. You are all just as depraved as the next, right Calvinists? So, don’t tell me now that you are better than those criminals. You aren’t. They may have sinned differently, or gotten caught, or just been unfairly treated by an unjust system that leans toward punishing black and brown boys, but they certainly are not less human or less good than you at their core. They are people–every bit your equal. And they deserve equal rights, as such.
I can go on and on. An end to war. Equal pay for women. Ending sexual violence. Gender justice. Racial justice. Stopping this incessant whining about immigrants taking something from you when you are extremely fucking privileged and losing nothing to them.
I am Pro-Thrive. I consider all of these things when I speak, write, read, vote, and live out my days. I consider the actual LIVES of the poor and marginalized, not just their births. Because what the fuck does it matter if babies are born if you won’t do anything to fight for justice in their lives after that fact? If they die of hunger, or they have to sell their bodies to pay for necessities like food and housing, or they end up in prison at age 14, or they die by war or suicide or gun violence at a young age, then what was the point in funneling all that money and energy into keeping them gestating until birth?? Was that better?? I don’t think it was good enough!
We can do better!!
The fact is, I don’t particularly love abortion as an option. I’d love to see free birth control offered to everyone, so that we can limit abortion. I’d love to see, science-based, comprehensive sex education courses offered to everyone, so that we can limit abortion. I’d love to see social programs increase, so that we can limit abortion.
But I would never tell a woman what she is or is not allowed to do with her body, because I don’t have that right. I’m not her. And if there is one thing that being sexually violated teaches you, it is that NOBODY tells you what to do with your body but you. So, I would rather she get a safe, legal abortion, if that is her choice, than go back to the fucking stone age and endanger the lives of women who do make that choice.
Regardless of my personal preferences, however, the point here is to look at the whole life of a person, and to make whole life a consideration. If you claim to be a person of faith, and you claim to honor life, but you support war and torture and the death penalty and cuts to medicare and SNAP, something is off-balance. If you wish to claim that you are for life, you must be for all of it, in all of its forms and for all of its people. If you are not for life for all people, at all ages, in all circumstances, you should come up with another claim. You are not pro-life. You are not pro-thrive. I’m not sure what you are, but it isn’t very inclusive and it isn’t very much like the Christ of the bible that most of you claim to be following. So, that is a concern that you might want to take to heart and consider for a while.
In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out over here in my progressive corner with The Divine. I am pro-choice.
But I am also PRO-THRIVE!! And I am very glad I have evolved to that point. Hallelujah!!
Payday
I’m busy printing out proofs to attain a payday loan. It is a long shot, last resort sort of move on my part. There aren’t any options left beyond a ridiculous interest rate over 50% and steep penalties should I not meet the strict requirements of repayment of that criminal amount of interest. It should be a crime for such life crushing loans to exist. And yet I am working to get one, and desperate to hear them approve me for this loan that I believe to be criminal.
It is nonsense, really. But it makes all the sense when you live in the margins, where there is never enough, and you are treated with contempt and barely considered human, much less treated with the grace and kindness and compassion that humanity should garner.
These days, I don’t know what “humane” means. I don’t know that “humanity” exists in the way it once did. Or, more correctly, I don’t know that it exists in the way that I had imagined.
I was running very late for a doctor appointment the other day and needed to take a Lyft instead of a bus. My driver, a Somali native, said something along the lines of “selfishness is human nature”. I wanted to argue that was not true. I wanted to express the compassion and love that humans were capable of offering one another. And then I thought better of it, knowing that I was suffering needlessly an economic situation that could be eliminated with just a few dollars from the people who call me “friend”, and knowing that this man, having emigrated from Somalia, knew selfishness and pain and racism and judgment and xenophobia and messed up fucking shit that I, an already despairing woman, cannot even imagine. Who was I to tell him that humanity has something better to offer??
Instead, I made a statement about perspective and how much we are shaped by what we experience in our lives—hoping to avoid agreement that hurting those whom we can place beneath us so that we might rise is human nature, but also not arguing that we are better than that, because I don’t feel like we are better than that very often of late.
I sit at a desk covered in images of Wonder Woman. I built it. I covered it in these images deliberately, because I found it inspiring. Not only do I sit and work atop a work of art when I am well enough to do work, but I also have a deep sense of justice and love and giving of myself to improve the state of the world, and she embodies that for me, and reminds me that my end goal is a world filled with love and justice. What I do at this desk should be focused on that goal. And to a great extent my work is focused on that goal.
But more and more my focus is fear. There is worry over finances. There is stress over what I read in the news. There is the sadness and the horror that comes from seeing the world become more broken, fractured, confused, and afraid as a particular world leader creates xenophobia, insecurity, unrest, racism, and general hatred and chaos. There is pain and struggle and the fear that the future will become even more difficult than the present. And that isn’t just my personal fear, but the fear of millions, which is even more heartbreaking, because of my deep empathy. Wonder Woman and her ideals seem worlds away while I work atop images of her from generations of comics.
I wonder if Donald Trump ever watches super hero films or reads comics. Do you suppose he sees himself as the hero or the villain? He certainly doesn’t have the ideals of the hero, so he must be delusional if he identifies as one.
I know that I am not the hero in any story. I sometimes get painted as one. Ask my brother-in-law about Christmas Day in Seattle and he will tell you a tale that makes me the hero of the story. But I am not the hero, because I only did what any human should do—I helped a woman in need. I felt her pain, I met her in it, and I made certain that she was safe in the hands of professional medical personnel before I left to attend to my own needs. That is the least that we should be doing for one another. The absolute least.
There is so much more.
So. Much. More.
Recently, I had dinner with my “brother”, Adam. We were talking about need and giving and enough and excess. He talked about aid that he had offered our nephew, and the way that he had added a component of “paying forward” part of the funding that had been offered to him. Give to another, the way Adam gave unto you.
It sounds a bit biblical, right?
It is a bit biblical. Because there is a verse in the bible that is pretty much the same. It is found in the Gospel of John, Chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. It says, “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
I suppose that means if my nephew pays forward a third of his college aid, he is a disciple of my “brother”. Haha. There are definitely worse men to be disciples of, so this is probably a good thing.
The point I am working toward here is that the goal that we as humans are meant to be working toward—according to Jesus, and according to Adam, and according to Wonder Woman, and according to the feeling in my gut—is offering love and compassion and physical needs and grace and equality and honesty and kindness and more than enough. And I don’t know when or where we lost sight of that, or whether we ever truly had that in our sights as a society at large. But our heroes—the embodiments of the best of us—have always had that in view. We need to cling to that view.
I should be focused on what I can do to continue living out the ideals of Wonder Woman, not on what I need to desperately print out to prove that I am worthy of a criminal payday loan! No human being should be forced to sell their soul so Speedy Cash out of fear that they won’t live from the 28th to the 1st, and will lose their home, contact with their family and friends, and the ability to obtain sufficient calories to sustain their body. And when some of the people are in this state while others are jumping off of fancy boats in the waves on a weekday morning, we are not loving one another as we have been loved. We are not giving to one another as Uncle Adam gave to us. We are being selfish. And we are letting Somali men believe that this is just the way we are as humans—that this is just who we are and will always be: selfish bastards who trample one another to elevate ourselves.
Are you a selfish bastard who tramples others to elevate yourself? Is that who you want to be? Is that what you want to be known for and what you want others to believe defines the human condition?
I cannot abide that. I cannot tolerate that. I cannot accept that.
I won’t let humanity be a giant game of “king of the mountain” where the ruthless climber is the winner. Not if I can do anything to help it.
And I can do something to help it. You can also do something to help!
We can all stop accepting the idea that selfishness is a part of our DNA and refuse to let humanity be defined by anything but the heroic ideals of love and generosity and compassion and care and grace and good. We get to define who we are, as individuals, as a society, and as representatives of the human condition. We decide.
So, decide now. Are you the kind of person who lets payday loans take the souls of disabled, poor women struggling to make ends meet, or are you the kind of person who changes the narrative and refuses to let this be the way that we treat the people in the margins? Are you the kind of person who is ready to stand up and work hard to eliminate the margins?
It will be difficult work. Change always is difficult. You need to learn, you need to change the voices in your head, you need to assess the things that you believe and challenge the beliefs that you have held for many years. So much of our bias is unconscious, and it takes a lot of self-reflection to work out what we think, and then to consider the ways that thinking might be incomplete, inconsiderate, or just plain wrong. But if the choice is between doing hard work or letting down humanity, I choose hard work every single time.
Today, I still need the payday loan. And it breaks my heart to know that I need to sacrifice in this way. It is a terrible choice. But there aren’t good choices in the margins very often, unfortunately. Maybe at some point I will have better options, or there won’t be margins, and humanity will not be seen as selfish, but as loving and generous and compassionate. Maybe on that day payday loans won’t exist—they actually will be criminal, as in illegal—and disabled women will not be afraid of starving or living under bridges because of financial challenges. If enough of us choose care over selfishness, this will be reality.
So, choose heroic ideals instead of payday loans. Don’t let Somalian Lyft drivers believe that this is who we are as humans. Don’t be this as humans.
We can do better.
I know that we can do better.
Follow Jesus, or Wonder Woman, or Adam. Choose heroism over selfishness and do better.
As I have loved you, so you should love one another.
And the Storm Rages On
It isn’t easy for me to be vulnerable.
I remember a friend from cohort saying to me once that I was very open by not very vulnerable, and I was upset by that statement, because I didn’t think it fair to separate the two out in that manner. Being honest was, in my mind at that point, being vulnerable. Now I understand more fully that there is a difference, and that Chris was correct in his assessment. It is easy for me to tell the truth, and it is hard for me to be open about how that truth can harm me—how exposing the heart of me is different from exposing the facts of my situation.
I was recently quite vulnerable about the financial situation that I find myself in, and the subsequent challenges that my daughter is experiencing. I let people know how hurt and frustrated and damaged and judged and punished I was feeling as a result of all sorts of things that are far beyond my control. And I didn’t shy away and rewrite and edit and try to add decorum or lessen the blow of my emotions.
Overall, the response was positive. I had a few people who commended my authenticity and vulnerability in stating not just the true facts, but the challenge of my own feelings about those facts.
But there was one response that has been eating away at me for days now, and I can’t help but craft some sort of retort. I won’t start some strange, heated Facebook argument about it, however. So, instead I want to address it here, and, hopefully, give it a worthy apologetic.
After lamenting that my daughter was forced to drop out of her educational program just 6 weeks prior to graduation due to financial constraints, and noting that my own challenge of being trapped in cycles and systems that keep me in an impoverished state, rather than offer me the chance to thrive—both of which I consider to be rather unique to me in my particular circles of acquaintance and/or influence—I received this comment in reply:
It’s not just you, Christy. Nor is or (sic) just single income households. The economy is tough and there are a lot of people that I know right now that are struggling to keep the lights on.
I’m so sorry. I know what you’re going through when the stress, the anxiety, disability, and desire all meet in the perfect storm.
I’m praying for you guys…
And under that was a meme that said:
Sometimes God calms the storm. Sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child.
I later texted another friend that I was “Zen as fuck” until I read that comment.
I can’t fully express how upsetting comments like this are for someone in my situation. The idea that my situation is just like a whole lot of other people’s situations is laughable. To normalize what is incomprehensibly abnormal as a strategy to deny me aid is not one that is foreign, unfortunately. People love to rationalize their refusal to help their fellow humans as “reasonable” instead of cruel or evil in all sorts of ways. And the easiest way to do that is to dehumanize the person in need—using racism, classism, moral relativism, or some other ism to blame the needy for their own struggle. That dehumanization is much more difficult when you sat beside said person in seminary classes and your child was babysitter to mine, so you resort to the second easiest rationalization—the “lots of people” argument.
“Lots of people” have disabilities and they…
“Lots of people” are divorced and they…
“Lots of people” are having financial challenges. “Lots of people” have anxiety. “Lots of people” want life to be different than it is. “Lots of people” struggle.
All of this is true. So, in the mind of the one arguing for the many, the one is simply an exaggeration of or a dramatic expression of what all sorts of people are dealing with. They “understand”. They “sympathize”.
Bullshit.
I call bullshit.
And I get to call it because of this ugly feeling in the core of my being whenever I get to read these sorts of comments under my vulnerable posts.
Ironically, just above this comment was a series of comments and replies that talked about how I hate to open up because of the times that I opened wide my arms for a hug and got a gut punch instead. This “lots of people” comment is a gut punch where there should be an embrace. And I will tell you why this feels like a gut punch.
My vulnerability is not something that is shared by lots of people. It is an intimate thing, to share my heart and my deepest wounds and fears. To say that lots of people are touched in the same way—even if it were true—is a betrayal of my trust. This comment is akin to a friend confiding in you that they were raped, and you saying, “Lots of people get raped. I know what you’re going through. Sometimes you need to let go of shit and let God change your perspective.”
Gut fucking punched.
I’m deeply involved in all sorts of methods for changing my perspective, by the way. I meditate almost every day. I practice yoga. I practice gratitude daily. I use several mindfulness practices, and I have all sorts of routines in place to keep my heart open, my outlook positive, and my disordered thinking in check. When I said that I was Zen, I meant it. I could not have been calmer when I received that offending comment. And I addressed it in the calmest manner possible: I ignored it. I talked to a close friend about how it made me feel, and she supported me through the event and helped me to keep a positive perspective throughout the situation.
So, even after being gut punched by the insensitive rationalizing comment, I kept my cool demeanor. I didn’t need “God to calm his child”.
But the storm is another story.
The storm should NEVER have been here in the first place, and yet it rages on.
This common little meme, and the saying upon it, are very upsetting for me. They assume that the things in life that harm us are somehow meant to be hanging around our heads so that God can teach us some sort of lesson in how to keep our cool under pressure. And I don’t understand where that idea comes from, but it is a terrible sentiment, and we need to put an end to it.
My challenges stem from disabling conditions, yes. And those disabling conditions might never go away or be cured. I understand that a certain amount of coping is required for me to navigate life with those conditions. In that sense, there with always be challenges.
But “the storm” for so many of us can simply go away if people stop using the rationale to avoid helping one another and affect change.
My storm includes a system that doesn’t fully support those in our society who have disability, and only offers me $750 in cash and $15 in food benefits, plus a housing stipend. Adding those together doesn’t make a livable situation, and I am constantly in need and constantly in danger of losing my home, starving, not having my medications, or some other disastrous challenge.
My storm also includes the challenge of mental illness that has been present since early childhood, and which left untreated for so long has influenced my life in countless ways, making it impossible to consider any decision I’ve ever made one that wasn’t made under duress, and challenging me to figure out who the hell I am, and why. I don’t need a midlife crisis, because I’ve never had an independent identity—my crisis is ongoing.
My storm includes a divorce from a horrible man, whose damage to my person and my psyche cannot and should not be downplayed, for any reason. And that also means an absent father is a part of my daughter’s storm—and the storms of our children influence our own storms. The weight of being a single parent goes far beyond “single income” households—and I’ve generally had a no income household, because of my difficulty with employment due to PTSD. Having a completely absent parent, who contributes in NO way, is not anything that a person who lives in a two-parent home can ever imagine. It still infuriates me when married people say things like, “I’m a single parent for the week”, when their partner is away on a trip or something. Having a partner who is physically absent for a matter of days is nothing like having no partner at all. You still have all sorts of support, financial and emotional just being the tip of the iceberg. You can’t imagine none of that being present, ever.
My storm includes debt totaling over $250,000. Most of that is from student loans, and much of the rest is due to the three years’ time that I spent waiting for my disability claim to be approved. I was unable to work and waiting for the Social Security Administration to look at the body of proof that I was unable to work and sign off on my meager $750 a month payment. In the meantime, I had nowhere to turn but credit cards, my dad, and charity. So, I owe far more than I could ever pay back on my own, but I am not eligible for programs that would forgive these debts. So, I sit and owe, and the interest just increases the amounts and increases the amounts.
My storm includes the complicated situation where my adult daughter cannot be considered an independent student, according to the rules of the government, but I cannot claim her as a dependent, according to the rules of the government. This leaves her with a shortfall that other students don’t need to deal with regarding their own financial aid. She can’t take out more money, but I can’t take out money on her behalf. Because she is in this weird limbo state, because I am a disabled individual. This isn’t her fault. This should not be a storm she needs to weather, because I should be able to provide for her. But I can’t.
So, my storm also includes the constant feeling of guilt because I cannot offer my daughter enough to put her in a position where she is on equal footing with her peers. She isn’t set up for success. She doesn’t have the advantages that her cousins and her friends and the children of the commenter on my post have. I can’t offer her a chance at starting out at zero sum and working her way up from there. She starts with my handicap. She starts at the back of the pack, because I can’t give her an education and rent money and clothing and food and care packages and enough love to make up for the losses that she has suffered and the abandonment that she has felt. I have loved her fiercely. I have done and continue to do all that I can. But it will never feel like enough.
My storm includes shame. So much shame. Not being a pure virgin girl, and not knowing how to stop being abused, and not understanding what that abuse even was or meant. The shame of hiding and the shame of secrets and the shame of difference. My storm later became one that was volatile and violent and full of rage—so much rage. I felt like I was the storm, or like the storm lived somewhere deep within me and it was trying to get out and I was desperate to hold it in—failing to hold it in. And then the storm became the shame of promiscuity and feeling like all of those words that are used to keep women captive—whore, slut, bitch—were the only thing that I could be, tainted that I was. And it felt good to be used in a sense, until it was over, and then the dissociative state wore away and the wave of shame washed over again and I started holding in the storm again, as long as I could … until the next time.
My storm includes being all the people that you could rationalize away as not quite human. Homeless. Addicted. Divorced. Unemployed. Mentally ill. Using my body as currency. Shielding my body from blows and then crawling into bed next to the one who wielded them. Perpetually single. Having sex with partners that were not my husband. Having sex with partners who were not men. The girl who stays out too late. The girl who mows her lawn on Sunday. (Oh, yes. Some people consider that a grievous offense!) I received anonymous notes about my bad behavior. I was told I could lose my scholarship for having sex. I got dirty, side-eyed looks from others. When I talked to your husbands after church, you would suddenly appear at their sides and pull them in a different direction—like talking to me would lead to me stealing them away to mow lawns and suck on body parts by sundown. In truth, I was just interesting and unconstrained by convention. It’s an attractive thing to be interesting and unconventional. (Translation: read some books not written by female bible study developers and then discuss the contents with your husband … he’ll be mowing your lawn in no time.)
So, my storm also included years and years and years of not having my needs met. Hence the comments about opening my arms for a hug and getting a gut punch.
I’m still not surprised when I open myself up and somebody hits me hard, instead of offering me love and support. Unfortunately, it is what I have come to expect.
The dumb thing about that meme is that you don’t have to tell me that the storm might not go away. I fully expect that storm to fucking tear me to pieces and kill me. It takes weekly therapy, twenty drugs, a host of friends, and all sorts of self-care strategies to convince me that the storm can be survived. It takes every ounce of energy I can muster to get up in the morning and face the storm again. It takes all manner of strategies to be my Zen self in the midst of all this chaos and terror and shame and unmet need. But I do it. I do it day after day after day.
I keep on facing it.
And some days the storm wins a little, and I freak out on a new potential partner with a host of doubt and shame and fear. Other days I wake up and counter that with a bit more of the Zen and apologize and open up and tell him why I reacted that way, hoping that he will meet my need and connect with what I am saying … and not gut punch me while my arms are open.
But I face it.
And your job, as the people who would support me, is not to remind me that there is this big, ugly, terrifying storm that I am working so hard to live in the midst of without losing my shit. Your job is to do everything that you are able to make that storm disappear. Your job is to offer support where there wasn’t any. Your job is to accept me and not shame me. Your job is to love and not harm me. Your job is to prove that the storm isn’t going to win, and that we can make all of that crap go away by being better than the crap. We can change and grow and not hurt one another anymore and counter the falsehood with truth and slay the dragon of cruelty with a sword of kindness and acceptance and love.
That is the only way I know how to continue to face the storm—by trusting that we can eventually find calm skies for everyone. Without that assurance, facing it is a worthless effort, and I may as well off myself now. (That isn’t a suicidal statement, fyi. That is me drawing on the extreme to make a point.) Because if there isn’t an end to the need and the shame there isn’t really a point in moving forward. And I don’t mean just the money—I mean the need for understanding and connection and love. But I define love as “meeting needs”, so the money is a part of the equation.
If you are to assist another, you need to do more than tell them that there is struggle all around them and to work on their perspective. You need to work to end the struggle. Because no matter what your perspective is, if the struggle persists, you aren’t doing what you should be doing. You aren’t helping.
I know that standing up against the storm isn’t an easy thing. It is much easier to say, “Check your perspective” or to hide in some shelter and hope that the storm passes. But for many of us—and for me—the storm rages on, indefinitely. And that storm can’t stop. It won’t stop without the change of perspective from many other people who are not me.
It is often not the people suffering, but those who are unaware of or those who are causing the suffering who need to change the way that they are operating in the day to day. I’m usually not the one doing things “wrong”. I’m generally suffering because of the things that are unjust, not the things that I cannot accept but that are perfectly fine. And the ones suffering an injustice generally don’t have any power to make the change required to stop that suffering. If they did, the change would happen hastily and without resistance. Because, despite the lies that many in power like to feed you, people don’t wallow in poverty and addiction and illness and homelessness and sex work because they want to. Just like Kanye West is an idiot for presuming that slavery was/is a choice, anyone who thinks that people live in the middle of storms because they like how lightning feels is an idiot. Those people don’t have the shelter they need. You must find ways to provide it for them—preferably by asking them how you can best provide them shelter.
Robert F Kennedy once said:
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
This is the type of shelter-building act that we need in response to those who are in the middle of storms opening their hearts and asking for assistance. Building currents that sweep down walls—sweeping away the clouds of the storm and bringing, perhaps for the first time, calm, blue skies, should be the goal that we aspire to reach. Asking people to be quiet and calm in the middle of injustice is not the answer. Fighting against injustice is the answer, on the grand scale.
And meeting me in my storm, with open arms and an embrace—not a gut-punching meme that seeks to discredit my need, devalue my expression, and normalize an injustice.
When you are met with someone who opens up and seeks to be authentic and disclose their struggle, don’t tell them to sit quietly in chaos, please. Don’t ask them to be happier with the injustice that swirls around them. Act to improve their lot. Strike out against injustice. Send forth that ripple of hope.
And if you won’t do all those good things, at least stop sending gut punches.
Contribute to Christy’s fundraiser here if you wish to help lessen her storm’s raging. Thank you!
Done
In therapy on Monday, I said to my therapist, “I’m done! I’m done.”
And that was immediately followed by the expression, “I don’t even know what that means, because I am not going to kill myself, so I don’t know what I am done with, per se, or what I am quitting, exactly.”
I’m relatively certain that was followed by an “ugh” and a deep sigh … and probably dropping my hands to my sides in a dramatic fashion that symbolized my giving up.
This morning, as I updated my fundraising site, I once again expressed that I can’t go on. And when I am talking with friends or family about serious topics, it comes up as well—I can’t keep doing this. I’m done. I give up. I can’t. I can’t even.
I don’t know if other people feel this level of frustration. I don’t know if it is a “normal” thing to be overwhelmed by life that you do not want to keep going forward with the living. And, like I mentioned above, that isn’t a suicidal ideation or proclamation. I don’t want to die. I just don’t know how to keep on living in this current state. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want a different sort of living, I suppose.
Many people want a different sort of living, I suspect. There are always goals and changes and opportunities that we are reaching toward. We see an article of clothing, or a car, or a home improvement project, or a new bit of technology, or some other thing that we want and we strive toward it. Or we admire a person or a way of living that we see outside of our own self and culture, and we seek to emulate the qualities and characteristics of that person or place or way of being. We want something different—something “better”. This is true of pretty much all of us, whether we are seeking more, or less—the minimalist or the consumerist lifestyle. We are working toward something that we currently do not possess. We are seeking change.
I think that what I feel, however, and what a lot of people in marginalized spaces or situations feel, is a bit different than that sort of desire and that sort of change. There isn’t just a drive to be different. There is a desperation. There is an evolutionary demand for fighting to survive.
I was watching the show Sense8 on Netflix the other night, and there was a line that struck me. One of the characters said that he realized he was slowly dying of survival. And that resonated with me so much that it brought me to tears. Because it is not only my situation, but the situation of millions of people like me. We are slowly dying of survival. And I am just coming to realize it, like Mr. Hoy on Sense8. It is breaking me.
Nothing has broken me so much that I couldn’t get back up and keep fighting. I have more sequels than Rocky Balboa could ever have. Even if he keeps training up new, young recruits until his death, I’ve still got him beat in the comeback department. Over and over and over, I survive what the world throws at me. But that is the best and the worst thing. I survive. I survive. I survive. And that isn’t enough.
We aren’t meant to survive. Not just to survive. Not only to survive.
We are meant for love and beauty and good. We are meant for the Arete of the Greek philosophers, so long ago. We are meant to thrive, to create, to live, to love, to transform. And surviving doesn’t let you do those things. Surviving makes you cautious, paranoid, isolated, resourceful, resilient, manipulative, strong, intimidating, disconnected, dissociated, and a great fighter. And some of those things can be positive qualities—most of them can be positive under the right conditions. But those of us who are fighting to survive are not living under the right conditions. We are living under the worst fucking conditions, which is why we are working so hard to survive. And the skills that we need and master to survive are not skills which help us to thrive, create, love, and transform. Those skills aren’t the ones that offer us the love and beauty and good. We survive to death. We just keep on making it past the obstacle that is most immediately harming us and our life, and then looking to the next obstacle. There isn’t room for anything but the fight. We fight, we fight, we fight, we fight, we fight, we fight, we die.
Because fighting obstacles doesn’t change the world. Creating new systems and eliminating the ones that are harmful and unjust changes the world. Developing programs that increase wellness and decrease poverty, sickness, and violence changes the world. But we don’t have the opportunity to create and develop, because we are so busy surviving. We are so busy fighting that we don’t have the resources left to create and develop. We don’t have what we need to thrive.
And the people who are not surviving—the people who don’t live in our situation, and don’t feel the weight and lack the resources and don’t fight the obstacles every moment of every day—don’t spend their energies (for the most part) creating and developing the systems that would change the situations of those of us who are marginalized. Because they aren’t the ones fighting the unfair fights, over and over and over again.
At some point, you stop wanting to fight. I’ve reached that point this week.
I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep fighting battles in a war that I know cannot be won. The futility of the military action in Vietnam comes to mind when I think about what I feel today. So many young men were injured, killed, and left with life-long mental illness because of that action. And nothing was won. There was no “victory”. The westside of Chicago is the Vietnam of my age. The southside of Chicago is the Vietnam of my age. But the “enemy” isn’t quite as clearly defined here. The enemy is us, and we are also the one battling. It is a strange thing. It is a confusing thing. And while I don’t understand why we are fighting battles against ourselves in our own cities, and I don’t understand how we, the victims, are blamed for the fight, I do understand that we are fighting to survive this war.
And we are slowly dying of survival.
The thing that is crazy about all of this—well, one thing, because there is so much crazy about this that I cannot even begin to express all of it—is that it doesn’t matter that I am too tired and too frustrated and too raw and too pained to go on.
I need to go on, or I need to die.
And my instinct—my evolutionary imperative, coupled with my very high dose of antidepressant medication—will keep me alive. I can’t give up, even though I want to.
I can’t choose to be done. I can’t be done. I need to fight the next battle.
So, where does that leave me?
Done. But not done.
Do I work hard to develop hope, just so it can be dashed once more? Do I adopt a rote series of movements and dissociate from my actions, protecting my heart from more pain, but closing it off from love and good and beauty in the process? Do I fight hard and believe that this time will be different, only to find another obstacle on the other side, and to break down once more?
I don’t know.
This post doesn’t wrap up in a sweet little bow. It ends in a sorrow. It ends in a question. It ends in a desperation and a struggle that doesn’t seem like it will ever end.
And that sucks.
I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know how I will respond to the next moment—the next challenge, the next need, the next unpaid bill, the next overdraft, the next pain, the next fatigue that cannot be overcome, the next spike in my heart rate, the next gunfire heard, the next overdose witnessed, the next rejection, the next extension, the next continuance, the next whatever the fuck gets thrown my way. I only know that I have one option: to face it, and to fight it, and to hope that I can overcome.
If you don’t know what that feels like, you should seek out someone who does. Listen to them. Learn from them. Help them. Try to find ways to develop and create systems that help and do not harm them. Offer them the chance to thrive, instead of allowing them to slowly die from surviving.
I don’t know the end to my story. My journey continues. A new friend told me this morning that “my best version” is coming. That gave me a tiny glimmer of hope, and reminded me that the end isn’t here until the end is here. And this day, I believe, is not my end.
So, I am still moving toward my best version. I hope that version includes creation and beauty and good and wisdom and love.
For now, I fight on.
Bully
When I was a girl, I suffered from a medical condition that made it impossible for me to maintain control of my bladder. I had a major surgery just before my tenth birthday that corrected this issue, but up until then, I was tortured by classmates and neighbors. I was less than ten years old, and I vividly remember one neighbor picking up a rusty nail from a parking area across the street from our homes and suggesting that “we shove this up there so you can stop peeing your pants”. I remember the taunts of “Christy Pissty”. I remember being isolated, depressed, ashamed. This is what children did to me. Children that were seven or eight years old did this to me.
Where did they learn that hatred and violence?
In the fifth grade, after the surgery and the pant-wetting had stopped, there was this girl, Tammy, (her name is not changed to protect her identity, because she was a fucking terrible person then and she doesn’t deserve my protection). (Also, I may be spelling her name wrong, but I have no desire to remember the correct spelling of the names of those who tortured me.) Tammy was friends with Shawn. Shawn had been my friend for many years, because our parents were friends and we grew up together. Tammy had the strange idea that three persons cannot be friends together. I’ve never understood this whole “best friend” thing, and feel like there is more than enough love to spread around. Lots of girls somehow get an impression that this cannot be true, and that they need to secure the best friend status of one other, and eliminate any competition.
Tammy convinced Shawn to run from me on the playground. Tammy took the time to create hand drawn cards for both Shawn and I, and then to deliver the whole cards to Shawn through the Kindergarten “mail” that was teaching them how to address letters. I received a very large package through the Kindergarten mail service. Everyone crowded around to see what I had been sent. It was the cards, identical to Shawn’s, ripped into tiny pieces—a pile of hatred on display for everyone in the room. Everyone laughed and taunted me.
Where did she learn this hatred and violence?
In high school, I became a nomad of sorts. I didn’t connect with a single group of peers, because I had grown to mistrust people. (Shocking.) But I still wanted friends, obviously. And many people failed me in this stage as well. I would hang out with a group of boys that were nice and fun to be around, so people called me a slut. I still had the influence of Tammy. One Sunday night, I waited by the cold, drafty window that faced the street for my friends to pick me up to go out. They never arrived. “There wasn’t enough room in the car” was the reason that Shawn gave. But they abandoned me, without a word. Shawn felt the guilt and told me the excuse, but the rest didn’t seem to care. And somehow I had been singled out as the one who wouldn’t go along. I was the one crying tears of pain and loss and confusion all night.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
I thought college would be my respite. New friends. New opportunities. It was going to be new and different and better. And it was for a few months, until I started to have memories of childhood sexual abuse. I confided in a few people. Those people told other people. Those people asked friends of my abuser if he had abused me. They asked him. He said no. (Shocking.) And I was immediately called a liar and a fraud and all sorts of other things. I was once more isolated and shamed and abandoned. I had failed my way out of college by the 3rd semester. Not only was I finding it very difficult to find and maintain healthy relationships, but the lack of support made the weight of dealing with the memories and nightmares heavy enough to break me.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
I proceeded to live out my pain. Drinking, sex, drugs, harboring runaways, and finally marrying a man who was violently abusive. He never hurt me while we were dating. It wasn’t until a month after our wedding that I was first physically smacked—backhanded in the kitchen while I washed dishes. But the ways that he harmed me weren’t just physical. Cycles of abuse include manipulations that most cannot imagine. It is more akin to a cult than a relationship. Isolate, degrade, shame, and then, once control has been gained, violence against your person. Getting pregnant gave me the reason I needed to leave. I would have stayed until I died, I suppose, were it not for the fear that my child would learn to be like me, or like him.
After I left him, I continued on the path of addiction and struggle, even getting involved in a less violent, but just as controlling and unhealthy, relationship. But even after I left this second relationship, and I worked to regain control of my own life, and to find some peace and some safety and some stability, people kept being bullies. Church friends would judge me. Family would challenge me. Poverty became a reason to treat me poorly, and being a single parent became a reason to shame me. There was always someone, somewhere actively working to harm and humiliate. There was never a place where I was safe from harm. I was always attacked, in some form.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
I’ve gotten to a point where I can mediate between the world and my heart in more effective ways. I’ve been in therapy and on medication for a few years now, following my diagnosis of PTSD. I’m learning to care less about the things others say and do. I’m learning to find self-compassion and self-definition, instead of relying on others to tell me who I am and what I am worth.
I still have the occasional bully in my sphere. It is difficult to get rid of them altogether. There are so many who are pursuing their self-interest at the expense of all others. There are so many who are looking at their decisions only from their perspective, and ignoring the impact that exists beyond their own interests.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
And it is hatred and violence to ignore the plight of others in order to gain more money or status or freedom or stuff for yourself. It is hatred and violence to isolate, to shame, to deny equal rights, to deny basic human rights, and to ignore the pain of others.
I was raised in a conservative religious setting, and I obtained two seminary degrees, so I often default to the bible when I look to quote something that expresses the ways that actions are rooted in hatred and violence. The Good Samaritan parable of the enemy of the harmed caring for him when his own religion and state and race abandoned him to death is one of those very easily quoted parables. Your own interests are not good excuses for not caring for others is the basic lesson in that story. But there are also many passages that talk about putting first the interests of the poor and the refugee and the sick and the imprisoned and a host of others who may be marginalized. There are also many that speak to the judgment that will come down upon those who do not have love as the basis of their actions.
I often find it ironic and sad that the place where I grew up, and the people I know from my history, were often so filled with hatred and violence while they assumed they were in the role of the good Samaritan. They thought they were the hero in the story. But they were not and are not. They are the villains. They are the bullies.
Since the election the other day, there have been numerous reports of hatred and violence. Swastikas and n-words and the simple moniker “Trump” have been graffitied everywhere from the sides of cars to the doors of prayer rooms. Muslim women have stopped the religious practice of wearing burqa or hijab out of fear. Children are taunting other children, with deportation or isolation or death being named as the fate of brown and black and Muslim students.
Where did they learn this hatred and violence?
They learned it by watching a bully become the president-elect of their country. They learned it from the rhetoric they hear in the news and around the dinner table. They learned it by watching the adults in this country make the grave error of choosing a man who spouts hatred and incites violence at every turn as their leader. They learned it by living in a society that places self-interest above the health and vitality of the society. We would rather burn with big screens than live peacefully with one another and share resources.
Donald Trump is the Tammy of my current situation.
The threat to end healthcare for millions is a real threat for me. I am chronically ill. I qualify for Medicaid under the expansion required by the ACA. I will not have healthcare if that is repealed. And, without the other ACA requirement of insuring people regardless of pre-existing condition, I will likely be uninsurable. I’ve had about 200 appointments and four surgeries this year. I take 18 medications right now. I see between two and seven doctors per week. All of this care keeps me in a state of disability, but a rung or two up the ladder from death. Without this care, I will drop down to the death rung. I die.
Without food stamps, without insurance, without housing assistance, and without disability, I die. Losing any one of them will potentially cause the loss of all others. My life is in danger, because we (and by “we” I mean the electoral college and don’t include myself at all) elected the bully.
When I was left crying that night by the window, left behind by my “friends”, I am relatively certain that all the people present didn’t want me to be abandoned and harmed, but at least one of them did. And by following the lead of that person or persons, friends that had been such for a lifetime were lost. The effects were devastating, and each person who went silently along in that car was responsible for my pain, because they didn’t put an end to that pain.
Taking stock of my life, and seeing the ways that bullies operate, and the ways that their actions affect others, I am trapped in a serious situation once more. After living through all the things that I have lived through, and enduring all the struggle while another profited from my demise, I see clearly the ways that electing a bully will impact the nation. The people who have let this go on, and who have elected a bully, are committing themselves to the ideals of bullying. They are allowing hatred and violence to win the day, and to rule the country.
I need to ask you, are you going to be the boy with a rusty nail, or the Tammy, or the abusive husband, or the manipulator/cult leader/champion for hatred and violence?
My childhood, my teens, my adult life—every moment and every experience—could have been radically different if the people around me had not been conditioned to consider themselves before others, above others, and in control of others. The people around me learned it by watching other people (probably their parents) adopt and embrace individualism and reject care and compassion and empathy for others. Whether you are using the choices one makes or the color of one’s skin as the litmus test for whether you shame and isolate and judge and harm, you are doing harm. By considering only your own interests, you are doing harm. By leading with your fear and reactionary instincts, instead of using facts and thoughtful consideration, you are doing harm. By voting for a bully, you are doing harm.
Where did you learn such hatred and violence?
And why don’t you seek to unlearn hatred and violence and, instead, live in love and peace?
Why do you choose to remain the bully?
On Being
I made a plea for funds on my fundraising page recently. This happens a lot, because I have a lot of financial need at present.
I wrote something within that plea about being a human being, and therefore deserving basic human rights. And not long after, I felt this unsettling feeling in my gut. I felt that feeling because I realized that making this statement means that I believe that some of the people who know me do not understand basic human rights. I realized that some of the people I know do not think all people deserve life and health and safety.
That is the worst feeling!
I am making an argument for my dessert of life to people who know me.
Seriously, let that sink in for a moment. People I know need to be told that I deserve life.
It is hard for me to imagine that others think existing on the most basic level is not a right. It is even more difficult for me to conceive of, because many of those same people are insistent on the rights of a fetus. Before your life is viable, you have rights. After being born, you cease to have those same rights? I find that concept difficult, if not impossible to argue.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights lays out a number of rights that all human beings deserve, simply because they are human beings. One of those is the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of a person and his or her family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care, and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his or her control.
This right, that is offered for all who are human, is denied me on an ongoing and regular basis. I’ve been living without that standard of living, and without that security for the last two years while I wait for my disability hearing to occur. And I have been living without that standard and that security for pretty much my whole life.
Obviously, I don’t count childhood in the financial failings of the system of social services, so my adult life has been plagued with poverty and lack of security. But I have been without life, liberty, and security of person since childhood, since I was not free and not safe during that time. Life, liberty, and security of person is one of the rights expressed by the declaration as well. And I didn’t have that. I still don’t.
And I am not alone in my lack of life, liberty, and security of person. Millions of people share this state alongside me.
We make all manner of excuse for why this life and liberty and security and standard of living and equal pay and recognition and participation in government and freedom of thought, expression, religion, and peaceful assembly are not offered to all humans. And all of them are inexcusable responses to the failures of our society to meet these standards.
At this moment, in the United States of America, there are children being gunned down in the streets, and unarmed people of color being murdered in the name of “feeling threatened” by the police. There is a violent response from law enforcement to the peaceful protest of indigenous peoples on their own land. There is humiliating punishment, torture, cruel punishment, and slavery within our prison systems (that are privately owned and income generating). People are not protected from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile. Political refugees are being refused access and protection. There are millions assumed guilty until proved innocent, instead of the other way around. There is arbitrary interference with privacy, family, and home with the NSA listening in on the American people.
All of the above are in direct conflict with the declaration of human rights that the UN puts forth. All of the above are not acceptable. And all of the above are excused by claiming moral failure or some form of action that pretends to nullify the humanity of those without adequate human rights.
So, at this point, I am offering the whole of society a command: STOP.
Stop treating me and others as though we are not human. We are human.
Dehumanizing happens in many ways, but at its core is the idea that we make someone seem like less of a person in order to ignore the responsibility we have toward other humans. We take an individualist stance, and we find reasons to say that people deserve what they have received on an individual level, so that we can ignore systems of injustice and refuse to change, share, care, or relate to others.
I sometimes feel like I live in a society of toddlers. When you are a toddler, you don’t yet understand that the world is not revolving around you. As an infant, you cried and someone responded. All the things were about you. And then, suddenly, you are thrust into social interaction, and all the things are not about you. “Mine!”, becomes your war cry. And all the adults are telling you to share, to respect boundaries, to not harm others, and to see your life in community instead of seeing it as a place where your voice is met with immediate action and all the things are meant for you.
The society I live in is struggling with the concept of sharing. Adults are still using “Mine!” as the war cry. My woman. My home. My paycheck. My desserts. My right to take and never give. My parenting style. My business. My tax breaks. My neighborhood. My border. My ego. My viewpoint. My voice.
But that isn’t how a society works.
We cannot be a group of individuals all working toward our own interest and ignoring the interests of others and believe that this manner of being will lead to justice and equity. It won’t.
It cannot. Because society is not just a bunch of people doing their own thing.
The word society originates from the Latin word “socius”, which translates into the concept of “companion”. A companion is one with whom you are a friend, a partner, a complement. Companionship requires the consideration of others, and the partnership between parties. Somehow, we have forgotten that those within our communities are companions, partners, and friends. Somehow, we have supplanted the idea of “individuals in a space” with the original meaning of “society” that includes companionship.
Our concern ends at those we consider “close”, both in relationship and in common interest, and we no longer extend our concern to those we see as outliers or strangers or “threats”. The comaraderie of society ended as the shift from the 16th century meaning was made and we began to look at life in the way of the toddler, by fighting to keep our individual self at the center of the universe. Society became a group of individuals sharing the same space, and lost sight of our responsibility to one another.
I’ve studied social justice for some time now. I’ve lived a life that denied me basic human rights for even longer than I studied. And I can tell you, both from an academic research standpoint and as a person affected by the way we view rights, that being a bunch of self-interested individuals who pursue our own agendas in the same space is not working. The increases in crime, in protest, in outrage, in violence, in refusal to help and share and identify with others, are all symptoms of the problem of that individualist thinking.
We need to find that understanding of society and companionship once more. We need to see all human beings as deserving of the basic rights that the United Nations has put forth. We need to look at all other humans as equal to us in their humanity, regardless of race or religion or poverty or moral failures or any other standard we might assign to others in order to dehumanize them, and to justify our lack of companionship with other human beings.
We need to treat humans as human. We need to care for each as we might care for the one we consider our closest companion. If you wouldn’t treat your friend or partner in a particular manner, then you ought not treat any human being in that same manner. Would you leave your partner homeless? Would you submit your partner to torture? Would you deny help to your best friend when they lost their job suddenly, or became ill? Would you tell your child to “deal with it” when they are profiled, policed under different standards, and denied education? Would you find excuses to allow the harm of those closest to you?
If the answer to those questions is “no”, and I hope the answer is no, then the answer should remain “no” when that person in the scenario or circumstance is not your partner or best friend. We should refuse to allow that treatment to any one of our companions—any person in our society. We need to begin thinking of our society as our companions, our partners, and our complements. When we work together, we create good things for all. Symbiotic relationship doesn’t apply only to the nature channel’s programming. Society is a symbiotic relationship, and each individual within it should benefit from the others.
I once had a conversation with a man on the bus who was in tattered clothing and appeared to be transient. We talked about his kids, and about his previous experiences, and about his life now. He lives in a tiny room above a bar, and he has a sign in his window that says, “Piano lessons, classical” and has his phone number below. He has that sign because he was a concert pianist. A talented and well-traveled, educated man was sharing this conversation with me. He told me of the places he had been, and the people for which he performed. He was famous in cultural, musical circles. And now he was without resources, because playing the piano doesn’t necessarily pay well anymore. When people pass him on the street, they think of him as a bum, a drain on society, a dirty or bad or frightening threat to the wellbeing of “good, clean, responsible” citizens. But he isn’t what they imagine. And if they could see him as a comrade, as a companion, or as a friend, as I saw him, they would enjoy beautiful tales of extraordinary fame and fortune. They would know, if they could see him as their equal, that he was more accomplished than anyone else on that bus.
But they don’t see him as an equal. They don’t offer him the human rights to housing, clothing, food, medical care, and social services. They don’t offer him more than a look of disgust, or the ever-present tactic of pretending that he doesn’t exist.
I’m not offered the human rights to housing, clothing, food, medical care, and social services either. I’ve been disabled for a few years, and I still haven’t been given resources to survive and remain safe. I don’t have what I need to live—to stay a human being and not become a pile of ash—unless I plead with people to meet my needs on an almost daily basis. The pleas are met with resources, thank the Divine. But those resources often come from the same six or seven individuals. The rest of my acquaintances ignore the pleas, or offer reasons that I do not deserve resources or should “get a job” to gain resources. They don’t seem to care about my rights as a human being. They don’t seem to believe that I deserve the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his or her control. They don’t seem to believe that I have the right to live.
I do have that right. And if you would treat me as your companion, your comrade, your complement, you would see how much I, as a human being, have to offer, and the importance of offering me life.
You hear much about “the system” or “systems” of late. People whom I stand in solidarity with are being oppressed and denied their basic human rights. We have created ways of acting within society that cause systemic damage, meaning that the whole of the society is affected. We have created a society where individualism, racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and all sorts of other “isms” are infecting every part of the whole. And many think that the answer to this problem of an unjust system is to spew forth more hatred and division and insistence upon individualist approaches to finding solutions.
But when the whole is affected, you cannot simply treat one part of the disease, leaving the sickness to spread in other areas. The whole is affected. And the treatment plan needs to begin with addressing the whole, not a part. The cure for our society’s ailments begins with adherence to the declaration of human rights. We need to stop being toddlers and grow into compassionate adults, who share and work together and have concern for others. The way to justice and equity is clearly spelled out for us—life, liberty, and security of person. The way to justice and equity is seeing people as human beings, and treating them as such.
I am.
Descartes stated that thinking was the basis for being—I think, therefore I am. But I believe that he was off by just a bit. I am, therefore I am.
Being is what makes us worthy of being. Living is what makes us deserving of life. Existence is what demands I receive resources to maintain my existence.
I am.
That is the whole argument.
And none of us should need to plead for our lives, no matter who we are, what we look like, where we come from, or what we do or do not accomplish. We should be offered a basic standard of living because we exist.
We are human beings.
We are.
More Than I Can Handle
There is this common statement among those who choose a Christian religious base for their belief system. I hear it often. I hate it more every time it is said.
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
I call bullshit.
I am dealing with more than I can handle. I’ve been dealing with more than I can handle since childhood. And every day I wait for the moment when pretending at control is overcome by the chaos of being overwhelmed.
So, here is the thing I need to say: either the Divine absolutely gives out more than one can handle, or the Divine isn’t a part of the equation at all.
Please do not misunderstand and read that as “God doesn’t exist”, because I won’t challenge anyone on that point. I believe in divine intervention and live a spiritual, but not religious, life. The existence of some Divine source is a part of my belief system. And it does not need to be yours. If you are not religious, I suppose you could ignore this post altogether. (But I hope you don’t.)
The statement that the Divine will not let you be overwhelmed, however, is bullshit. I’m overwhelmed right now. I was overwhelmed two days ago. I was overwhelmed last week. I am consistently given more than I can handle. And if the Divine exists, and I am overwhelmed, then god does give you more than you can handle. If the Divine does not exist, then the statement is just bullshit from the very first word.
I’ll try to elaborate without getting into a weird rant or too many details. When I was a child, I was sexually assaulted repeatedly. I couldn’t cope with that. It was too much. And while my actions were often a cry for help, they went unheard or were misunderstood, so I was marinating in more than I could handle. I was feeling so much pain and shame and confusion that my brain literally stopped knowing about the sexual molestation. I had a complete dissociation from the events. My brain shut those events and any and all memories of those events down. They were tucked away in a place I didn’t have full access to, and they didn’t become known to me in a conscious way until my first year of college. And when I became aware of those events once more, it was more than I could handle again. I became depressed, suicidal, and easily enraged. I was a mess. I dropped out of college, moved away, dropped out of another college, harbored a runaway, became a drug addict, and got married. All of these events were too much to handle.
My husband was violently physically and psychologically abusive. I got pregnant, got divorced, had my baby, went on a blind date, and started a relationship with a man who influenced my return to drug use and eventually became physically abusive, as my ex-husband had been.
Too much.
And then, it would seem, I “got it together”. I worked hard, cared for my daughter, went back to college, got a master’s degree or two, and ended up working in Chicago. While these years seemed like the most excellent years of my life to the onlooking outsider, inside of me there was just as much struggle as there had been in years past. I smoked a lot. I ran often. I did everything asked of me, until I could not do it anymore. What most don’t know about those years is that my kitchen was a mass of dirty dishes half of the time, I was drinking too much, I was fired as a teacher’s assistant because I didn’t have enough time to read and grade papers. I failed a few classes. My daughter resented me for leaving her with others and not hearing her needs often or well. I was struggling to keep it together, and looked fabulous on the outside, while the inside was being ripped and torn into ugly, bloodied chunks of flesh.
I had become a master of pretending at a very early age. It took a lot for me to fall apart in front of people.
But behind closed doors, nightmares and weeping and screaming and praying and begging for the pain to end kept on happening. They didn’t stop as I grew up and developed and became a “responsible adult”. They just got pushed under layers and layers of façade.
Around 2010 was when things stop staying hidden. I couldn’t control it anymore. Tears would come at the most inopportune time. The lack of sleep from nightmares and insomnia was causing my body to suffer. I started experiencing chronic illness, and I started to look and sound like a person without hope—crazed with the desperate state of my psyche and the onset of more and more symptoms of illness. I was breaking down in front of people, instead of doing it behind closed doors. And people ran away rather than be sucked into my despair.
It’s hard for people who are not given more than they can handle to watch you crumble under the too much. They don’t understand it. And it is frightening. But what I think is the hardest thing for those people to come to terms with is that the platitude they have believed is not true. Some of us are given way more than we can handle.
Because some of us are given more than we can handle, we need help. Help, need, care, and the like are not things that most want to offer, so they cling to the lie and insist that god won’t give me more than I can handle. But I know that is just an excuse not to get involved in the pain of others.
Empathy hurts.
Walking into the center of another person’s trauma is painful. Feeling what they feel is terrible, because it is completely and utterly too much. And nobody wants to feel what I feel.
Nobody wants constant physical and emotional suffering. Nobody wants to face fears and be struck down and struggle through depression and suicidal thinking and destroy relationships through mistrust and sob with such intensity that you need to sleep for three hours to recover the ability to stand. And, on one hand, I don’t blame you for not wanting to experience what I experience. On the other hand, leaving me to suffer alone and offering me platitudes that I know are lies makes me despise you for not standing in solidarity.
Because if you cannot handle what is coming at you every day, and if you are overwhelmed, you need others to help carry the weight. I have approximately six people who help carry the weight in a consistent and generous and loving way. One of them I pay, because she is my therapist.
I understand more than anyone how heavy and exhausting and painful carrying the load of my life is, but I don’t have the option to step out from under that weight. I have to cope, shift, manage, and try not to be crushed forever by that weight.
There is another saying—less religious and more true—that I sometimes use. “Many hands make light work.”
A heavy burden becomes light when there are twelve people lifting, and not just one. I would love for us to acknowledge our avoidance of the burdens in the lives of those around us. I would love for us to accept that the only way to make things better is to add our hands and help carry the burdens of others. I would love for us to admit that there is a lot that is overwhelming, and that it won’t go away because we pretend that god makes life easy enough for us (or hard enough for us, depending on your perspective) in relation to our ability to be weighed down.
You don’t keep placing items in a grocery bag until it breaks. You open and fill a second bag. You disperse the weight, balancing things out and making certain that there isn’t too much pressure in one spot.
(Yes, I just unintentionally made a grocery bag analogy to suffering. But I can’t really think of a better analogy right now, so it stands.)
So, we are given more than we can handle. Which is why we need others supporting us. All of us need others to carry a bit of the weight at times. That looks different at different times and in different spaces. But none of us is immune to being overwhelmed.
My life has had too much to handle for a really long time. I get better at handling it through coping strategies. But I still haven’t worked through all the burdens or had the weight lifted. I still make valiant attempts at handling it all. I still pretend I am well while I am carrying immense pain just under the surface. But I fail all the time. I hurt all of the time. I feel too much. I need too much. I falter too much.
And my only hope is that others might find their way toward helping, and that hands would be added, and that my burden may become light. Help me Obi Wan Community, you are my only hope!
I hope that empathy might become something that we embrace, despite the hurts, because it also brings shared joys. I hope that generosity rules the day. I hope that we start to dissect the lies that the platitudes reinforce, and come to understand that we need one another to survive. I hope that we find the strength to share, to respect, to dignify, and to accept. I hope we leave behind individualism, judgment, marginalizing, and rejecting.
I don’t know that this is an eloquent post. It is a needed expression. Mostly, I need to say it, because it is boring a hole through my mind. But I also hope that it is heard and accepted. Because I have always known that the Divine isn’t giving me any number of things to handle or not handle. The Divine gives me an assist when all the things are too much. The Divine doesn’t give anyone burdens for the fun of watching us struggle. And the Divine doesn’t give burdens to prepare us for assisting others in their burdens. The Divine is the opposite of burden. The Divine is love. And whatever is burdensome is what we need to fight against, not for.
When racism tears apart a community, we fight against that. When illness strikes a body, we fight against that. When fear creates divisions, we fight against that. When poverty leaves people in the streets, we fight against that. When little children are violated, we fight against that. When women are not given a voice, we fight against that. When gun violence steals lives every day, we fight against that.
And we fight together, in solidarity, and as one entity. Because there is more in each of those situations than we can handle, and ridding our society of these evils requires our many hands, working together, to unburden the most vulnerable.
I happen to be one of the most vulnerable, because life tossed all sorts of challenges at me, and so my plea for justice—the unburdening of the most vulnerable—ends up being a plea for my welfare also. I beg for hands to help on a regular basis through my fundraising site. But I want, today, to express that there are so many more burdens than mine. And there are so many who do not have hands helping at all, where I have a few. So, I’m not just advocating for myself. I’m advocating for all the poor, disabled, homeless, captive, imprisoned, endangered, devastated, depressed, and unsupported victims of all the ills within our society.
Lend them a hand. Live in solidarity. Challenge your assumptions and preconceptions. Dig deep into your heart and your mind, and figure out why you let burdens continue without intervention. Smash those excuses that keep you from moving toward empathy and solidarity and understanding and care. Do things that change lives. Do things that save lives.
And stop saying that god doesn’t give us more than we can handle. Stop spreading that lie. Start spreading love.
But Some Lives Don’t
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.
Learning To Be Whole 