Sunday, September 30, 2012
Standard Christian Condolences
Death, I have discovered, makes me violently angry.
It isn't that the death itself makes me angry, although often times this is so. Certainly I am still particularly livid about the death of my twenty-one-year-old brother, and, despite the fact that she was in her 70s at the time, I'm pretty pissed off that my paternal grandmother died. I think if she'd been around when I was in high school, a lot of things would have gone differently for myself and my family. But death is death is death and what are you gonna do? Death is like that game they play in The Secret Garden where they spin you around in circles with a blindfold on and then you have to grope around the designated area until you find someone, at which point you have to feel their face and guess who it is. In this analogy, ladies and gentlemen, the part of the blindfolded person will be played by Death.
No, what makes me really furious about death is people's responses to it.
And I know, I get it, everybody deals with death differently. I know that better than most, certainly, because my mother always wanted to talk about it with me and all I wanted was to run yelling from the room any time she brought the subject up. Don't worry; I am no longer living inside an emotional fall-out shelter.
"Incoming emotions! Incoming! Hit the deck! Take cover! Save yourselves!"
I bring this up mostly because my step-cousin has, for the past couple of weeks now, been constantly updating Twitter and occasionally Facebook with posts about two deaths at her high school. My step-cousin, who lives in the Bible Belt. Who is very strongly entrenched in a local religious community.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
But when she makes these posts, there is a massive outpouring of responses from this religious community with things that say that God has a plan and have faith in God and blah blah blah Jesus is the only path to Salvation, so make sure that while you're trying to figure out this senseless death of a teenager, you sing some new poppy Christian music and hold your hands in the air to show you're really feeling the fucking Holy Spirit.
Because let me fucking tell you, there is very little more infuriating to me than someone's response to death being that it is God's fucking plan. God works in mysterious fucking ways. God will see you through this tough fucking time. FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
And, I swear, if you tell me you're praying for me and my family during this difficult time, I will punch you in the motherfucking face.
As you can see, I feel strongly about this subject.
This is probably not universally true*, but I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that if you respond to the news of death with something about God's plan and your prayers for that family, you have never actually experienced what it's like to lose someone who has not lived a long, full life.
And when I say "lose someone" I mean that someone who is in your immediate family or very intimate with you -- a parent before they were old enough to be a grandparent, a brother, a sister, a child, a best friend, a lover, in some cases a grandchild or a niece or nephew or cousin (although you have to be really fucking close to that niece or nephew or grandchild or cousin to qualify) -- perished. Died. Shuffled off the mortal fucking coil.
(I'm saying fuck a lot in this post. This is uncommon for me.)
Because when you actually get bitchslapped in the face by that kind of death, you suddenly realize how completely useless and inadequate all forms of consolation are. There is no consolation for that kind of loss. There will never be a consolation for that kind of loss.
"I'm so sorry your teenaged son just committed suicide. God has a plan. I'm praying for you."
HOW. FUCKING. PRESUMPTUOUS.
I say this, mind you, as a Christian myself. I don't believe in organized religion in general, but I do believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I do, in fact, think that God has a plan and sometimes I do pray for people (but only ever things like 'keep them safe' or 'help them through this' and I would never ever tell them that).
But you don't know how that person's feeling about God or a plan or anything in that moment and how dare you make yourself feel better by shoving your own puny sense of stability and order in the universe in their face.
I don't even feel that I can properly articulate how absolutely wrong that is.
And maybe that's just me. I do notice that because of my own particular experiences with death and trauma, I have a tendency to feel almost an ownership, a possessiveness towards the traumatic events themselves.
But I do think that it is impossible to truly understand what it's like to lose someone that close to you until you've lost them. And I think people whose lives have been more or less trauma-free cannot, to a certain extent, truly empathize with the utter chaos or complete devastation of trauma.
Sure, acting-wise, we can say, "If you have killed a mosquito, you know what it is to be a killer." And to some extent that's true. A fucked-up life is not a prerequisite to being a great actor. But I think some life experiences are almost like very exclusive clubs. I am a member of several such clubs. And I am very elitist.
I do want to say that Standard Christian Condolences are not my only death-related pet peeves, just, I think, probably the ones I hate the most.
"You'll see them again in Heaven. They're in a better place."
Fuck you. I want to see them now and I want them to be here in this shitty place with me.
No, just about every response to death bothers me. People who pretend it's effecting them more than it actually is for attention (because, in my experience, the people really suffering tend to be quiet about the pain to most of the world) or some kind of award that says 'Guys, I'm Hurting The Most!' (people who are experiencing their first peripheral brush with death tend to do this -- they play the role of the grieving like it's a game). People who tell me they're sorry for my loss. People who send me 'positive vibes'. INTERNET HUGS. THEY ARE AWFUL.
One of the absolute worst is when people find out you've experienced something like, say, your big brother dying, and their response is to say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry. My best friend's dad died a couple years ago."
THAT IS NOT THE SAME, DUMBASS.
And while I do think there is a certain club-like something to this kind of loss, that does not give anyone the right to say, "Oh, you just got your membership card? Here's my membership card!"
I would never ever tell someone whose brother just died, "Oh, I'm sorry. My brother died too."
I'd bring it into the conversation eventually, but I'd do it to make it about the person feeling the pain and not about me. In that moment, the point of bringing up my own loss would be to let them know that I understand what it feels like and that they're welcome to talk to me about it if they need someone who knows.
Because nobody knows. Nobody fucking knows.
But you know what I think is bothering me the most about this outpouring of messages of love and support and God-plan for these two dead kids in this high school, regardless of how disingenuous or ignorant these responses are?
When my big brother died, there was practically none of it.
And that makes me want to gut the entire fucking world in a hysterical rage.
* I do recognize that there are people in the world who, when faced with death of that magnitude, hold closer to their religious and/or spiritual beliefs and are not shaken and do not question. They stare at the urn with the ashes of their dead loved one and they think, "This is God's plan. God is great. I am blessed." And good for them. I mean, seriously, it must be an amazingly reassuring feeling. Personally, when I'm confronted by this kind of loss, my response tends to be three-fold: 1) "FUCK YOU, GOD!", 2) "GOD, WHAT THE FUCK?! THIS IS BULLSHIT!", and 3) "ARE YOU EVEN UP THERE?!" I don't usually get back around to the "maybe this is God's plan" idea until much, much later in my grieving process.
It isn't that the death itself makes me angry, although often times this is so. Certainly I am still particularly livid about the death of my twenty-one-year-old brother, and, despite the fact that she was in her 70s at the time, I'm pretty pissed off that my paternal grandmother died. I think if she'd been around when I was in high school, a lot of things would have gone differently for myself and my family. But death is death is death and what are you gonna do? Death is like that game they play in The Secret Garden where they spin you around in circles with a blindfold on and then you have to grope around the designated area until you find someone, at which point you have to feel their face and guess who it is. In this analogy, ladies and gentlemen, the part of the blindfolded person will be played by Death.
No, what makes me really furious about death is people's responses to it.
And I know, I get it, everybody deals with death differently. I know that better than most, certainly, because my mother always wanted to talk about it with me and all I wanted was to run yelling from the room any time she brought the subject up. Don't worry; I am no longer living inside an emotional fall-out shelter.
"Incoming emotions! Incoming! Hit the deck! Take cover! Save yourselves!"
I bring this up mostly because my step-cousin has, for the past couple of weeks now, been constantly updating Twitter and occasionally Facebook with posts about two deaths at her high school. My step-cousin, who lives in the Bible Belt. Who is very strongly entrenched in a local religious community.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
But when she makes these posts, there is a massive outpouring of responses from this religious community with things that say that God has a plan and have faith in God and blah blah blah Jesus is the only path to Salvation, so make sure that while you're trying to figure out this senseless death of a teenager, you sing some new poppy Christian music and hold your hands in the air to show you're really feeling the fucking Holy Spirit.
Because let me fucking tell you, there is very little more infuriating to me than someone's response to death being that it is God's fucking plan. God works in mysterious fucking ways. God will see you through this tough fucking time. FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
And, I swear, if you tell me you're praying for me and my family during this difficult time, I will punch you in the motherfucking face.
As you can see, I feel strongly about this subject.
This is probably not universally true*, but I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that if you respond to the news of death with something about God's plan and your prayers for that family, you have never actually experienced what it's like to lose someone who has not lived a long, full life.
And when I say "lose someone" I mean that someone who is in your immediate family or very intimate with you -- a parent before they were old enough to be a grandparent, a brother, a sister, a child, a best friend, a lover, in some cases a grandchild or a niece or nephew or cousin (although you have to be really fucking close to that niece or nephew or grandchild or cousin to qualify) -- perished. Died. Shuffled off the mortal fucking coil.
(I'm saying fuck a lot in this post. This is uncommon for me.)
Because when you actually get bitchslapped in the face by that kind of death, you suddenly realize how completely useless and inadequate all forms of consolation are. There is no consolation for that kind of loss. There will never be a consolation for that kind of loss.
"I'm so sorry your teenaged son just committed suicide. God has a plan. I'm praying for you."
HOW. FUCKING. PRESUMPTUOUS.
I say this, mind you, as a Christian myself. I don't believe in organized religion in general, but I do believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I do, in fact, think that God has a plan and sometimes I do pray for people (but only ever things like 'keep them safe' or 'help them through this' and I would never ever tell them that).
But you don't know how that person's feeling about God or a plan or anything in that moment and how dare you make yourself feel better by shoving your own puny sense of stability and order in the universe in their face.
I don't even feel that I can properly articulate how absolutely wrong that is.
And maybe that's just me. I do notice that because of my own particular experiences with death and trauma, I have a tendency to feel almost an ownership, a possessiveness towards the traumatic events themselves.
But I do think that it is impossible to truly understand what it's like to lose someone that close to you until you've lost them. And I think people whose lives have been more or less trauma-free cannot, to a certain extent, truly empathize with the utter chaos or complete devastation of trauma.
Sure, acting-wise, we can say, "If you have killed a mosquito, you know what it is to be a killer." And to some extent that's true. A fucked-up life is not a prerequisite to being a great actor. But I think some life experiences are almost like very exclusive clubs. I am a member of several such clubs. And I am very elitist.
I do want to say that Standard Christian Condolences are not my only death-related pet peeves, just, I think, probably the ones I hate the most.
"You'll see them again in Heaven. They're in a better place."
Fuck you. I want to see them now and I want them to be here in this shitty place with me.
No, just about every response to death bothers me. People who pretend it's effecting them more than it actually is for attention (because, in my experience, the people really suffering tend to be quiet about the pain to most of the world) or some kind of award that says 'Guys, I'm Hurting The Most!' (people who are experiencing their first peripheral brush with death tend to do this -- they play the role of the grieving like it's a game). People who tell me they're sorry for my loss. People who send me 'positive vibes'. INTERNET HUGS. THEY ARE AWFUL.
One of the absolute worst is when people find out you've experienced something like, say, your big brother dying, and their response is to say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry. My best friend's dad died a couple years ago."
THAT IS NOT THE SAME, DUMBASS.
And while I do think there is a certain club-like something to this kind of loss, that does not give anyone the right to say, "Oh, you just got your membership card? Here's my membership card!"
I would never ever tell someone whose brother just died, "Oh, I'm sorry. My brother died too."
I'd bring it into the conversation eventually, but I'd do it to make it about the person feeling the pain and not about me. In that moment, the point of bringing up my own loss would be to let them know that I understand what it feels like and that they're welcome to talk to me about it if they need someone who knows.
Because nobody knows. Nobody fucking knows.
But you know what I think is bothering me the most about this outpouring of messages of love and support and God-plan for these two dead kids in this high school, regardless of how disingenuous or ignorant these responses are?
When my big brother died, there was practically none of it.
And that makes me want to gut the entire fucking world in a hysterical rage.
* I do recognize that there are people in the world who, when faced with death of that magnitude, hold closer to their religious and/or spiritual beliefs and are not shaken and do not question. They stare at the urn with the ashes of their dead loved one and they think, "This is God's plan. God is great. I am blessed." And good for them. I mean, seriously, it must be an amazingly reassuring feeling. Personally, when I'm confronted by this kind of loss, my response tends to be three-fold: 1) "FUCK YOU, GOD!", 2) "GOD, WHAT THE FUCK?! THIS IS BULLSHIT!", and 3) "ARE YOU EVEN UP THERE?!" I don't usually get back around to the "maybe this is God's plan" idea until much, much later in my grieving process.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Midnight Thoughts On Bitterness
Nobody wants to hear a twenty-six year old complain about high school. Right? That's a thing. It's almost ten years in the past (holy shit) and there is not a single adult person having a conversation with me that wants to hear me bitch about my public high school experience. Because it's over. It's in the past. What purpose does being bitter about the football culture serve? The only people that win when I whinge about the abusive teachers in a non-activist way is the abusive teachers. Because that is their abuse still having power over me all these years later.
I'm bitter to some degree about practically every aspect of my life so far. Twenty-six years of bitterness or thereabouts. Less, maybe. When did things start getting worthy of bitterness? First grade, when Ms. Peterson accused me of plagiarizing my Valentine's Day story? The day my mother told the principal not to move me into the gifted and talented class just yet because we'd moved from Colorado and that was a lot of change in a short period of time?
On the other hand, what's wrong with being bitter? If shit was unfair and I was wronged, why not retain that sense of pain and injustice? Is it really holding me back? What does it hurt that I don't look entirely favorably on my high school experience? Some of it was great, but a lot of it was complete and utter bullshit.
At what point do I lose the right to be bitter and angry about something that happened in the past? And what does that part of my life become if I do decide to no longer feel that way about it? How do I even go about not feeling that way? Forgiveness?
I understand that Miss Howell and Ms. Vernon and Mrs. Hitt and Mrs. Flynn and all the other horrific teachers that abused me in some way, shape, or form in high school had problems of their own. It was never actually about me. But the fact that it was allowed to happen, that they allowed it to happen, I find it upsetting. I don't want anyone else to go through that. But I'm not actively doing anything to stop that. I'm just still angry at them.
It isn't as though I am only angry. My life is a lot of things. It is not only bitterness. Must I let the bitterness go? Why does it have to be bad or unhealthy? Is it actually bad or unhealthy?
I can't imagine how I'd feel about those parts of my life if the bitterness and anger were no longer there.
I've heard it said that depression is a person dwelling in the past and anxiety is a person worrying about the future. (However, if you're depressive and you have anxiety, that does not mean you live in the present, strangely enough. And I should know.) So probably the fact is that I am depressed because I haven't dealt with the bitterness and anger toward my past. Or is it that my depression makes me be bitter and angry toward my past? Maybe it's both.
And to be honest, it kind of makes me bitter and angry that not everyone else is bitter and angry about their pasts.
If I somehow managed to deal with the bitterness and heal it, would I be a better me? I like the dark, dry humor my bitterness and anger afford me. Will I be less funny if I have an emotionally healthy regard for the past? Okay, probably not.
Part of me clings to it protectively. My self imagines a world without bitterness and anger to be a scary, unsettling, unfamiliar one.
Well, I'm no closer to an answer to any of these questions than I was when I started typing.
At least I don't feel bitter or angry about that.
I'm bitter to some degree about practically every aspect of my life so far. Twenty-six years of bitterness or thereabouts. Less, maybe. When did things start getting worthy of bitterness? First grade, when Ms. Peterson accused me of plagiarizing my Valentine's Day story? The day my mother told the principal not to move me into the gifted and talented class just yet because we'd moved from Colorado and that was a lot of change in a short period of time?
On the other hand, what's wrong with being bitter? If shit was unfair and I was wronged, why not retain that sense of pain and injustice? Is it really holding me back? What does it hurt that I don't look entirely favorably on my high school experience? Some of it was great, but a lot of it was complete and utter bullshit.
At what point do I lose the right to be bitter and angry about something that happened in the past? And what does that part of my life become if I do decide to no longer feel that way about it? How do I even go about not feeling that way? Forgiveness?
I understand that Miss Howell and Ms. Vernon and Mrs. Hitt and Mrs. Flynn and all the other horrific teachers that abused me in some way, shape, or form in high school had problems of their own. It was never actually about me. But the fact that it was allowed to happen, that they allowed it to happen, I find it upsetting. I don't want anyone else to go through that. But I'm not actively doing anything to stop that. I'm just still angry at them.
It isn't as though I am only angry. My life is a lot of things. It is not only bitterness. Must I let the bitterness go? Why does it have to be bad or unhealthy? Is it actually bad or unhealthy?
I can't imagine how I'd feel about those parts of my life if the bitterness and anger were no longer there.
I've heard it said that depression is a person dwelling in the past and anxiety is a person worrying about the future. (However, if you're depressive and you have anxiety, that does not mean you live in the present, strangely enough. And I should know.) So probably the fact is that I am depressed because I haven't dealt with the bitterness and anger toward my past. Or is it that my depression makes me be bitter and angry toward my past? Maybe it's both.
And to be honest, it kind of makes me bitter and angry that not everyone else is bitter and angry about their pasts.
If I somehow managed to deal with the bitterness and heal it, would I be a better me? I like the dark, dry humor my bitterness and anger afford me. Will I be less funny if I have an emotionally healthy regard for the past? Okay, probably not.
Part of me clings to it protectively. My self imagines a world without bitterness and anger to be a scary, unsettling, unfamiliar one.
Well, I'm no closer to an answer to any of these questions than I was when I started typing.
At least I don't feel bitter or angry about that.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Bellew Revisited
As I walked home tonight from the train, I passed the church as I always do, and I looked up hopefully through the doors as I always do. I feel a pull when I pass a church, like God tugging on my heart's sleeve and saying, "I am. I am. I am."
Usually when I pass the church, there are people milling around or there's no one there. Tonight, I passed the church and the doors were open and they were singing.
Hymns. The sound of all sorts of voices raised in praise to Heaven, a kind of non-existent harmony created simply by the very different people joined together. My heart leapt. It leapt like I do in dreams where I can fly. It jumps, juuuumps, juuuuuumps! And then it takes flight.
My heart leapt. And right as it was about to take flight, a car drove by with the windows down, blasting rap music. The church music was completely drowned out and remained overpowered as I passed out of hearing.
It made me want to cry.
It occurred to me that it's a metaphor for my depression. Now, don't get me wrong. My depression now is not nearly as terrible as it was when I started this blog. The story in between posts goes like this: I took medicine over the summer. I did more therapy. Things were very good. The sun came out. And then second year made it impossible for me to go to therapy and I stopped taking my medicine because I thought that it might interfere with my acting (stupid). Second year passed by and I was no longer in school and I sank hard back into my depression, but never so deeply as when I first started this. So I never went back to therapy and I never got back on the medication. And sometimes I'm great and sometimes I'm awful, but it's never all the time. It's like the tide. Sometimes the beach is exposed and sometimes it's under water.
Tonight, my thought was that this experience, this craning to hear the hymns only to have it overtaken by the rap, that's the story of my depression. My natural state is to enjoy those things in life. Breathing in the quiet magic of reading a book in a park. Imagining characters and stories based on people on the subway. Feeling the age of the cobblestone streets of downtown. These are the hymns of the world and I am meant to hear them. But sometimes I can't. Sometimes the rap is too loud.
In a recent blog, Wil Wheaton likened his depression to always being in a very loud room but never realizing how loud it is because you can't remember anything else. He said when he went on medication and finally left that room, he was amazed at how quiet and enjoyable everything became.
Tonight, I am not depressed. At least, I am not more depressed than I am at peace. The rap is a little quieter at the moment and I can hear some of the singing. But it's still there. I can't remember a time when it wasn't, though I know there must have been one.
I wonder what that's like. One day I'd love to give it a try.
Usually when I pass the church, there are people milling around or there's no one there. Tonight, I passed the church and the doors were open and they were singing.
Hymns. The sound of all sorts of voices raised in praise to Heaven, a kind of non-existent harmony created simply by the very different people joined together. My heart leapt. It leapt like I do in dreams where I can fly. It jumps, juuuumps, juuuuuumps! And then it takes flight.
My heart leapt. And right as it was about to take flight, a car drove by with the windows down, blasting rap music. The church music was completely drowned out and remained overpowered as I passed out of hearing.
It made me want to cry.
It occurred to me that it's a metaphor for my depression. Now, don't get me wrong. My depression now is not nearly as terrible as it was when I started this blog. The story in between posts goes like this: I took medicine over the summer. I did more therapy. Things were very good. The sun came out. And then second year made it impossible for me to go to therapy and I stopped taking my medicine because I thought that it might interfere with my acting (stupid). Second year passed by and I was no longer in school and I sank hard back into my depression, but never so deeply as when I first started this. So I never went back to therapy and I never got back on the medication. And sometimes I'm great and sometimes I'm awful, but it's never all the time. It's like the tide. Sometimes the beach is exposed and sometimes it's under water.
Tonight, my thought was that this experience, this craning to hear the hymns only to have it overtaken by the rap, that's the story of my depression. My natural state is to enjoy those things in life. Breathing in the quiet magic of reading a book in a park. Imagining characters and stories based on people on the subway. Feeling the age of the cobblestone streets of downtown. These are the hymns of the world and I am meant to hear them. But sometimes I can't. Sometimes the rap is too loud.
In a recent blog, Wil Wheaton likened his depression to always being in a very loud room but never realizing how loud it is because you can't remember anything else. He said when he went on medication and finally left that room, he was amazed at how quiet and enjoyable everything became.
Tonight, I am not depressed. At least, I am not more depressed than I am at peace. The rap is a little quieter at the moment and I can hear some of the singing. But it's still there. I can't remember a time when it wasn't, though I know there must have been one.
I wonder what that's like. One day I'd love to give it a try.
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