Last night I watched my kiddo grow up a little bit more. Seeing that is rare, at least for me. Growth is normally a gradual process, and you notice it after the fact.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I was working, he was doing homework, and we were talking about our days. He was working on an essay about a trip we took, he wanted a school t-shirt, and he was caught up after missing a few days of school to travel for a sports competition.
"Oh, and in social studies we talked about school shootings, and what to do if one happened in school" he said. He mentioned it so casually; deliberately not lifting his head from the drawing he was working on. Hearing this my heart sank a little bit. He's 13 now. I know he is aware that school shootings happen, but that doesn't change my urge to shield him from the fear and hurt that lurk out there in the world. Since I can't shield him from reality and prepare him for it at the same time we need to talk these things through. Like so many other frightening realities that could happen, it's better to have a plan. We have them for fires, floods, bomb threats, and abductions. We live close enough to Three Mile Island that we have a plan for any sort of meltdown or leak there. None of these things have ever happened to me, or to him, but they're a possibility, so we make plans, and we hope we never need them. Following his lead, I didn't turn my eyes away from my computer, and I asked what they talked about, and what the plan was.
The plan is to get out of the school, if at all possible.
The plan is that they may have to fight someone with a gun, if someone with a gun is in their classroom, because you want to get the gun away from that person.
The deal is, that not everyone is a fighter, and that's ok. His teacher said so.
I know that this came up because the kids asked about it. When you talk about these scenarios, and you tell kids that they need to get out of the school, they want to know about the worst case. What if you can't get out of the school? What if the shooter is in the room? What if you have to fight?
What if you have to fight, and you can't?
My kiddo is a good person. He wants everyone around him to be happy and safe. Some of that is how we raised him, and some of that is the person he is. Last night I watched him try to determine if he would be brave enough to try to keep people safe by fighting someone with a gun. He was chewing on a rice krispie treat, trying to figure out what kind of hero he thinks he is strong enough to be.
He was finishing his homework, and weighing his fear against the safety of others.
He was growing up a little bit, right there in front of me.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
I am not a commodity.
Facebook holds 879 tagged pictures of me. Spread out through 45 albums, I have added over 2000 pictures. These are pictures of me having fun. Pictures of vacations and parties and weddings and days at home. Pictures of my child, my husband, my family and friends. They are snapshots of a life filled with love and fun. Not all of these pictures are flattering. I'm fine with that. I've never had concerns about sharing them with anyone I choose to associate with on Facebook.
Then, Saturday night, this happened.
Moving past the fact that the picture in question is from 2008, and that this person had to crawl through plenty of other pictures of me and my family and my life to find it, I now refuse to have concerns about the pictures I have out there.
I have spent way too much time being uncomfortable with my body, and with my face. I have spent too many years trying to deny that I can be found attractive. I worried that these things didn't reflect the person that I am, and that they detracted from that. I worried that I needed to be nice to people who made me uncomfortable when they made comments about my ass, or my tits, or my body in general, because I didn't mean to be noticed like that. So if I was noticed in that way it was probably my fault, and I needed to make it ok. I needed to be nice, because they meant it as a compliment.
FUCK.
THAT.
I'm most upset with myself that I STILL told him it was ok, and I would take it as a compliment. I know full fucking well that it isn't. That conversation has NOTHING to do with me as a person, and everything to do with my body as a commodity.
Nothing about me is a commodity.
This is true for every single person on the planet.
This was verbal sexual attack. This happened because someone I know, someone I have spent time with and chatted with and smiled at, chose to view me as an object, and more importantly, thought that this was fine.
This is not fine. I fight every day to be respected as a person. I work every day to be a good one. I have to live every day knowing that any number of people will discount all of that, and only see a sex object. This will be the case no matter how I dress, or what pictures I choose to share. This will be the case for every woman I know.
This makes me really angry. There isn't a lot that I can do about it, but I know that I will NEVER apologize for it again. I will never say it's ok, and I will never again categorize it as a compliment.
This is the picture in question.
These are my lips. This is my mouth. I will not be ashamed of them, and I will use them to speak up for myself.
Monday, March 19, 2012
I'll be Gretel
After each refill my stash of pills dwindles, and inevitably I find myself standing in the kitchen staring into the amber abyss of an almost empty prescription bottle.
I should be used to this. It's been years. It's almost been decades. I've lost count of the amount of times I've told myself, my friends, my family, even strangers on the internet that I am a person who will need to take a pill every day for the rest of my life. If I don't take that pill then I lose the ability to be the person I am, and instead become someone else. Someone who cannot add anything positive to anyone's life, or is convinced she cannot, and so doesn't try. Someone who becomes consumed with sorrow. The idea of it, the feel of it. The weight and texture of despair become a part of every breath and fill the space in between every heartbeat. I have lived in that dark disorienting place. I have followed the twisting logic of depression right to the brink, and am lucky enough to have found my way back. I don't want to go back there. No one does. Ever. I promise you, no person ever wants to feel that way. Not once, and certainly not twice, or three or four of five times, or however many occasions I have wrongly decided that I was cured, I was fixed, and I didn't need any stupid pills to help me.
And yet . . . every month I wonder. Who am I really? Is this who I was supposed to be? I was barely a person when I got lost in the frightening woods of depression, so it's hard to say. How can I tell, at almost 35, if I am the person I was on track to be at 17? There is no app for that. No picture to take and extrapolate from. I cannot know, and it's that exact fact that keeps me wondering. What I can know is this: I lost myself. I lost the very core of who I was, and who I could be. And I found myself again, by swallowing a trail of pills, one each day, until I limped back into the world. Changed perhaps. Limping and skittish, certainly. But present, and capable of joy.
It is this knowledge that I rediscover at the bottom of that amber bottle. I was, and I will always be, Gretel. I was lost, and I was willing to be found. I will keep following that trail. If only because I know what darkness lies behind me, and I would rather step into the unknown with hope and love.
I should be used to this. It's been years. It's almost been decades. I've lost count of the amount of times I've told myself, my friends, my family, even strangers on the internet that I am a person who will need to take a pill every day for the rest of my life. If I don't take that pill then I lose the ability to be the person I am, and instead become someone else. Someone who cannot add anything positive to anyone's life, or is convinced she cannot, and so doesn't try. Someone who becomes consumed with sorrow. The idea of it, the feel of it. The weight and texture of despair become a part of every breath and fill the space in between every heartbeat. I have lived in that dark disorienting place. I have followed the twisting logic of depression right to the brink, and am lucky enough to have found my way back. I don't want to go back there. No one does. Ever. I promise you, no person ever wants to feel that way. Not once, and certainly not twice, or three or four of five times, or however many occasions I have wrongly decided that I was cured, I was fixed, and I didn't need any stupid pills to help me.
And yet . . . every month I wonder. Who am I really? Is this who I was supposed to be? I was barely a person when I got lost in the frightening woods of depression, so it's hard to say. How can I tell, at almost 35, if I am the person I was on track to be at 17? There is no app for that. No picture to take and extrapolate from. I cannot know, and it's that exact fact that keeps me wondering. What I can know is this: I lost myself. I lost the very core of who I was, and who I could be. And I found myself again, by swallowing a trail of pills, one each day, until I limped back into the world. Changed perhaps. Limping and skittish, certainly. But present, and capable of joy.
It is this knowledge that I rediscover at the bottom of that amber bottle. I was, and I will always be, Gretel. I was lost, and I was willing to be found. I will keep following that trail. If only because I know what darkness lies behind me, and I would rather step into the unknown with hope and love.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Anger Ball
I keep waiting for the nauseated twist of my anger and fear to unravel. I keep waiting for it to subside, so that I can swallow the bile that keeps rising in my throat, so that I can smile without forethought. So that I can laugh without then feeling guilty. None of that has happened yet. I have to imagine it will.
The anger is the trickiest beast, and managing it is the worst kind of rodeo. I need to stay on top of it, sly and cunning as it is, and I need to stay on top of it every second of every day. Eight seconds will never be long enough to win. It's trying to trick me into thinking it's done, or I've broken it, only to frenetically burst into action again with no provocation. Managing these bouts of almost paralyzing anger leave me shaking. They leave me wanting to cry. They leave me feeling more alone than I have ever felt in my adult life. Because there is no one to strike out at. Try as I might to focus on one thing, or one person to be this livid at, I can't. Which means that I get a little mad at EVERYTHING. All this emotional energy needs to go somewhere. I can't keep managing this. I can't tamp it down. I can't contain it. I can't. It's stealing my ability to focus and laugh and love and just be. I am becoming less me and more anger.
This is upsetting as it stands. And more so when I think about how hard I have worked to be happy. How hard I have worked to control who I am when I am angry. I don't want to be hurtful. But now I do. I don't want to tear people down or make them doubt themselves. But now I do. I don't want to explode and spew bile and hate. Except that I do.
I want to scream. I actually want to cause another person physical harm and it doesn't even much matter who. I want to vomit. I want to shake and cry. I want to sleep for a week.
I yield. Whatever it takes to not feel this way. I am broken. Please help me be whole.
The anger is the trickiest beast, and managing it is the worst kind of rodeo. I need to stay on top of it, sly and cunning as it is, and I need to stay on top of it every second of every day. Eight seconds will never be long enough to win. It's trying to trick me into thinking it's done, or I've broken it, only to frenetically burst into action again with no provocation. Managing these bouts of almost paralyzing anger leave me shaking. They leave me wanting to cry. They leave me feeling more alone than I have ever felt in my adult life. Because there is no one to strike out at. Try as I might to focus on one thing, or one person to be this livid at, I can't. Which means that I get a little mad at EVERYTHING. All this emotional energy needs to go somewhere. I can't keep managing this. I can't tamp it down. I can't contain it. I can't. It's stealing my ability to focus and laugh and love and just be. I am becoming less me and more anger.
This is upsetting as it stands. And more so when I think about how hard I have worked to be happy. How hard I have worked to control who I am when I am angry. I don't want to be hurtful. But now I do. I don't want to tear people down or make them doubt themselves. But now I do. I don't want to explode and spew bile and hate. Except that I do.
I want to scream. I actually want to cause another person physical harm and it doesn't even much matter who. I want to vomit. I want to shake and cry. I want to sleep for a week.
I yield. Whatever it takes to not feel this way. I am broken. Please help me be whole.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Ugly On The Inside
France just started enforcing it's "burqa ban" which prohibits people from publicly wearing anything that covers their faces. Personally, I think that's just plain silly. If the goal is punishing those who would oppress other people, why would you penalize the people that you think are being oppressed? I'm an enlightened white middle class lady. I listen to NPR. There are women who choose to wear the burqa! I know because I heard them on the radio! Some because it's a way to display their faithfulness, and some because it also makes them feel safe. I can't blame them for that. It's hard to know, as a woman, what attributes of ours are being judged, and it's hard to gauge, as a person, just how fair minded you are being in judging someone else.
I move that we all start to wear burqas. For most of my youth and adolescents I felt ugly, and awkward, and judged. I knew I was smart, I knew that I could accomplish things well, and I knew that none of that was appreciated by my peers. They saw the gangly girl with the feathered bangs and impressive overbite that only WAY too many years of thumb sucking can impart, and that was that. I'm sure my titanic inability to interact socially was also a factor, but still. I was miserable, and largely because of the way that I thought others perceived the way that I looked.
If we had all been covered up from head to foot maybe I would have been more confident and proud of what I could do, and would have correlated that sooner with who I was.
Now I've grown out of most of that, and have developed an outsized and self depreciating sense of humor that keeps those sort of barbs at bay. Now, other people find me to be not hideous, and sometimes pleasing to look at. Mostly though, I feel like an ugly girl, when I really think about it. I feel like I have to work extra hard to make sure that what I do well is noticed and appreciated. Then I wonder, do people who have always been appreciated for their looks feel the same way? Do they worry that because they are pretty, people don't expect them to be smart or successful? Do they worry that what they have achieved may not be entirely based on what they can do?
Probably.
Orchestras now hold blind auditions. Before they started having the musicians (each assigned a number so that the judges couldn't see the names) play behind a curtain for their audition women in professional orchestras were hard to find. After the audition process changed, and applicants were judged entirely on their abilities, and not on their appearance, the number of women in orchestras rose dramatically. I think we should all have the chance to play behind the curtain. Don't you want to know how your skills are valued on their own? That's what you've worked for, isn't it? To gain and refine those skills, whatever they are? Wouldn't it be nice to know that any achievements you have earned, or been passed over for, were entirely based on the merits of your skill set? I think so. Which means I reject Frances new law, and hereby request that we all, men, women, and children, start wearing the burqa.
I move that we all start to wear burqas. For most of my youth and adolescents I felt ugly, and awkward, and judged. I knew I was smart, I knew that I could accomplish things well, and I knew that none of that was appreciated by my peers. They saw the gangly girl with the feathered bangs and impressive overbite that only WAY too many years of thumb sucking can impart, and that was that. I'm sure my titanic inability to interact socially was also a factor, but still. I was miserable, and largely because of the way that I thought others perceived the way that I looked.
If we had all been covered up from head to foot maybe I would have been more confident and proud of what I could do, and would have correlated that sooner with who I was.
Now I've grown out of most of that, and have developed an outsized and self depreciating sense of humor that keeps those sort of barbs at bay. Now, other people find me to be not hideous, and sometimes pleasing to look at. Mostly though, I feel like an ugly girl, when I really think about it. I feel like I have to work extra hard to make sure that what I do well is noticed and appreciated. Then I wonder, do people who have always been appreciated for their looks feel the same way? Do they worry that because they are pretty, people don't expect them to be smart or successful? Do they worry that what they have achieved may not be entirely based on what they can do?
Probably.
Orchestras now hold blind auditions. Before they started having the musicians (each assigned a number so that the judges couldn't see the names) play behind a curtain for their audition women in professional orchestras were hard to find. After the audition process changed, and applicants were judged entirely on their abilities, and not on their appearance, the number of women in orchestras rose dramatically. I think we should all have the chance to play behind the curtain. Don't you want to know how your skills are valued on their own? That's what you've worked for, isn't it? To gain and refine those skills, whatever they are? Wouldn't it be nice to know that any achievements you have earned, or been passed over for, were entirely based on the merits of your skill set? I think so. Which means I reject Frances new law, and hereby request that we all, men, women, and children, start wearing the burqa.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Time and grief - a guest post
This was written by my best friend Lauren. Her cultural commentary can be seen at Trivial Pursuits: Lauren's Blog of Pop Culture.
I like to plan things. Always have, always will. I find it comforting to know when to look forward to things, when I have to be somewhere, and when I can have some down time to myself. Not everything can be planned for though. Over the past years, I have found that I try to schedule times to let myself be sad. Not just have a blue day, but really allow the grief to take up residence inside myself. The first year, I had no control over this at all, and would just start to weep when the smallest thing brought my loss back into sharp focus. I think I hated the feeling of losing control of my emotions more than the feelings themselves, so I started to try to plan for it. After all, I planned ways to get back some semblance of normal life; I went back to work, starting thinking of having more kids, allowed myself to have fun again. It stood to reason that I could schedule grief. I started thinking about what times would be hard for me, and when I could adequately “make time” to feel sad.
I wanted his birthday to be a day of remembrance and joy for the little time we had. No time for grief that day. I wanted the day before to be a day to not dwell, to think of my life before this tragedy, to block everything else out and focus on frivolities and fun. That was unequivocally the worst day of my life, and in my quiet moments, the pain on the faces of people that love me come back to me as sudden as lightning. If I give that day a moment's thought, the weight of it will consume me. So when would I allow myself to feel the sadness if not the days closest to the anniversary?
There lies the problem. Because I am going to get sad and mournful and distracted and emotional and weepy and nostalgic as his anniversary approaches. My heart doesn't know that I have to function, and do my job well, and support my friends through their own tough times, and listen when people talk to me. My head can look at a calendar and know that I have work, and bills and priorities and obligations. But my heart just knows there is someone missing in the world, and I don't need a calendar to tell me what an amazing six year old my son would have been. Cheerful and stubborn and verbose like his mother, helpful and gentle and restless like his father. Both my heart and my head know these things for sure. I can not plan a time to be sad, any more than I can plan for moments of great joy. I can just allow myself to feel them, and hopefully, after six years, learn how to embrace them when they come, feel them fully, and move on from them. Because I plan to be happy in my life, as best I can.
Monday, April 11, 2011
"If this isn't nice, I don't know what is." Kurt Vonnegut 11/11/22 - 04/11/07
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."
Even in the midst of sad and scary things there are little moments of beauty and joy. Most of them happen when we are kind to each other, I think. Being kind isn't being weak, or untruthful. Recognizing a nice moment isn't sentimental or silly.
I try to remember that every day. Sometimes it's hard. My brain starts buzzing with things I need to figure out, and lists of things I need to do (along with things I should have already done), and all of the other junk just floating around in the world that makes getting all of that done a challenge. Once I get myself all twisted up about the responsibilities and hence people that I am on the verge of letting down that larger perspective gets harder and harder to find, and I'm closer and closer to the edge of unreasoning anger. Any little thing that gets in my way seems like a personal affront, and a reminder that I'm just not good enough at the things I should be doing. Not a good enough wife, or mother, or daughter, or sister, or friend, or employee. or boss.
Then I know that it's time to breathe. It's time to be kind, and time to find something that makes me smile. It's time to look around me, and notice what I have to be happy about, and think "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
Even in the midst of sad and scary things there are little moments of beauty and joy. Most of them happen when we are kind to each other, I think. Being kind isn't being weak, or untruthful. Recognizing a nice moment isn't sentimental or silly.
I try to remember that every day. Sometimes it's hard. My brain starts buzzing with things I need to figure out, and lists of things I need to do (along with things I should have already done), and all of the other junk just floating around in the world that makes getting all of that done a challenge. Once I get myself all twisted up about the responsibilities and hence people that I am on the verge of letting down that larger perspective gets harder and harder to find, and I'm closer and closer to the edge of unreasoning anger. Any little thing that gets in my way seems like a personal affront, and a reminder that I'm just not good enough at the things I should be doing. Not a good enough wife, or mother, or daughter, or sister, or friend, or employee. or boss.
Then I know that it's time to breathe. It's time to be kind, and time to find something that makes me smile. It's time to look around me, and notice what I have to be happy about, and think "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
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