I have been away from my blog for a long time. Maybe not the longest break I've ever taken, but it's been a couple of years. The last time I sat down to write something my brain was not in the best place, and the last two years have been really rough. I don't know if I'm entirely past that, but I think it's getting a lot better. 

I recently quit my job of almost 11 years. While this was not an easy decision, it was also absurdly easy. I thought that I would be devastated to leave a place I have loved so much and work that has meant so much to me, and yet that really has not been the case. So even though my leaving wasn't planned, and I lost some friends in the process, I don't feel the sadness I expected. 

And I suddenly find myself with extra energy, and so here I am, with a head full of thoughts, itching to write them down. I have missed writing, and I hope I can do this more. 

I have a critical self-reflection due tomorrow for one of my classes (I decided to go back for my MSW. Don't ask me why I decided that one of the most chaotic and stressful times in my life made me think I was ready for grad school) and it's all about radical self-care. I have to choose up to two areas of my life to prioritize self-care and take pictures, and talk about them. It's a little weird, but I'm finding school a little weird. 

One of the things I think I want to do though is write. I don't think it matters what I write, but when I cut myself off from writing because I'm too tired, or I don't have time, or I don't think I have something to say, my mental health suffers. Even if these words never make it past this page to being published, and nobody but me ever reads them, it helps. 

Because here I can say that although leaving my job of 11 years was easy, letting go of a 10-year friendship was not so easy. Even though it kind of was. And that makes me sad in a different way. And here I can say that I still feel a little dark and strange on the inside, and maybe I've just been too exhausted to even see how unhealthy my thoughts have been. 

I'm not great at self-care and I genuinely struggle to prioritize what I need over what other people want. So today I made a space to work in that feels comfortable and functional and I want to commit to keeping my personal space clean and clutter free. Writing and managing my clutter. That's going to be my self-care, at least for now. 

Flying on the raggedy edge

I have felt recently like a latch on a door that has withstood the elements, friction, pressure, and probably a kick or two, before finally giving way and letting go of everything trapped behind it. The proverbial skeletons in my mental closet are scattered around the entry way, and try as I might to cram them back in, there are stray bones everywhere. It's not pretty. 

And it is so frustrating. I have been in control of my brain for years now. I faced down so many challenges, so much pressure, so many crises, and all manner of other assorted crap, and come through it just fine. Coping skills solidly in place, I was starting to feel invincible. 

But...apparently not. About halfway through 2020 I noticed a little crack. A little break in that dam where some anxiety was leaking through. (Be honest, if you weren't anxious in 2020, you were in a coma, right?) But it was enough that I wasn't coping well with it. I had to work through the pandemic, but unlike doctors, nurses, and other essential workers, nobody was buying us coffee. We just showed up to work with the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our community and kept on going. And going. So I saw my doctor and I said, "Hey, I'm doing all the things that usually help me manage this, and it's not being managed. Can I get some help?" and she got me a prescription, and a few months later I got myself together and took the last of my prescription, and I was fine. 

Then, my oldest kid, started high school. This has not gone well. I suppose it could be worse, but it hasn't been great. And I've had to grapple with a whole different set of issues. Issues I do not feel equipped to handle. And issues that feel eerily similar to the ones I had when I was in high school. 

Let me tell you, I did not know it was possible to feel this afraid of what might happen as I have lately. The idea that my child might experience anything similar to what I did as a teen, and might end up needing the same kinds of care and intervention, has shaken me to my absolute core. I go to sleep every night terrified that by morning they could be gone. I walk around constantly thinking of what else I can do, how else can I help, what additional support to they need? How did we get to this point? Where did I fail? 

Because make no mistake, the responsibility for this mess lands squarely on my shoulders. Either genetically or through failures of parenting, I just know, without question, that I am responsible. And if I am this bad at parenting, well it kind of throws my whole view of myself into question. 

I also know though, that my brain is unreliable. I'm not starting over from scratch here. I've walked these shadowed and bony places in my brain many times before, and I know I can't always trust what I find. But I just can't shake this feeling that I have failed, that I have fundamentally failed, to live up to the obligations of parenting and by extension, everything else. 

I keep waiting for someone to come along and just confirm for me what a mess I am, and maybe take my kids away, because I don't feel fit to care for them. I know they're fed, and clean, and loved, and dressed, and housed, and all those other things, but can't someone see that I am defective in some way? I am broken on the inside somewhere, and I have been lying to myself for years and decades and maybe my whole life, that I am okay. Maybe I don't actually know what okay is. And I desperately just want to crawl into a hole and hide from everything. 

But I'm not. I'm at work. I go home. I hug my family. I feed them dinner. I do laundry. I shop. I made someone laugh this morning. I put on my functioning human suit and I go through all the motions. I send emails. I answer the phone. I ignore the rattle of bones in my head whispering "failure, failure, failure" and I paste a smile on, and I pretend I am okay. 

And I am exhausted by it. I feel that I am a catastrophe away from collapsing amongst the bones in my foyer and just weeping until I dissolve and take up residence as a skeleton in someone else's closet. I probably won't, but sometimes it's tempting.

The Danger of the "Other"

 This morning I was listening to Tom Morello's "One Man Revolution" radio show, and he was talking about an incident when he was a kid where the KKK had left a noose on his garage. It frightened him for a long time. This story was part of the larger narrative of the show which was centered around Juneteenth. Towards the end, he played the song "Fuck Tha Police" by NWA, which I have heard before, but I guess I hadn't really listened to the words. Today I did. I was struck by the anger at being constantly "othered" by police, and the infuriating relevance of the message these many years later. 

I can't blame them for their anger. I can't fault them for their mistrust of this system that continues, even now, to hold them apart from society and prevent them from being fully included. That targets their safety, their lives, their communities. The amount of generational trauma that we as a society continue to inflict because we fear an "other" is disgusting. And despite the many good, honest, ethical, compassionate cops that I know, fuck the police as a racist, unjust system that targets anyone it deems as "other" and especially those who are not white men. 

I have had a few conversations recently about an ongoing crisis within the United Methodist Church. The debate rages on about the inclusion of LGBTQIA persons in the life and ministry of the UMC. Some of us argue that by failing to ordain people who are LGBTQIA, or to marry them, that we are excluding them and sending the message that they are not welcomed into our congregations. Well, maybe their volunteer hours or their money, but not their full persons. Others argue that they are perfectly welcome to attend, they just can't participate in these areas because, you know, sin, or something. And really, this is just the church "othering" someone. Looking with suspicion and mistrust on a group of people, and deciding to exclude them from full participation in the life of the church. However you want to parse it semantically, the result is the same. 

So I cannot blame people who are LGBTQIA, or those who support them, from leaving churches (not just the UMC) in droves. And what responsibility do we, as individuals, bear for continuing to prop up a system that others and dehumanizes these persons? There are many sins we can lay at the feet of religion, but the fact remains, religion does not exist without us, and these sins are ours. The othering, whether done by us or not, is tolerated by us, and therefore propagated by us. So I cannot blame any who look with suspicion, and hostility, on my faith or any other. 

I have never ending conversations about those who find themselves without a home, who are suffering from chronic, debilitating mental and/or physical illnesses. Those who are often "othered" in some other way, in addition to the serious crime of being poor and without housing. It is so easy to scapegoat these people. To look at them and see a threat, to see danger. The fact that they are often already viewed as "other" because of their race, their sexual identity or orientation, their lack of wealth, well...clearly they deserve this. They must. They are dangerous "others" and we need to make sure we hold them down, and never let them forget that they do not belong and their suffering is their own fault. 

This is the danger of "other." The dominant culture will discard, abuse, shame, dehumanize, and destroy anything it perceives as a threat, as other than itself. And the rest of us are all others in this system. We are all inches away from exclusion, from persecution, from the violence that is a feature of the system, not a flaw in it. These systems were designed to protect the power of one group to the detriment and degradation of all others. And it works by constantly giving us an "other" to scapegoat. Someone to point at and blame for the ills of society. Thugs, degenerates, lowlifes, crazies, druggies, whores, criminals, perverts. If we keep looking at the others, if we keep pointing our anger and rage at those who are different, then this unjust, broken, violent system continues. 

I don't want to be part of a society that says leaving a noose on a child's house is okay, or that we will take your time and money but you aren't really welcome here, or you deserve all of your misery because you are poor and sick. I am disgusted by the notion that wealth somehow indicates the value of a person, that skin color means anything beyond how much melanin you produce, that your sexual orientation or identity has anything to do with how worthy of love and acceptance you are. I am angry, and sick at heart, and utterly fed up. 

Who am I?

 I've been thinking recently about identity. What it means, what mine is, how do we know ourselves.

I was watching Moana with my daughter and there is a moment toward the end where Moana is having a crisis of faith in herself and her calling. She gets some good advice, and then she begins to identify the parts of herself that are foundational to who she is. She loves her island, she loves the sea, her role in her family and her community, she lists the struggles and challenges she has already faced and overcome. She draws these together and identifies herself by all of them. 

I was also having a conversation recently with a friend and it also got me thinking. How did I arrive at my identity? That intimate self-knowledge and awareness. Who even am I? How do I know? I wish I could say that I had a beautiful musical montage and awakening to self and at the end was confidently able to declare to the universe, "I am Leia!" but not so much. 

This is, as best I can tell, what really happened. For many years, I wrapped my identity in my pain, my trauma, and my anger. It drove me until it broke me. And then, sitting there in the shattered pieces of who I thought I was, I found a piece of myself that I didn't hate. I found compassion for someone else. 

Compassion was my first step, my first building block. But who am I? I am a girl who loves to write. So I write. I write a lot. I write my pain, and anger, and shame, and guilt, and somehow it helps. So I have compassion and writing. I find that I love my family, this weird bunch of people with funny edges that seem to fit mine. So now, family is important and necessary, and I'm adding people to it because family isn't just what you are born into. 

Over the years I have added empathy, a love of fantasy novels, the joy of cooking. I love making people laugh. I love singing (in choir, no karaoke solos for me!). Knit these all together, and it gives you a picture of me. 

But still...are these things me? I am, and am not, all of these things. I am, and am not, any label that I might choose or have ascribed to me. The person sitting here, writing all of this, thinking these thoughts, is me, but I seem to be on an endless quest to discover exactly who this person is and how they fit into the world. 

And at the end of the day, what is me except a lot of fat sitting in salt water with electricity running through it? 

Kill your heroes

Every election season we set about setting up our hero. The person, the guy, who will represent us and move the country in the direction that we think is best. This goes through several stages, but it culminates in this "election night" nonsense. The winner isn't chosen on election day. 

Democracy is not a once in four year spectator sport.

Democracy demands that you get up and get involved. Get your skin in the game. 

For some of us (BlPOC, Native Americans, women in general) our skin has been in this fucking rigged game, voting year after year for men who look nothing like us and who can never understand what it is to exist in the world as women, as BlPOC, as LGBTQ, as Native and hoping against hope that the person who wins might make an effort to understand and do better. Promote policies to make our lives better, to improve the world we live in, maybe try to advance policies that won't just fuck everyone except the old rich guys over. 

The fact that this election is even close, is even a contest, is insulting. Just to be clear, Trump is the antithesis of equity, justice, fairness, or anything else that's good unless you're white and rich.

I am not white, nor am I rich. I am the sole earner in my household. My husband lost his job just before the pandemic and thank God because he has been needed at home to help homeschool  our kids. Trump's policies have not helped my family. They have not put more money in the bank or made the future brighter for my children. Trump does not care about me or mine. 

Trump cares about himself. He cares about what makes him look good. He cares about power. He is a narcissist. 

I know it doesn't matter now, now that people have decided and votes have been cast and decisions have been made, but I want people to know. Voting for Trump is a vote against the people next to you. Voting for Trump is a vote for social policies that hurt people. Voting for Trump is voting against our own well-being and future. I want to be on record saying that so when they come to take me away for dissent, at least I earned that shit.

This virus is stupid and (sometimes) people suck.

I sat at my desk this morning, and I cried. I was typing notes, thinking about my clients, and it struck me again how many of them we might lose to this pandemic.

And how people in power do not seem to care that we might lose them. That their deaths, and the deaths of our elderly, and our sick, and our neighbors and friends, our coworkers, might just have to be the price we pay for a "good economy."

I look at those who are helping, who are showing up in spite of everything, who keep doing the good, necessary, hard work of keeping us safe, keeping us fed, keeping us well, and it makes me sad.

We are not testing people at the rate we should be. We are only testing people with possible exposure or showing symptoms. People are still partying, still travelling, still shopping, and do not yet see that the price for this frivolity could be their lives, or the life of someone they know and love, or even someone they don't know and will never meet.

I am finding it so hard to have hope. So long as your 401k is good and you have enough to eat, I guess that's all that's supposed to matter.

Listen to the experts, and the scientists, and the health providers, and the people on the front lines. Stay home if you can. Be careful if you can't.

Remember that all human life, any human life, is worth more than the stock market or another roll of toilet paper.

Trying to be OK with "good enough"

Recently someone asked me what I would be giving up for Lent, and I replied that I did not know. I've been thinking about it, and while I don't feel that any one thing or activity is really weighing on me to give up, I have noticed an interesting internal trend that might be worth examining and working on during the season of Lent.

Before we begin, it is important to know about me that my standards for myself are absurdly high. My therapist (when I was going to therapy) has told me that, my family tells me that, my friends tell me that. I am convinced that nothing I do is good enough, even if I acknowledge that I do it adequately. 

Two examples spring immediately to mind. Number one is writing. My whole entire life people have told me I am a good writer. I continue to believe that my writing is only adequate and any compliments are entirely based around being polite, but cannot possibly be sincere. I know I'm not "that good." I'm no famous novelist, not a brilliant poet, an award-winning journalist. I'm alright, but alright isn't good enough.

Number two is singing. I love to sing and have been singing in choirs since I was a small child. I have never had any training, taken any kind of music theory, or studied music in any serious way, but over the course of many years I've picked up a few things, and I'd say I'm alright. Even if someone tells me that I sing well, or that I have a lovely voice, I again will write it off as mere politeness because I know that I am no great singer. I'm alright, but alright isn't good enough.

I spend a lot of time weighing myself against people around me. That person exercises more, that person has way better fashion sense, that person is amazingly talented, that person is funnier, that person is a better writer. Everyone is better, and I'm not good enough.

It's a really self-defeating attitude, because you see, if you aren't good enough, then you don't really have to take yourself into scary, unknown places. Because you aren't good enough, someone better will do it. Someone better will step forward. Someone better, because you, clearly are not good enough so why bother trying? They don't need your gifts, or your presence, or your thoughts, because someone better has brought theirs.

And of course, when I do take my not good enough self out into the world to do all the life things, I have terrible and persistent anxiety that other people will notice how not good enough I am. That they will tell me to take me and my mess of a self somewhere else because I am not good enough and they don't need that.

Another thing to know about me is I am incredibly stubborn, and I refuse to let myself keep me from the things that bring me joy. Writing brings me joy. Singing brings me joy. Making people laugh brings me joy. Helping people brings me joy.  Cooking brings me joy. So I show up to do those things anyway, but it would be nice to do them without listening to me tell me all the ways that they weren't perfect.

So when I think about giving something up for Lent, I mean, sure. I could give up caffeine, or I could give up social media, or fast food, or something like that. But if Lent is about giving up those things that really hold us back from relationship, that really separate us from God so that we can deepen and grow our spiritual life, then giving up those things is not going to help.

Because what I need is a hard mental reset. I need to give up the idea that everything about me is not good enough because I am who God created me to be and that is good enough.