i want what you have and how my brain is like a magnifying glass

i’m feeling completely overwhelmed with emotions. i’m trying to allow myself to feel all of them and be okay with that but what i really want to do right now is unscrew the top of my head and pick all of those feelings out of my brain and then go on my way.

Sometimes i shy away from blogging when i feel like this because i remember being taught that i shouldn’t have these feelings and if i was weak and did have them that i shouldn’t ever show them. i also get scared that if i talk about the things that are in my head that everyone will think i’m a horrible person and i’m terrified of that.

i’m trying to push myself through these fears and do this anyway. And i hope that i can write everything out in a way that doesn’t show me as terrible and that will act as a relief of some of the mounting pressure i’m feeling under the weight of everything.

We have a bajillion people in our lives. Some of them have a larger impact than others. When those people compliment you, it fills your heart in a way that other people can’t. However, on the other hand, if those people do something to upset you or disappoint you in some way, it can hurt more too.

This is hard no matter what. But it’s even harder when it is a newer relationship. With my best friend she can do something to make me angry and it hurts so deeply but i know that she is still my best friend and nothing is going to change that. We have put that time and effort in together over years and i just know, i can feel that bond even through the negative stuff.

There are people that we meet that we just click with. You can’t always explain it but there is some connection there. For me this is awesome and awful all at once. i don’t always connect with people well. i tend to stay in my safe little area until i know things are okay and then when i venture out i don’t know what to say or do. Finding someone that i connect with in a way that allows me to skip all that is fantastic. But. . . i’ve had some pretty shitty people in my life. So when something negative happens in the beginning of a new friendship i get so scared that i have screwed everything up, i was stupid and thought there was a connection where there really wasn’t, i am going to be left all over again, and whatever other multitude of panic filled negativity my brain can churn out.

i get scared that if i say something about these negative things- and maybe negative things is a bad phrase,misunderstandings, comments, actions, whatever it is- that i will come across as weak or needy or ridiculous. So i keep it inside where it festers until it causes a crack in the wall i have built and everything falls apart. It isn’t necessarily that i am holding on to a bad feeling about a certain person, it’s more of just the feeling in general that sits there and then tries to take over every relationship, skewing my view of what is really going on in my life. Sometimes it does hold on to the connection to a particular person in a way that i worry myself sick about it. Rather than just coming out and saying something like, “you said that you would do X and now you seem like you’ve forgotten/don’t care/blown me off/whatever and that is upsetting, can we fix this?” i wonder what i’ve done to make that person change their mind. i wonder what i can do to be better and make them like me again.

i was talking to my best friend the other day about this and she had to basically spell out for me that sometimes people, even good people, do shitty things to other people. It is not always my fault. It wasn’t a magic fix that changed everything right then and there but it was good for me to hear.

Sometimes we won’t get an apology or a confrontation with another person about these things because they honestly don’t realize that it has happened. That can be a bitter pill to swallow when something feels so enormous to me. But i need to remember that even though it feels enormous to me, it didn’t even register to them which means that whatever happened was not done out of malice or pre-meditated horribleness. That’s a huge distinction.

Then there’s this. . .

i read a book last year called Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard. It was a good book, not one of my all time favorites but i enjoyed it enough. But there one one line that has stayed with me since reading it and will probably stay with me forever.

“Envy is when you want what someone else has. Jealousy’s when you also don’t want them to have it.”

i set goals for myself constantly. i think about them over and over and over again until i can see them when i close my eyes. And i know that some of those goals take longer than others to achieve and that’s fine. i know how hard i will have to work to get there and that’s okay. It can get frustrating, of course, but i know how much more i will appreciate the end result when i’ve worked so hard for it rather than having it handed to me.

But. . . i definitely find myself so envious of other people sometimes. To the point where i stand in my own way or beat myself up over it. It’s graduation time and i see people i know graduating from school- high school, college, grad school, etc. And i’m so proud of them, my heart bursts with pride and i brag about them to other people (because i have ridiculously smart awesome friends) and then my heart has that tug of envy because i want that. i want to be graduating, i want to be in school, etc. i’m working toward that goal everyday but for whatever reason i see all these people achieving their amazing goals and dreams and i feel like i’ll never reach mine, that i’ll never be good enough to stand where they are. i know this is dumb, when it comes down to it, i don’t want to stand where they are, i want to stand in my own spot that i have created for myself. But my brain doesn’t always look at things logically.

It’s the same when it comes to recognitions or new jobs or promotions or whatever else. i love hearing about them. i get overwhelmingly happy when they happen to the people i care about most. And then that tug happens and i want that. i know we all have our own path and things will happen the way they are supposed to. That doesn’t make it any easier when you work toward something and don’t get it. It still hurts.

Feeling that hurt at the same time you feel so happy for someone is difficult. You have these conflicting emotions going on and you don’t want to come across as jealous. A lot of times you have to hide that hurt because it won’t come out the way you actually mean it. So again, it just sits inside until it bursts.

i don’t know the fix. i don’t know if there is one. i know that i can try to focus on the happy and use the envy to fuel my drive to achieve my own goals. And i can come here and try to shake out all the crazy feelings so they don’t explode. i guess that’s enough of a step forward for now.

If my brain leaves track A at 9pm going a million mph and my thoughts leave track B at 9:05pm going 47.5 mph, what will my fingers type?

i took AP Calculus in high school. i am not a fan of math stuff. When i think back at the decision to take that class it makes my head spin a little. Don’t get me wrong, i got through the class just fine, it wasn’t that i couldn’t do it. The thing that gets me is that the decision to take the class was based on, like so many high school decisions, if it would help me get into college. Four years of math looks better than the two required to graduate. Continuing with advanced math classes looks much better than coasting through a normal level math for your senior year. For some time now that decision has left a sort of bad taste in my mouth. i had a great teacher and a lot of fun studying with friends in the class but i do wish that i would have been pushed to challenge myself in ways that truly interested me. i wish i hadn’t had, or at least felt that i had, to be so focused on certain classes and activities just to get where i wanted to be in life.

A lot of us are raised thinking that the only way to be successful is to leave high school and then go right to college. For me that was the right thing to do but i know for a lot of people it isn’t. College is definitely a time that you can use to find yourself but it’s also a really expensive, time consuming, and exhausting way of doing it. i don’t think it is worth going to college directly out of high school if you don’t feel ready or you really have no clue what direction you want to go in life. There’s always a chance that you will find that direction at school but more often i see people just settling on a major and a career path so they can be done. Then some time down the road they don’t feel satisfied and have to deal with all the what ifs in their head.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we changed our view of academic success to more of a picture that includes a variety of people who are truly passionate about what they are doing and are completely committed to it? i don’t know why this isn’t more appealing than campuses filled with students who have been in school for years and years because they don’t really know what they want or graduating with regrets about the path they chose.

And wouldn’t it be even better if we could start that even sooner? If we could study things that we are truly passionate about and challenge ourselves in subjects that fascinate us in high school and middle school rather than to simply focus on a grade point average and the classes listed on our transcripts. i don’t mean that we should cut out other classes all together but it would have been great for me to take the math classes that would help me get through life and then move on to extra reading and writing classes.

i don’t know. i’m just thinking out loud because i realized that while i didn’t especially like my AP Calculus class or any of my math classes, when i went to College for Kids my first summer i chose to take a math type class. i was so excited when i read the description and i loved every moment of the class. Rather than being “normal” math stuff it was about patterns and problem solving involving those patterns. My brain works like that. It finds patterns and makes links and i feel better when things are put together the way they are supposed to be. i would have happily challenged myself in those ways for a high school math class but that was not only not an option but also wouldn’t have been looked at as a “real” math class. So instead of offering a class that would have challenged me and that i would have worked really hard at i felt that i HAD to take a class that i had absolutely no interest in and put the least amount of work possible into. That doesn’t seem like the way we should want our educations to be.

That was not at all what i expected to come out when i started typing but it did and i’m okay with that. It’s nice letting my brain just flow sometimes. i need to try to stop all the constant over-thinking and let it just do its thing more.

“It’s the human touch in this world that counts” metaphorically, we don’t actually have to do all that touching, okay?

Oh life, you are a tricky creature sometimes. i finally watched the final episode of This Emotional Life the other day, this one was about happiness. They talked a lot about the science of happiness and what people think makes them happy as compared to what we can scientifically show actually does make them happy. It’s all fairly new but the one overwhelming truth is that social connections make us happier.

 

Yes, of course. Relationships with people make us happier. And this doesn’t seem shocking at all to me but social connections are not something i always have an easy time with so it is frustrating sometimes.

 

We’ll start with romantic relationships. i wholly believe (though i may not have always followed this rule) that romantic relationships should come after a point where you are comfortable with yourself. As RuPaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love someone else? Can I get an A-men?” For me, and i think for a lot of people, there is never going to be a point where i am completely one hundred percent okay with everything about me. And i hope that is the case because i want to be ever changing and evolving as i grow and learn. So really we just need to get to a point where we are generally comfortable with ourselves and love who that general person is. Then there is the, apparently impossible for me, task of finding someone who fits together with you the way that they should. That they should, not they way that you have imagined them or have tried to squeeze them into a space that they don’t belong in. i don’t think i need a relationship to get through life. i don’t think i can’t survive on my own. But, and even more so as i get older, i would really like a relationship. i want to have that one person to share things with and laugh with or cry with. i see most of my friends getting married or in long term committed relationships and the atmosphere changes. It’s hard to be one of the only people without that connection with someone.

 

Since i have no romantic relationship, we’ll move on to other social connections. There are probably about 47 bajillion levels of connections we can have with people. It could be as simple as smiling at someone as they pass you on the street (as long as it’s not one of those creepy smiles it can brighten both of your days.) We live in a constantly changing technological world so we have “facebook friends,” people that you would probably never call up to have a huge conversation with but you are happy to see their pictures or make brief comments on statuses. And vice versa- but it’s still something because even though those people may not be your closest friends, when they like a picture or status you posted it makes you feel happy or at least connected with another person. i suppose that is both a good and a kind of scary thing. We no longer have to have those face to face connections with people that can forge a deeper relationship- we can exist purely on someone else’s screen as though we were a character in a book.

 

There are some people we connect with on a deeper level and then the proximity to one another changes. It isn’t that the relationship isn’t “important enough” to keep up with it just isn’t the same. But somehow when you are with that person again it seems like everything is the same. i don’t know if that is our mind or life playing games with us and making us overlook any changes or rifts that might have come up if the relationship were continually pushed through the distance or if it is because sometimes relationships just work like that.

 

Then we have those people who we can point out little and bigger commonalities with but the connection is deeper than that- something that doesn’t always make sense, it just is. The people that you can talk to about anything or who you can tell your stupid moments to without being judged. These people can make you so angry sometimes but for the most part it won’t last. You’ll talk through it, you’ll yell at each other, and then you laugh about it. For me these are the people i can call in the middle of the night if i need to or who i can call while they are working and have them call me back as soon as they are able if i ask them to. These are the people my heart tends to ache for if i haven’t seen or heard from them.

 

All of that is stuff you probably already know. Maybe i didn’t need to write any of it out. Where it gets tricky for me is in two places. Making those connections and maintaining them.

 

When i talk about maintaining them, it isn’t a matter of not wanting to put in the work of a friendship or a relationship. It is more the fact that when my brain starts up with the crazy talk my inclination is to step back. To pull away from all people. Logically it would be easier to get through those times when the depression gets so bad if i had that support (and i do, but i mean if i reached out to not just have the knowledge of support if that makes sense) but i don’t do that. i want to be alone, i want to cut off all communication with the world. i don’t know if this is partially a cultural thing where we tend to be taught, and hugely in my situation, that we need to hide those big (and small) emotions from people. That we need to only show a smile to the world. Maybe some of my friends who live or have lived in different cultures can weigh in on this. It becomes like a tug of war with a tiny part of me realizing that those connections with people are vital to being happier and the majority of me saying fuck that, crawl back into your bed and be alone for the rest of your life.When i’m already struggling to get through each day those tug of wars are exhausting.

 

Making those connections is terrifying. As we get older it is harder to make friends. i don’t drink or go to bars so that social scene that works for some people is out. But the bigger problem is i am petrified of being hurt, being abandoned, being led on, etc. i don’t want to foolishly think that i have a friendship or connection with someone only to have it thrown in my face. Sometimes i try to avoid those connections even though i can feel in the pit of my stomach that they are there. Sometimes i try to find a middle ground where i can have a surface relationship but avoid going any deeper. And other times i find myself tumbling down the rabbit hole while hoping i don’t end up landing on my face.These connections can be so random. They aren’t always with the people you would expect and that can be a hard mental hurdle to jump.

 

Maybe i’m getting better at this. i’ve sort of forced myself to talk stuff out with people lately, people who i didn’t know how it would go with. People who while i would like to think i would be fine without, the truth is i would be heartbroken. i know those are good steps. Hard steps but good ones. It’s nice to be able to look back and see that i’ve moved forward.

Not only do i have my own thoughts crashing around but also everyone else’s

We are told by many different people, in many different ways, throughout our lives that we shouldn’t worry about what other people think.

 

This is complete shit.

 

i’m not saying that you shouldn’t be happy and comfortable in your own skin but this idea of not worrying about what other people think of us is preposterous. And worse, those thoughts aren’t all equally weighted. Some people’s thoughts and opinions about us mean more than others.

 

Friends can tell us how smart and talented we are but they aren’t the ones who hire us for a job or give us a promotion. Family members can tell us we have grown up to be remarkable but they aren’t the ones who are going to ask you on a date.

 

i wish i could simply not worry about these things. But the truth is, if i want to go to school, i will have to jump through those hoops to impress the people who will admit me, and then i will work my ass off to make a good impression on my professors so when it comes time to get a job i will have the right people standing behind me. When i applied for this job, i didn’t have my tattoos showing or wear any of my piercings. And while those things are accepted where i work, they aren’t in so many other places. Ink on our skin or dye in our hair doesn’t make us any different on the inside but that doesn’t seem to matter to a lot of people.

 

Who we love isn’t something we should have to worry about but so many of us do. We have to worry about what family or friends or co-workers will say. And it’s not just if you’re queer. People have strong opinions on age differences or race differences or how people meet and whatever else. This doesn’t mean that you stop loving who you love but you find yourself avoiding subjects or talking loosely about them.

 

People say that we shouldn’t stay in situations where we can’t be ourselves and i agree, in a friendship or a relationship you should be able to be yourself without fear. Things like jobs and families are a whole different story though. Jobs aren’t something you fall over every day and families are so ridiculously complicated.

 

And the thing is, even if you can be who you are at a job you will still (at least i will) worry about what people think of you. Do they think you’re working hard enough, do they think you’re smart enough or good enough to be working there, do they think you’re good enough to move on past the point you are at?

 

For me, the idea that i am not any of those things is crushing. i don’t want to be a failure and i don’t want people i respect to think i’m not worthy of something more. i don’t want to feel like i am told one thing to build me up and then i sit back and look around and see something else. My last job spent a lot of time telling me how good i would be at a higher position and then pushing aside any requests to learn more or to take on more responsibility. It hurt so much and i didn’t have much, if any, respect for those people.

 

We are told to ask for help when we need it. In a huge variety of situations. And then somehow, when or if we actually do, there are people who think we are weak for it. So we are left wondering and worrying about who those people are and what we should or shouldn’t say and do.

 

People can make tiny remarks that leave such deep scars. They play a major role in how we go through our lives every single day.

 

It is exhausting. All of it. i’m just so fucking tired of all of it. i’m just so fucking tired.

Books, people, hormones, and why the world works.

Today was a good day despite the fact that Olaf is being a jerk.

i even posted stuff on my happiness project 3.0 for the first time in months. And i looked at some of the stuff i had posted there and it made me smile. That’s the whole purpose and i let that slip away.

Thankfully my tumblr, like my friends, is still there. It didn’t matter that i didn’t post for a long time it was there waiting when i needed it.

i’ve spoken before about my belief that the world works the way it is supposed to. i got my job when i needed it most. i was put with the supervisor i needed to be put with on the team that i needed to be with. Last week i was still having a really hard time processing some things that happened recently and i had lunch with one of the best people i know. She was able to help me process those in ways that i hadn’t been able to. Even though she used some of the same words i’ve heard before- they finally clicked. And she was able to tell me to walk away from the crazy drama at the same time that she helped me see the ridiculousness that had been put in my head for so long. This was not the reason we had met for lunch but that’s how it ended up and i walked away feeling almost cleansed. i needed that right then and didn’t know it.

Other times we find a book or a song or a movie that says something we need at that moment. We weren’t expecting it but it hits us at full force almost taking every bit of breath that you didn’t realize you had been holding. That’s one of the reasons Good Will Hunting runs through my veins. i go to the library almost every week. It is (and by it, i really mean any library) one of my favorite places in the world. i walk up and down rows of books grabbing anything that looks interesting or that i’ve been waiting to read until i can’t hold any more. When i get home is the worst part because i have to decide what order to read the books in. This is of the utmost importance to get right because starting with the wrong book can turn you off from the whole pile and ending with the wrong one doesn’t leave you ready to bolt out the door for more.

On my last trip i picked up a book and i put it toward the bottom of the pile because i was sort of scared of it. i read Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta a couple of years ago and my mind was so blown by it that i didn’t want to read another one of her books and be disappointed. So Saving Francesca sat there staring at me until it was time and i took a deep breath and opened it. Once again the world helped me out because i needed to read that book exactly then. If i would have read it a few weeks ago or even a few days ago it would not have spoken to me in the same way it did.

There were two parts in particular that i stopped and reread a few times just to let them soak into my brain because they were like a missing piece of something.

“I can’t believe I’ve said it out loud. The truth doesn’t set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. But free? I don’t feel free. I feel like shit.”

This blog and my attempts at talking more and being more open in the hopes that i can get the things in my head out is like this. It’s a first step, i know that, but that first step is sort of horrible sometimes. There have been so many times that i have talked to someone about something that makes me feel like this or i post something on here that makes me feel like this and i just want to hide. i don’t want to stand around and see people’s reactions. i don’t want to hear their responses. Of course, the world doesn’t work like that and i do see their reactions and hear their responses and a lot of times they are words i didn’t know i needed to hear. And that’s enough to try another step.

“Memory is a funny thing. It tricks you into believing that you’ve forgotten important moments, and then when you’re racking your brain for a bit of information that might make sense of something else, it taps you on the head and says, ‘Remember when you told me to put that memory in the green rubbish bin? Well, I didn’t, I put it in the black recycling tub, and it’s coming your way again.’”

Dealing with PTSD is hard. Depression is hard. Both have ways of making you think that you’ve learned how to deal with things only to be knocked on your ass when it comes back around. The littlest things can be triggers for me. Sometimes there are things that i saw or heard or smelled the day before and for whatever reason it triggers me that day. Those memories are so clear. They don’t feel like memories so much as being trapped in a past version of myself while re-living that moment over and over and over.

i just finished watching the second episode of This Emotional Life on Netflix and there was so much in there that helped me understand my brain a little more. There was a scientist who wanted to test the relationship between memory and stress hormones. They did an experiment where they showed people images of bad or scary stuff then some of the participants put their hand in ice water and others put their hand in lukewarm water. The next week the participants came back and were tested about the images they saw. They found that the people who put their hand in ice water- which triggered stress hormones were much more able to remember those images. Those hormones sort of etched them into their brain. They said that in the case of PTSD the switch gets stuck. While normally it’s a good thing to have those images etched in our brain (they remind us not to touch a stove or to be careful when driving in the rain) with PTSD the stress hormones etch that image and then don’t stop. They keep going making that image stronger and stronger and every time the image is recalled the stress hormones are released because that’s what happens when you re-experience a traumatic event and then those stress hormones strengthen the image even more and it just keeps cycling.

This doesn’t fix anything for me but it gives me something to wrap my head around and i need that. There is so much in the world that i don’t understand and that causes me unbridled anxiety. i need to be able to comprehend anything i can.

Real conversations and why we should filter water, not the world.

Sometimes i miss being in college simply to have the experience of a group of people reading or watching one thing and then discussing it.

 

i adore watching documentaries and often find myself spending hours online reading about ideas or topics that were mentioned in them. But it isn’t the same as sitting down with a group of people and really discussing something. i want people to challenge the way i see things, i want to be passionately and politely angry about something and defend my thinking. i want to start talking about one thing and segue into a million other things because of an article someone read or a story someone heard on NPR that opens a can of worms.

 

Now, i really like having one on one conversations with people, ones that run the gamut from tears to uncontrollable laughter. But there is something infinitely different about a small group of people together sharing thoughts and information and being vulnerable enough to be real with one another.

 

A lot of times that vulnerability is hard for me. i don’t want to let my defenses down. i don’t want to share my thoughts or opinions until i know the situation and the environment is safe. And yet, i long for those situations. They help me to understand myself and my beliefs as well as to understand the world around me.

 

i watched a sermon yesterday from the church i am going to try out next week. The minister was talking about truth and whose truth is real and questioning whose truth we should follow. He talked about how sometimes we get so caught up in what we personally think and have been taught and feel that we filter the world.

 

We read articles and we filter out the parts we disagree with. We listen to news reports and people’s rants and raves and we roll our eyes because we filter out a lot. We kind of zone in on key words and ideas and we take them out because we think they don’t apply to us.

 

That filter is a hard thing to get around. It means you have to try and shut your brain off sometimes and just listen to the world. Listen to the people around you. Have those experiences and let the feelings and thoughts that come up from that pure listening just come up – you can analyze and pick things apart later. For me, this is really hard but when i manage it, it feels so good so be sort of organically experiencing things.

 

i want to get better at this. If i can work on turning that filter off and experiencing things as they happen then i can be in control of my emotions and feelings in a way i never have been before. i don’t mean that i won’t have any- i know i will and sometimes they may come out of nowhere and surprise me. However, there is a big difference between hearing something, getting angry about it right then and there, dealing with that anger as it happens and then moving on, and holding onto that anger (or sadness, or worry, or whatever) until there is so much of it inside that i feel like i will burst or implode or both.

 

Those times in college or even now when a group of my friends gets together and we just start discussing life and the world, i can feel that filter almost fade away. i feel open to learning and while the filter is gone my brain is soaking in every bit of information it can and churning out responses of my own. i walk away feeling like a better person. And the truth of it is, i probably am a better person for having turned that filter off and actually listening to what was being said.

 

i’m working on it. i’m hoping to find a good community to have these discussions with and i’m going to try not to shy away from the chances i have for the one on one discussions i love. If i ever find someone to date (i’m looking, i have a list of requirements, if you know someone who will fit them let me know) i want to be able to have real talks and experiences without filtering every moment.

 

The world is so much bigger than any of us and we’ll never see anything until we let that filter, that wall, come down and see through the eyes of other people and try to understand their views and their experiences. We have to change ourselves before we can change the world. It’s not easy but i’m pretty sure it’s worth it.

Voices and staring and how we aren’t really that different but, of course, we are

First of all i need to know how and why with my immense love of graphic novels no one ever made sure i had read Maus and Maus II and then kicked me in the face when i said no? Seriously. i want to inject stories like that into my veins and breathe them in. i would read that and any of Marjane Satrapi’s books and Alison Bechdel’s graphic novels (to name some of my favorites) all day every day.

 

i’ve talked with people about the fact that i am not one of those writers who can write what she doesn’t know. i don’t mean i can’t write fiction but the situations are going to be based on what i know. There is a poet (and i can’t remember who it is) who wrote these incredible poems about all of these different people in hugely varied situations and talked about how they wrote these poems to give a voice to people who didn’t have one. And they were so successful at it, if you just came across the poem you wouldn’t expect to find out the poet had never experienced any of those things. i understand that there is always a personal touch onto these things and we can’t leave ourselves entirely out of our writing but to even broach the subject is awe inspiring for me.

 

i can only talk for me. i’m totally okay with that and i know somewhere deep in my mind i know that by talking for me i am, in a way, still speaking for people without a voice. One of my awesome Scottie sisters sent me a message with this in it recently “When we share we realize we’re not alone and help someone else in the process.” When i was growing up we didn’t have blogs and the books that talked about things i needed to know were vastly different than they are now or just didn’t exist. i felt totally alone in a lot of ways. But now i can use my own voice to show other people that they aren’t. Even if they can’t say it themselves and that’s kind of incredible.

 

And even if people who read this have never experienced anything that i’m talking about, they probably know someone who has and i hope that it can open a dialogue that won’t be the naive or close minded discussion it could be. When i read these graphic novel memoirs (and other memoirs in general – but the graphic novel ones hit me in a totally different way) i can soak up other people’s stories and understand them and the world in a way i couldn’t before. People are less scary because i can look at them and see the human in them and the commonalities rather than the strange differences that i don’t understand at first. The world is both more and less scary because i can see even more of the injustice and horribleness out there but i also see the good in people through these people’s stories.

 

One of my Amandas sent me an article last week from The Disabilities Studies Reader called Beholding by Rosemarie Garland-Thompson. i don’t know if it is available online but if you want to read it send me a message and i’d be happy to pass it along. The article talks about staring and the differences between good staring and bad staring and how we can turn bad staring into good. The context has to do with people specifically differently abled people and the judgements and assumptions people make about them upon first glance and how that first glance isn’t really a glance but a gawk. It talks about two different women who were both featured on the cover of New York Times magazine, both women’s photos would probably make most people stare or even uncomfortable but the accompanying articles show that those physical differences that seem so frightening or off-putting are not what we should really be staring at at all. We need to be looking deeper into the stories people have to tell and basing our thoughts and even judgments based on those.

 

Our stories and our experiences and our voices are just as unique as our finger prints. No one else is going to experience life in the same way that another person will but somehow we all seem to expect that of people sometimes. It is a ridiculous notion and is how we end up in cycles of violence and prejudice and hate. We are not alike. We have commonalities and those are awesome to find with people and to share but we are not the same. We can help our communities and our world by realizing this and taking the time to read and listen to those stories and hear those voices that are speaking for people who can’t. Find those commonalities but also cling to the differences because they really aren’t scary, they’re just different.