I AM PRO-THRIVE

February 18, 2019 / christyterese / Leave a comment

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!!

And the Storm Rages On

May 3, 2018 / christyterese / Leave a comment

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!

Too Much

February 7, 2017 / christyterese / 1 Comment

There has been so much to say that I haven’t been able to say anything.

It’s one of those things that seems inevitable for me. The more there is, the less I do. I have heard others speak of this phenomenon. I’m, apparently, not the only one who suffers this problem. And I have read a bit about how decision-making gets more difficult with each decision, so having too many things to decide leads to a sort of fatigue or paralysis for your will.

I think I currently have some fatigue or paralysis of productivity, because there is just too much I feel like I must produce—or do, in other terms.

I have this long list of things that I am working on completing … so I spend no time completing tasks and all the time bingeing on The Mysteries of Laura and The Killing on Netflix. The sheer volume of tasks makes me unable to choose a task. I am overwhelmed before I even start.

There is this thing that they call “uniform dressing”. It is basically taking the school uniform into adulthood, and removing wardrobe decisions from taking up your precious decision-making energy. Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, and Vera Wang all practice(d) this way of dressing. When you think about it, they wear the same thing all the time—not the actual same clothing, but the same basic type of outfit. Vera Wang wears a legging for her everyday, and Steve Jobs used to be in a black turtleneck at almost all times. Obama has a white button down and a grey pant for every occasion—dress it up or dress it down, he is always wearing the same thing.

I’ve been thinking about trying the uniform dressing out with my own closet. I don’t know about everyone else, but I stand in front of that damned closet for way too long. And it doesn’t matter where I am headed or what I need to do that day. I spend twelve minutes in front of the closet even when I am choosing joggers and a tee for a reclusive day in my apartment. And that time staring at my clothes or trying on and taking off items increases in direct relation to the amount of “fancy” associated with the event.

The concept of uniform dressing seems like a good one, in terms of reducing time spent considering clothes. What I wish for is a similar concept for the rest of the tasks in my life. How does one “uniform clean” or “uniform pay bills” or “uniform consider the state of the union and freak the fuck out”? How do all those decisions and determinations and actions become rote and leave my brain less fatigued and less paralyzed?

I’m not sure there is an answer to those questions. They are mostly rhetorical—unless someone reading this has a solution, in which case, please share your wisdom!

So, yes, there has just been so much to write and so much to think about and so much to plan for and so much to accomplish that I have been stuck not writing and not thinking and not planning and not accomplishing. I’ve been in this sort of non-being—walking around and appearing to be handling life, but being completely stymied by all the things inside my head.

And being overwhelmed is not new to me, sadly. But this is different, because every aspect of life seems overwhelming, not just one or two.

I have worries about all the parts of my existence, because the world has changed in significant ways over the past few months, and my view of the world has changed in significant ways over the past few months. I’ve had all sorts of experiences where what I thought was true, turned out to be false. I thought that people were reasonable. I thought that Spring brought security. I thought that my worst fears were never to be realized. I thought that life had a certain level of sense attached to it, and that nonsense couldn’t become normative.

I was wrong.

And the world that I have been cast into, by my realizations, isn’t the whimsical Wonderland that Alice gets to explore, but the opposite. There is no whimsy here. There isn’t joy here. There isn’t hope here. The only thing that my world shares with Alice’s world is the irrationality—the senseless replacing the reasonable.

And the chaos is too much.

I have degrees in philosophy, religion, and social justice. I understand well the ways that thought and belief and social problems shift and form and reform throughout history. But I have never experienced a time when that shift happened with such force and velocity that I could see the change happening—feel the pendulum swing.

That force and velocity made the pendulum swing right into my gut, and throw me flailing across the room, proverbially speaking.

The worst of that flailing was in response to the emotional connection I made with the change in thought that I was experiencing. The knowledge that people whom I have connected with, stood with, and related with believed in and supported this swing of the pendulum was painful. It still is. Those who would claim to love me, on one hand, promote ideals that would kill me, on the other. And the cognitive dissonance isn’t the thing that bothers me most. The thing that bothers me most is the knowledge that I am the Other. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty truths of the matter, I am not the person who “deserves” care and kindness and assistance and love and life. I am the expendable “drain” on society. I am the margin. I am the fringe. I am the problem, and the solution to fixing me is denying me basic rights and basic needs—effectively exterminating me. Let’s all hope and pray that the literal extermination of people doesn’t become normative. But we also need to be honest about the fact that denying anyone basic rights and basic needs casts a death sentence upon them. And I feel like many in my nation are not being honest about that.

Paint the world with your fascism, if you must. But don’t pretend that you have painted it with hope and love. Admit that you have painted fascism. Admit that you are making my life a challenge. Admit that your actions are placing so much undue stress upon my brain that it cannot function normally—being paralyzed and fatigued by the hopelessness and fear that weights the synapses, slowing them to a crawl. Admit that you have painted a picture that doesn’t include me, or at least puts me in the dirty, decrepit corner where the others cast out the “problems” they don’t wish to acknowledge or deal with.

And now all the Trump voters are freaking the fuck out because they believe this is a political post. It is only partly such, because making the presidency a reality show cannot be ignored as a part of the dilemma. But, it is mostly just me looking at what is happening in the world right now, and acknowledging that I no longer have a place in it, in the view of many. I don’t deserve a space on the board when we are playing this game. I’m continually told to not pass go and not collect $200. I’m stuck in a world where nonsense is sense and reason is replaced with weird tweets and executive orders that can only serve a handful of people.

(Wait. Are we literally in a game of Monopoly right now? That would explain so much. I fucking hate that game.)

So, here it is: a post with no wise expressions and no neatly packaged solutions, but just the admission that I am overwhelmed and that I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t even know how to begin to fix that. This post ends in the same place it begins. It ends with me paralyzed and fatigued in ways that make me completely ineffective and incompetent. It ends with the pain of betrayal, and the questions about how and why my experience is invalidated and ignored. It ends with me having too much to say and too much to do and too much to fix and too much to think about. It ends with a plea to be heard falling on deaf ears.

Because that is exactly how it started.

And it is too much.