It's Time To Stop Shaming People For Having Harmless Fun

This morning, as I was browsing my news app, I came across this article from LADbible.  For the TL;DR version: guy runs right into Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station in London, hits the wall pretty hard, shouts "Fuck, it's closed," and runs away.  The article recounts the scene from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in which Harry's unable to get to the platform, speculates that this anonymous prankster was doing it for clout (which makes no sense; his name has not been publicised), and anyway, it happened back in 2018.  And when I saw it on my news app, after the paragraph that ends with "It turned out that—on that occasion—it was because the House Elf Dobby had sealed the door in an attempt to stop Harry from travelling to Hogwarts, rather than the fact that it simply doesn't exist and magic isn't real", there was a one-sentence paragraph that simply read, "Sorry, folks, but it's time to grow up."

While the sentence seems to have disappeared from the article as of this writing, I have to admit that I have a bit of a problem with the fact that it was even there at all.  Regardless of what you think about J.K. Rowling and her transphobia—and wow, that's probably going to be a whole other post on here eventually—I deeply disagree with the idea that being an adult has to mean that the only fun you're allowed to have involves raising children, exchanging pleasantries with co-workers, and occasionally going out to dinner (probably for a work thing).  There's this idea out there that once you reach A Certain Age—and nobody really says what it is, but it's probably somewhere around thirty years old—you have to become dull and boring and just completely give up anything that isn't 100% serious and practical.

Quite frankly, fuck that shit.

As far as I'm concerned, even though we carry the responsibilities of adult life, adults are allowed to be silly.  We're allowed to be creative.  We're even allowed to make utter fools of ourselves in front of other people by making references to pop culture things that have since fallen out of style and/or favour.  I'm actually quite in agreement with the sentiments expressed by Randall Munroe in this xkcd comic—that people who are grown-ups now get to decide what that means to us.  Growing up doesn't have to mean that you never have fun or make people laugh.  It just means that you have different responsibilities and more demands on your time.

Besides, life is hard right now.  The cost of living is unconscionably high.  There are two major conflicts happening with the potential for more, and in most of the world, financial policy seems to be focusing on making sure that all of the money gets funnelled to those who don't need it and away from those who don't have enough.  Climate catastrophe abounds.  So does human tragedy.  We need positive change and we need it yesterday.

We also need to add what joy we can to the world.  As long as we're not harming others, that is more than okay!  Sometimes we need a bit of silliness, laughter, and mirth.  Those who roll their eyes and make snide comments will do so no matter what; personally, if I'm going to encounter the petty unpleasantness of small minds, I'd rather do so in the company of someone who's trying to make the world a better, shinier place, even if it's only temporary.

In the words of one of my favourite Tumblrs...

"It is my solemn and sacred duty to make the vibe as silly as I can, and with your support we could achieve maximum silliness."

Nostalgia

 For better or worse, I'm an older Millennial.  My childhood was filled with bright colours, wild 80's hair, awesome music, weird and sometimes dangerous toys (for example, I knew someone who broke her ankle using a Skip-It, and I myself incurred a number of minor injuries on my childhood best friend's Pogo Ball), and technology that was considerably less advanced than what we have today.  I could never have imagined that touching a spot on a screen would allow me to issue voice commands to my car, telling it what phone number to call or giving it an address for the GPS (on the rare occasion when I have Location Services enabled on my phone, anyway).  Being able to take a small-ish rectangular device out of my pocket to look up practically any bit of useful (or uselesss) information was unthinkable.  Portable computers technically existed—my father had one for work—but there is no way on Earth I'd ever have wanted that thing to be on my lap, because it was really, really heavy; I honestly think that it weighed more than my dog at the time, a big, goofy black Labrador Retriever.  Meanwhile, I'm fairly certain that my current laptop computer weighs only a little more than my violin in its case.  Times have changed.

Life, as they say, seemed simpler then.  But then, it always does to a child.  I'm sure today's kids will be saying much the same thing about our current world as I'm saying about the world as I experienced it in the 80's and 90's.

People love to roast my generation for being nostalgic, but I have to admit, I understand the urge to be nostalgic, even the urge to feel a bit smug about the things that we knew and remember, and the skills that we have, that young people today don't understand or have no reference for.  (I recently saw a post on Tumblr about a fanfic in which there was a DVD-style menu repeating on a VHS tape, which is impossible unless, for some unfathomable and/or trolling-related reason, somebody actually recorded a DVD menu onto a VHS tape.)  Because frankly, we've lived through a lot, and it's natural that many members of my generation—perhaps especially my segment of it, the older ones who are sometimes called "Xennials" or "the Oregon Trail generation"—should be looking back at that time in our lives with a certain amount of longing.  

We weren't expected to be available to anyone and everyone at all hours of the day or night.  Most of us were cared for reasonably well by our parents or other caregivers.  The predominant message about us was that we could change the world, our lives had worth and meaning, and if we worked hard enough, we would be rewarded for it.  And as anyone who hasn't been living as a hermit for the past quarter century or so would know, it hasn't exactly worked out that way.

My generation has gone from being told that we were the hopeful builders of a bright future to being convenient scapegoats for many of the ills of the present.  We're told now that we're the entitled and self-centred destroyers of multiple industries, too lazy to work hard enough to afford a basic home (including apartment rentals), too old to be worth a hand up when we have trouble finding work (many of the most helpful job-finding services and entry-level positions with even half-decent compensation are only available to recent college or university graduates under the age of 30), and overall, just a giant disappointment to the world.  Mental health issues run rampant among Millennials,  and have done so since we were in our 20s or so at least.  Small wonder that so many of us try to find joy where we can, including in silly slang and the memory of a time when we were told that we had value, that our dreams were worth having and chasing, and that if we worked hard enough, we could change the world for the better.

Life isn't easy for most people.  And the 80's and 90's weren't exactly a cakewalk either,  but it's easier to get sentimental about those decades because they're so temporally far away now.  And frankly, I find that it's nice to remember a time when I, and people like me, weren't being blamed for everything that's wrong with the world.  It's nice to remember hope.  Sometimes I'm foolish enough to still feel it.

So, yeah.  Cringe at Millennials for being nostalgic if you must.  (Given our general fondness for self-roasting humour, we may well be cringing right along with you.)  But don't be an asshole about it.  If nothing else, someday there'll be somebody poking fun at you for ridiculous generational stereotypes and nostalgia for the world as it was when you were young.

Unexpected

Yesterday something happened that I'm not exactly proud of—but first, I think I need to provide a bit of context.

A few years ago, my best friend introduced me to an old friend of his from high school.  She's lived an interesting life; while I don't think it's best for me to provide details, I can say with certainty that she is well-travelled, creative, insightful, and an interesting person.  We hit it off pretty well, and though we were never close, we did become friends.  She joined the community choir that my best friend and I sing with, and the three of us went out to dinner together from time to time.  I was even part of a small writing group that she coordinated for a time before it fell apart, mostly due to scheduling issues.  Along with our in-person association, we were Facebook friends and followed each other on Twitter (using my other account).

Then, rather suddenly, about two and a half months ago, she abruptly unfriended me on Facebook and blocked me on Twitter.  I still don't know why, and at this point I'm not actually curious, but it baffled, confused, and hurt me for quite some time.  Maybe it was because I made a comment about disliking "cancel culture" and the way that it tends to inadvertently cover up wrongdoings rather than actually hold people accountable for their actions.  Maybe it was because I first "liked," and then subsequently unliked, a meme that she shared that listed a number of reminders for guests of people with pets that seem pretty reasonable at first reading, but at a closer look reveal a surprising amount of hostility and lack of respect for people's boundaries.  I'm sure you've seen similar ones; they list things like "they love me, they're only friends with you" and "I will lick you, so if you don't like it you can leave" and "I live here, you are just a guest".

Anyway, those are the only possible reasons for friction that I can think of; as far as I knew, we had been on good terms before mid-March.  She'd even recently invited me to go to dinner with her and another woman from the defunct writing group at some time to be determined in the near future.  But whatever the reason, before I realized that I'd been unfriended and blocked, I tried to say hello to her at a choir rehearsal, and she just ignored me.  At that point, I realized that something was probably up, and I soon discovered that she'd disappeared from my followers/following lists on Twitter—looking her up while I was logged in revealed that she had blocked me—and she'd also disappeared from my friends list on Facebook.

I was angry and hurt, which is reasonable, considering the circumstances.  I didn't lash out at the time; I just avoided her at choir practice and let our mutual friend know that she had cut me out of her life, though she'd maintained her ties with him, and that I was fine with him maintaining the friendship between them if he wanted to.  And I still am; after all, it's not my place to dictate who anybody should be friends with, regardless of our relationship.  And it's not like the abrupt termination of my friendship with her has anything whatsoever to do with him.  I don't really want to hear anything about her, but it's okay with me if he sees her (though as I said, I am well aware that it is not my place to dictate who he can and can't be friends with).

So.  Fast-forward to yesterday morning, when I was running errands with M., a close friend of mine.  Before we did anything else I had to stop to put gas in the car because it was getting a little closer to the 1/4 tank mark than I'm comfortable with.  While I was refuelling the car, I saw her pull into the same gas station (her vehicle is somewhat distinctive).  I shrugged it off; I didn't think I'd care if we ran into each other when I went in to pay.  After all, I reasoned, she's the one who acted inappropriately.

M. tells me that after I went into the store to pay for the gas, my ex-friend looked over at the car for a moment and then followed me in.  After I'd paid and I was on my way back out, she walked up to me and said my name in a tone of rather obviously fake surprise.

Things have happened in the past year that have made me somewhat less willing to tolerate bullshit than I used to be.  The response was automatic; I was furious!  I turned around and glared at her and said as coldly and calmly as I could manage, "You cut me out of your life without even bothering to tell me you were upset with me.  I do NOT want to talk to you."  Then I left.  I don't know how she reacted to what I said; I just wanted to get the hell out of there.  And I'm very glad that M. was with me; she already knew what had happened back in March, and it didn't take long to explain to her why I was so upset.  She's always been good at making me laugh, and soon I had regained a certain amount of my mental equilibrium.

Was that the right course of action to take?  I don't actually think so, especially given that the values that I try to live my life by are love, compassion, and forgiveness.  I am also aware that my ex-friend has a history of depression, so perhaps I should have been gentler.  Still, it was a very authentic reaction, and the outright hostility with which I reacted to her was a surprise even to me, but I suppose it shouldn't have been.  Regardless of anything that I believe, I am still human and I fail to live up to my own ideals at times.  And while I believe in the importance of forgiveness, I don't believe that "I forgive you" means "it's okay that you hurt me."  Because it isn't okay.

So...I'm not actually proud of how I acted yesterday.  It was petty and rude.  I'm not sure that I would at this time be capable of saying or doing anything else, though, if that exact situation were to happen again.  The hurt is just too recent.

Reclaiming my voice

This post has been a long time coming, I know.  It was never my intention to abandon this blog; but for a time, I believe I lost my voice. 

Not my physical one, of course.  But written?  Absolutely.  It was a gradual process, and one that I think I believed I deserved in some twisted way.  Several years ago, I became involved with a feminist group on Facebook (I know, I know...) that was, at the time, a vibrant and active community, as supportive of all of its members as it could be, and one in which people new to various feminist concepts could learn and ask questions and make mistakes.  It wasn't perfect, because the people involved weren't perfect, but it didn't need it to be.

And then, as progressive communities so often do these days, it went toxic.  I'm not going to go into the details here, but suffice it to say that the group's creator and a number of the moderators left, a new crowd took over, and suddenly things weren't so good anymore.

The group's death throes were painful to witness, particularly when I saw people who I knew to be kind and gentle being called out as toxic trash because they'd accidentally misused words that were new to them or had simply stepped on the wrong nerve at the wrong time.  People who had every right to be mad were summarily kicked out of the group for pointing out that more than one marginalized group of people in the group had been hurt.  Apologies were blasted as "making somebody else's pain all about you" and those who made them were also heavily encouraged to leave.  If someone in the "in crowd" called out someone who wasn't as educated/informed about the group's new focus as they were, and that person responded with confusion and expressions of hurt, that person would be told to sit down and shut up and listen while the real marginalized people had their say.

I learned, gradually, that voices like mine were not wanted or needed, even in attempts to encourage people and especially in attempts to learn anything at all.  (It always came down to "shut up, too many people like you are talking already and marginalized people are not your educational opportunity.")  I learned that because of certain demographics that I fall into, I need to just sit down and shut up and let the important people do the talking.  Doing otherwise meant that I was being a hateful oppressor and I was allowing my voice to drown out the ones that really needed to be heard.

Eventually, as these things do, application of that lesson gradually ceased to be exclusive to that Facebook group.  It bled through to this blog and my (friend-locked and under another name) LiveJournal as well.  I stopped writing fan fiction.  I stopped writing original fiction.  I stopped writing poetry.  I stopped writing, period.

And so I lost my voice.

Reclaiming it isn't going to be easy.  I still halfway believe that I don't deserve to be heard.  That the colour of my skin means that I need to sit down and shut up because the world is already too full of white women with opinions.  I've been complicit in my own silencing for so long that it feels as comforting as it is restrictive.  But there are things that I need to say, and this is my own space; who am I oppressing if I speak here?  I don't get many pageviews anymore, it's been years since I regularly updated, and anyway, I'm not exactly forcing anybody to read what I'm writing here.

So here I am.  I'm still alive, still bisexual (though that is still a serious oversimplification of terms), still Christo-Pagan, still a little bit silly, still perhaps more than a little bit smart, and still perpetually surprised by life and all the wonderful, horrible, and downright bizarre things that it has to offer.  And as I go through the process of reclaiming and refining my voice, I hope that I can offer anyone who reads this something to think about, even if you don't necessarily agree with me.

I'm still alive!

It's been quite some time since I last felt like writing here—inspiration has been fairly rare of late.  But I've missed this blog, and I think I'd like to get back to it.

Few of the good things have changed.  I'm still singing in my church choir, still a practising Pagan, and still working with young students who are having trouble with reading.  My depression is still (mostly) in remission, though I've had a few small flare-ups and I'm still dealing with a certain amount of social anxiety and negative thought patterning.  Overall, life is good.  And if I return to my writing as I want to, it will only get better. :)

Please don't be THAT Vegetarian.

Before I get to the rest of the post, I want to make something clear.  I like vegetarianism.  I tend to lean that way myself, but for various reasons, going vegetarian full-time is not currently a good idea for me.  Yes, I've thought seriously about it (and tried it, which did not go well for my health, mental or otherwise).  No, I have not closed my mind to the possibility that I might do so in the future.  Yes, I agree with most of the ideological reasons for becoming a vegetarian.  No, I really, really don't think that all vegetarians are like this.  Most of THOSE Vegetarians I've met are ones who have recently adopted this eating style and I think it's profoundly unfair that the people who exemplify the idea of THAT Vegetarian are able to give other vegetarians, and those of us who are predominantly vegetarian, a bad name.

This post is the product of a fair amount of frustration caused by a few too many recent encounters with people who have been, often in more than one way, THAT Vegetarian.  I repeat: I do NOT think that all vegetarians are like this.

THAT Vegetarian is the one who never misses a chance to educate people about the benefits of vegetarianism, regardless of whether such education is necessary or welcome.

THAT Vegetarian is the one who dismisses as mere excuses the reasons why a vegetarian diet is not always ideal or even suitable for all people.

THAT Vegetarian is the one who ignores the psychology of eating disorders when pointedly saying, in a conversation in which a person has made note of their own eating disorder and stated that putting that kind of limit on their eating habits did indeed make it worse, that there is never any good reason to be willing to consume animal-based foods. 

THAT Vegetarian is the one who believes that omnivorous diets are a sign of a less-evolved and enlightened mind and never lets anybody forget it.

THAT Vegetarian is the one who won't rest until they've converted the entire omnivorous world to their way of eating.  (I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can't annoy people into believing that you're right.)

THAT Vegetarian is the one who claims that going vegetarian is a great way to lose weight and that there's no such thing as a fat vegetarian.  (Hint: this is not true.)

THAT Vegetarian believes that being vegetarian makes them superior to the rest of us, and won't let anyone forget it.

Please don't be THAT Vegetarian. 

Some thoughts at the end of 2014

It's been a tough year on the emotional front.  I've had a harder time controlling my depressive tendencies, but I've largely managed to do so; however, I've been neglecting my writing across the board, not just here, and I think that hasn't been doing many favours for me.  I think that in some ways, I need to find my voice again; I've had a tendency to silence myself in recent months, and while that has its place, it's also perhaps not a good thing to do to myself in my own spaces.  If I have a goal for the new year, it will probably be to write more frequently.

That said, this year has also held some wonderful things—especially the week of the Kaleidoscope Gathering, which I hope I'll get to attend again in the coming year.  As upset and frustrated and low as I've been feeling, there have been moments of hope and joy.  I certainly hope that I can find a few more of those in 2015.

As has been my tradition when celebrating the new year alone, I'll be starting a kettle for tea soon.  Earl Grey—that old favourite.  And even if I'm not actually listening to it when midnight strikes, I know that the following song will be on my mind:

Have a great 2015, everyone.  May we all be blessed with love, wisdom, and the will to act with both.

I've heard this before. That doesn't make it any nicer.

There's so much that I'd like to write—I've been working on posts about the gathering I went to at the end of July, actually—but right now, I've got something on my mind that's been bothering me a bit.

You see, a couple of weeks ago, my best friend confessed to me that although he loves me, he can never find me attractive because I'm fat.

I'm not in love with him, but it hurt almost as much (as I can say from bitter experience) as it would have if I had been.  My emotions, when I've thought of what he said, have run from sad to indifferent to angry and back to a sort of tired neutrality.  I've heard it before, after all—minus the "I love you," which somehow made it worse this time in some ways—and I'm kind of tired of it.

I believe him when he says he loves me.  He's not the sort to say this kind of thing lightly or without sincerity; even if he really doesn't love me, it's safe to say that he believes that he does.  And I believe him when he says that he doesn't actually see me as ugly and that he finds his reaction to my fatness to be somewhat difficult to understand.

But the fact remains that on some level, he agrees with the people who have called me any number of horrible things because of my weight.  And it hurt to hear him say that what he would want in a partner is basically me, but not fat.  I was surprised at how much it hurt, actually.  He's tried to figure out whether this is something caused by current societal attitudes towards those of us who possess ample figures, but it's so deeply ingrained in him now that he doesn't think he'll ever be able to get rid of it, no matter how much he wishes he could. 

I have to admit that I wonder whether he's actually tried.

Chief among the things that I've been thinking since we had that conversation is that I'm deeply afraid that if I could click with somebody this well—we are totally comfortable with each other, and we know each other so well that we've been at the point where we can practically read each other's minds for quite some time now—and yet still be very unattractive to him, then there really is nobody in the world who's capable of really loving me, through and through, as I am, and not as they would rather I could be.  Not for my fat, as people who only find themselves attracted to fat women might, and not in spite of it, as my best friend does.  Just me, as the Gods and my genetics made me, and as the person I am coming to be.

Because I don't want to be defined by my fatness.  I want it to be just another of my many descriptors, physical or otherwise, and no more or less attractive than my hair (long, wavy, and red-brown), my height (about five feet, seven inches) or my eye colour (a weird shade that's a mix of green, grey, and blue).  If I wear it as a badge of honour, it's because I've earned that by surviving the countless hurts that have been inflicted on me because of social standards relating to it even by well-meaning family and friends.  But at heart, I just want it to be part of me, not my most significant characteristic.

I want it to be neutral.

And as unlikely as I know it is, I want to be loved by someone who's up to the task as my best friend, however fond of me he is, apparently never will be.  I want to be seen as a woman, a person—not just a fat one.  I don't want my body, such a basic part of what I am, to be seen as a disgusting flaw.  If I'm difficult to love, I don't want it to be because of my clothing size—I'd rather that it was because of my personality flaws, because at least they aren't superficial reasons as anything related to my appearance is.  And I want to be found attractive by someone I find attractive, too.

This seems to be too much to ask, though.  And as much as I'm content with our relationship, I must say that it would have been lovely if he had been able to love my body along with the rest of me.  But he can't.

The hurt that I feel over this will be with me for a while yet.  It'll pass, though.  It always does. 

Time to sweep away the dust and displace a few cobwebs. :)

First of all: I'm still alive. :)  The past few months have been good, if uneventful, ones.  I have to admit that I haven't felt moved to write for a while now—which is, historically, not a good thing for me, as a lack of writing ambition has usually been a sign that I'm going to start slipping back into that special living hell that is depression.  But so far I've actually managed to avoid a relapse, and for that I'm thankful.

I've been wanting to resurrect this blog for some time, though, because I've missed it.  I've said some pretty stupid things here, no doubt, and I'm actually embarrassed about some of my earlier work here, but really—this blog has always been, as the title indicates, a series of meditations in which I try to work through whatever's on my mind at the time, regardless of whether my state of mind is good or bad, and regardless of whether my conclusions are right or wrong.  I never expected that I'd always agree with my stated opinions in the future once I'd finished a post, and indeed, I'd be a bit disappointed if my past writings always reflected my present thoughts because I feel that would indicate a lack of intellectual growth.  And I never really set out to be right—not all the time, anyway. :)

So, as it stands, I'm going to try to write more frequently than I have done in the past year or so.  And I suspect that soon, I'm going to have plenty of inspiration, because next week, at the suggestion of a friend who is also going, I will be attending an annual Pagan gathering that happens just outside of Renfrew.  I'm really looking forward to it, not least because it's been a long time since I've had the chance to travel more than a couple of hours away from my current location.  And we'll be camping.  That's something that I've missed doing.  I've already aired out the tent and replaced my long-vanished air mattress.  Rain or shine—though of course I'm hoping for more shine than rain—this is going to be good. :)

A meditation on my closest friendship

On Saturday, I spent about seven and a half hours with my best friend.  This is hardly unusual; we've been in the habit of spending long periods of time together for most of the time we've been friends.  In some ways, this surprises me a bit; while I am no longer as socially awkward as I used to be, and I'm certainly not as shy, I'm still very much an introvert, and long periods of social interaction often have the effect of draining my energy rather than replenishing it.  But I find that there are some people who don't have that effect on me—when I'm with them, I get the same feeling of being energized as many extraverts say they do when indulging in social interaction.  Obviously, "B." is one of these people.

Our friendship had a somewhat unusual beginning.  (Well, unusual for me, anyway.)  While I have memories of him that date from late 1998 and early-to-mid-1999, I really consider myself to actually have met him in late September, 2011; he sang with my community choir for a couple of concerts when I was sixteen years old, but I don't recall us ever saying even so much as "hello" or "excuse me" to each other at the time.  

(Small digression: technically, I shouldn't have been able to join that choir until I was eighteen.  However, in 1997, about a month and a half before I turned fifteen, they sent out a message to the high school choirs in the area asking whether any of the students who sang in those choirs would be interested in joining this community choir for their 25th-anniversary concert.  I did, and because I loved the style of music that this choir sang, I decided to stick around afterward.  I found out years later that the choir's usual minimum-age cutoff was eighteen years, and that I was largely permitted to stay because I wasn't doing any damage to the sound and nobody really thought I'd stick around for very long.  Suffice it to say that I proved them wrong.)

Twelve and a half years (give or take a month or two) after he left to go teach in Toronto—B. is a bit over thirteen years older than I am, and because I rarely have any reason to think of the age difference between us, acknowledging the fact of it always comes as a bit of a shock—he came back up to Northern Ontario; he'd recently earned a doctorate in History and had been hired to teach part-time at the local university.  About a month after he came back, he attended a service at my church; he arrived shortly before the pre-service practice was about to begin.  Our choirmaster knew that B. could sing (S. also conducts my community choir, and has for over twenty years), and because S. has a talent for this sort of thing, in short order, he had convinced B. to put on a cassock and rehearse with the choir for the morning's service.  I remember seeing B. walk into the choir's rehearsal room, and though I hadn't seen him in over twelve years—oddly enough, I've since learned that our paths crossed on at least one occasion, at a theatrical performance that we both attended when he was visiting his parents in mid-2007—I remembered him.  That I did still kind of surprises me, because frankly, I had no reason to do so.

He joined my church choir for a brief time (in early December, he started playing the organ for another church, also Anglican, whose previous organist had left the year before), and he also started singing with the community choir again.  We didn't speak much to each other at first, though we did get along fairly well.  Then, one day in late October or early November that year, as I still sometimes do, I was browsing through the page in LiveJournal's schools directory that links to journals written by people who have listed themselves as having attended the university where I earned my B.A., and I saw a now-familiar face smiling at the world from one person's default journal icon.  I thought about adding him to my friends list there, but we didn't really know each other that well at that point.  I knew that I liked him, and we'd had some pleasant surface-level conversations by then, but because I don't friend people idly, I decided to take a bit of time to make sure that I was really comfortable with him seeing the sorts of things that I post on LJ.  After a few weeks had passed and we'd interacted with each other a bit more, I decided that I was comfortable with that, so I added him as a friend on LJ and sent him a quick message to let him know who his new LJ acquaintance was.  He added me as a friend as well, and as we started corresponding through LJ, we gradually started speaking more frequently in person as well.

It occurs to me that if ever there were an introvert's way of forming close friendships, LJ might be it.

Our friendship didn't form overnight, of course, but relatively frequent correspondence, added to our now more regular in-person conversations, certainly helped.  By March of 2012, I was starting to consider him a friend, maybe even a good friend.  (I certainly liked him well enough to know that I'd miss him if he left town to teach at another university, as he had the opportunity to do at the end of May that year.  He ultimately decided to stay here, and later told me that our friendship was one of his more important reasons for doing so.)  We started spending relatively long periods of time together when we managed to get together for visits (our very first visit was something like six hours long, though I'd really only expected that we'd spend an hour or two together at most).  And when he left to spend the summer in Toronto, working on research with which he hoped to start turning part of his Ph.D. dissertation into a book, we kept in touch through regular—usually lengthy—Skype conversations.

Since he came back from that summer away, we've usually spent time with each other at least once a week outside of choir activities.  Even when one or both of us is short on time, we always manage to at least spend an hour together.  (The only exceptions to this have come with illness or travel, and in the latter case, we still talk through Skype, usually at length.)  We've developed something of a routine with each other in the past year and a half or so, though we've certainly varied from that routine at times.  Whatever we end up doing, though, we always enjoy each other's company.  

This is probably where some people would probably expect some big declaration of love and the wish that the two of us would someday become a couple.  I have to admit that under some different circumstances, that would have been nice—our relationship is a strong and mutually supportive one as it is, and neither of us hesitates to describe it in terms of love—but for a number of excellent reasons, most of which are his, that's pretty much impossible.  As it is, a number of people have asked both of us whether we're dating, and although I don't know for certain what the reaction has been when he's told them that we're not, most of the people who have asked me have been very surprised by my answer (which is usually a slight misquoting of Sheldon's repeated line about Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory, before it ceased to be true—I tell people that yes, B. is a guy, and yes, we're close friends, but he's not my boyfriend).  As much as I have to admit to being a bit annoyed by the way that people expect that just because we're opposite-sex best friends, we'll end up in a romantic relationship together, I also have to admit to being a bit amused by that as well.  I mean, anyone who spends five minutes or fewer with the two of us can tell that we've become very close—we have even been known to complete each other's sentences at times—and, if nothing else, the surprised, and occasionally shocked, looks on their faces when they find out that our relationship is absolutely devoid of romance tend to be pretty funny. :)

(Mind you, the one actual matchmaking attempt that's happened so far really did annoy me.  It's one thing to make assumptions about our relationship; these assumptions can be corrected.  But it's quite another thing to actually attempt to force our relationship into a form that conforms to the dominant social narrative about close relationships between women and men who are, as far as they know, not directly related to each other.  Suffice it to say that I don't like the interference or the implication that somebody else thinks that they have a better idea of what our relationship should be like than either of us does.)

Anyway, Saturday was largely one of our "routine" days.  I arrived shortly after two o'clock in the afternoon.  He was in the middle of preparing dinner—I love that he's as comfortable puttering around in the kitchen as I am, and we've cooked together on occasion—and we chatted for a while.  When he was finished putting together the meatloaf and vegetables for the meal, we took a walk; the day was gloriously sunny, and although there was still a rather biting chill in the air, it wasn't difficult to stay warm as long as we were moving.  Afterward, we played some music together—B. plays the piano, and I had brought my violin over that day—and watched part of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," had dinner together, finished the movie, and talked until fairly late in the evening.  At some point that afternoon—when he'd put the movie on pause and gone to the kitchen to check on the meatloaf and potatoes—I closed my eyes and relaxed into the chair I'd been sitting in, and as I listened to him moving around in the kitchen, it occurred to me that I was feeling happier and more at peace then than I had felt in a long time.

I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to end up in a friendship like this one.  In spite of the many possible circumstances under which we might never have become close in the first place—he might never have come back up here after he had earned his doctorate, we might never have started speaking to each other at choir practice, I nearly didn't add him as a friend on LiveJournal, and he almost chose to take that sessional instructor position in Southern Ontario—we have actually done so.  I couldn't be happier with our friendship.  B. is one of the reasons—though hardly the only one—that my depression is now solidly in remission; I still get a bit gloomy from time to time, as most people do, but those times are nothing like the horrible feelings that I used to get, the ones that I always knew would frighten me once I was in a more stable mood.  And even when I did have a temporary relapse early last July, he helped to pull me out of it.

I am happy that we've developed such a close friendship, and I certainly hope that in the years to come, we'll manage to keep some of this closeness, regardless of whether we always live in the same general area.  Even if we don't, though, I will always treasure what we have now, and be thankful that we've each made choices that have made it possible. :)

Marshmallows

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I'm a former Girl Guide.  I went all the way through the program from Brownies to Pathfinders—"Sparks", for girls who are about five years old, wasn't introduced until I was about seven or eight—and I earned my Canada Cord in 1999.  I was a little bit older than the average for it, but I joined Brownies about a year later than most girls, and I spent an extra year in Pathfinders because paying proper attention to my schoolwork hadn't left me enough time to accomplish everything I wanted to before leaving Guiding.

Now that you've got the background, you may well be asking: what does all of this have to do with marshmallows?

Well, once every year in Brownies and Guides, we played a game.  We were all seated in a circle in an order assigned by the leaders; once that was done, the leaders would read out stories of good fortune, bad fortune, or anywhere in between.  Each story would end with either "take [x] treats" or "take no treats" and occasionally "take [x] treats, but give half to the person with the most treats."  The treats they used were marshmallows.  And at the end of the game, we'd always talk about how it felt to have a lot of treats or none at all.  Afterward, the girls who had a lot of treats were encouraged to share with those who didn't have any, or didn't have as many.

This was always an interesting social experiment in itself; the girls who had been given a lot of treats were always reluctant to share with those who had few or none because they viewed the treats as rightfully theirs.

As for me, I was one of the ones who was, year after year, seated in a position where my stories gave me no treats.  This made a major impact on me, and I noticed the sudden greed of the girls who had been given a lot; even when they did share, they were usually inclined to only share with their close friends.  I also noticed that the leaders must have had specific outcomes in mind for each of us, because usually we were allowed to sit wherever we wanted while in our circle—assigned seating would only have happened if they wanted you to have a specific experience.  But it wasn't until years later that I realized: that's a hell of a lot like being part of a system that's set up ostensibly to help you, but subtlely (or not-so-subtlely) sets you up to fail.

And it's an interesting microcosm.  The selfishness shown by the girls with lots of marshmallows looks an awful lot like the selfishness of those who hoard wealth and whose lives are drenched in privilege.  But I also remember one other thing that, in retrospect, is every bit as interesting: being given treats when you'd just been denied them by the rules of the game also felt embarrassing.  It's like the difference between a handout and a hand up.  And while a lack of marshmallows is rarely a problem, being shown only a grudging amount of compassion, or compassion on terms which allow the giver to say "look at me, I'm such a fantastic person," is not just embarrassing—it can be emotionally draining, and in the end, the person who is the recipient doesn't necessarily get what they actually need—just what the person with more resources is willing to give.

Take it from me: it never feels good to be given crumbs, and to be expected to be overwhelmingly grateful for them, when other people get to feast.

(For anyone who's interested: a variation of the marshmallow game can be found in this .pdf document.)

Here Come the Food Police

One of the things that I like the least about teaching Primary-level students is the fact that we're expected to police their food choices, right down to the order in which the students eat what's in their packed lunch—sandwich first, maybe the beverage if it can't be put off until after the fruit or vegetables have been consumed, and only then, if there was time and the kid was still hungry, might they be permitted to contemplate the sugar-laden dessert item.

I hate this. It's not teaching them to have a healthy attitude towards food. It's teaching them that Food Has Rules, that some foods are intrinsically Good, that other foods are intrinsically Bad, and that the Bad foods have to be carefully regulated because they taste too good. Kids like sugar, without a doubt. And too much sugar isn't good for anyone. But there's a finite amount of anything involved when a parent packs their kid's lunch—it's not like there's an infinite supply of candy, cookies, and cake in a lunchbox that suddenly appears if the kid eats their pudding before they eat their sandwich! If it were up to me, I would let them choose the order in which they eat their lunch, and only ask that unless they're full, they at least nibble on everything that they've brought that day. But unfortunately, it's not up to me, and I have to watch (and help) as the same old counterproductive messages get passed on to a new generation.

You know, when I was a kid, I didn't like that we were given no real choice regarding the order in which we consumed our food. Sometimes I wanted to leave the sandwich for last because it was what I liked best (especially if it was corned beef with lettuce and mustard—or good old peanut butter and jelly, of course). And being forced to eat things when I didn't want to eat them yet actually turned me off of a lot of the healthy foods (especially fruits and vegetables) that I now really like—particularly celery, tomatoes, oranges, grapefruit, broccoli, asparagus, apples, carrots, cauliflower, and potatoes. It took years for me to get over that whole "I'm eating this because I have to" mentality and replace it with "this actually tastes pretty good, and I'm eating it because I want to." And I never quite managed to overcome that problem with bananas; when I was in Kindergarten and only going to school for half-days, I couldn't get enough of them. By the end of Grade One, after a full school year of being told "no, you have to eat this before you can eat something else," I couldn't stand them. And I still don't like them. (Well, maybe banana muffins aren't that bad.)

And it seems to me that at this time of the year, when even at the secular level we have (in Canada, at least) recently celebrated the harvest, it seems like a particularly bad idea to teach kids—even inadvertently—to hate food, especially when so many in our own country and around the world do not have access to enough food of any kind. If it were possible, I'd teach them to appreciate food, to share it when they know that someone hasn't got enough, and that eating what they're hungry for, when they're hungry for it, isn't a bad thing. (Students who, for known health reasons, have to carefully regulate their diets—such as students with diabetes—might be a possible exception, but ideally, there'd be a way to get them to enjoy a healthy variety of foods without reinforcing that Good and Awful-Tasting Food/Bad And Delicious Food dichotomy as well.) Making such a big deal about the order in which the students eat what's in their lunch just seems so damn counterproductive.

And I must add that it's a huge privilege to even have this much food that we're told that we have to food-police the students in our care. That we live in a society that currently holds a lot of messed-up ideas and attitudes regarding food and eating is not news. I just hate that the same old harmful ideas, especially in response to the current panic over childhood obesity (which is a whole other rant in and of itself), are being reinforced and even elaborated upon. (There's even one school in Toronto, in fact, to which students are not permitted to bring any junk food to school—not even granola bars.) We should be teaching kids to love good food, not hate it. And teaching them that their own preferences for the order in which they eat their food are wrong, and that they don't get a choice about whether they eat the sandwich or the cookie first, isn't a great way to do that.

You think we live in a post-racist society? Think again.

I've been hearing and reading things about George Zimmerman's murder trial that are, quite frankly, still pissing me off.  ESPECIALLY the verdict.

Here's the case as I understand it.  Last year, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old kid, was walking through the gated community where his father lived.  He'd just been to the corner store to buy iced tea and some Skittles.  He was wearing a hoodie, and because it was raining out, the hood was up, and he was talking with his girlfriend on his cell phone.

And then George Zimmerman, who was driving through the neighbourhood, saw him walking.  He called the police, claiming that the kid was obviously up to no good and was probably on drugs.  He also said that Martin seemed to be looking at all of the houses.  (Oh, the shock!  Oh, the horror!  A kid who's taking a walk in a neighbourhood where he's just recently arrived to visit his dad is looking at the houses!)  Zimmerman left his vehicle, pursued Martin, confronted him, and shot him to death.  Later, he used the excuse that he thought that Martin was armed and dangerous and claimed that Martin had threatened and attacked him.

Funny.  Just because the kid was black, he was a threat to people's safety simply by taking a walk in the rain.  And the threat he posed was so dire that it warranted a pursuit (which the police dispatcher told Zimmerman not to engage in) and, ultimately, a physical confrontation that ended in Martin being shot to death.  Zimmerman, of course, claimed that he shot this kid in self-defence.

I don't buy it.  From what I've read—and I've been keeping an eye on this case since Zimmerman killed Martin last year—the most dangerous thing about the kid was the sugar content of the junk food he'd bought.

And yet, Zimmerman's lawyers were given permission to pry into Martin's school records and social media accounts, like anything that he'd said or done in the past could be used to justify Zimmerman's attack on him.  At times, it looked like Trayvon Martin himself was being put on trial, not the man who killed him.  And the result was all too predictable: Zimmerman was acquitted.

I was, needless to say, heartbroken.  But I wasn't surprised or shocked, just sad and angry.

I hate that black people's lives are evidently considered to be worth less than white people's.  I hate that Marissa Alexander is serving 20 years in prison for firing a single warning shot when her life was actually in danger (anyone who thinks that spousal abuse isn't life-threatening is not only tragically wrong, but also potentially a horrible human being), but George Zimmerman walked out of that courtroom a free man after having caused a confrontation that didn't need to happen and killing the kid who he profiled, stalked, and fought.  And I hate that there are so many more cases that are similar to the killing of Trayvon Martin that we just don't hear about because the same system that creates and maintains white privilege also makes it so easy to ignore—or never even learn about—black people (especially unarmed black people) who have been killed, often as a direct result of racism.  In far too many cases, their killers walked free, or were never even charged in the first place.

And there are a lot of them.

This shouldn't be allowed to continue.  Trayvon Martin may be one of the more famous victims, but he was hardly the first, or the last, black person of any age to whom this sort of thing has happened.  But I think that in many ways, what happened after his death is a tragically excellent example of the harm that systemic racism does.  Consider: his killer wasn't even arrested until after an international outcry arose, his killer was released on parole soon afterwards anyway and was able to raise huge amounts of money for his legal defence (and ended up using some of it for living expenses), and despite the fact that pretty much everything that Zimmerman did that night was wrong, and despite the fact that the horrific wrongness of his actions resulted in a seventeen-year-old boy's death, the jury chose to free him.

That's the power of systemic racism.  A boy gets murdered while walking down the street.  There are witnesses.  His killer is told by the police dispatcher to whom he's talking to not follow the kid, but the man with the gun, the man who has a history of violent and abusive behaviour, disregards this.  And still the mostly-white jury decides that the killer didn't do anything wrong.  He's even got his gun back.

Tell me that's not fucked up—and if you believe it, prove it to me.  Come on.  I dare you.

Signal Boost

What follows is a link to the Trayvon Martin Foundation.  You can probably guess what I thought of the decision that the jury in Zimmerman's trial made.  A post about that is coming soon.  In the meantime, though, please check out their website.

The Trayvon Martin Foundation

This Is Fat Privilege

I know that most of my recent posts haven't been particularly spiritual, but please bear with me.  I've been working on a few posts with a more "on-topic" bent to them lately, but right now, after having encountered several of the things that usually trigger my difficulties with eating in the last several days, I feel the need to rant, especially because I've been stumbling upon a lot of opinionated comments talking bullshit about the ridiculous concept of "fat privilege."

I'll tell you what "fat privilege" is.

"Fat privilege" is never needing to go to the doctor because you know that regardless of whether something's actually wrong with you, you'll be diagnosed as fat and prescribed a diet, and sometimes told not to come back until you've lost 50 pounds.  "Fat privilege" is the absolute certainty that whatever might be wrong with you can be cured by starving yourself, overexercising, having someone mutilate your stomach and/or intestines, or taking medications that can cause fecal incontinence or cause fatal damage to your heart.

"Fat privilege" is being treated to absolutely charming remarks made in a disdainful tone of voice about people who are about the same size and shape as you are as part of what was supposed to be a funny story about a friend's childhood.  (And yes, I'm the author of that submission.)

"Fat privilege" is the fun of never really being able to be sure whether the person who's just asked you out is serious unless you know them well enough to know they're being sincere.  Otherwise, there's always the chance that they're just playing a prank on you, engaging in a bit of sweat-hogging, or playing some variation of "Nail the Whale".

"Fat privilege" is the thrill of experiencing verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse for simply existing in public at your current size.

"Fat privilege" is the knowledge that a word that accurately describes your body has gradually picked up connotations of laziness, stupidity, ugliness, and worthlessness and is regularly used by people who want to describe themselves in those terms.

"Fat privilege" is the great honour of knowing that people who look like you are often used as visual shorthand for greed, overconsumption, wastefulness, thoughtlessness, sloppiness, gluttony, disease, aggression, laziness, stupidity, and carelessness.

"Fat privilege" is the joy of knowing that when employers write that prospective employees of theirs must be "neat and well-groomed" it's often code for "fatties need not apply".  Furthermore, "fat privilege" is having an increased difficulty in finding work and earning significantly lower wages than our thin counterparts once we do get hired.

"Fat privilege" is not getting as good an employee discount as some other people because your employer has chosen to give a special reward to people with low BMI scores.

"Fat privilege" is being laughed at if you're walking, sitting, or leaning on something that breaks—perhaps especially if you're injured as a result.  Hey, it's always nice to bring a bit of laughter into somebody else's day, isn't it?

"Fat privilege" is having a choice between precisely two options for clothing: the do-it-yourself option or the cheaply-made but expensively-sold option that's hideous, badly designed, and made of some horrible synthetic fibre fabric that will start falling apart after a single washing.

"Fat privilege" is the fact that so many people think that the contents of your cart or basket at the grocery store are somehow fair game for them to comment on or, in extreme cases, actually start removing while they admonish us that "You don't need to eat that!"  And "fat privilege" is seeing the smirks on other customers' faces when they see that no matter what else you've decided to buy that day, you've also got some kind of junk food in the day's shopping.

"Fat privilege" is the ability to attract negative attention regardless of where we are or what we're doing.

"Fat privilege" is being told that all that we have to do to become human permanently change our size and shape is eat less and move more.

"Fat privilege" is never being sure whether you'll have to purchase two airplane tickets for yourself—and knowing that if you do, there's no guarantee that you'll actually get to use the other seat, because it's likely that either the second seat won't be beside the first one or, because airlines routinely overbook their flights, they'll decide to put someone else in your second seat anyway.

(Note: Southwest is evidently not as horrible to fly with these days, and it's against the law to have a fat-people-must-buy-two-seats policy in Canada, but other airlines in the States still have, and enforce, a policy that's similarly horrible to what Southwest was originally doing.)

"Fat privilege" is the ability to easily unlock other adults' inner children—if we accidentally brush against someone, and especially if our skin actually touches them when this happens, some people will actually react as if we have cooties and have therefore just infected them, just like we used to on the playground when we were kids.

Yes, fat people really are just swimming in privilege.

Fat

I recently went with a friend to see "Weird Al" Yankovic perform a concert.  It was a great evening—we ran a couple of errands, had dinner together, and then attended the concert.  Aside from the fact that I forgot to bring earplugs (I have sensitive hearing, so the volume level that night was not comfortable), I really enjoyed myself; he has a tremendous amount of energy for performing, and he really seemed to be having fun up there on the stage.  It helped, too, that I've loved his music since I was a kid—twenty years ago, one of my friends introduced me to his music, and he's been one of my favourite singers ever since.  My friend really enjoyed the concert, too; he's been a fan for longer than I have.  (Of course, it helps that he's about thirteen years older than I am; I wasn't born until 1982, so if I was even alive when Weird Al's music really started to become popular, I was probably still listening to Fred Penner, Raffi, and Sharon, Lois & Bram at the time.)

The last song before the encore, though, was one that I was hoping that he would not perform, and I was rather disappointed when he did.  Given the title of this post, you can probably guess which song I mean.  While I'm not as easily triggered as I used to be, I was distinctly uncomfortable—not least because the intro to the music video was played on an onstage screen just before they started the song.  I also saw and heard a lot of people singing along with him, as some people had been doing throughout the whole evening.  I was certainly grateful that my friend and I had opted to have dinner before we went to the show; even if I'd been in a state of feeling-dizzy-because-I-haven't-had-anything-but-water-in-over-sixteen-hours hungry (and yes, I still do that to myself from time to time, though not as frequently as I once did), I couldn't have eaten a bite.  I was feeling better by the time the encore was over with, but I was also still feeling incredibly self-conscious and uncomfortable.

It was the only song that Weird Al and his band had performed during the whole concert that I didn't applaud.  Convention aside, I just couldn't bring myself to do so.  The lyrics consist of little but a combination of derogatory stereotypes and some of the most horribly vicious and excessively mean-spirited insults I've ever heard directed against fat people.  (And on an unrelated, but perhaps even more important, note, the line "I've got more chins than Chinatown" strikes me as being more than a little racist.)  And regardless of whether the song is meant as a bit of harmless fun, I've experienced serious insults, and even a few episodes of physical violence, as a result of other people's hatred for fat bodies for as long as I can remember.  This stuff is not harmless.  Joking that fat people take up seven rows when we go out to see movies, cause enough impact on the Earth that it measures on the Richter scale when we walk to the mailbox, are the only ones who get a tan when we visit the beach, are having twenty-thirds when normal people are having seconds at mealtime, or really sit around the house when we sit around the house—those are real insults that really get used to hurt people IN REAL LIFE.  And they're not automatically harmless, innocent, or funny just because it's Weird Al who's still singing them in this song after twenty-five years.  I doubt that I was the only member of the audience who felt that way; I noticed that there were a number of other fat people in the audience that night, and more than a few were larger than I am.

As for my friend—who is tall and very thin—I have no idea what he was thinking, as the matter never came up in conversation afterward, but I noticed that he didn't applaud after that song either.  I'm not automatically interpreting this as a show of support, but it's worth noting that he does know about the issues that I have that cause me to starve myself, and he knows that I can be triggered when I unexpectedly encounter this level of hate for fat people.  It's entirely possible that he found the song distasteful for his own reasons.  Nonetheless, I appreciated it.

So.  Recap: even fat jokes sung by Weird Al are hurtful and unfunny, and although it didn't even come close to ruining my evening (it would've taken a lot more than that to do so), it made me very uncomfortable and self-conscious—and while I could possibly have been the only one who felt that way, I consider it to be unlikely.

You Can't Steal A Person!

A few days ago, I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with a close friend.  He'd seen it before, and he knew that it was on my list of movies that I wanted to see but hadn't got around to seeing yet.  Because he knows my sense of humour very well (not least because his own sense of humour is every bit as warped as mine), he thought that the movie would probably amuse me.  He was right.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and would happily see it again someday.

But there was something that really, really bugged me about it.  Knives Chau, who is Scott's girlfriend at the beginning of the movie, at one point physically attacks Ramona, Scott's new love interest (admittedly, with whom he cheated on Knives before he broke up with her), and shouts that Ramona "stole him with [her] advanced American slut technology!"

There is just so much wrong with that statement.

Perhaps Knives can be forgiven for that particular outburst, and for accusing Ramona of stealing Scott again a few minutes later; she's seventeen years old, after all, and I don't know about you, but when I was seventeen years old, my level of emotional maturity wasn't, er, quite what it is now.  And there's quite a powerful stereotype out there which paints boys and men as all but helpless in the face of exceptional feminine beauty.  It's the same mentality that accuses victims of rape of secretly wanting it or asking for it because they were drunk/scantily dressed/walking alone/previously sexually active.  According to this pattern of thought, guys are helpless in the face of their own desires, and those desires can be easily swayed by unscrupulous females who use their bodies to get their attention.  I'm not sure that I ever really believed the whole story, but, though the fact embarrasses me now, I must admit that in my teens I did at one time believe that it was possible for some exceptionally pretty girls to "steal" other girls' boyfriends.

But you know what?  As I indignantly remarked (to my friend's slight amusement) at this point, "You can't steal a person!"  And you can't.  You really can't.  They make the decision themselves.  Hormones may deliver a good part of the inspiration for that decision, but the fact remains that they decide that they will cheat on, or even abandon, the partner they already have for somebody else.  And they make the decision quite willingly.  There's no theft involved.

To say that one person "steals" another implies that the person whose partner they "stole" actually owned their partner at some point.  But we don't own other people.  When we do, that's called slavery.  And I don't think I have to tell you what an evil thing that is.

I'm just glad that in the same scene, Scott rebuts that accusation with the simple fact that he cheated on her with Ramona, who had no idea that Scott wasn't single when they first met.  But the idea of one person stealing another person's partner is so absolutely ridiculous that it's past time for us to abandon it.

And Now I *Am* OK

I was almost right about one thing in the previous post: I find my mental state when I last wrote here to be rather worrying, though not actually "terrifying" as I thought I would.

I find it worrying because I'm still capable of falling that far, that fast.  Admittedly, I was unusually tired at the time; until yesterday, for the last several months, there had not been a single day in which I have not had to get up, get going, and keep going because so many things needed my attention.  I was having trouble sleeping.  (I don't think that it's entirely coincidental that, after having given myself permission to rest from about Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon, then running a few errands that weren't all that horrible, and then having dinner and watching most of "The Fellowship of the Ring" with a close friend in the evening, I finally feel at peace and even somewhat refreshed.)  And the argument that I had on the day when I last wrote here was with someone I love; I always end up feeling the most hurt when I feel as if someone I love unconditionally only loves me conditionally, which strikes me as not being "love" as much as it is "fertile grounds for rejection," and that's precisely how I felt when we argued.

Come to think of it, that sounds an awful lot like one of the major reasons why I've never had a girlfriend or boyfriend.

And yet, I am not actually terrified by the way that I was feeling the last time I posted anything here.  No matter how bad I get, I doubt that I'll ever seriously harm myself.  The temptation to hit myself may exist, but I'm capable of fighting it.  And I don't ever get suicidal anymore, regardless of how overwhelmed I sometimes am by negative feelings.  Even when I did feel suicidal, which last happened a couple of years ago, I was never actively so; I never made plans, never acted on the feelings, only ever had a feeling of "I should remove myself from the human race because I am a hopeless, useless, superfluous drain on resources with nothing to offer the world, so I hope something happens that will erase my existence from this planet because I don't deserve to be here."  That feeling hasn't come along in years now, and for that, I am thankful.  I also believe that if it ever does come back, I will know how to fight it.  

The thing is, my life has significantly changed since the last time the suicidal feelings happened; among other things, I now have a small and trustworthy circle of close friends.  (My social life wasn't precisely nonexistent before 2011, but I mostly just had acquaintances and somewhat distant friends, and didn't feel inclined to bother the one really close friend I had at the time because she was working as a teacher in Korea and I felt that she had more important things to deal with than my petty insecurities and worries.  And yes, I now realize that was silly.)  And though I don't tell my friends everything, I trust them to be as supportive of me as I have tried to be supportive of them.  Thus far, my trust and my love (and yes, I love these people) have not been proven to be misplaced.  I believe they will not be.

So.  I'm fine, for the time being, at least.  And I'm looking forward to singing at church this morning and then taking a long walk somewhere this afternoon, because the sun is shining, the snow looks absolutely glorious, and on days like this, I am not just grateful to be alive—I absolutely love it.

I'm Not OK

Right now, I'm in a state of mind that I know will terrify me later, when I've managed to re-establish some of my mental equilibrium.  I won't say what's put me in this state, though I will say that an argument was involved, and that I believe that I am 100% at fault.

I feel useless, lonely, alone, hopeless, and totally worthless.  I feel like I want my body to be in as much pain as my mind is at present; right now, it's taking a considerable amount of willpower to stop myself from inflicting pain with the nearest wire coat hanger or heavy book.  (And I have both of these things in abundance.)  I feel like if I disappeared, nobody would ever miss me; I feel like nobody would even notice for at least a couple of weeks.  The scary thing is that this is what I'm feeling even after I've actually calmed down a little.

Living with depression, especially depression that's gone untreated as long as mine has, is a pain in the ass, to say the least.  I know that treatment options exist; I also know that even here, in Canada, I cannot afford to seek them out, and even if I could, I wouldn't be getting treatment any time soon; in my city, we have within the past year had to withstand a reduction in mental health services, so there's quite a waiting list for help, and in any case, even the least expensive counsellor available here charges $150 per hour of counselling.  That's way out of the range of what I could ever possibly afford.  So, frankly, it's easier for me to stay home, save the money, and do the best I can with music, reading, writing, my volunteer work, occasional socialization (I have several particularly close friends, most of whom I don't see nearly often enough, and one with whom I typically spend several hours at the end of each week), and meditation.  Usually this helps.  In spite of incidents like this, I'm getting better.  I haven't actually felt suicidal in about two years, though there have been times when I've felt a little more able to understand the urge than usual.  (That's scary enough for me, believe me.)  But I am still prone to fits of moodiness, and there still are times, like this afternoon, when something in me breaks and I find myself rapidly spiralling back down into that state of mind that I once knew so well: that mix of feelings of worthlessness, self-hatred, irritability, lethargy, and hopelessness that are the earmarks of my particular kind of depression.

The irony?  Just before the argument began, the one that set off my current mental state, I was doing some research about depression so that I could write about it for another blog, one that I've set up and am maintaining for a cause that is very dear to my heart.

Mission accomplished, I think.  If nothing else, in my current mood, I certainly have my inspiration.

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

I've run into this terrible saying so many times in the past few days that I just have to say something about it.

First of all, it's a lie.  I'm not saying that there are no incompetent teachers, of course.  That would also be a lie.  But I am saying that we do not have so many incompetent people in our profession that it justifies saying that we are all incompetent.  When I walk into a room full of teachers, which happens more often than you might think (my life is kind of weird that way), I always see within a few minutes that I am walking into a room full of caring, professional, and exceptionally intelligent people who are always looking for better ways to teach the students in their classrooms.  Some are better at it than others, of course, but there's a baseline standard to which we are all held, and it is a strict one.  We are constantly evaluated for our effectiveness, and if we fall short of the standard, there are consequences.

Teaching is not the easy job that so many non-teachers assume that it is.  When school is in session, we spend more hours in a day with our students than many of their parents are able to unless it's a weekend or a holiday.  Thus we are not only expected to teach our students; we are also expected to raise them.  We take our work home with us; lessons don't plan themselves, and the work that we collect from our students does not mark itself.  We take courses to learn new things about teaching and learning so as to be better and more interesting teachers for our students.  We deal with irate parents who don't like it when their perfect little angel is disciplined for beating up a classmate or who are upset because their child failed an assignment.  We are often the first to notice when a student has a mental health issue or a learning disability, and when the problem is found and understood, we spend extra time on our lesson plans to make sure that we put the necessary modifications and accommodations into place so that these students (and frequently, there is more than one student in a classroom who needs such modifications and accommodations) have as fair a chance at success as their peers.  To be a teacher is to be a diplomat, a temporary substitute parent, a record-keeper, an actor, a researcher, and a perpetual student all at once.  It is a challenging profession, and one that is as important as any other.

And yet the general public is consistently encouraged to think poorly of us, to blame us for everything that goes wrong, and to de-value what we do.  "They're just lazy," they're told.  "Look at all the vacation time they get.  Look at how well they get paid.  If they want any respect, they should get a real job.  Teaching is so easy, anyone can do it.  They don't need sick leave.  They don't need a better salary, not even the newer ones who are just starting out.  They don't need preparation and planning time.  And if they complain, don't listen.  They're just whining because they don't understand the real world.  They need to shut up and do their easy jobs.  Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach."  It's a lie, and, as lies go, it's a particularly dangerous one.

Put simply, those who can, do.  Those who can, and who are dedicated to making sure that others can as well, teach.  Those who can't are not teachers.

And people who sling this thoroughly false and terrible statement, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach" at teachers are acting maliciously and are often wilfully ignorant.