Showing posts with label self-discovery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-discovery. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, October 11, 2009
An American Crime (movie #38)
I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to watch this. Good lord.
Ok,first off, let's start with what this movie is about. In the 1960s, a young woman and her younger sister go to live with their aunt. Their aunt has too many kids and not enough money and she's suffering because of this,so adding two more kids kind of send her off the edge. All the rage she has inside, rage she'd never let herself pour out on her own kids, suddenly comes out on her niece Sylvia (the eldest of the two girls). The aunt starts beating the girl, getting more and more violent, until one day she flies into a rage and imprisons the girl in the basement. Soon, her children and the neighborhood children join in beating Sylvia, calling it "punishment." This continues for months.
Horrible story, right? Who would think up something like this? Well, I'm sad to say, but this movie is based on a true story. Don't believe me? Read the info here and here. It's a terrible thing, a horrendous thing, and it's not a lot of fun to watch it happen onscreen in this movie. There was a novel loosely based on this case, called "The Girl Next Door," written by Jack Ketchum, and it's one of the hardest books I've ever read. The movie based on that book, also called "The Girl Next Door," was so disturbing that when the Family Video in my town got it in, people protested until it was taken off the shelves. That pissed me off royally, because I think it's an important film and I think people need to see it. "An American Crime" is more closely based on the Sylvia Likens case,and it's easier to watch because it ends with courtroom scenes and testimony and a voice over telling you what happened to each character, which serves to take you out of the story a bit and soften the blow of what you just saw, but it's still a difficult movie to watch.
Ellen Page stars as Sylvia, and Catherine Keener as the aunt, Gertrude Baniszewski. Both Page and Keener give great performances. Everyone in this movie gives a great performance, even the bit players. The torture scenes are painful to watch. But the most terrible thing about this movie is watching the neighborhood kids as they slowly succumb to the idea that it's ok to torture and beat Sylvia. The way that woman gets inside their minds is terrifying to watch. I've seen it happen before, and it's not something I like to relive (again, remind me why I thought it would be a good idea to watch this movie?) At the end of the book "The Girl Next Door," the narrator,one of the neighborhood kids who tortured the girl (now as an adult) says that he wonders how the other kids are doing,now that they're all grown up...and that he wonders the same thing about himself. There's something about being a kid, at the mercy of adults most of the time, that makes you believe the things they tell you, even when you know those things are wrong.
The kids who tortured Sylvia knew that what they did was wrong,but part of being in a fucked up situation is that sometimes you become more fucked up yourself just so you can adapt to it and eventually survive. Seeing them transform like that is haunting, and it makes you wonder about how they fared as adults, and it makes you worry for your neighbor's kids, because if something like this could happen in suburban USA with neighbors all around, what could be going on in your own neighborhood? At least it makes me wonder these things. And it almost makes me wish I hadn't watched this movie, which is one of the best recommendations I can give for a movie. It's that disturbing. It's that important.
Ok,first off, let's start with what this movie is about. In the 1960s, a young woman and her younger sister go to live with their aunt. Their aunt has too many kids and not enough money and she's suffering because of this,so adding two more kids kind of send her off the edge. All the rage she has inside, rage she'd never let herself pour out on her own kids, suddenly comes out on her niece Sylvia (the eldest of the two girls). The aunt starts beating the girl, getting more and more violent, until one day she flies into a rage and imprisons the girl in the basement. Soon, her children and the neighborhood children join in beating Sylvia, calling it "punishment." This continues for months.
Horrible story, right? Who would think up something like this? Well, I'm sad to say, but this movie is based on a true story. Don't believe me? Read the info here and here. It's a terrible thing, a horrendous thing, and it's not a lot of fun to watch it happen onscreen in this movie. There was a novel loosely based on this case, called "The Girl Next Door," written by Jack Ketchum, and it's one of the hardest books I've ever read. The movie based on that book, also called "The Girl Next Door," was so disturbing that when the Family Video in my town got it in, people protested until it was taken off the shelves. That pissed me off royally, because I think it's an important film and I think people need to see it. "An American Crime" is more closely based on the Sylvia Likens case,and it's easier to watch because it ends with courtroom scenes and testimony and a voice over telling you what happened to each character, which serves to take you out of the story a bit and soften the blow of what you just saw, but it's still a difficult movie to watch.
Ellen Page stars as Sylvia, and Catherine Keener as the aunt, Gertrude Baniszewski. Both Page and Keener give great performances. Everyone in this movie gives a great performance, even the bit players. The torture scenes are painful to watch. But the most terrible thing about this movie is watching the neighborhood kids as they slowly succumb to the idea that it's ok to torture and beat Sylvia. The way that woman gets inside their minds is terrifying to watch. I've seen it happen before, and it's not something I like to relive (again, remind me why I thought it would be a good idea to watch this movie?) At the end of the book "The Girl Next Door," the narrator,one of the neighborhood kids who tortured the girl (now as an adult) says that he wonders how the other kids are doing,now that they're all grown up...and that he wonders the same thing about himself. There's something about being a kid, at the mercy of adults most of the time, that makes you believe the things they tell you, even when you know those things are wrong.
The kids who tortured Sylvia knew that what they did was wrong,but part of being in a fucked up situation is that sometimes you become more fucked up yourself just so you can adapt to it and eventually survive. Seeing them transform like that is haunting, and it makes you wonder about how they fared as adults, and it makes you worry for your neighbor's kids, because if something like this could happen in suburban USA with neighbors all around, what could be going on in your own neighborhood? At least it makes me wonder these things. And it almost makes me wish I hadn't watched this movie, which is one of the best recommendations I can give for a movie. It's that disturbing. It's that important.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
From Within (movie #10)
I grew up in a very fundamentalist Christian environment. It was one of those situations where everything was part of God's plan, and questioning and wondering and thinking anything not approved by the church was a sin that would lead me astray and allow Satan into my life. As such, this movie really hit me. It's about a small town not unlike the one where I grew up, a small town where the people trust the local pastor with everything and they believe what he says about God being in control. Well, one day, a young man comes back from the war very troubled, and he meets with the pastor for "counseling," and then he winds up dead, and people blame his mother for killing him. Around this time, the young people of the town find a book that contains evil spirits, and as they mess around with the powers of the book, the kids begin killing themselves. This leads the main character, a young girl named Lindsay, to question her faith. Meanwhile, the pastor doesn't like the evil taking over his town, so he takes steps to stop it, and these two opposing forces begin to converge and the structure that has allowed the town to survive for years falls apart.
I must say, I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's not so much a demon speaking to these kids as it's voices in their heads telling them to question the things they've always believed, and they can't handle this, so they break down. I've been through that. I had more than one book, I had tons of novels and movies and music,things that made me question the things my church told me. When I first got to college the church I attended here had a "cleansing event" where the pastor brought all his non-Christian CDs and burned them in a bonfire, and he invited all of us to do the same with our books or music, anything that separated us from God by making us think "evil things." Of course, I did it, but looking back on in now, it wasn't that the songs I listened to or the books I read or the movies I watched told me that there wasn't a God, it was that they challenged me to move beyond my narrow little world and look at things differently from the way I'd always been taught. That was hard for me (it still is, every day) and in this way I can really relate to the teens in this movie, starting to think about what they've always believed and scared to move beyond that.
In this movie, the evil is not picky, it talks to the kids starting to question their faith, but it also talks to the hardcore Christians and whispers to them what they have to do to get rid of the evil in their town. The Christians think they're listening to the voice of God, and the other kids think it's the voice of the devil,and meanwhile, the evil book is just setting them all up and watching them fall. It's pretty grim and harrowing.
I never really expect a little low-budget horror flick to make me think like this, but I appreciate it just the same.
I must say, I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's not so much a demon speaking to these kids as it's voices in their heads telling them to question the things they've always believed, and they can't handle this, so they break down. I've been through that. I had more than one book, I had tons of novels and movies and music,things that made me question the things my church told me. When I first got to college the church I attended here had a "cleansing event" where the pastor brought all his non-Christian CDs and burned them in a bonfire, and he invited all of us to do the same with our books or music, anything that separated us from God by making us think "evil things." Of course, I did it, but looking back on in now, it wasn't that the songs I listened to or the books I read or the movies I watched told me that there wasn't a God, it was that they challenged me to move beyond my narrow little world and look at things differently from the way I'd always been taught. That was hard for me (it still is, every day) and in this way I can really relate to the teens in this movie, starting to think about what they've always believed and scared to move beyond that.
In this movie, the evil is not picky, it talks to the kids starting to question their faith, but it also talks to the hardcore Christians and whispers to them what they have to do to get rid of the evil in their town. The Christians think they're listening to the voice of God, and the other kids think it's the voice of the devil,and meanwhile, the evil book is just setting them all up and watching them fall. It's pretty grim and harrowing.
I never really expect a little low-budget horror flick to make me think like this, but I appreciate it just the same.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Shepherd
Today hasn't been a good day. I wouldn't be lying if I said that it's probably been the hardest day I've had in months. It seems like all the stress is piling up and ganging up and attacking me at once, and I've been bottling up things that threaten to come to the surface and I don't know if they'd make me feel better or destroy me if I let them out. My boss called me worthless at work last Saturday even though I bust my ass and try to stock as much as I can, and last night he threatened twice to fire me because he said he knows someone is trying to get away with not stocking by saying things are "backstock" (what we call items that are already full on the shelves). I know this isn't true, but the morning people keep saying it's true about me (I don't know why they hate me so much) and you can say all you want "oh, if it's not true, he won't fire you" but Ive been fired before from a job when I was accused even though I didn't do anything wrong. I'm barely scraping by as it is. Losing this job would be devastating for me. Especially when I work so hard to do my job and do it well, and I'm so stressed out about everything else in my life that my job was the only thing that seemed to be going well. I don't need this stress on top of everything else.
So yeah. Bad day. And I'm so tired of trying to have hope in the midst of a sea of people who keep telling me to have hope like it's easy to do, or like it's not something I'm already trying with every fiber of my being, while I get sicker and sicker and still don't have insurance and still have so much debt and still see people losing hope all around me and giving up and dying, and I want to tell them to have hope, but I know how trite that sounds to me and I want to give them something real, so I try my best only to have people mock my words or tell me I'm a drama queen. I'm about to stab the next person who says something like that to me.
See? Now I'm threatening to stab people. I want so badly to be a good person. I want to be the kind of person I expect others to be. It's so much harder than it sounds, and I'm so tired of trying and failing. When the author Renee Alston wrote in her book "Stumbling Toward Faith" about her husband, her description of him touched my heart in so many ways that I read it over and over and over again to remind myself that there is good in the world, even when I can't see it for myself:
there was so much that was shattered and broken in me. i was distrustful and skeptical, and i pushed love away because i was terrified of it. the thought of being hurt kept me from taking risks, and kept my life protected and safe.
my husband came into my life with great gentleness. he never forced his way in. he never insisted that i give him anything that i couldn't give. he simply sat with me and waited with me and loved me.
i learned from him the wonder of being loved. he has stayed with me even when i have begged him to leave. he has respected me even when i have yelled at him and thrown things at him and refused to respect myself. he has held me when there were no words to be said, knowing that to say them would only trivialize my pain.
he walked with me through the process of intense therapy, of nights when i slept in the bathtub or the closet, too terrified to be with another person; too full of memories to be in my own bed. he has watched me sign "no suicide" contracts and visited me in mental hospitals. he has nurtured the small wounded parts of me and always believed i would make it.
i have held on to his hope for me when i have had none for myself. i have held on to his love for me when i have felt unloved and afraid. through him i have learned that there are places in me that love can reach. through him i have been willing to begin to be loved. through him i have learned the worth of letting people in. because of him i began to open up to others again, to be brave.
he has been the beginning of my ability to believe.
That description tugs at my soul. It reminds me of what I'm trying to be for other people, and for myself, a friend...someone who is there for people and tries to give them hope; and I keep trying to remind myself that even if it seems like it doesn't matter, it does matter. So many people gave up on me. I want to be the kind of person who will not give up on someone else. I honestly don't feel strong enough, like I don't have one thousandth of the resolve I need, and the light I try to shine looks so small in the face of the darkness. I try to remember that it's important that I'm shining a light at all, but it's hard to remember that when all I can think about is what a horrible job I'm doing and how messed up my life is (and how bad my grammar is when I keep putting prepositions at the end of my sentences).
Have you guys ever seen Pulp Fiction? There's this part I keep thinking about, where Samuel L. Jackson's character says this:
There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.
Maybe that's it. I'm the tyranny of evil men, but I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd. It doesn't seem like enough, but it's going to have to be, because it's all I've got right now.
So yeah. Bad day. And I'm so tired of trying to have hope in the midst of a sea of people who keep telling me to have hope like it's easy to do, or like it's not something I'm already trying with every fiber of my being, while I get sicker and sicker and still don't have insurance and still have so much debt and still see people losing hope all around me and giving up and dying, and I want to tell them to have hope, but I know how trite that sounds to me and I want to give them something real, so I try my best only to have people mock my words or tell me I'm a drama queen. I'm about to stab the next person who says something like that to me.
See? Now I'm threatening to stab people. I want so badly to be a good person. I want to be the kind of person I expect others to be. It's so much harder than it sounds, and I'm so tired of trying and failing. When the author Renee Alston wrote in her book "Stumbling Toward Faith" about her husband, her description of him touched my heart in so many ways that I read it over and over and over again to remind myself that there is good in the world, even when I can't see it for myself:
there was so much that was shattered and broken in me. i was distrustful and skeptical, and i pushed love away because i was terrified of it. the thought of being hurt kept me from taking risks, and kept my life protected and safe.
my husband came into my life with great gentleness. he never forced his way in. he never insisted that i give him anything that i couldn't give. he simply sat with me and waited with me and loved me.
i learned from him the wonder of being loved. he has stayed with me even when i have begged him to leave. he has respected me even when i have yelled at him and thrown things at him and refused to respect myself. he has held me when there were no words to be said, knowing that to say them would only trivialize my pain.
he walked with me through the process of intense therapy, of nights when i slept in the bathtub or the closet, too terrified to be with another person; too full of memories to be in my own bed. he has watched me sign "no suicide" contracts and visited me in mental hospitals. he has nurtured the small wounded parts of me and always believed i would make it.
i have held on to his hope for me when i have had none for myself. i have held on to his love for me when i have felt unloved and afraid. through him i have learned that there are places in me that love can reach. through him i have been willing to begin to be loved. through him i have learned the worth of letting people in. because of him i began to open up to others again, to be brave.
he has been the beginning of my ability to believe.
That description tugs at my soul. It reminds me of what I'm trying to be for other people, and for myself, a friend...someone who is there for people and tries to give them hope; and I keep trying to remind myself that even if it seems like it doesn't matter, it does matter. So many people gave up on me. I want to be the kind of person who will not give up on someone else. I honestly don't feel strong enough, like I don't have one thousandth of the resolve I need, and the light I try to shine looks so small in the face of the darkness. I try to remember that it's important that I'm shining a light at all, but it's hard to remember that when all I can think about is what a horrible job I'm doing and how messed up my life is (and how bad my grammar is when I keep putting prepositions at the end of my sentences).
Have you guys ever seen Pulp Fiction? There's this part I keep thinking about, where Samuel L. Jackson's character says this:
There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.
Maybe that's it. I'm the tyranny of evil men, but I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd. It doesn't seem like enough, but it's going to have to be, because it's all I've got right now.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
"As far as I'm concerned, it's all hot. Just because I'm not sticking it in there doesn't mean that I don't find it beautiful."
The title of this post is a quote from Adam Lambert in his infamous Rolling Stone article. I read that quote, and I thought it was the most awesome thing OMG EVER, so I wanted to use it somewhere, but the thought crossed my mind that if I did, some of my friends would be pissed off at me. I've been this way all my life, always finding friendships with people who don't respect me, or who put me down all the time, or who just basically treat me like garbage. I don't know why it is. Someone told me that as humans, "we accept the love we think we deserve," and I think that for me, there's a lot of truth in that. Maybe a part of me thinks that I deserve to have friends who cut me off in mid-sentence to mock what I'm saying, or to roll their eyes at me and tell me "that makes no sense" when I speak (even when what I said makes perfect sense, thanks) or who tell me that I look like shit and they don't want to be seen in public with me, or who wait for me to tell a story that I think i s so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes to tell it, and then when I'm done roll their eyes and say "that was stupid." I could go on and on. I seem to have a talent for picking relationships with people who don't respect me (and most of them wouldn't even recognize that they do this if I tried to talk to them about it...I know because I HAVE tried).
Part of being self-aware is realizing that I need to change some things, but the hard part is knowing that I have to work on ME, because I can't change anyone else. I have so many issues that I don't know where to start some days, but until I'm capable of seeing any good in myself, no one else is going to see any good in me, either. So onward I go.
I wrote this message for a friend, and I posted it on a message board awhile ago, but just to remind myself (and because maybe some of you might want to hear it, as well) I'm posting it here, too. I love you guys.
Someone posted this passage from the children's story "The Velveteen Rabbit" the other day, and I haven't read or thought about that story in years, but when I read these words again, they hit me so hard that I cried, because they describe me so well:
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very nappy. But these things don't matter at all. Because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
So I was thinking about this the other night, in the midst of about a week without sleep (and with very little hope...it's been a dark week) and these words came to mind, so I started praying them:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Recently, I've started praying the serenity prayer at work. Like I said, I haven't slept in days, and I'm so stressed out and such that it seems that drinking and drugs and razor blades have never been as tempting to me as they are right now. I was thinking how weak I was that the temptation had never seemed to bother me this much in the past, and I'd never been overcome with it like I seem to be right now. Then last night it hit me...of COURSE it seems like the temptation is stronger now than it was before. Before, I always gave in. Now, I don't do those things anymore, so I know what it feels like to struggle against something that used to rule my life so strongly. It seems harder now because I'm fighting, and fighting is always harder than giving in.
I actually cried, I was so relieved to be able to see it that way. I have such a hard time seeing myself in a positive light and seeing myself as strong, because even typing those words seems alien to me. I'm not strong. I'm not anything good or noble or righteous, not the way I should be, because I'm surrounded by tangible reminders of every ugly failure I've ever had. But the thing is, these scars make me who I am. I shouldn't have made them, it was wrong, it was bad, blah blah blah, but even if it was wrong, they're here now, a part of me, and scarred skin may be ugly, but it's also stronger than regular skin, because something about the process of knitting itself back together makes it tougher than it was in the past. I may be ugly, but these marks show that I have lived, and that I'm still here to tell the tale.
So I thought about the things I can change, like my attitude, the things I can't change, like the nasty comments and opinions of others, and how the hardest thing for me has always been knowing the difference between the two, because I want so badly for other people to like me and see something good and worthy in me that I always think if I try hard enough, I will be good and be righteous and people will see that and finally, I will be good enough. It never works out that way, though, and because of this, every negative opinion hurts that much more because it reminds me again how I've failed and how I'll never be good enough. But there again, that's looking at things backwards...if nothing else, people's negative comments should remind me that no matter what I do, someone somewhere is going to disapprove, and I can't live for the opinions of others, I have to live for myself, because I'm the only one who has to be around myself 24/7 for the rest of my life. And as I was musing on the words of this prayer, I started praying it, over and over (I do that sometimes, pray the "Hail Mary" or the "Our Father" because those are the ones I can remember, and they help me focus on God and keep going) and I realized that "The Serenity Prayer" is probably the best thing I could pray to myself at work and throughout my life, when I'm surrounded by other people and their opinions, things I can't change, and motivated by the desire to be whole and accepted more than any other thing. If nothing else, God accepts me where I am, and I'm doing everything I can to put one foot in front of the other and keep going and survive, and I'm feeling every sling and arrow because I don't have drugs or alcohol or anything else to numb the pain like I had in the past. I'm realizing how much pain hurts when you have to actually FEEL your emotions. But this is good. It means I'm still alive, still becoming. All things new.
Part of being self-aware is realizing that I need to change some things, but the hard part is knowing that I have to work on ME, because I can't change anyone else. I have so many issues that I don't know where to start some days, but until I'm capable of seeing any good in myself, no one else is going to see any good in me, either. So onward I go.
I wrote this message for a friend, and I posted it on a message board awhile ago, but just to remind myself (and because maybe some of you might want to hear it, as well) I'm posting it here, too. I love you guys.
Someone posted this passage from the children's story "The Velveteen Rabbit" the other day, and I haven't read or thought about that story in years, but when I read these words again, they hit me so hard that I cried, because they describe me so well:
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very nappy. But these things don't matter at all. Because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
So I was thinking about this the other night, in the midst of about a week without sleep (and with very little hope...it's been a dark week) and these words came to mind, so I started praying them:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Recently, I've started praying the serenity prayer at work. Like I said, I haven't slept in days, and I'm so stressed out and such that it seems that drinking and drugs and razor blades have never been as tempting to me as they are right now. I was thinking how weak I was that the temptation had never seemed to bother me this much in the past, and I'd never been overcome with it like I seem to be right now. Then last night it hit me...of COURSE it seems like the temptation is stronger now than it was before. Before, I always gave in. Now, I don't do those things anymore, so I know what it feels like to struggle against something that used to rule my life so strongly. It seems harder now because I'm fighting, and fighting is always harder than giving in.
I actually cried, I was so relieved to be able to see it that way. I have such a hard time seeing myself in a positive light and seeing myself as strong, because even typing those words seems alien to me. I'm not strong. I'm not anything good or noble or righteous, not the way I should be, because I'm surrounded by tangible reminders of every ugly failure I've ever had. But the thing is, these scars make me who I am. I shouldn't have made them, it was wrong, it was bad, blah blah blah, but even if it was wrong, they're here now, a part of me, and scarred skin may be ugly, but it's also stronger than regular skin, because something about the process of knitting itself back together makes it tougher than it was in the past. I may be ugly, but these marks show that I have lived, and that I'm still here to tell the tale.
So I thought about the things I can change, like my attitude, the things I can't change, like the nasty comments and opinions of others, and how the hardest thing for me has always been knowing the difference between the two, because I want so badly for other people to like me and see something good and worthy in me that I always think if I try hard enough, I will be good and be righteous and people will see that and finally, I will be good enough. It never works out that way, though, and because of this, every negative opinion hurts that much more because it reminds me again how I've failed and how I'll never be good enough. But there again, that's looking at things backwards...if nothing else, people's negative comments should remind me that no matter what I do, someone somewhere is going to disapprove, and I can't live for the opinions of others, I have to live for myself, because I'm the only one who has to be around myself 24/7 for the rest of my life. And as I was musing on the words of this prayer, I started praying it, over and over (I do that sometimes, pray the "Hail Mary" or the "Our Father" because those are the ones I can remember, and they help me focus on God and keep going) and I realized that "The Serenity Prayer" is probably the best thing I could pray to myself at work and throughout my life, when I'm surrounded by other people and their opinions, things I can't change, and motivated by the desire to be whole and accepted more than any other thing. If nothing else, God accepts me where I am, and I'm doing everything I can to put one foot in front of the other and keep going and survive, and I'm feeling every sling and arrow because I don't have drugs or alcohol or anything else to numb the pain like I had in the past. I'm realizing how much pain hurts when you have to actually FEEL your emotions. But this is good. It means I'm still alive, still becoming. All things new.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Coming Out
Someone asked me to post my "coming out" story here, since I keep going on and on about how mine is different. It is. I'm not like most people; I can't say "well I realized that I was attracted to people of the same sex at X age" because for me, things didn't work out like that. Someone asked me to write "What the letters GLBTACQI Mean to You" and this is what came out. I apologize if it's incoherent (and it's going to have more profanity than I typically use in this blog, because it's been the sort of week when I use profanity quite a bit).
Yeah, so when I was younger, I realized that I never fit in and never belonged anywhere, and I blame my mom for a lot of that, because she never let me go to school or get out of the house and socialize and be around other people and learn their language. So anyway, I felt like an outcast, and when I was fast becoming a rabid reader in my pre-teens, I read every book I could possibly find about gay people. I figured I wasn't one of them (since, you know, I didn't want to have sex with women, but then I didn't even know how women HAD sex, and I didn't want to have sex with anyone, even though sex dominated my thoughts as a kid, it was a skewed view of sex as pain and degradation, so even though I felt like it was a part of me, I didn't want any part of it) but anyway, yes, I figured I wasn't gay, but I figured that everyone hated gay people and everyone hated me, too, so we had something in common, so I should read about them. So I did. that's when I discovered Harvey Milk, and how he was the first openly gay person elected to US public office (other gay people had come out and told people they were gay after they'd been elected, but Harvey Milk was elected when everyone knew he was gay, meaning he didn't hide it but he told everyone about it because he was loud and mouthy but most people seemed to like him anyway). I read about him, and I read his speeches, and I became obsessed with him ("yes you did," said Lillian's friends list, "and we're all still paying for that, so many years later") because he talked about hope like it was a real, tangible thing that could keep people going when they had nothing else, and I had nothing else (I wasn't even allowed to leave the house) so long before I discovered Jesus, I discovered Harvey Milk, and I tried to have hope that someday, I would be able to break free from my prison (because that's what my home life was) and live. It took me years, but I managed to do just that, and forgive me a moment of blasphemy, but I'd have done well to hang on more to the message I got from Harvey Milk than most of the messages I got from church, because churches fucked me over and fucked me up royally for years. But anyway, gay people were always important in my life, so it bothered me somewhere deep down knowing that I was supposed to believe that they were going to hell (well, if they had sex and were happy, they were going to hell...if they stayed celibate and beat themselves up over every homosexual thought, they could stand a chance of being righteous one day maybe if God chose to love them more than they deserved or something).
In college I really desperately wanted to go to the gay group on campus, but I was too afraid to go...I went to a few meetings, but I was so messed up that it didn't have much of an effect. The only thing that wore down the stupid walls I had built in my head was years and years of being around gay people (because I stand by this: I always did love them and never thought they should have to change, even when I tried to change myself in later years, even when I beat myself up for my sinful thoughts, even when I hated myself, I never hated them, and I hated myself for not being able to think what they did was sick and wrong like I was supposed to think...how fucked up is THAT?) And after years of being around gay people (and probably convincing every single person in my church that I was gay because I look back on my pictures from back then and I dressed like the biggest fucking dyke I've ever seen...but that was more to cover my body and not ever cause a man to look at me and think about sex, because that was a sin and that would send me to hell...just ask my church...) one day, after I'd walked away from the church and started kind of seeing this guy, I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I'd seen a million times before, when suddenly it hit me that I had a crush on one of the girls in the episode. Just like that. It never occurred to me before, but I think that's because I spent so much time in a screwed-up mindset about sex that I never thought there was anything positive about sex...I thought about it all the time, and I had graphic pictures in my head that nothing could erase, but I knew next to nothing about what sex really was and what it really could be...does that make sense? I saw that I had a guy who found me attractive, and suddenly I stopped thinking I was ugly and sinful and evil, and I stopped seeing my sexuality as something ugly and evil, too. So it wasn't until I had a guy who was sexually attracted to me, a guy I liked who was nice to me, that I could begin to see anything positive about sex, and it was then that I was able to open up to my crushy-gushy feelings about another girl (yes, I'm saying that it wasn't until I was in a sexual relationship with a guy that I was able to see sex with a girl as a good thing, yes, I know how stupid that sounds, this is why I've never said it before, no, I don't know why I'm saying it now...wait, yes I do...blame Dani).
So anyway, after this guy broke up with me, I got my first crush on a girl who I knew in real life, and then I had my first relationship with a girl, and even though it was messed up, I wouldn't trade it for anything, because it made me realize that there was always something missing when I had sex with a guy (I liked looking at him, I still like looking at guys and especially at naked guys but when it comes to actually having sex, I most certainly enjoy having sex with women more). So that's when I finally realized that I don't just empathize with the letters on that alphabet soup list, I'm ONE OF THEM.
That's the long answer to the question, of course. The short answer is that "GLBTACQI" means to me that we have WAY TOO MANY letters in our acronym.
Yeah, so when I was younger, I realized that I never fit in and never belonged anywhere, and I blame my mom for a lot of that, because she never let me go to school or get out of the house and socialize and be around other people and learn their language. So anyway, I felt like an outcast, and when I was fast becoming a rabid reader in my pre-teens, I read every book I could possibly find about gay people. I figured I wasn't one of them (since, you know, I didn't want to have sex with women, but then I didn't even know how women HAD sex, and I didn't want to have sex with anyone, even though sex dominated my thoughts as a kid, it was a skewed view of sex as pain and degradation, so even though I felt like it was a part of me, I didn't want any part of it) but anyway, yes, I figured I wasn't gay, but I figured that everyone hated gay people and everyone hated me, too, so we had something in common, so I should read about them. So I did. that's when I discovered Harvey Milk, and how he was the first openly gay person elected to US public office (other gay people had come out and told people they were gay after they'd been elected, but Harvey Milk was elected when everyone knew he was gay, meaning he didn't hide it but he told everyone about it because he was loud and mouthy but most people seemed to like him anyway). I read about him, and I read his speeches, and I became obsessed with him ("yes you did," said Lillian's friends list, "and we're all still paying for that, so many years later") because he talked about hope like it was a real, tangible thing that could keep people going when they had nothing else, and I had nothing else (I wasn't even allowed to leave the house) so long before I discovered Jesus, I discovered Harvey Milk, and I tried to have hope that someday, I would be able to break free from my prison (because that's what my home life was) and live. It took me years, but I managed to do just that, and forgive me a moment of blasphemy, but I'd have done well to hang on more to the message I got from Harvey Milk than most of the messages I got from church, because churches fucked me over and fucked me up royally for years. But anyway, gay people were always important in my life, so it bothered me somewhere deep down knowing that I was supposed to believe that they were going to hell (well, if they had sex and were happy, they were going to hell...if they stayed celibate and beat themselves up over every homosexual thought, they could stand a chance of being righteous one day maybe if God chose to love them more than they deserved or something).
In college I really desperately wanted to go to the gay group on campus, but I was too afraid to go...I went to a few meetings, but I was so messed up that it didn't have much of an effect. The only thing that wore down the stupid walls I had built in my head was years and years of being around gay people (because I stand by this: I always did love them and never thought they should have to change, even when I tried to change myself in later years, even when I beat myself up for my sinful thoughts, even when I hated myself, I never hated them, and I hated myself for not being able to think what they did was sick and wrong like I was supposed to think...how fucked up is THAT?) And after years of being around gay people (and probably convincing every single person in my church that I was gay because I look back on my pictures from back then and I dressed like the biggest fucking dyke I've ever seen...but that was more to cover my body and not ever cause a man to look at me and think about sex, because that was a sin and that would send me to hell...just ask my church...) one day, after I'd walked away from the church and started kind of seeing this guy, I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I'd seen a million times before, when suddenly it hit me that I had a crush on one of the girls in the episode. Just like that. It never occurred to me before, but I think that's because I spent so much time in a screwed-up mindset about sex that I never thought there was anything positive about sex...I thought about it all the time, and I had graphic pictures in my head that nothing could erase, but I knew next to nothing about what sex really was and what it really could be...does that make sense? I saw that I had a guy who found me attractive, and suddenly I stopped thinking I was ugly and sinful and evil, and I stopped seeing my sexuality as something ugly and evil, too. So it wasn't until I had a guy who was sexually attracted to me, a guy I liked who was nice to me, that I could begin to see anything positive about sex, and it was then that I was able to open up to my crushy-gushy feelings about another girl (yes, I'm saying that it wasn't until I was in a sexual relationship with a guy that I was able to see sex with a girl as a good thing, yes, I know how stupid that sounds, this is why I've never said it before, no, I don't know why I'm saying it now...wait, yes I do...blame Dani).
So anyway, after this guy broke up with me, I got my first crush on a girl who I knew in real life, and then I had my first relationship with a girl, and even though it was messed up, I wouldn't trade it for anything, because it made me realize that there was always something missing when I had sex with a guy (I liked looking at him, I still like looking at guys and especially at naked guys but when it comes to actually having sex, I most certainly enjoy having sex with women more). So that's when I finally realized that I don't just empathize with the letters on that alphabet soup list, I'm ONE OF THEM.
That's the long answer to the question, of course. The short answer is that "GLBTACQI" means to me that we have WAY TOO MANY letters in our acronym.
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