I don’t know if I can really look back at this objectively, but I’m going to try.
Growing up, I had one parent out of four who really, really didn’t approve of me. I was always too fat. It made him really upset that my hair fell out in perfectly round circles – what was up with that? I must have been doing something to myself, I should just stop it! (But it was my body attacking itself.) He told me that he loved my sister more than me because she was the first born, and my brother more than me because he was the boy he always wanted.
While I was still in elementary school, we moved from a large city to a very tiny town of 300. This was right in the middle of my awkward years when I couldn’t figure out what to wear on my strange new body and my teeth were still crooked like I could eat a carrot through a fence because the dentist wanted to wait a few more years before recommending braces. Fifth grade was brutal. I had almost no friends the entire year because a girl from my class (who was tall, also awkward, with blond frizzy hair and shifty eyes) gave me a horrible nickname and meanly declared that no one could be friends with me or come near me. She got one of the boys in our class to write me love letters as a joke. He then made a big deal of “breaking up” with me, or as much as you can break up with someone after a few badly written letters, and their little group passed around what I wrote to him. (Imagine my surprise when I visited my step-cousin’s cousin’s house and it was HER house a few years later. I thought she was going to shit her pants. I had no idea where my step-aunt was taking us, I was just riding with everyone.)
I also had bullies on my bus. They didn’t just pick on me, my sister was a target too. Our bus ride was a long one, nearly an hour in the mornings and about 40 minutes in the afternoons. The worst of them was the stop immediately before ours but still quite a distance from our house because we’re talking farm country. She was MEAN. ROTTEN. The others were further along the route. One was a girl in my class who has always been very mean spirited. Her whole family has taken on the same persona as her mom; her dad busted his ass, but it seems that her mom was never happy with that and was always focused on appearances and putting her dad down. So that’s what she embraced. So I was an easy target. Fat, awkward, and crooked teeth. There was a scrawny boy, I think he may have been a year younger than me, also part of their little group, that my sister ended up punching because he lifted her skirt. It’s too bad she didn’t break his nose. And then the last regular in that group was another girl, who, again, was spiteful. She was good friends with the girl with the nasty mom and she seemed to thrive on the nastiness herself. (As a side note, I have become friends with some of these people on Facebook to see if anything has changed. It hasn’t.)
I’m just going to skip way ahead here, to the bullies online. First there’s the guys who have dating profiles on the various dating websites. After a few decades of doing online dating between being in relationships, I have decided to not use online dating anymore as a means to find connections, because it can be pretty brutal. In my 20s and into my 30s, there were times when I would take things that were said to me very personally. It was really tough to let stuff go. This was also the time when I was in the process of losing all of my hair, so I was really self-conscious of my appearance and didn’t really know how to initiate the conversation about looking like Mr. Clean to prospective dates (or guys that I had already been out with a bunch of times). But everything nasty that was said to me was excused by the guys as being in the interest of not wanting to waste time. They HAD to say it. They couldn’t wait. They couldn’t filter. I had to take it or they would move on. They had to be shitty. If I couldn’t handle it, then it was my problem and not theirs. How can you reason with that anyway?
Now of course we’re in the era of Facebook. We thought this would be a fad that lasted maybe 5 years, maybe a bit more. But they keep changing the algorithms so we stay hooked. I try to take breaks, but they usually only last 4 of my waking hours. Facebook is filled with all kinds of ills. I belong to some rare disease patient groups because I know it’s likely I will hear something I’m not aware of, and it’s also a good way for me to keep track of doctors and medications. I don’t often comment, though. I will see the same people posting – sometimes daily. I know that some people need to find any reason to connect. It drives me a little batty because sometimes they ask, “Has anyone tried ______?” and of course there was just a long discussion about it the day before. If I have something different and useful to say, I will add to the discussion.
Recently in one of the groups, a guy posted that he was taking hydroxychloroquine for our condition, the same as what “cures the virus.” That really upset me, because first of all, no one takes that medication for our condition. It’s the wrong medication. Second, that medication also does not treat COVID-19. So I posted that along with scientific journal articles, plus the CDC directive stating that that med should not be used because it has caused people to die. Suddenly 4 guys jumped on and said all kinds of personal things about me, including one who said he hoped I didn’t have children – as if that related to me correcting this misinformation that this guy put up in the first place. So a few days later he came back on and said he did indeed put the wrong medicine up, that he was actually given an antibiotic of a completely (not even close) name. No one apologized to me for being shitty to me. Then two days ago from today, a woman jumped on and was shitty to me, telling me I was off topic and I should apologize for that. I wrote back and told her that ignoring all of the other posts and focusing on me for correcting misinformation, misinformation that the original guy admitted he was responsible for, was shitty. Then she just wrote another line saying, “Well, it was off topic.” Yep, it sure was, initiated by the original guy. But I’m going to correct it with science every time if someone else is going to put the wrong info out there.
Just yesterday, I was in another patient group for another rare disease. It’s a little more difficult for me to describe everything that happened or is happening with my brain and cerebrospinal fluid in a short enough paragraph that will make sense. Part of that is conveying this understanding that my symptoms are unusual and disarming to the doctors, to say the least. A fellow patient basically called me a liar. My fuse is pretty short these days, so I tend to stomp and snort once as warning, and that’s all you get. After that I will cut a bitch. I explained how many doctors I had encountered (over 100 in 10 years) and being banned from the Mayo in writing, and added that Barrow had just told me to go to a “neighborhood neurologist” because they didn’t know who to send me to in their own organization. This other patient continued on her crusade to tell me that I didn’t know what I was talking about and there was no way I could guess that doctors hadn’t seen my symptoms before. So I told her congratulations on deciding to be a bully to a fellow patient. In fact, all of the doctors were stumped by my symptoms, their words.
Also not too long ago was the issue with my cousin who lives on the east coast. He told me to get off my lazy ass when I became disabled after the ten failed brain surgeries (but before the issues with my vertebrae and the bones in my hands starting to fuse together). I did mention this before, but I didn’t hesitate to tell him to eat a bag of dicks. He is a drunk bully, and I just kind of feel sorry for his wife and daughters.
I’m 46 years of age now. There’s certain things you stop caring about, I suppose, but I think my thing is bullies. I mean, really, I think I’ve experienced them all. My feelings just aren’t getting hurt anymore. After the most recent exchanges, I did a temperature check and I felt nothing. That parental bullying is gone. My cousin hasn’t ever really been in my life. Elementary school is long done. I haven’t ridden a school bus since 10th grade. I’m definitely not doing online dating anymore, I think I gave that the old college try and then some. And those patient groups…well, now I can just scroll past them. Sometimes I get random comments online because of articles that have been posted that I respond to. Those are usually the lowest of the low. I think I remember one lady telling me to “get that thing in the middle of your forehead fixed.” I still have no idea what she was trying to say. It seems no one else did either because she didn’t get any responses or reactions.
I think one of the truest tests was after an exchange with complete strangers in a comment section, a stranger sent me a message that said, “Have you been drinking? You must be lol” and I was thinking, wow, he came all the way over here just to say that. No imagination. He’s the laziest bully ever.
Christianity
No. Oh, Wait…Oh, That’s a Definite No.
Of course it’s been a while since I’ve logged on to OKCupid, but there are some guys who don’t pay attention to that and just like my pictures or check out my profile without looking at the last time I’ve logged in. I will admit that even I’ve been excited about a profile and then noticed too late that it’s been a month or three since the guy has logged in, signaling either 1) He found someone, or 2) He gave up, or 3) He’s in jail. I got a little notification in my email with a note from the guy saying, “I do have a German shepherd and a Siamese – otherwise I’m clean- list-wise”
I’ve heard this before. I logged in. We were a whopping 43% of a match. I looked over his profile, and the very first thing I saw is that he’s Christian, and it’s somewhat important. What did I specify in my profile? I won’t date someone who participates in organized religion. Why not? Because I’m not waiting to be saved or led or subjugated. I can lead a morally upright life without religion. I can lead a spiritually aware life without religion.
Some other tidbits from his profile: He admits he drinks regularly (at least 4-5 nights a week), he really, really wants to fuck anything that moves, and he’s a Dom. A little more from his questions: He doesn’t want women to have “too high self-esteem; he wants to date a slut; he would prefer to date only in his race; jealousy is healthy; he could be in an open relationship; he’s just looking for sex for the next few months.”
I started with the easiest one, and replied that we wouldn’t be a match because he has listed himself as a Christian and that it’s important to him.
His response: Really? I’m a barely attending Lutheran with doubts. And what is with intolerant people on all sides of the spectrum- Good luck with your godless utopia
Me: Since your profile says that you’re Christian and you’re getting pissy that I pointed it out, I’d say it’s pretty important to you. And since you’re offended that I don’t believe in organized religion, I’d say we’re not a match.
I didn’t even have to take it any further than that because he blocked me and so I blocked him (sometimes these jackwads come back later when they are drunk and looking for spank bank material). But really, he’s “questioning” his faith because he really, really wants to fuck around and he doesn’t want to feel guilty about it. It was such a weak insult to throw at me – “godless utopia”??? That’s only a horror to someone who believes it’s the worst kind of hell a soul can suffer. If he wasn’t strong in his faith, he wouldn’t have written it. I guarantee you he’s still trying to work out how to give himself blow jobs.
Medical Sexism and Trump Grabbing My Girl Parts
I pride myself on being a college-educated woman. The education came at a steep price. The student loans will likely haunt me long past my death; I only finished two years ago, and I was even handing in projects while I was in the ICU recovering from my many surgeries.
My education is not strictly located in books, though. I have traveled through 36 states and 7 countries in 20 years, and moved across the U.S. 4 times. As my friend pointed out on Friday night, I seem to be able to talk to people wherever I go (I didn’t realize anyone noticed!). Sometimes I hang back and observe, and there is a lot to be learned by listening and watching body language.
I have never liked Donald Trump. I was never attracted to his slicked-back hair and definitely would not have recognized him if I stumbled across him in the 1980’s or ’90’s when his star was rising, and I couldn’t stomach his show for even one hour when “The Apprentice” started airing. I didn’t understand the appeal of him being put in front of a camera for being extra nasty. I never bought into the idea that it was being played up for entertainment; I actually thought that he was even worse than what we were seeing.
Now here we are and somehow he has slipped past all of the 14 other candidates for president and it’s the last few weeks before the big election. Here in Minnesota we’re allowed to vote early by absentee ballot, so rather than join the crush on voting day, I made arrangements to go to the county office at a time I knew it would be much quieter. It took me about a half hour to fill in all of the boxes manually for all of the different options. We had state representatives and judges that needed votes as well as the president and vice president. Luckily Minnesota is still using paper ballots – so many states tried to go electronic and the glitches resulted in votes disappearing forever, and Republicans winning votes where they might not have.
In case you haven’t guessed yet, I didn’t vote for Trump. I happen to be a few things he hates: a disabled, fat, bald woman who will never compete in beauty pageants or for his attention. But here’s a more comprehensive list of why having him as president would pretty much guarantee that 99% of us would be dead by February 2017 (or there would be a coup, but that would require people getting off of their asses and abandoning their cats).
I attended a school in a very rural area of Minnesota for five grade levels before I moved back to Minneapolis to finish school. Some of those classmates are now friends with me on Facebook – or at least “friends” as Facebook defines us. But we have led very different lives. As much as I have ventured out on my own since the age of 16, the majority of them have stayed very close to home, married very young (some even fellow classmates), had children, and some have already started working on grandchildren, even though our age range is only 41-43. Collectively and in general, they are afraid of anyone who isn’t white and Catholic; Lutheran is marginally okay, even though those fuckers don’t kneel. You’re fucked if you’re Jewish in that area. There’s been a mighty wave of Muslim Somalians of course, and the white folks are scared shitless. Trump seems like a white-orange god because he makes them feel secure – walls! Muslim registry! Deny entry to any more Muslims! All Mexicans are bad (except for tacos)! Um…money! (Shhhh, don’t say anything about the fucking bankruptcies. He was smart for dodging taxes, you’re just jealous because you’re not as smart as he is.) And the creme de la creme: GRAB WOMEN BY THE PUSSY! He sure tells it like it is!
Well, let me tell it like it is.
First, let me drop in a little truth bomb. I had my genes analyzed through 23 & Me just to get the raw data because of all of this rare disease business and to see if they could pick up anything identifiable, and something that came up on my mitochondrial DNA (mom’s DNA) is that I’m Yemeni Jewish. That’s right, fuckers, I’m Jewish. Yemeni Jews happen to be the oldest lineage of Jews, desert dwellers who often converted to Catholicism in order to avoid being put to death, which is likely what happened with our family somewhere along the line – we’ve got bishops and nuns. Jews who converted to Catholicism became self-haters publicly to save their lives. I’m a survivor.
Second, I feel like we are moving backwards in time. Trump is just a very obvious sign of it. Here we are in 2016 and a swimmer gets 3 months in jail for raping an unconscious woman in a back alley because a judge feels sorry for his potential swimming career; young men are deciding that as a reaction to women trying to get equal rights and pay to men, there needs to be a movement called “menenism” where their “grievances” need to be aired (and though it was started as satire, I’ve been personally targeted numerous times on Twitter by guys with the “menenist” agenda – mostly ending with “shut up bitch what have you done nothing,” so of course I’m mentally correcting the punctuation); and now females aren’t going into medicine in equal numbers to men.
When I was debating the Trump vs. Hillary vote with these former classmates and they were telling me why they thought Trump was still “better”, and here was the list that one of the debaters came up with:
Instead, I suggest folks vote based on simple, concrete (non-emotional) things like
1. Who will keep us safer?
2. Who will keep the government out of my health and education choices?
3. Who is LESS LIKELY to be swayed by bureaucracy?
3.5. Who is least likely to fu*k up our economy further?
4. Who hasn’t been linked to several national security leaks?
5. Who hasn’t been linked to voter fraud?
6. Who hasn’t been linked to multiple nefarious deaths to those opposed to or threatening to them?
7. Who HAS BEEN?
This was my response:
Okay, I’ve gotta jump in on this, because I’m a little worried about just where the “facts” are coming from. First of all, we have a pretty solid idea of how Trump is going to treat certain issues.
1. Trump is going to be just as challenged with geography and world events as Palin is.
2. Trump needs to stay away from my vagina and needs a thesaurus because he only knows the word “tremendous” – so do you really think he needs to be in charge of determining how education is either built up or broken down?
3. Trump is easily swayed by anatomy, money, perceived power, hair spray and dementia (his own). 3.5. Are you guys really okay with the number of times he has declared bankruptcy and denied payment to all of his contractors, big and small?
4. He leaks what’s going on through his brain (i.e.: “I don’t pay taxes because I’m ‘smart'”) – pretty sure he shouldn’t be trusted with nuclear bomb codes.
5. He doesn’t have a voter fraud record because he has never had an office that he has been voted into; he has bought all of his offices. And then filed bankruptcy. Multiple times.
6. Multiple nefarious deaths….well, that comes with the territory of being American, doesn’t it? We’re all bullies. We don’t take time to listen or understand or practice any diplomacy.
7. Silly question that is more like a bumper sticker and carries no meaning.
Then one person asked how I felt about “all” of our health care providers supporting Trump?
I’m going to let the “all” slide because I don’t think that’s the case, but I am personally struggling with getting adequate care, and I truly think it’s because we have a boys’ club that is going strong still. Right now the breakdown is about 70% male and 30% female doctors, and I really do feel like my female primary care doctor isn’t confident she can stand up to the male specialists who misdiagnose me. Because she can’t, it really, really fucks me over. It fucks over my case with the undiagnosed diseases with the NIH, and it fucks over my case with disability.
I’ve been struggling with the right way to put this into words, and it’s a little more complicated. I have a deep mistrust for doctors at this point in my life. I expect them to let me down. Last week when I had my appointment to follow up on the testing for the mast cell disease, I barely slept three hours the night before and fully expected to be sent away, just like hundreds of other times. So right now, if I even have the slightest hint that someone worships Trump and his hatred for women besides as sexual vessels, I instantly get anxiety. I can’t trust that doctor to write objective notes in my file and I can’t trust that doctor in my personal space. This is not unfounded.
But the truth is that most doctors won’t talk politics freely. I just have to trust my instincts and read the doctor’s body language and figure out if he’s an asshole the old-fashioned way.
‘Scuse Me, Are You The Lady With Some Honesty?
A week ago I received a message from a guy on OKCupid who seemed pretty sane. What I mean by this is that he typed complete sentences that included all of the proper punctuation, he didn’t call me “sweetie,” “honey,” “dear,” or “beautiful,” and he didn’t simply say “Hi.” He did tell me right off the bat that I had a lot of negatives in my profile (as in, “Don’t send me dick pics”) so it was hard for him to get a true sense of my personality.
I wrote him back and thanked him for contacting me. I told him that I wrote my profile in that manner because in the past, it never mattered what I wrote – every guy who contacted me wanted to get right down to showing me his penis, so I had to immediately make my personal boundaries known.
I also told him that I wasn’t really in top form for dating for the time being; my time and attitude are both being consumed by medical stuff and I am not the best company right now. His response was, “Hey, I understand on both fronts – it’s gotta be pretty frustrating to be a woman on this site and fighting off all the trash, and if you have stuff going on that is too much to deal with, I won’t take it personally if I don’t hear from you again.”
I wrote back and said, “Hey, thanks for understanding! I don’t want to be one of your “stories” because of the stuff I have going on, so I think it’s best if I take a time out right now.” So…crickets. He’s being a gentleman and taking no to mean no at face value, which I appreciate to no end. It’s times like these when I really, really feel cheated about the body I currently dwell in.
From another guy an hour ago: “Hello! I love the profile. Very Intelligent way to let people know you are a no-nonsense, straight forward woman, who know what she wants. And I like that.” However, he’s a holy-rollin’ Christian and I’m not at all attracted to him physically, so I’m going to have to thank him and turn him down gently. I’m going to stay on hiatus for now.
And I just saw someone from the town where my mom’s business is located. There’s only 1,000 people in that town on a good day, about 80 miles from here, and I can’t figure out if I know him…I’m afraid to click on his profile. I guarantee you he’s a Trump humper and we’d have nothing in common anyway, but it creeps me out that I’m back to being in the same state as the place that I ran away from two decades ago and I’m going to keep running into people I know exactly in the same manner.
How Nice, She Included A Map
I’m officially clinically depressed.
I don’t know who was the first to diagnose me. It doesn’t really matter. You would be depressed too if you had worked your way through 54 doctors and none of them could tell you what was causing your severe physical issues, a good number of them misdiagnosed you, somewhere around 10 said it was psychosomatic, and around 49 of them told you to go away and don’t come back.
I’ve got anxiety too.
I can’t talk about a lot of the CSF stuff without becoming emotional. I also don’t sleep the night before appointments. Who wouldn’t react the same under these circumstances?
At some point, whether it was my counselor or one of my medical doctors or the actual medical insurance, someone determined that I should get help from a county organization that offers comprehensive help with mental health. Fine. I’m doing meditation, and I’m trying to be social while also trying not to wear my body out, and I’m trying to watch videos of babies and cats and dogs to keep my spirits up, but fine, if this is a resource that I can benefit from, then sign me up. But I told them that I still need a hospital bed so I can try to avoid bedsores, and I still need a neurologist and a neurosurgeon that won’t turn me away and who will listen to me.
So this past Monday the 19th I had my initial intake appointment, and two women from this organization come to my apartment to discuss the program and sign forms with me. I signed a release form for them to talk to my counselor, with whom they are very familiar, and they also went through various questions, one of which was, “Do you have a religious preference or religious beliefs?” I emphatically said, “No, thank you!” They smiled and nodded, and we didn’t go into more detail, but it was clear that I have zero interest in religion.
So imagine my surprise when I pull this anonymous letter out of my mailbox this afternoon:
At first, I thought one of my friends (or even a frienemy) was having a laugh at me, especially since religion has been a hot topic in light of the stabbings and shooting this last Saturday. I wracked my brain; I thought there was a possibility it was the crazy German woman who was always telling me she was better than me and in addition, she was a good Christian; I fleetingly wondered if it was a relative of the ex or maybe a recent new acquaintance who contacted a friend for my address to send me this information about this can’t-miss fire and brimstone. The envelope wasn’t much help because it didn’t have a name on the return address, but I looked up the numerical portion anyway…
Bingo.
It’s from one of the two people who sat on my couch on Monday morning. They both heard me firmly say “No, thank you,” and both smiled and nodded. When I talked to them about my medical history and both were absolutely dismayed at the number of surgeries I had, my inability to still get a diagnosis, the swiftness with which I am sent away, the sheer number of doctors I have seen, my accuracy in my communication to my doctors and their refusal to “hear” me…let me say that last part again: THEIR REFUSAL TO HEAR ME. They said that they would collaborate with my counselor and also have an RN visit my apartment so that my physical and emotional needs could be addressed, and they would also review my medical records so that they would be worded more accurately for my disability case.
They saw me become emotional when I said that doctors were ignoring me when I told them exactly what was wrong with me and it would prolong my agony and pain, sometimes for years, when they ignored me; I was never wrong. They said again, “Your biggest challenge is that doctors don’t hear you.” Yes!
So why didn’t they HEAR me when I said “No, thank you” to religion?
There is a certain arrogance that comes with religion; if you practice religion, why is it assumed you are better or your life is better than if you don’t? If one person is religious and the other person isn’t and there is some debate about whether or not a ritual like going to church is practiced, why is the assumption that the ritual is the obvious choice and that the religious person should be made happy? Why can’t it be the other way around? Pray on your own time. God is everywhere, right? Why do you have to go to church to put money in the pastor’s wallet?
I got this letter after business hours so I have been left to my own imagination to compose letters, and most of them ended with an emphatic “Fuck you.” Most importantly, this organization is a county organization, and no where does it state that I must follow a certain religion in order to receive services. That was one of the first things I looked for, because if I would have known that that was a requirement to be in the program, I would have told them not to bother before making the appointment.
So now, just three days into the program, I have to file a complaint with the Clinical Director.
If I do compose a letter, it’s going to include the fact that I have traveled around the U.S. and have moved across the U.S. four times, and have used up two passports, and since I’m a 42-year-old woman who has lived a fairly adventurous life, I know what options are available to me as far as belief systems go. “Have you considered science?” I think I’ll end my letter with that.
The Remains Of The Day
Yesterday I was picked up by the short bus for back-to-back appointments at the health crisis center. I was the only one on the bus and so I felt comfortable chatting with the driver, unhindered by eavesdroppers or joiners. First I asked if he was a Prince fan. Hey, why not? He didn’t look to be much younger than me, and it’s still big news around here since it’s Prince’s home base. Rumors are still flying and spreading like wildfire. How did he actually die? How will his estate be handled? Will his family completely melt down and will it get ugly like it so often does when there is money involved?
The guy admitted he wasn’t much of a Prince fan. Our conversation wandered around the world of entertainment, and he talked about how dissatisfied he was with staying hooked up with satellite TV, but he kept it for sports. But then he said that he really didn’t enjoy watching any sports either. I asked him if he liked to see games in person as opposed to seeing them on TV and he said he kind of did, but he couldn’t afford to go to games. I asked him if he liked to go to shows like theater or dance, and he said he’d rather be burned alive. He also didn’t really “get into” movies or music.
A 20-minute bus ride isn’t really the place to offer life coaching. I also can’t make people feel what I feel, which can’t necessarily be put into words. A sense of urgency, maybe, or finality? It could be that my bullshit meter goes off a lot more than it ever has before. What I wanted to tell him is that he needs to find his joy. I cannot say this loudly enough, though, but this cannot be confused with finding his next fix. So many men are stuck in this cycle of seeking thrills and the adrenaline wears off and they are onto the next conquest while constantly feeling empty and wondering why they do. Where is their humanity?
Before connecting with The Saint Paul, I talked to a few men through OKCupid by text and/or phone who made excuses to play stupid games with me or not respect boundaries. I changed their identifiers in my phone to start with “Asshole ______” and programmed my phone to automatically send their calls and messages into my spam folders. I don’t even think about these folders unless I get weird calls like I have been for the past three days from recruiters based on resumes I put out in the universe over a year ago when I got laid off of my job in Phoenix before I had my last surgery. I went to update the blocks and thought to myself, “I should check my spam folder.” Lo and behold, there were some messages.
The first was from the Christian asshole who had no respect for my boundaries, and who previously tried to bait me into talking to him again by randomly telling me he had arrived at his hotel room. This time he just said, “Hey stranger how are you?” Of course, it’s been almost three months since we’ve texted, and we never even talked on the phone – but by God, he’s not gonna give up!!!! Answer, bitch!!!
The other two were from the last guy I talked to on the phone and texted with before I met The Saint Paul who abruptly said he met someone and cut off all communication after he tried to sext, which I guessed to be a lie since he was constantly logging into OKCupid still when I had an account before mine was deactivated. After two months of silence, he sent texts saying, “How have you been? Just wanted to say hi.” Gawd, please – I am not new. He didn’t “just” want to say hi. We were not casually keeping in contact and staying friends. He’s trying to keep his options open in case whomever he is currently trying to bang doesn’t work out.
I resisted the urge to reply to both of these messages because really, neither one of them deserve a response. I really, really like this phone I purchased on New Year’s just for this blocking feature alone.
There are a couple of great lines in this song by Sean Rowe that I think applies to these guys (and really, listen to the whole song because it fucking rocks): “I’m a man, I am the world, I’m a man, I am the Lord” and “He puts out the lights and jerks off alone.”
I can’t save everyone. They need to figure this shit out.
Everything But The Gay
Quite frankly, I really like this pope…except for this glaring disparity in his chorus about love and acceptance and how homosexuals are still making a choice to sin. This is why I can’t subscribe to any religion.
Pope France made another official proclamation this week, and it was predictably warm and fuzzy. The 256-page document, titled “Amoris Laetitia” (Latin for “The Joy of Love”), calls on Catholic leaders and followers to treat one another with kindness and empathy, and to remain respectful and honest about the challenges of domestic life. It contains…
via If the pope loves gay people, he has a strange way of showing it — Quartz
My Adolescent Heart Is Cured
Right at the cusp of my childhood and the beginning of the time when I became self-conscious and awkward, we moved from a large metropolitan area with a population of 1.5 million people to a town of 300. My bus ride to school was long and filled with strange faces; it took an hour to get to a town of 700, where people rarely moved to or away from and were all largely related. In fact, I had a couple of classmates who were the offspring of first cousins, sentenced to lifelong special ed classes thanks to genes that were far too similar to have been considered safe to pair up.
I was bullied terribly my first year at the farm town school. It really wasn’t until the next year, 6th grade for me, that I started making friends. I also became a little more comfortable expressing myself – including being vocal about crushes on boys. One boy in particular held my attention for ten whole years. I’ll nickname him C. C. Deville, because he played guitar and wanted to be a rock star just like the guys in Poison and Motley Crue.
I made Valentine’s Day cards for everyone in my class. However, for C. C.’s card, I did exactly what I read about in a book, which was write a little poem without signing it:
“You can’t be my Valentine, you look too much like Frankenstein!”
He was intrigued! It worked, just like in the book! Except when he thought another girl wrote it for him, and he started making eyes at her. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Two years later a friend from Minneapolis stayed with me for a couple of days and came with me to school. C. C. Deville was doing everything he could to charm her, and she flirted right back, even though she knew I liked him. She liked him too and thought he was very cute. Later that year he got suspended for smoking pot under the bleachers in the gym, so obviously he was a little bit of a bad boy. No wonder all of the ladies were flocking to him like bees to honey.
When I was in 9th grade, I tried out for and made the cheerleading squad for boys’ JV basketball…which meant that I would be cheering for HIM. Oh, sure, there were a few other boys who were cute too. But there was one time on an away game that I was floating on cloud nine because we had to drive two hours through a snow storm on the bus and I was sitting in front of him, and he let me borrow his leather jacket to sleep on it. I could smell his cologne. I thought maybe he might eventually warm up to me since he lent me this article of clothing. Instead, he started talking to one of the other girls on my squad and eventually started dating her. I had confessed to her that I had had a long-term crush on him and I’m pretty sure she spilled the beans to him if he hadn’t already figured out that I had been throwing myself at him for years at that point.
(2 years break to attend arts high school.)
(2 years pass while I move back and forth between Michigan and Minnesota.)
When I was 20, I discovered that a former classmate was living in my apartment complex. She said, “Oh, did you know that C. C. Deville also lives here?” I just about shit my pants. It turned out that he lived above me. Shortly after that I ran into him, said hi, exchanged pleasantries, talked him into putting my new license plate on my car for me. (“Oh, C. C., you’re so manly, thank you!” Okay, no, I didn’t say that, not really.) Sadly, I didn’t see him after his dad and my aunt died and I left on my big trip around the U.S. to find a new place to live.
Facebook has directed us back into each others’ lives many years later. However, he posts maybe 6 times a year, and my average is maybe 6 times a day – mostly goofy stuff, sometimes political stuff, and occasionally medical updates. As far as I can tell he hasn’t moved much, he doesn’t have children, may or may not play in a cover band, may or may not have a girlfriend, and may or may not work in a bank. In other words, we are really only peripheral observers. All that we have in common is that we have been in the same place at the same time in the distant past.
Today, for instance, he posted something on Facebook that really weirded me out – mainly because it didn’t seem like he wrote it (though he was taking credit for it, but its rhythm and spelling and punctuation didn’t match the rest of his writing in other posts), and because it’s some sort of rambling message about “God.”
It starts out nice enough: “Most of the time, our biggest obstacle is us. Maybe we’ve stopped dreaming.” True enough. Then: “Or, maybe we’re refusing to share our dreams out loud because we fear that God’s reputation might be at stake. God’s reputation is fine. It’s our reputation as leaders that we fear taking a hit. The dreams in our hearts were planted by God who loves us!”
“God’s reputation”? That, my friends, is anthropomorphism – assigning human qualities to non-human entities.
He goes on: “The day we stop following the dreams God has put in us is the day we allow ourselves to go into cruise control. When our biggest desire starts to shift from seeing God do great things to making everyone as comfortable as possible, we know we’re losing sight of how big God is.
“Fight the urge to maintain the status quo. Instead, do everything possible to advance the cause God placed in your heart. Stay focused on what could be rather than what has been.”
This is what has cured my heart once and for all: I feel like C. C. Deville deliberately lived a small life, looking for hero worship in a small town, and is now turning to “God” to try to make his life feel expansive and limitless. A classmate said that she was surprised at his preacher-like post (hell, I was too), but he replied that he wasn’t trying to be a preacher, he was just coming to his senses. I think it’s more like he realized that he’s middle aged and he hasn’t done anything he said he said he was going to do when he first reached adulthood.
For the longest time I felt inadequate and undesirable while he chose girls around me. Now I feel as if I have run circles around him with my life experiences and we would have nothing to talk about.
Don’t Ever Think ‘Equality’ Is A Dirty Word
We need women (and MEN) from all walks of life, from all occupations, from all age groups, to get on the bandwagon with the idea that equality is worth it. Already my nephews, aged 10 and 6, have started reciting the ugly words, “Boys are smarter than girls.” They certainly didn’t learn that from me or their parents. Now our work is even harder with trying to turn that thought process around (if it is even a process – because they are more parrots at that age than scholars).
I want all girls and boys to grow up to appreciate differences while embracing each other for their value as human beings first.
I want women to receive equal pay for equal work.
I want men to stop claiming all space as their own, including women’s bodies.
I want women to be supportive, rather than see each other as competition to be beat.
But in addition to that:
I want people who are labeled “disabled” to be out in the work force (if they are able) and have a social life filled with inclusion, and to be portrayed correctly in advertising, TV and movies.
I want “inspiration porn” to end.
I want the freedom to practice – or NOT practice – any and every religion of my choosing.
I want churches to start paying taxes.
I want people of ALL races to be valued, truly, but I want privilege to be acknowledged and then driven to extinction.
I want our actions to match our words.
I want choices, whether it’s the company I keep, the job that pays the bills, the food I put in my body, the chemicals I keep away from my dwelling and the doctors I see. The more we work towards total inclusion, the better our lives will feel, period.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jennifer-lawrence-feminism-equal-pay_us_56d08bfee4b03260bf769e58?
Dude, You’re Stepping On My Personal Space
I wrote this article for Patient Worthy on February 14th; since that day I got daily (sometimes twice daily) texts from this guy saying, “Good morning cutie” or “sweet dreams cutie.” The most recent ones – because he still won’t stop – say “Just got to my hotel” and “How are you?” For the life of me, I can’t figure out why he would bait me with the hotel remark because that one really came out of the blue. I haven’t traded texts with him since February 10th. Was the hotel text his clumsy attempt at a booty call? Or was it not intended for me, and instead should have gone to whomever was playing the part of his dirty little secret?
Dude, just…stop.
The Sick and the Dating 