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.
value
Dances with Dragons
It is no secret that I love the HBO hit series Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin is genius in so many ways, and the show follows suit. And for many reasons, I wonder how Martin connects in the ways that he does to the plight of the marginalized in his medieval and magical imagined society.
One of the ways that I identify with the characters in this series has to do with the plight of the woman. Not one woman in particular, but a great variety of women in a great variety of situations. Raped, owned, captive, forced to do and be what another bids you to be—all are ways that women in the stories suffer due to their perceived weakness and their lack of agency. But we don’t stop there. We go on to tales of power and strength and cunning and a capacity for greatness in the lives of these fictional women.
I sometimes feel like a fictional woman.
That might sound strange. I’m not bipolar or schizophrenic and manifesting with delusions that I am a character. I simply bear burdens that I rarely hear about in true tales. My life is an epic tale already, and I assume that I am still only about half way through my life, barring the development of fatal disease or the collision with a truck that might end it a bit early.
I’ve gone through so many things in my life that it is difficult to believe that they all truly happened. I wonder how I survived. I wonder if I have some cosmic draw upon the evils of our society. I wonder whether the story has a glorious end, or whether the bad things will keep coming indefinitely for the rest of my life.
I sometimes feel like a fictional woman, because I have never met another who can relate to all of the things with which I relate. I feel like this life is impossible, not plausible, and maybe a bit crazy—this life of struggle after struggle and story after story.
The marginalization, lack of agency, and captivity that the women of Westeros experience feel like real things for me. There are moments it is too real for me—when I have my hand clamped over my mouth in shock and my stomach feels as though it has dropped out of my body, leaving an empty, sickly cavern in its place. Being owned, being abused, being captive: these are things that I know intimately. And most women don’t have that intimacy of knowledge and connection with all of the bad things you might imagine. Most women have experienced some marginalization or lack of agency, but not with all the forms of marginalization and lack of agency you can imagine wrapped up into one package.
So, who imagined my story? How did it become this epic tale that recounts the plight of each and every woman who crosses the pages of Martin’s imagination? When did I become the poster-child for trauma and trial?
I think the answer is staring me in the face. And I don’t want to name it—I don’t want to name him, because that will make me feel the unwarranted guilt of calling out the wrongs of those who made my story go so “wrong”. Because somewhere, deep in my psyche, I still feel responsible, and I still feel shame, and I still feel confused, and I still feel like I need to protect those who harmed me. That is crazy, and more than just a bit so. That is a lot crazy.
The startling thing here is not my responses to trauma and trials, but that my responses are considered less acceptable than the actions that brought about those responses. Molesting your family member, or sex without consent, or smacking around a non-compliant partner, or treating a woman like property are all less offensive to many than my psyche and my ways of coping with the traumas of my life thus far. Even more startling is the fact that my depression and disability, which are directly related to those traumas, are seen as the marks of a dirty, lazy, crazy, messed up, burdensome, whining, free-loading, fuck-up. My disabled status is more criticized than the ones whose actions caused my disabled status. I am attacked for having been attacked, and not just being fine with that. I am attacked for having been wounded and not just putting a Band-Aid on that shit and going ahead with life unaffected.
The ways I relate to the women in the imagination of Martin, and their portrayal by the producers of Game of Thrones, are ways that express the greatest possible struggles in life. But I also relate to the women becoming something stronger and more powerful and more able with each passing event. Hard things make strong people. And I hate sentiments similar to that statement, in some sense. I don’t believe that the divine offers us challenges to strengthen us or prepare us or make us useful in the lives of others. I don’t believe that triumph follows trials, necessarily. I don’t believe that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. There are plenty of things that didn’t kill me that made me broken and weak and wishing that death had been offered instead. But, I cannot deny that some of my strength was forged in the fire of evil attacks upon my person and my psyche.
I don’t want to say that I am better because I was treated worse than most. That simply is not true. I am far worse off because of the poor treatment I was subjected to in the past. But I have also developed some great skill in coping and in fighting for justice and in being a beacon for those still caught in a cycle of dark, dangerous mistreatment and marginalization.
One doesn’t negate the other.
I’m a fucking mess who learned lessons in being amazing. They exist in tandem—the broken and the brave.
And you don’t want to process that last statement. It fights against the dichotomous thinking that we have been programmed toward for centuries. Either/or thinking is rarely the best line of thought. Both/and is the way that the world actually offers itself. I am both broken and brave, at once.
The women of Westeros are broken and brave. They are overcomers. They fight to gain their freedom, their justice, their right to be whom they choose and not the ones they are told to be by others. But the knowledge of trauma and its effects upon its victims lets me know, with certainty, that these women are also irreparably broken. There are some things that you never forget. There are some things that never stop having a hold. And that hold doesn’t need to propel us toward evil and revenge and perpetual suffering. Sometimes those things that have a hold are the inciting motivation for our desire to find justice and agency and bravery. But they still have a hold—they still take a toll.
The thing that I need to keep remembering and reinforcing in my own life is that it is alright for those things to have a hold and take a toll. It is okay to suffer the effects, and it is okay to fight for freedom from those effects. And those two things can happen simultaneously. I can allow both the bravery and the brokenness to exist and to be honored and to be experienced and to be felt deeply.
I am allowed to be both/and.
Sometimes my ability to press forward toward a goal of peace and justice and healing is inspirational. Sometimes my inability to cope and overcome and heal is just as inspiring. And it is so and should be so because I am both/and. I am both a woman of strength and a woman who copes with weakness. I am both a victim and a victor. I am both broken and brave.
Learning to celebrate the difficult parts of your life and your person is not easy. I’m certainly not to the point where I do so with consistency. But I am closer to celebration today than I have been in a long time.
The challenges are difficult for the women of Westeros. The moments of champion are many for these same women. One doesn’t negate the other. One informs the other.
In the same way, my challenges inform who I become and how I live in this world. The bad things are not negated by the good. The lessons don’t erase the loss. The struggle remains real, even when it seems like I am overcoming, because there are those things that hold on—the things I can’t forget. And those things are a part of who I am, not just a part of who I once was.
Allowing yourself to be both/and, and accepting the brave and the broken equally, is not simple in its execution. It is ridiculously hard. It is something that I want to do, but that I am constantly told by my society that I should not do.
“Get over it.”. “Let it go.” “Just forgive and forget.” “Look at the bright side.” “At least you haven’t experienced [thing that one deems more crappy than your experiences].” “There are children starving in Africa.” “Focus on the future.” All are well-meaning sentiments, and all are telling me to stop being the person that I was shaped and developed into, and to ignore and subordinate the majority of the things I have experienced. And I think that desire to ignore and subordinate the broken and the bad things is a conditioned response. I think that our society tells us that value is tied to good things, and those who experience bad things are people of little worth, or of poor character.
That is a terrible, incorrect, and damaging view—that struggles are the result of poor choices by lesser beings. That is the root of every “ism” that we experience in our society—racism, classism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and more and more.
Instead of feeding the fallacy that my challenges are evidence of my personal failures, I would love to see a society that can live in the both/and. I would love to feel that my challenges are just as valued as my moments of champion. I would love to be treated as a whole—a woman who has trauma and trials and triumphs. I would love to be accepted as I am, without judgments that minimize the effects of my past experience or tell me to cover up wounds for the comfort of others.
The thing is, I cannot cover up those wounds. I am covered in wounds and scars, and those don’t disappear. They might heal a bit, or stop openly bleeding, or be less pronounced over time. But they never disappear altogether.
I have a scar across my lower abdomen from a childhood surgery. It used to be a big, hip to hip, thick, red scar. Now it is lower and thinner and just a touch lighter than the skin around it. It seems to have shrunk quite a bit, as my body grew, I aged, and time passed; but that scar is still present and always will be. And that is a part of my whole. That scar is a moment in time etched on my body for life. That scar is tied to psychological effects and physical limits and family dynamics and the response of my community. That scar says all sorts of things about who I am and where I have been and where I am traveling now. Because it says all of those things, it is important. It is as important as this moment or any moment to come. It shaped me and created a way of being and a way of reacting and a way of living that I would not have without it. So, it needs to be honored and held and accepted and loved as an important part of me.
Identifying with women who overcome the worst challenges and become champions is something that most of us can do on some level. But it takes a lot of deep consideration to understand the ways that the trial and trauma shaped the triumph. It takes a lot of understanding to see that the victories are often bittersweet, because of the place where the moment happened, the change came, and the suffering informed the future actions that brought us to the victory. That understanding is so needed.
Accepting my past is imperative to being in my life today. Honoring my struggle and refusing to hide or ignore what is difficult to cope with is necessary for me to survive, to thrive, and to continue working toward moments of victory. Being a champion doesn’t mean you are not still the oppressed and challenged and broken woman in some ways. And acknowledging both the brave and the broken in me is so important.
Because none of us are only our triumphs. All of us are both/and. We are all light and dark, commingling in a storied history. And it is time to begin celebrating that storied history. It is time to sing and dance and toast to the storied history that includes both trials and triumph. It is time to see the characters before us—both fictional and not—as both/and. It is time to honor the whole person, and end the practice of trying to bleach the dark bits in our histories and our hearts.
I am working hard to love all of the parts of my life and myself. That work is made harder by those who insist that the hard times and bad times and horrors that have been and are being endured should be hidden behind false smiles and kept behind closed doors. I need for those around me to be willing and able to accept all of me, and to look at the hard times and bad times and horrors without recoiling in shock and disgust.
There is a moment when a character in Game of Thrones, Sansa Stark, is named by her challenges. Her name—her title—is questioned because she was forced into marriages against her will. The power and influence she might have is called into question because she is no longer a woman who holds her family name. She replies by claiming that she is and always has been a Stark. She did what she needed to do to survive, but that didn’t make her into someone other. She has changed, but she is also the same. Her history and her present are both tied into one. She is twice married, but she is still a Stark in her heart. She is both/and.
I think that it would serve each of us (and likely the whole of the universe) well to respond to and respect the both/and in the lives and personas and stories around us. I believe that the acceptance of the light and the dark, the trial and the triumph, the challenge and the champion, allows us to celebrate who we are without the question of worth, value, purity, influence, or power. Being who we are, wholly and completely and without shame, is only possible if we accept both/and. I cannot celebrate and dance and play and love and live in the ways I want and hope to while others force me to question whether my value has been reduced as a result of the history I carry with me into today. None of us can truly accept ourselves or others until we acknowledge that the dark and the light commingling is a part of our humanity, and that, regardless of what we are currently experiencing, we are still valued and loved.
We need to become a society that does not place value on one and not on another. We need to be able to face what seems like it must be fiction due to the enormity of the challenge, and still smile and offer kindness and show love. We need to be people who celebrate the whole. We need to accept that the same character who is sold/married to solidify an alliance is also the Mother of Dragons. And we need to celebrate her in both of those moments—the terrifying and terrible wedding night, and climbing atop a great beast and flying to the rescue—in a way that does not deny part of the story. We need to find a way to accept that all have value, in each and every moment.
I identify with these characters, because I am forged in burning flames. I have a storied past, and those moments shape this moment and the moments to come. And I am determined to figure out the way to both dance in the darkness and dance with dragons. They are equal parts of me. They do not disappear, and they cannot be hidden. They are parts of a whole, and should be honored as such.
Join me on this journey. Let us learn to dance in darkness. Let us dance with dragons. Let us be both/and.
Production
Yesterday I deleted some people from my friends list on Facebook. This isn’t uncommon, as far as my activities in a normal week might go. It is uncommon that I have such a visceral reaction to the things people say that get them removed from the list.
These people clearly hit a nerve. So, I dug into that nerve. And my digging brought about the realization that they were saying things that I say to myself, and that is why it was so hurtful. I haven’t talked to these people in years. They know nothing of my situation, and never bothered to ask about it, but felt incredibly free to judge it, nonetheless. And they judged not just the situation, but me within the situation. They were making attacks—entirely unfounded attacks—on my character, and calling me a person who lies and steals.
Why, you might wonder, would I call myself a person who lies and steals? And I have an answer. Society.
When you are ill and cannot be “productive” in some hyper-capitalistic sense, you are called lazy and worthless on a pretty regular basis. And if not called it, then at least made to feel it. North American society oozes production. We over produce and we over consume and we are basically a big fat nation that hogs all the stuff and money. And when you don’t buy into the system of making too much and having too much you get all sorts of push-back. Has anybody been called “granola” or “hippie” for letting go of the idea that we need all the things all the time? Has anybody been chastised and berated for being too slow at making a latte or typing a document or responding to a text message? Has anybody been given the side-eye because they ordered a side salad for dinner at the steak house?
We are expected to fall in line and over produce and over consume and to always want more and always be more and never fail or slow or stop.
So, when you cannot play that game, and you sit the bench, you feel the disdain of the whole of your society. It pours over you. And you start to feel it inside of you. And it becomes not the mourning and coping that it ought be—the letting go of expectations and settling into your new truth—but a self-hatred that you never deserved.
Bodies and minds are complex and beautiful. And because they are such, we don’t always know what they are doing or why. My rheumatologist said today that I was pretty much stuck in the disabled column “unless they come up with a miracle pill”. And it would be a miracle pill because they don’t even know what causes my illness, much less how to treat it effectively. Barring an act of god, I stay this way. I stay broken and in pain and unproductive. And I hate that.
To hear someone else say to me the things that swim through my mind. To have relative strangers and former friends voice those things was hurtful because they were my fears realized. I am lazy. I am bad. I am not enough.
None of those things are true. Not one. But I feel like they are because of the way our society treats people who don’t produce in the ways that they deem fit.
I do produce.
I write when I am able, and I create works of art when I am able, and I am trying to learn to sew again, and I have a lovely little rosemary plant that I am growing in my front window. I also encourage and offer love to my friends and my daughter and my dad. Sometimes I talk with the neighbors, or send coloring pages to friends. I often spend time meditating and doing a few yoga poses and listening to or reading material that helps me cope with my illnesses. I listen to music. I play with my dog. I bake cookies once in a while. I compare theories on racism or feminism or Game of Thrones episodes with friends.
And that is more than enough. That might even be better than the Almighty Dollar or the shoddy product or the other service I might provide. If I could make a Big Mac, and not sit and braid a rug when I have the dexterity and energy, would you respect me and value me more? I hope not.
I mean, I’ve been a fast food worker, and spent much of my life working in the service industry, so I am in no way belittling the people who make your Big Mac. They deserve a thousand times more money and respect than they are currently receiving. But, what are the parameters for successful production? And who made them?
I’m choosing to reject them, no matter who made the parameters or what they are. I am enough as a disabled woman working her hardest to make ends meet and to jump through all the ridiculous hoops the state demands of me in order to get the benefits that are legally and rightfully mine through the Social Security Administration. And if that isn’t enough for you, then maybe you need to evaluate how you value people, and not evaluate what I do or don’t do with my time.
It isn’t like I break into your house and judge your parenting or cooking skill. And if you asked me to mail a letter on your behalf, I wouldn’t assume it was acceptable to judge all the areas of your life because you asked for one thing from me. And why would it be okay for you to put a spotlight on all the areas of my life because I ask you for one thing? Is it because that thing is money?
If that thing being money makes the difference, then you value money more than you value lives. If asking for a favor and asking for money are on two completely different planes, in your estimation, then you serve money, and not humanity. Because if you would pick up some milk for me, but not give me five dollars, you are placing undue value on the dollars. Of the two, five dollars is probably worth less than the favor, if you factor in the price of gas, the price of milk, and the value of your time.
I’m currently listening to a song that has lyrics that repeat, “Have you ever lost every part of yourself?” And this resonates with me, because becoming disabled felt like losing every part of myself. I can’t do what I once did. My mind isn’t the same. My body isn’t the same. My capabilities and skills and gifts and occupations and expectations all came to a grinding halt. I lost everything I was, in some sense.
Until I realized, and people reminded me, that I didn’t lose all. I still have my sense of humor and my fabulous snarky sarcasm and my beautiful eyes and that face that always shows what I am thinking (even when I want to conceal what I am thinking) and my love for humanity and my passion for justice and my artistic spirit and my love of music and the power of Wonder Woman as my guiding light. I am still me, but I produce at a slower rate than I once did. And this is only problematic if I keep buying into the idea that my value is directly correlated with my rate of production.
No person’s value should ever be directly correlated with their rate of production. Not ever.
So, these people who are no longer on my friend list did me a favor. They reminded me of who I am and what I am capable of, instead of keeping me stuck in a place where I was focused on my own lack of production and means of production. They shook me out of the place where I valued myself only as the hyper-capitalist society valued me, and brought me back to the peace of knowing who I am, and valuing myself as a human, and not as a mode of production.
Would it not be incredibly transformative for each of us to have someone push us into that knowing and that valuing of the self? What if the people working 65 hours knew that they would be just as cared for and valued if they worked 32 hours? They would likely all choose the 32. What if we all believed that our passions were worth living out, instead of things relegated to the spare room or the moments when we finally retire from the 9 to 5 production race? How many people would be writing a concerto instead of punching a time clock?
What would happen if we all looked at ourselves and one another through a lens that included valuation based on humanity and joy and kindness and love and passion and friendship and interest and curiosity and so on and so forth, instead of one that valued only production, and subsequent dollars? I would LOVE living in that world—and not just because it would mean I struggled less with seeing my disability as a failure of humanity, but because the whole world would be filled with good and love and joy, not stuff. I would much rather have the love and the joy and the good than the stuff.
So, I am not deficient. I am actually less so than those who would judge my inability to produce as a marker of deceit and theft. Because I value humanity above productivity. I look at people and see people, not burdens or benefits.
How do you see people? Do you see them at all, or are you too busy trying to prove your own productivity? Take a breath. Let it go. And look deeper.
You are not the sum of your production.
You are a person.
And you are valuable.
The Dangers of Being
Once in a while I sit and reflect. Just be. In the silence, alone, waiting, and living inside my own head. It is a different feeling, this reflection, because usually I am always thinking, in the most deliberate of ways, but without conscious effort. My mind just doesn’t stop. I’m constantly assessing—for threats, I assume, because of my PTSD, but also just weighing all the things and investigating all the things and trying to anticipate all the things.
There are times when I question whether this is the sign of a diseased mind, like the doctors who prescribed ADHD in my twenties believed, or like the literature on trauma indicates, or whether it is just a side-effect of being really, incredibly intelligent. I think my mind is always working for reasons, and I don’t always want to push away all of that thinking to just sit and be.
But I need to just be.
Disease or intelligence aside, I do feel better and gain energy and increase clarity by spending time in reflection and in meditation. It helps. It calms and centers me. I can literally feel myself be more connected to the ground with a strong foundation. I can literally feel my heart opening to love and my chest lightening with the release of anything I might be struggling with. It can be a beautiful experience.
The trouble is, that when I start to spend time in this grounded, open, lighter space, I start being more grounded and open and light.
And that might not sound like a problem initially, but let me explain the difficulties of this change.
I do what I love. I don’t care about the approval of others as much. I let things happen without interfering or controlling them. I act on my desires. I live life to the full. I enjoy my life.
If you don’t see the problem above, then you must not have grown up under the circumstances I was raised within. Because where I come from you do what you “should” and you care a LOT about the approval of others, and you interfere and control things all the time, and you don’t act on your desires, and you don’t live life to the full, and most don’t enjoy their lives. Who could enjoy life under such restraints? (I think a lot of people in that area just feign enjoyment and then go home and drink themselves stupid or cry into their pillows. I know that is usually my strategy when I even visit for a long time—drinking and crying usually happen.)
Now, I do wish to clarify that there are amazing and beautiful people in this area where I grew up. Some are even aware and thoughtful. Others still are loving and compassionate and non-judgmental. But on the whole, the area is plagued by expectations that are never met, leaving people to judge and be judged continually. And that isn’t for me.
But being—just being and not trying to meet those constant expectations—causes consequences for me.
It sometimes feels like I am worlds away from those people and that place. Other times I feel swallowed up by my own expectations, which were adopted and enforced in the stead of the ones who did so in my youth. But, for the most part, I am shedding the rules and regulations and all of the “shoulds” that were once commonplace. The struggle that I face, then, is the disconnect between the freedom of my current life and the captivity of my earlier life.
Tonight I ate a cookie baked with cannabutter …the whole cookie, not just my usual few bites per hour to manage pain, but enough to get me feeling a little stoned… and then I considered a booty call, but decided against it. I figure I will wait things out and see if the guy from the other night decides to come back for more. Because the other night I had sex for the sake of sex. And it was fun. And I really liked it. And I am absolutely up for more, but I don’t feel like making the ask. Being pursued seems like it might be fun. And there is nothing wrong with any of the things I said in this paragraph, but that is not how the people in the place where the expectations and judgments live will see it. Their perspective allows my situation to be bad or sad or cause for “concern”. It does not allow them to accept that I like having sex but don’t plan on getting married anytime soon. It does not allow them to accept that I break the law to feel better and eat my weed cookies anyway. It does not allow them to enjoy my life.
And their enjoyment of my life is not a thing for which I will argue. My life isn’t meant for them to enjoy. It is meant for me to live and enjoy. But what I am arguing for is to have the freedom to live life from my own perspective, in my own experience, filled with my own truth and understanding, without it being tantamount to murderous crime sprees.
I’m a good person. And I don’t say that because I do good things, but because I am a person. I’ve not met a single person who didn’t have some good in them. (And I have met some pretty awful people. I even married a pretty awful person. It is saying a lot that I can find good in even him.) And that good doesn’t disappear because I break a conservative evangelical’s rules. I know that is how many of the people in my history have seen people, however. There is good and there is bad, in their view. There isn’t anything in between and one cancels out the other, it would seem. So, my pot consumption and sex while unmarried would make me bad (or sad, or misguided, or confused). Really, it just makes me a good person who does what she wants and lives according to her own convictions and not the convictions of others. I can listen to and understand your convictions, but I don’t need to make them mine.
Sometimes, just being, and doing what I want and what feels right to me, gets me into trouble with these others. And that is the danger here—finding freedom in your own life only to be chastised by those not even in your life. (Being related to me doesn’t count as “in” my life, per se. You would need to talk to me more than once every five years for that to be the case.) It is difficult to live between worlds. Do I pretend? Do I lie about what I believe and what I do? Do I tell people only what I believe they want to hear? Doing so would mean denying myself the freedom I spend the time to achieve, and being locked in a cage of expectations once more. And pretending for too long leaves you lost—you forget who you are after a while. But not doing so means having to field angry messages and argue for my freedom a ridiculous amount of time, or restricting people’s access to my writing and my opinions (aka, unfriending half of my Facebook “friends”).
Being is hard work.
And apparently it is also lonely work, as the list of people who accept me as I am grows ever shorter.
Ironic that “Just As I Am” is a hymn that I heard often growing up, now that most who sang along with it don’t follow it at all. Maybe the divine accepts me as I am, but I haven’t met many evangelical Christians that would do the same. And with every move I make away from traditional views of scripture and toward a divine concept that offers more hope than criticism and more love than judgment, I lose more friends.
I was recently accused of “just trying to cause fights” by expressing my views. I don’t need fights caused. My life has quite enough struggle on its own, and I am not looking to add more. But I also don’t need to feel shamed and judged and hated for the beliefs I do hold, and the ways that I do live. I often wonder why those who comment repeatedly on my Facebook posts think I am starting a fight, when they are perpetually commenting. If they don’t want to argue about a point I have made, then they don’t need to object. And when I refuse to engage their comments, some people get extremely agitated and accost me. But I suppose I am considered the one at fault because I have the divergent viewpoint.
That word, “divergent”, just reminded me of the book series of the same title. It turns out that divergence isn’t really all that terrible, and that the girl who seemed all wrong was actually “right”. And it is a bit fun to believe that I am the lead character in this story. It is fun to think about how it will feel to know that I am justified. And I am justified not by the ones who now judge me, but in a much greater scheme and a much broader sense. Because right or wrong, we all have the freedom to be. And that being can look however we might choose for it to look. I am not afraid of the choices I am making. I am not ashamed of the choices I am making. And I am not hiding from the choices I am making.
Trust me, I get the whole fucking consequences concept. I’ve understood that concept since about age four, but it was beaten into my head (sometimes literally) later in life as well. If my choices really aren’t the “best” or “smartest” or most “good”? I don’t really care. Because they are the ones I have made, and I made them for reasons—often well researched and scientifically proven reasons.
And you have the freedom to make your decisions too. And you are subject to your own set of consequences.
I would never say that the only people who are right are the people who got pressed up against an appliance the other night with a hand around their throat and liked it and begged for more. I would never say that the only people who are right are the ones who believe sexual purity is the mark of a good woman. (Actually, I would never believe those people were right in that particular instance, but let’s just imagine for a second that they could be.) The point is, I get to make my choices, and you get to make yours. And I rarely attack people for their choices … unless I am super hangry or in a lot of pain. I might disagree with your ideas, but I don’t use ideas to harm people intentionally. But I also don’t think my ideas are the measure of my worth. Because, as I said earlier, I am a person. And people have value because they are people, not because they hold the right set of beliefs or have the correct courses of action. People have value because they are people.
I wanted to type that I often question how the world might look if we all let one another be, instead of focusing so much on what one should or should not do, but I don’t actually question that much anymore. I don’t believe that many of the people I know will ever change the way they now live, and I have stopped expecting the same level of acceptance from others that I offer myself. It has, after all, taken years and years for me to let go of expectations and accept myself as I am. Some days it is still a struggle for me. I’m guessing it will be as difficult, or more difficult, for others to do the same. But I also don’t question my desire to break ties with those who would wish I hate myself more again—and I understand they would be well-meaning and not trying to make me hate myself, but by judging my actions and beliefs constantly, that is exactly what they do. They make me slip back into the self-hatred of my earlier years. And I am refusing to go back to that place, if I can help it.
So, being, in my case, might mean being tied to only a handful of loving people who understand and accept who I am. And it might mean refusing to engage with those who offer me shame and self-loathing in place of the freedom. Being might be difficult in all these ways.
It is so worth it.
I have never been more satisfied with life, even though much of my life currently sucks. But I have never let go and let life be mine in this way before. I wish I would have. Because being, and being me, are both fabulous.
To close, I suppose I would like to encourage you to be. Just be. Free from expectation and letting go of control and allowing your happiness to be of great importance and offering your life what it desires to be, instead of always trying to fit your life into someone else’s desire for what you ought be. Find yourself, in the quiet meditation space, and leave the space where judgments and disappointments and all those other negative self-images are formed. Let go and be.
And, if you don’t want to, fine. It is your choice. But I think you might enjoy who you are, once you start just being. I know that I have.
Learning To Be Whole 