The Constant State of Being Wrong

This starts with a washer and dryer.

Well, not really, but that is where we will start the story.  A few months ago, my sweet husband and his friend traveled to my mother's house and hauled a very ( very!) heavy stackable washer and dryer down the narrow,steep and altogether treacherous stairs of my mothers antebellum farmhouse.  The washer and dryer was a gift from my mother, a replacement for the 9-year-old el-cheapo brand washer and dryer we have moved from home to home over the past 10 years.  A kind gift that made it that we didn't have to run the dryer 3 times to get a load of dry clothes.  We were grateful.  Well... I was grateful... husband was frustrated, weary, and grateful.  

Several months later and husband is a approached with a great deal for a really nice High-Efficiency washer and dryer set... much higher end than what we had then and what we have now.  But now, there is this hanging issue:  what do we do with the stackable set my mother gave us?  Give it back? Sell it?  

This story is full of nuances that might help understand the story a little more fully... the nature of the gift... the reason my mother had a spare set... relationships and burden on others....but all of that would make this a much longer post than anyone wants to read ( and I have more important things to say).  Here is the bottom line:  I was going to be wrong in some way... and that is a horrible feeling.

The nature of wrongness is something that we all deal with, although how we deal with it differs.  How I deal with being wrong has changed significantly over the past 2 years, likely as a result of changing my views on what it means to be wrong and what being wrong says about me.

Historically, I have kept my wrongness as a deep dark secret.  Wrong was a flaw on who I was, and had direct influence on my inherent value.  If I was a diamond, I would lose 5 points for the time I stole from my mom when I was in high school...7 points for that guy I kissed when I knew he had a girlfriend....91 points for that time I spanked my daughter.  And, on a long enough time span, my self-worth was diminished from the value of a diamond to the worthlessness of gravel.

And here is the simple truth:  I thought that if people saw me being wrong, they wouldn't like me, let alone love me.

There is a second part to the deep dark closet of wrongness, because when you hide being wrong, you also tend to hide the possibility of being wrong.  So, really, what I've done is built this giant, dark closet of lies and withheld vulnerabilities and fears and truths and confined myself into this space where I am defined not by who I am, but by what I have been able to hide from everyone.  

And resentments.

In those moments where I hid the possibility of being wrong, I would fail to speak a truth, and then would feel like roadkill that had been unwittingly driven over by someone who was free from those constraints.  And, as a result, I would become resentful of them... of their freedoms.  Why were they able to live in the moment and proceed in their lives... loved despite their wrongness... and I couldn't?

And, ya know, when I really think about it, that is actually a really huge part of what I've felt.  So much so that I'm going to say it again.

People like me... people who hide their wrongness and strive for perfection to reach some elusive state of worthiness have one gnawing issue that causes them to pull their hair out:  Why do people who are so wrong get loved anyway?

I mean... here I am... I've hidden away all my rough edges and I've put on this elaborate show... twisted and turned myself inside out to be the diamond that I think you want me to be.  And yeah... maybe you love me.... but you also love that incredibly flawed piece of gravel over there!

It is almost like I should never have been hiding all those flaws to begin with.

Now, here I am, learning my lessons and trying to grow and I'm letting those things go.  I'm starting over.  I'm being honest in the moment and I'm not hiding my wrongness.  Or my fear of wrongness.  I'm being authentic and vulnerable.

So, back to resentments.  Over the years, I've built up these resentments.  I recently have been working on letting go of many of these things, and with some people, it meant I needed to reestablish a new relationship.  One of these people recently accused me of being a list keeper.  My instant response to that was one of defense ( pretty standard response for a wrongness-closet keeper!).  But, after a wee-bit of processing, I realized that they were right... I WAS a list keeper.  Because I was hiding away all of this wrongness and fear of wrongness, I was also hiding away all of those moments of resentment I had over their wrongness.  I was absolutely a list keeper.

What they didn't see is that I'm trying really hard not to be a list keeper anymore.  I'm trying to start over without hiding.  Unfortunately, they don't understand that you can't start over without clearing out a big old closet full of shit you have been stocking away for years and years.  And they don't understand that I'm willing to accept that I might be gravel... and they've only known me as someone who wants to be a diamond.  I understand their position... it can't be easy to know a person one way, only to have them 180 on you.  

My sudden transition into this place doesn't mean I'm more wrong now than I was before, but somehow my wrongness doesn't hold the same weight as it use to.  When I'm wrong, I'm wrong in the moment.  It happens, I feel it, people end up loving my anyway, and I proceed through my life without worrying about the deep dark closet of wrongness. I don't strive to be wrong, but being wrong has stopped defining me.  

Of course, I could be wrong.

Stop the Blame

Two days ago, a 21-year-old man walked into a church in South Carolina.  He sat with a group of people that were unlike him in one or two ways, but just like him in a million others.  He sat there for an hour before he raised his gun to shoot them, killing nine of those people.

And, again, a nation is talking.  We are talking about mental illness and terrorism and guns and god and race and a million other things.  We'll talk for the next week or so... and then we'll stop talking.  Some celebrity will do something outrageous or someone will say something that will be overanalyzed by talking heads.  And a few weeks from now, this young man from South Carolina will go down in the long list of cold-blooded killers we have seen and his trial, his imprisonment, perhaps his execution...all of that won't matter anymore.

Right now, we stand here as a country and we all want to ask him why... but I think we all know the answer.  It's actually the same answer over and over again, but we can't seem to hear it.  It's not about mental illness and it's not about guns and it's not even really about race.  It's about blame.

In that moment, the million things he had in common faded away, and the one thing that made them different than them came into focus for him.   This young man was searching for answers in his life... like so many of us do.  We question our lives... why things have to be so hard... and we find something, or someone, to blame.

We blame republicans for being heartless

We blame liberals for spending too much money

We blame gay people for using the term marriage

We blame Christians for limiting science education

We blame Jews for occupying Isreal

We blame Muslims for causing wars

We blame atheists for taking god out of schools

We blame immigrants for taking our jobs

We blame men for limiting women's job potential

We blame women for getting child support

We blame poor people for using community resources

We blame rich people for not giving to community resources

We blame the middle class for being entitled

We blame anti-vaccine believers for diseases

We blame pharmaceutical companies for diseases

What is interesting to me, in all of this, is that not one of these things is real.  They are all reasoned away with particulars, but are never scaled for accuracy.  They are sound bites.  They are never about the individuals but are instead an evolution of a story into a stereotype.

When I think about this young man, I think about his story... the story I don't know for sure, and I can see it.  A young man, likely trying to scale the wall of poverty that exists for both black and white in South Carolina.  Education was a struggle for him... there could have been a lot of reasons for that.  But, overall, the systems that we as a society designed for him were failing.  He was aimless and struggling.  And somewhere along the way, someone said something to him that helped him focus.  Someone told him that there was someone to blame.  And for a person like him- a person who has all of the privileges of being white and all of the weight of being poor- the ability to blame likely felt like a relief to him.

As blame often does at first.

We all yearn for the ability to be free from the consequences of our actions, because shame is an awful feeling, and owning up to our own shortcomings is a daily reminder that not only are we flawed, but we are expected to work harder and dig deeper and overcome.  Blame is easier.

So, I imagine that this young man has spent the past year watching the news coverage, reinforcing these ideas that there is someone out there to blame.  He watches as others who have placed blame get a spotlight.  He sees other people who might not share his story, but they echo his sentiment. People call black folks animals.  Statements about the welfare state and black kids with XBoxs. His government flies a flag that memorializes a country that existed for four years and call it heritage.  A girl he likes goes out with a black guy and it wears at his already-wavering self-esteem.  He stops seeing people and starts seeing this all as a war against him and the life he could have had.

This young man's story is just like a million other people's story.  It's about who is to blame.  A cop starts to see young black men as a threat, then the young black men see the police as a threat.  Neither of them see the person, they simply see the blame and it makes them feel better- for the moment.

I am just as much a victim of this mentality.  I am a female, anti-religion, liberal, middle class asshole who believes in evolution, gun control, lgbt equality, and immigration reform.  I don't blame gays for destroying my marriage.... but I blame Christians for a gay kid who kills himself.  I am against the death penalty and don't want this kid to be executed for his crimes, but I blame republicans for this kid having a firearm in the first place.  I don't think that immigrants are trying to steal american jobs, but I blame the government for turning it's back on the mexican government's response to drug cartels.  I have no issue with pornography or sex on television, but I blame the media for putting out photoshopped images of women my daughter will never look like.

I have my own blame, and while my blame may not have the same results as others, the root is the same.  The blame has to stop.

Today, I was trying to explain to my eight-year-old daughter the difference between a good person and a bad person.  The truth is that it's not a clear line.  Good people are good until they aren't anymore, and bad people are bad... until they aren't anymore.  The best I could come up with is this:

Good people are good when they don't give up and don't stop trying.  Bad people are bad because they give up... they stop trying.... they make the decision that what they want to have isn't worth the effort, and it's better to just blame and take from someone else.  And each of us does bad things, until we decide to try again.

So, I'm going to stop the blame.  I'm going to stop blaming others for my lot in life... because that is what I would have told that young man if I had been given the opportunity.  I'm going to stop blaming my Catholic Education for my feelings about spirituality.  I'm going to stop blaming men because of that guy who inappropriately touched me when I was 13.  I'm going to stop blaming the rich for the lot of the poor.  I'm going to stop blaming everyone for my failures.

I'm going to stop blaming because there is blame enough to go around.  We all failed this kid, and we all failed his victims because none of us stopped blaming others long enough to notice that HIS blame was a problem.  And, for the next couple weeks, we will go around in circles on who to blame.  His dad who gave him a gun?  His mom who didn't help him with his drug problem?  I'm already seeing it, and it'll only get worse... and we'll miss the next kid who is coming down the line... he's watching those talking heads and that social media chatter right now.  He's watching as we blame each other, and we are currently reinforcing some idea in his head.  The kid could be white, and he'll blame Obama's speech.  Or the kid could be black, and he's blaming the media for calling this kid mentally ill.  We are breeding this... we are creating the Petri dish of blame that grows into the hate we see before us.

And I'm going to work really hard to not let this something else that fades into the background in a week or two, when I am tempted to blame a conservative Christian homeschool family for distorted sexual norms or to blame the attachment parenting mom down the street for a measles outbreak in Colorado.  Because I have to understand that my blame, at best, is just me giving up... and at worse is me reinforcing the blame for someone else who might not be equipped to handle it.

The real problem is blame.  Stop the blame.

Sex, Drugs, and Toilet Paper

Tonight, a proposition to extend LGBT rights and establish anti-discrimination standards in my adopted hometown of Charlotte comes up for vote before Charlotte City Council.  This vote has become a hot button issue and, of course, I have thoughts.

I was fortunate to spend 4 years in the Rehoboth Beach Delaware area, a mecca  of tolerance.  I remember straight college kids (usually boys) who were visiting, blissfully unaware of the predominance of LGBT community before their visit, making comments to me in restaurants I worked at  like " What's with all the gay people?", and my response gave me a satisfaction that I have not been able to replicate since.  "Here..." I would say" ..you are the minority.  Does that make you uncomfortable?"

In those years, I learned so many things about the LGBT community that I feel has made me a more complete person.  Before moving there, I had already learned the basics:  I had known that a person who was gay or trangendered was "born that way".  I had known that, too often, society placed an incorrect assessment that sexuality that was different than the norm somehow unraveled their  understanding of what it means to be human- determining that this was about sex and only about sex ( and that was and is a tremendous oversight on the part of society).  I had known that there were circles where people were not free to be who they are.

What I didn't fully realize is the impact that has a on a human being.  What Rehoboth Beach taught me is about what being closeted does to a person.... and how being free from that dark place can change everything.

There are remnants of those dark places that run inside the LGBT community.  Addiction, harmful and dangerous behavior, abuses... all built upon the foundation of self-loathing that exists when someone grows up in an environment where the do not feel free to be who they are.  LGBT kids so often grow up in an environment where they have to hide... and it isn't just within immediate families.  Even when there is acceptance at home, there are schoolmates, friends, the family of friends, churches, teachers, extended family.  Life becomes a minefield, and keeping quiet becomes the safer choice.  But, inside of that festers the darker place of shame:  that who you ARE is bad.

I wish that I could only count on one hand the number of LGBT people I know who suffer from this deep shame.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  Inside the younger LGBT community, that kind of dangerous shame is the rule, not the exception.

When hot-button issues like this come up, there tends to be rhetoric that passes us by.  Of course, the problem with rhetoric ( and hyperbole in general) is that it removes the human element... yet each of us so completely understands the human element since our common link is that we are all human.  Each of us should have a basic understanding of what it means to carry the weight of that kind of shame around.

Can you imagine that shame that exists in being forced to use a restroom that you didn't feel comfortable in?

Legal proceedings, like the overturning of DOMA and Amendment 1 here in North Carolina, and legislation like that before the Charlotte City Council tonight, change the course.  The government acts as a mirror that is held up to our society to establish our own social norms.  When DOMA was overturned, it didn't suddenly made everyone who is against gay marriage reevaluate their stance.  What it did do was change the societal standard for the next generation.  In my daughters life, gay people can and do get married and that is just how life is and that is completely the norm.  Just as, in my life, white folks and black folks get married and have families, and the idea that they couldn't is completely foreign to me.

The legislation before the City Council will not make it that people suddenly feel comfortable with a transgendered person in the bathroom, but it sets in stone that we have a path we would like to see for our society:  that our children grow up seeing a world where they are not bound by what their society thinks they should be, and transgendered children do not feel the shame that their predecessors has to.  Legislation like this is our social mirror.

The most disturbing or rhetoric that I have witnessed has been the statements that this legislation will open the door for people (specifically men) with ill intent to dress up like women for deviant sexual purposes in public restrooms.  To this I have three thoughts:

1) Eww.... do you really think that what occurs in a woman public bathroom is sexual?  I fear that people instantly go to this mindset should worry more about their own ideas about sexual norms than other peoples, because it would never ever occur to me that a restroom would be a cornerstone of sexual impropriety.

2) Interesting that the main concern is what will happen if men get into womens bathrooms, but no attention is paid to the idea that women would dress up like a man to get into a man bathroom.  I think this speaks volumes about the social mindset regarding men, women, and the standards we set in the regards of sexual desire of each gender role.

3) ( and most importantly)  You will not often hear me speak about gun rights, but at some point, you need to speak on the same level as those you are arguing against.  Repeatedly, I have heard that the argument against gun control is that law abiding citizens should have their rights taken away because of criminals, and pointing to the idea that more laws are not going to stop criminals because they are criminals.  Well, what is good for the goose.....
A person who would do such a thing is a criminal.... the law is not going to stop them, just like gun control laws would not stop a criminal from using a gun to commit an illegal act.  If someone is so messed up that they get their jollies from going into an opposite sex bathroom for gratification, I doubt that what has stopped them is the fact that they aren't legally allowed to do it.  The assertion made is that suddenly public restrooms will be a place you should fear stepping into because you ( or your children) could be victimized at any moment.  Let's make this perfectly clear... sexual assault and sexually inappropriate behavior is STILL illegal, regardless of where it happens.  If you think that someone can do something sexually inappropriate in a public restroom and would not be prosecuted because of this new legislation, that your understanding of legal standards is severely lacking.  Again, back to the gun analogy.  Guns are legal.  Owning a gun is not illegal.  Doing something that harms another person with that gun IS illegal.  You aren't allowed to shoot someone in a parking lot and then say " But, I'm allowed to own a gun, so shooting that person was totally legal".  Ummm... no.

At the core of this issue comes down to what is right and what is wrong.  I am a woman.  I would not feel comfortable in a mens restroom.  It is not my place to tell someone else who identifies as a woman that they should feel any differently than I do, and to say that one persons comfort level is paramount to anothers is exactly what we need to overcome as a society.

I do not trump anyone.  We are all born with inherent worth and the right to dignity.  Our standards thus far in our society have sadly fallen short in that right, stripping dignity from others who we deem 'different'.  It is not until we realize that 'different' does not equal 'wrong' that we all become better, and we hand our children a society they can be proud of.