Today I woke up. And I wish I never had. I wish the world would have told me that it would be one of the worst days of my life and that I should just roll over and shut my eyes once more. But the world was against me. Giving me a warning would've been too kind, too merciful. And the world's a tough bitter b**ch who knows how to serve it cold.
I leaped out of bed, late again as the faint sound of my naively happy alarm flooded my sh*it night's sleep, and headed to the shower. I've performed a self-deprecating ritual for the past three weeks. I walk to the bathroom with a slouch, feeling every crick in my neck and complaining about it relentlessly in my head, and I tell myself that I don't need to impress anyone today. So I shower, put on any clean, or 50% clean, clothes I can find, and walk out the door. Self care has become too tiresome for me, and when you've been made to feel like sh*t about yourself internally, there's no real point in taking care of yourself externally. The dog whines, I whine, and I drive away wishing I could turn back around and forget everything. Something Pacific Northwest writers share is the grand amount of cynicism placed throughout their writing. It's almost as if it's a universal truth to hate everything. That's when you really become a star. Once you've made sure there's nothing left to say, except for list after list of every injustice done to you and the ones you can barely utter that you've done. I felt like a Pacific Northwest writer today. I don't know if it was the blatant disregard for my emotions when my closest friend told me I was "a piece of sh*t", or the fact that every morning I wake up without the desire to eat, or move, or be. Both were pretty bad. It's silly of me to pin them together as if it were a competition. Who can take Grace down the quickest?! C'mon boys and girls, she's already at her lowest! Look at her spreading herself too thin, take her down! Maybe I am a piece of sh*t. Maybe there are things that I will never fully understand and won't be able to replace with an alternative decision because at different stages of life we aren't different people thinking different things, feeling everything so quickly. But I want to. That should count for something. I saw a really silly innocent video of a girl just talking and checking in with her viewers, and she said something that 15 year old me, or 16 year old me, or even me when I'm not having manic depression and anxiety would think was absolute horse crap because it's just not good enough. But it was. She said that the fact that we make mistakes and feel bad about them means that we have the capability to produce and feel empathy. It means we aren't seeking to harm. To do wrong to others. I don't think that would've been enough for me 6 months ago, or a year ago, or three years. But it was enough for me. Forgiving yourself is the hardest thing to conquer when alternative sources are making sure that you know everyday of your life that you've failed. You've failed them, which is a really difficult thing to process. It's like when you were a kid, and there was a puddle outside in the driveway or in the parking lot of a Winco, and you just have to immerse yourself in the feeling of pure joy by splashing as hard as you can with one giant leap into that puddle. But when you do, you realize that you just got your mom's pure white Keds drenched. This is very minuscule, and greater mistakes have been made, some having yet to be created. But the feeling is there. I didn't mean to drench your Keds. I'm sorry I did. Feeling lost within your own body, or your own mind, there's not much else that feels worse. The horribly tangled labyrinth that continues to give you an option, a way out, but the cost isn't worth it. Or it's not desired. Bu I'm so tired of running in circles. I can't keep passing the same tree, with it's leaves dark and ruthless and full of thorns, over and over again. Each scratch lashes deeper and deeper. I should've probably slapped a bandage on it the first time, but I thought it could heal. Time heals all wounds, they say. But what happens when you take too much time? When the wound becomes a scar, or an infection. Continuously spreading or remaining with you for years. Yeah, if I had just bandaged it the first time. I tell myself every day, during the end of my self-deprecating ritual, just keep going. Maybe someday I won't keep tripping over the vines growing through the floor, or I'll just miss her Keds with the cold mucky water. Or maybe I'll still be a piece of sh*t. And maybe you'll realize you are too.
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Feeling.
I wish I didn't have to do it anymore. I feel like I've felt way more in the past year than a normal human should be allowed to feel. Angry, trapped, stuck in my own skin, rotting away with my heart that keeps feeling too many things but doesn't have the energy to release it through her work and art. My perfectionism has been an on going battle. We began with simple wrestling maneuvers and it's turned into a bloody fucking war. I keep losing every time. It's like it knows exactly where my weak spots are. My legs are never in the right stance, the one that's supposed to keep your feet grounded. Mine continue to fly from beneath me. My perfectionism relishes in this move, raises her chin the air, and spits in my face. She's pretty aggressive. Envy is how I feel when I see women feeling their feelings in that type of way where you know that it isn't going to hurt anyone else. Their ability to be supported, to be affirmed in their foundations as if their entire being was meant for that moment. The fates were aligned for them, and they knew it. They prepared for this because they knew they wouldn't allow others to take that power away from them. The consistency of caution I have with whatever I do, whatever I say... it has consumed me. I don't feel my identity the way these women feel theirs. I don't feel it's strength within my chest or it's power within my ribs. Not as much as I did before. Instead I feel the intensity of others, of the closest beings around me, whispering the patterns and directions I must pass through in order to keep the storm at bay. I have felt many things in the past year. Envy is the strongest one. During late nights, when my thoughts are turned towards the "adult swim" setting, my filter is diminished. This makes the voices quieter. I find myself being my being again. And quickly, in a moment nearly unrecognizable, it is shut down. I have done something. Something alarming. It's as if the ones I'm closest to can't handle my entire entity, and so I'm stuck, censoring my thoughts. Censoring the feelings that deserve to be felt. The night is the hardest time for me. I want to feel the feelings that allow you to be a complete person. Love, support, freedom, succession, passion. But I'm left with scraps, leftovers that someone else has managed to conjure up, back from the time their filters were drawn back. To a time where they were allowed to just be. I don't remember being able to feel these on my own. It terrifies me every day that I'm living through other people's hearts and minds. Because if I don't feel like an entire entity, and I only feel the things worth feeling through someone else, what's the point in being? Through a year of being misguided and filled with suspicion, the mistrust being placed upon my shoulders like a heaping sack of sand, weighing down every conversation, every look, every action, I have learned to never trust my feelings. My own judgement falters. The internalization began when someone's insecurities tested my own firm foundation. At least what I thought and knew to be firm. I don't know if I had any roots to begin with. I have been stuck for months, every opportunity surrounding me. Waving its arms in the air screaming, "Here. Take me on. Just give me a try. It's okay if you think that you're going to fail, you couldn't possibly be doing worse than you were before." I can't seem to get a grip of my feelings anymore. I've lost every sense of my being. I've been able to execute things the way that my past self would execute things and I still don't feel the feelings that I was meant to have. My feelings have been diminished. My entire being has been diminished. Unhealthy patterns with myself and the love of my life, constant and cycling change threatening the existence of what was thought to be my firm planted frame, everything has brought me to a place of hate. Hate is the only thing I feel strongly. Instead of feeling the feelings that make me want to be whole, I have been a walking piece-by-piece pile, feeling everything at once. Never absorbing it. Just letting it move through me. Women.
Women are a god sent. Don't even argue with me, women are the reason this earth has existed and we are the reason it will continue to exist. Even through oppression, through boots being pushed against our necks by men who spit and sneer, "No,". We rise. Through prodding and plucking of our essential needs to live, being examined and torn apart as if we are not only objects but specimens left here after the dust and debris. As if we are anyone's to save. We are not. I used to read essay after essay from a woman who made my head spin with her words and sentences. Her life was a literal and metaphorical mess and she owned every bit of it, never letting any one, any man, tell her to clean it up. She seemed like a woman who would go and do as she pleased, and if anyone dared to defy to her, she would simply breathe smoke in their face and saunter off. I wanna be that woman. I want to be undefined, unwritten, and uncommon out of everything in this world. Writing women are the best. They speak for every the women who have lost their voices after the dust and debris. They know when to say, "That's unfair," or "Don't talk above me," and they are able to do it in a way that the superior can't understand. Because no one but women can understand the struggle with femininity. How when you are weak, you are a woman. How poverty has been feminized, as if a higher power themselves bestowed it upon us. They did not. No one is born lucky. No on is born and meant to be in a higher place and women will continue to testify their "natural" unluckiness until we are granted the same power of those who prosper. To the women in my life; Thank you. Without you I wouldn't know what it means to be woman. I wouldn't be as proud as I am today. I love you all. From the word's of a great Becca Batman's blog, "I present to you, a “list” I’ve procrastinated on." I have indeed procrastinated and failed to get my life together, and it is all spiraling out of control on *wait for it* FINALS WEEK. So I now commemorate a short list of things I wish were never uttered by yours truly.
- Accidentally calling Hamilton "Hamlet", not just once... but three times (I'm so sorry Trey and Lenore, I hope we can still be friends). - "I hate her," to my neighbor about my mom because she wouldn't let me stay over and eat at a sh*tty barbecue. Even though my spoiled a** was going out to a 4 star meal with my grandmother (I was a terrible ungrateful child). - Every song lyric I have ever sung incorrectly in front of an audience or by my lonesome in my crappy Subaru. - "Yes," when my boss asks me if I want to pick up an extra shift on my days off. They always end up being the longest shifts in history and don't even pay the bills. The metaphorical bills that are hypothetically swarming my life. - Every phrase I've tried to utter over someone else as if my words are more important. As if someone will stop talking so that voice can be undeservedly heard. - Anything I've said that has offended someone because of my lack of knowledge and overcompensation of (again, undeserved) privilege. - Everything I said about Hillary Clinton freshman year. I didn't even know what an indirect voting system was. Who did I think I was? - "I hate you, I want you to leave my life," to my cat when she is in heat. I don't mean it, kitty. I promise. - Any careless joke I remark, not thinking ahead of my mouth and saying something completely unnecessary. Something completely hurtful. I'm so sorry. - My silence towards injustice. - My silence when an apology was needed. I hate saying that I'm in college because it sounds so pretentious. It wouldn't be pretentious if I were an actual college student going to a four year university or at least joining at the same time as everyone else, but ever since I started going this year, while everyone else is still a junior and attending pep rallies and football games, I've felt a crippling sense of anxiety as I enter through the doors of high school. I feel as if everyone knows how pompous I've been acting ever since attending college, and that is one of my greatest fears. I wouldn't want to go back to spending 6 periods a day at high school. It just wasn't for me. Lack luster work, gossip, and revolting amounts of ignorance. I didn't sign up for that. But I had a routine. I knew what I was getting into every day. I knew who I would sit by at lunch, I knew who I would see every morning before first period when I skipped class and slept under Jatos's bookshelf, and I knew my job and position as a student and a person in high school. College is so surreal to me because you are utterly and completely independent. Instead of social outings and ignoring your responsibilities to hang out with as many people as you can, the norm is that you're there to succeed and do your own thing. No one yells "Grace! We missed you," when I walk into college algebra. I have no one to complain to about pesky privileged white boys that think they know more about the women in a women's studies class. My sole purpose is to succeed and pass by. Every term, just slowly moving and progressing.
I don't think I've ever had as much instability with my emotions and my mental health than I did my first term of college. After three months I had gone from a social being who knew everyone and was able to engage with anybody, to a depressed, numb, and antisocial being. All I did on a day to day basis was stay at home and either finish document analysis's or procrastinate reading my textbook chapters. I didn't go out anymore. I pushed and distanced myself from those who I used to tolerate because I was afraid of my flaws. I used to think that I hated everyone. I was never able to find someone that I could engage with 24/7 because something would always throw me off. They either talked too much, laughed at everything I said, kissed my ass, were too nice, were too shitty, or whatever else I could think of. After I went to several counseling appointments, I started to wonder if it was really their flaws I was worried about. I wondered if maybe the person I had worked so hard to become, the person that didn't need anyone but herself to survive, was really too worried that no on would want her. I held people at an arms distance because I knew that they would grow uncomfortable with my angry antics, my dying need for acceptance and to be liked by others. And so I pushed. And by the end of all of it I had succeeded at fueling an unhealthy relationship with the one person who could stand to be around me. I accomplished ignoring everyone who ever wanted to be inside my bubble all because I was unconsciously terrified that they wouldn't accept me in the first place. On top of all this I overestimated my capability of juggling extracurricular activities and college classes taught by professors who wear man sandals and don' know how to properly explain Pythagorean theorem. It was one of the hardest times of my life. I found myself in an environment where I wasn't the most intellectual. In fact, two boys who silently snickered at my frustration with completing the square were smarter than me, which is my other biggest fear. I was in a situation I had never experienced. Feeling powerless and underestimated. I have since been going to my counselor, a wonderful plump short woman who wears shiny black clogs and bright red dresses. She calls me "babe" at the end of every empowering or supportive piece of advice. I love her. I'm hoping that my mental health gains the innocence it had in my freshman and sophomore year of high school. Things are getting better every day, and I'm learning how to handle the times when they're not. Getting out of bed has become increasingly difficult within the past few days. It's gotten to the point where I've forced myself to use the bedtime app on my phone because staying up until 12:44 am watching 'Get Ready with Me' videos and feeling numb is becoming unsatisfying. You would think when someone is numb they wouldn't have to deal with unsatisfactory emotions anymore. You would be wrong.
Within the past week I have become temporarily unavailable and am taking a break from the person I've spent 98% of my time with in the past year. My cat has been assigned as my new closest companion. She sleeps on the edge of my pink floral sheets or wiggles her face underneath the curves of the duvet cover. Sometimes sniffs my nose when I cry. Not that I do that often. I'm numb. Its perplexing when the person you're attached to at the hip asks to take a break, and you agree because you both know that's what's best after a year of unhealthy arguments and mind games that you're both guilty of participating in, but instead of crying every night like you think you would do, you just keep moving. Keep progressing in a trance that doesn't allow you to get anything done except binge watch The Series of Unfortunate Events, which I must say is getting exceptionally better with every episode I indulge in. So I set my alarm to 7:30 am, and even if I don't have to get up at 7:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursday's, my counselor said it was good to have a sleep schedule and once you wake from that sleep schedule you can make your bed and follow the movements that any normal person would do to get through the day. Sometimes I wonder what her sleep schedule is like. It must be nice to not be depressed and just relish in the fact that you're not while you help very depressed people unlock the secrets to their depression. I know that's not actually why they do. They're involved in an act and study of science and do an amazing job, I just passionately despise getting up at 7:30 am everyday. I see couples surround me and I'm still numb. How odd is that? That I can continue to grow numb when I see happy people, happy couples as satisfied as I was at times with my partner. Granted the happy memories became cramped and limited as time went on. Now they're pocket-sized, and I'm able to pull them out and wipe my eyes or hold them to my chest when I see two people hugging. Or when I hear the same song come on the radio every morning at exactly 9 am that I know he loves and will never cease to stop loving. I store it in my pocket, keeping it for a moment in the future when I might need it. The pocket-sized memories are there and they will continue to be collected until we come back to a place where we can gather all of the reminders we've stored and lay them on the table. Maybe then we can reassemble the pieces, like the puzzle we bought of Starry Night, along with Mancala and the vintage version of Monopoly. Someday we can just enjoy the picture. But for now, the pieces are still in the box. Some are stuck behind the couch and if we're lucky, we find them. And keep them in our pockets. Today has been utterly exhausting. Today was a day where people made history. Today was a day where those people had to tolerate hypocrisy and injustice because of those comfortable with oppression.
The first thing I read before my drive to the PDX Women's March was a twitter post that read: Logic of people today: Destroy American property with riots to try and make America better. I am frustrated with many things. I am frustrated that we have an uneducated, white supremacist bigot as the supposed leader of our country. I am frustrated that my coffee was not especially hot this morning. I am frustrated that our world is now subject to hate and detest because of differences. But I am mostly frustrated by hypocrites that are stuck within their perspective and unwilling to look past their privilege. And I have one thing to say about comments coming from Republicans, conservatives, or politically ignorant people that make remarks such as these. It is toxic to discredit protesters across the world because of very few spurs of violence and destruction of public property. Our media, particularly right-wing biased media such as Fox News and other popular sources of information, strive off of broadcasting the one single story of protests. That single story is that they are dangerous, an attack on patriotism, and a source of carnage and annihilation on mainly property rights, or in our case, the good ol' American dream. Notice how this pessimistic attitude is a large portion of how Donald Trump supporters view minorities and the very people protesting for their human rights. Media has worked tirelessly to cover up the truth about protests, especially the majority that have happened in the past four days. The Hill, an active source for political news, states, "...while anti-Trump protesters have engaged in mostly peaceful demonstrations against the president-elect, pro-Trump supporters have been responsible for a wave of attacks against Muslims, Latinos, blacks, and the LGBT community," ("Conservatives forget history", Mehlman-Orzoco). Vox news also writes, "Yes, the protests briefly got violent here and there — seemingly because a handful or dozens of people (typically anarchists), out of hundreds or thousands of protesters, decided it was a good idea to vandalize property, including the burning car, a few storefronts, and some public trash cans," ("Don't judge the Inauguration", Lopez). The fact of the matter is that we can look at every situation throughout history where a certain event has happened, and there will always be at one point of the claim one person or even one group of people that will paint the event as one image. It's the same exact logic as to why most people paint Christians to be homophobic and conservative. Or why people believe Muslims are automatically terrorists. Or that people of color, especially African-Americans and black people, are criminals and all feminists are lesbians. These are general stereotypes. It is what white supremacy and systems of oppression thrive off of. Now we can talk about the hypocrisy. I have watched video after tweet from post to message to hashtag to any other form of communication stating that protesters need to "Get over it", "Deal with it", and "Stop being so sensitive." This is not only hypocritical, but also virulent, considering that the anti-Trump protests are upheld for the protection of the power of liberty, equality, and democracy. The idea that conservatives across the nation 'accepted' Obama's election with grace and dignity is a lie, as if when Obama was elected Presidential status there was a national Republican choir of "Kumbaya". There wasn't. There was an "outpouring of hate in 2008" (Orcinus). There were model figures of Obama being lynched and set on fire. There was questioning of his citizenship and his credentials as President, as if that's not something the executive office researches precisely and effectively. The entire intolerance towards human rights that Republicans and conservatives have indulged in by chanting "Get over it", with the safety of their privilege and unearned advantages to consistently and progressively back them up, is complete bullshit. And if you are or know someone who is indifferent towards the power of protest because we the people are being too 'sensitive', you should probably knock that shit off right now. Today the Women's March across the nation has been confirmed to be the "biggest protest in US HISTORY with 2.9million demonstrators against Trump". I thought since it was the biggest protest in US History, it deserved a very large font. We will not stop. I will not stop. I may not be able to speak on behalf of every humans rights supporter, but I can guarantee this is just the beginning. And if we continue to contribute to a society that enhances the danger of a single story, we will only become more ignorant. More subject to letting the government do whatever they want to our rights because we aren't knowledgeable enough to stop them. To even notice when they are crushing our humanity, even if it's happening right in front of our noses. Links to articles used in post: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/20/14342032/inauguration-day-protests http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/womens-march-live-updates-protests-9664725 http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/305749-republicans-employ-double-standard-to-discredit Inspiration for phrase "single story": The Danger of a Single Story - Chimamanda Adichie https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story Ways to help: Donate to rawa.org Donate to organizations such as ACLU and Planned Parenthood, and remember to research and not allow stereotypes rule your beliefs and opinions! Protest on. Feeling.
I wish I didn't have to do it anymore. I feel like I've felt way more in the past year than a normal human should be allowed to feel. Angry, trapped, stuck in my own skin, rotting away with my heart that keeps feeling too many things but doesn't have the energy to release it through her work and art. My perfectionism has been an on going battle. We began with simple wrestling maneuvers and it's turned into a bloody f***ing war. I keep losing every time. It's like it knows exactly where my weak spots are. My legs are never in the right stance, the one that's supposed to keep your feet grounded. Mine continue to fly from beneath me. My perfectionism relishes in this move, raises her chin the air, and spits in my face. She's pretty aggressive. Envy is how I feel when I see women feeling their feelings in that type of way where you know that it isn't going to hurt anyone else. Their ability to be supported, to be affirmed in their foundations as if their entire being was meant for that moment. The fates have aligned for them, and they know it. They prepare for this because they know they won't allow others to take that power away from them. The consistency of caution I have with whatever I do, whatever I say... it has consumed me. I don't feel my identity the way these women feel theirs. I don't feel it's strength within my chest or it's power within my ribs. Not as much as I did before. Instead I feel the intensity of others, of the closest beings around me, whispering the patterns and directions I must pass through in order to keep the storm at bay. I have felt many things in the past year. Envy is the strongest one. During late nights, when my thoughts are turned towards the "adult swim" setting, my filter is diminished. This makes the voices quieter. I find myself being my being again. And quickly, in a moment nearly unrecognizable, it is shut down. I have done something. Something alarming. It's as if the ones I'm closest to can't handle my entire entity, and so I'm stuck, censoring my thoughts. Censoring the feelings that deserve to be felt. The night is the hardest time for me. I want to feel the feelings that allow you to be a complete person. Love, support, freedom, succession, passion. But I'm left with scraps, leftovers that someone else has managed to conjure up, back from the time their filters were drawn back. To a time where they were allowed to just be. I don't remember being able to feel these on my own. It terrifies me every day that I'm living through other people's hearts and minds. Because if I don't feel like an entire entity, and I only feel the things worth feeling through someone else, what's the point in being? Through a year of being misguided and filled with suspicion, the mistrust being placed upon my shoulders like a heaping sack of sand, weighing down every conversation, every look, every action, I have learned to never trust my feelings. My own judgement falters. The internalization began when someone's insecurities tested my own firm foundation. At least what I thought and knew to be firm. I don't know if I had any roots to begin with. I have been stuck for months, every opportunity surrounding me. Waving its arms in the air screaming, "Here. Take me on. Just give me a try. It's okay if you think that you're going to fail, you couldn't possibly be doing worse than you were before." I can't seem to get a grip of my feelings anymore. I've lost every sense of my being. I've been able to execute things the way that my past self would execute things and I still don't feel the feelings that I was meant to have. My feelings have been diminished. My entire being has been diminished. Unhealthy patterns with myself and the love of my life, constant and cycling change threatening the existence of what was thought to be my firm planted frame, everything has brought me to a place of hate. Hate is the only thing I feel strongly. Instead of feeling the feelings that make me want to be whole, I have been a walking piece-by-piece pile, feeling everything at once. Never absorbing it. Just letting it move through me. When I was little, I believe in the third grade, I wrote a poem for my elementary school's poetry contest. I won first place. The poem was called, "Beauty Is", and I don't mean to toot my own horn, but the fact that a 9-year-old could describe to you the changing colors of the seasons and the ways birds chirp when they're in love, was certainly some magnificent shit. As embarrassing as it is now to see some cheesy-try-hard poem my 9-year-old self thought was pure genius, it was the moment I realized that I wanted to write. For a long time, not just in third grade. I wrote about the basics. The way people fall in love, how family is the most important factor in one's life, and all the bullshit that we see now and realize isn't a big deal. But it was to my 9-year-old self. I think we go through life understanding beauty differently. When I was 5, I thought a beautiful person looked exactly like Ariel the mermaid, and that was that. There was no compromising with my standard of perfection, because it was stuck to the image of a fish woman. Now I find a lot of people beautiful. Unconventionally beautiful people are beautiful to me. And that's not me giving myself an award on how I'm different from societies standards, it's the fact that I appreciate difference in appearance so heavily now, that I wish more than anything I wasn't so Plain Jane. I find socially aware people beautiful, and I feel a spark of happiness every time someone is able to digest the injustice in our world and make it into art, or music, or poetry. Language is beautiful to me. It's why I fell in love with writing. I follow a lot of different categories of humans on my twitter, and one is my friend, Kai. I would be honored to even say that since he lives in California and has only liked one of my tweets. I still look up to him. He is a non-binary transgender masculine who is also one of the most incredible artists I have seen over social media. I find that beautiful. That individuals can have the creativity and angst to create something so raw, that the pure act of praise is what comes from it. All I want to do when I see wonderful art is praise it. It’s a selfless act, and it’s a part of why art is beautiful to me. I’m not aware of many forms of art. I swear to god if you ask me which of Monet’s pieces is my favorite I will only know “Waterlilies” because it’s one easy word to remember. But I have seen exhibits that I have fallen in love with faster than you could say "Ariel the mermaid fits typical societal ideologies of beauty." Did I mention I find people with good humor beautiful? It’s because I don’t have one. Ronan and I went to an art talk at Clark College hosted by Julie Green, an artist that created the exhibit “The Last Supper”. She’s created thousands of plates that have illustrated the last meal prisoners asked for when they were sent to death row. She paints them in indigo blue strokes, on pure white plates. The innocence of food she leaves to the audience is heart breaking and sickening, but so beautiful and magical to see. I find that maybe I won’t find Kai’s or Julie Green’s art beautiful someday, but I do now. And maybe I will still find it strikingly raw and magical at 89, but I will continue to add beautiful things to my collection. Beautiful people, beautiful language, beautiful art.
I feel antsy as I write this. I feel that I don't why I'm writing this, other than to keep my hands moving so I don't have to sit in this stuck position. Stuck. I feel stuck. And sticky.
I may not even finish this, and it may not be of service to anyone, not even myself. But I need to feel that my words are going to matter. At least before he is in office. Before his decisions might take place, I need to feel like I have a voice. Many of us need to know that we have a voice and that our voices will be heard because even if we don't have the power, we are the people. We are people. And that should matter. It matters to me. It matters to me. I didn't sleep last night. I didn't think that this years election would take a toll on my mind like it did, because I didn't take the time to sit down and analyze just how my feelings would travel out of me if this man became our president. Our leader. I feel disgusted just giving him that title. I have been taking a Women's Studies 101 class for the past three months. We would sit and talk and discuss and sit and think about all the ways we are agents, systematically dominant groups of people, and targets, systematically non-dominant groups of people. And as much as I would like to take the time to explain what these ideas of privilege, and power, and difference, and inequity are, I just don't have the capacity. Today can not be the day that I take the time to educate my fellow white Americans about the vast amount of unconscious and unearned privilege they are given every single day, including yesterday. So I'm sorry, but you will have to research that yourself. I used to think that I was only a target as a woman. Which I am. But I am not a woman of color. I am not a gender queer woman. I am not a transgender woman, or a disabled woman, or a woman in poverty, or a woman with no credentials, and I am not a transgender, black, queer, disabled woman, so how dare I complain about the things that are oppressive towards me. I am a white, middle-class, non-disabled, heterosexual, cisgender woman. I have never been targeted in my life except for the times I have been eyeballed and commented on by men twice my age. We would go over the strategies targets must use to make it on a day to day basis in class, and the stages that we as targets go through to realize our oppression, cure our confusion, and empower our people. Except I never felt that I deserved to be apart of that group. I was still a white woman. I was still a bigger agent for being white, than I was a target for being a woman. And that changed yesterday. Yesterday was the day that I felt that I was in danger for being a woman. It hit me that there are uneducated white males that may feel that they have the right to grab me by my pussy and take advantage of my body as if it is the last slice of cake on the table and everyone feels that it's fair game. My body is fair game. It hit me that my rights to my body are now in the hands of any man that brushes past me on the street, by the government that is all too close to taking away my rights, and possibly even medical centers that are forced or willing to hold me back from my bodily autonomy. I didn't feel as if I had to follow the steps of how targets cope with their oppression until yesterday. My professor talked about how sometimes targets have to choose their battles. Sometimes it is physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting to have to speak up for your oppression. I didn't feel that I had to do that. Until now, when I opened twitter and I was forced to read a bunch of "white whine" and see how white people are so "tired of hearing about this election" and how "whatever happens, happens". I was forced to respond in a manner that spoke for all people because I have never needed to work towards being an ally more, while also making sure that myself and other women's voices are heard. You might be tired of hearing about it. You might want to go back to your normal life and forget that this whole thing happened, and you might even have the privilege to let this not effect you. And that's okay. But what's not okay is when you comment on how a target of a systematically non-dominant group of people is "overreacting" for the undeniable fear that their basic human rights will be taken away from them, hung in their face, and burned to the ground. We are not overreacting. We are not extreme. We are humans. With less privilege and power than you could ever imagine. And we have only our voices. Let us use them. Let us use them until we cannot utter anymore words because they have been pried apart from our lips, our bodies, our thoughts, our passions, our families, our goals, and our opportunities. For those of you that are targets, take care of yourself. Take care of one another, and find ways to unite when stood in the face of oppression. Keep talking. Keep fighting the fights that you can muster and know that you matter. Your voice matters. Your story matters. You are human, and you are deserving. For those of you who are agents, create safe places for targets. They may not have many when this is over. Use your privilege to speak up on our issues when no one will give us the time of day. Unite with us, and do your best to work towards ally-ship. |
AuthorGrace Willcox. High school student. Likes to think of herself as cunning & witty. Probably isn't. Enjoy. Archives
March 2017
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