x60 (you don’t believe in god because of “alice in wonderland”?)

“You know, here’s what I don’t get about you. You know for a fact that there is a God. You’ve been in His presence. He’s spoken to you personally. Yet I just heard you claim to be an atheist.”

“I just like to fuck with the clergy, man. I just love it, I love to keep those guys on their toes.”

Bartleby and Loki, “Dogma”

This post was a bit tl;dr, so it’ll be spaced into three posts over the coming weeks.

I have reached a spiritual crossroads in my life. I’ve experienced several, but this is perhaps the biggest (although not necessarily the most profound). Almost two years ago I posted an entry modeled after directions from Mapquest that detailed my “religious roadmap”, and I’m revisiting that today. As I mentioned previously, I was raised Catholic and have waffled back and forth between the Catholic church and other faiths as the years have progressed. I would best describe my relationship with Catholicism as I would describe an attempted platonic relationship with an ex – you respect the role they had in your life and there are good memories, but sometimes the temptation is too great and you fall back into a sexual or “friends with benefits” relationship even though you know it’s not a good idea. I currently attend services at the local Catholic church because the community and volunteer opportunities are inexpensive and easily accessible to me, and while there are certain aspects of Catholicism that I will always find endearing, my relationship with the church is not one I plan on continuing once my fiancée and I move in together. Part of this is fueled by a discovery I made recently regarding receiving the Eucharist – apparently, both divorcees and married gay persons are not permitted to receive Communion, something I had been unaware of until I read an article about the new Pope and whether or not the Catholic church would ever accept gay marriage (an interesting side note – even straight allies who support gay marriage were apparently urged to not receive Communion by an archbishop in Detroit). I had been under the impression that only people who had been excommunicated were not allowed to partake in the Eucharist, although technically you shouldn’t even receive it if you haven’t been to confession – you’re not supposed to receive Communion if you have a “mortal sin” on your hands. But the point is that the distribution of the Eucharist is the only part of the mass I still connect to (and even then, it’s a shoddy connection at best), and so I’m not too keen to continue attending services at a church that doesn’t let me fully participate.

And so, therein lies the crossroads: spirituality is important to me and I would like a religious outlet in my life, but I am torn as to whether or not I want to be Jewish or whether or not I want to be Pagan.

x59 (beauty comes in all shapes and sizes)

I am 5’ 9”, and I weigh 160 lbs.

I am surprisingly OK with this.

Initially while I was thinking of sharing this with people, I thought that a simple Facebook status update would suffice. But I soon realized that I had more to say on the topic than Facebook would allow. I think that’s because I was reading an article that was a guest post on the blog of a former Sassy magazine writer (I never read Sassy, but from my understanding it was a feminist magazine geared toward teen fans of indie and rock music). The author was talking about the culture of fat in Hollywood, and started listing all the different tricks that Hollywood starlets use to curb their eating. I found the article largely triggering, and began pining for the “good ol’ days”, wherein my weight really mattered to me and curtailing my food intake was a major part of my life. “I could be skinny,” I thought. “I could be beautiful.”

A few days later, my attitude toward those statements is a resounding fuck that shit. When I started dating my fiancée almost a year ago, I was around 145 lbs and between a size 6 and an 8. I currently wear jeans that are a size 12. My weight fluctuates frequently and aside from my eating disordered behavior as a teen, I’ve never actually tried dieting or put extended effort into keeping my weight consistent. At this height, the most I’ve weighed is 175 lbs, and the least I’ve weighed is 127 lbs – as you can see, that’s a pretty big discrepancy. I think one of the reasons that I’m so comfortable at my current weight is that when I’m stressed or sick, my weight tends to plummet (hence my low point being 127 lbs), and so it’s good to be on the heavier side of average to act as a buffer. There are days where I miss being a size 6 and feel like I’m less beautiful because I’m not, and that’s unfortunately something that’s common in this culture. I frequently see Facebook status posts about friends and family members discussing their plans to lose weight, their goal being a 6 or a 4 – what are considered the “ideal” for women, while the average is actually closer to a 12.

My fiancée has told me that she did not notice my weight gain. I should note that five times a week, I either take a 45 minute walk or spend 45 minutes on a recumbent bike, and two to three times a week I spend 30 minutes doing yoga, so it is possible that I’ve gained muscle mass – although I don’t think I look particularly toned. I’m vegan, and I stick to what’s called a “whole foods diet” – this does not mean that I shop at the (very expensive) Whole Foods grocery store on a regular basis, but rather that my diet consists of actual food that has not been overly processed (with the exception of grains – I do eat pasta and bread, and I’m working on cutting back on that) – so lots of beans, rice, vegetables, etcetera. I feel like I lead a healthful lifestyle, and I feel that my build and height are sufficient enough to carry my weight. I’m happy at the weight I am and I don’t feel the need to shed pounds. I even had one of those (rare, fleeting, but incredibly exciting) moments where I looked in the mirror the other day and thought, “Damn, self,  you look good!”

I think it’s important to create a new cultural narrative in which we’re comfortable talking about our bodies with specific numbers, rather than the usual “never ask a lady how much she weighs” bullshit that creates body shaming. Now, don’t get me wrong – I understand that this can be difficult, particularly for a lot of the women out there who are considered overweight or obese. While I am larger than the standard ideal of beauty in the US and while I have been on the “overweight” scale before (at 175 I had a BMI of 25, which is considered overweight; my PCP at the time told me that while she didn’t think I should gain any more weight I was fine where I was and didn’t need to lose any), I’ve never experienced the degree of body shaming that many larger women have. It’s incredibly disheartening that I have friends who work in the beauty industry who say that they get passed over for photography opportunities because of their larger stature. I’d like to see the fear mongering behind admitting to a certain number dissipate and a pride of a healthful lifestyle – which is attainable at many sizes – take center stage. Let’s admit what is triggering to us so that we can create a culture wherein healthy ways to lose weight are emphasized over tips and tricks, instead of a culture where women who are a size 8 or 10 or 12 (and who are healthy) are forced into smaller sizes and a smaller way of thinking that dictates an ideal of beauty that needs to be made more accessible. Beauty really does come in all shapes and sizes, folks, so we’d do well to focus on healthy living instead of skinny living.

x58 (a faith that complements, but not defines)

So, perhaps inspired by an impending Pagan holiday and a recent blog post about the modern culture of casual dress in church, I decided to write about something I’ve been avoiding because I have so few religious friends – my own religious beliefs, and how they are changing and how I am challenging them. As I was writing, all I could think was “This is so self-serving and narcissistic – who wants to read about the fact that I attend a Catholic church but want to be Jewish and am a practicing Pagan?” It sort of goes back to my “Judge and Let Judge” piece, but I have this fear of coming off as… the best way to describe it is “different”, but not in a good way. I have this fear of being seen as different because I am a religious woman. I’m reminded of a quote from Mayim Bialik while she was describing her friend Allison Josephs of “Jew in the City” fame. It’s a simple quote, but I feel that it is very profound:

“She’s extremely intelligent and I think she’s not what a lot of people think a religious woman is…”

There’s that word. Intelligence. I don’t want to be seen as less intelligent, or less of a feminist, or less of a gay rights activist, just because I’m religious. It’s hard to describe the words or phrases or triggers that a stereotypically religious person has that indicate that they are those things – less intelligent, less of a feminist, or less of a (or not at all a) gay rights activist. And when it comes to religion, the word “intelligence” is extremely charged, because of course there are scientists and atheists who offer that there is no proof of a higher being and therefore religious people are automatically less intelligent for considering it. Technically the main point of my blog is to simply keep my family and friends, who are scattered all over the US and some even in different countries, updated on my life. But I also find myself often hopping up on a soapbox to prove a point. My point here is not to prove that there is a higher being or that you should follow or ascribe to x, y, z, but rather my point is that, yes, you can be both religious and rational; yes, you can have a spiritual awakening and not change radically but rather have that spirituality be a complement to what you already were.

The fear is pretty heavy here, because I don’t want to talk about my religious beliefs while projecting myself as “stereotypically religious” or giving my atheist friends a headache. And the thing is, I know exactly the reaction my atheist friends could have to this given situation, because I’ve had that reaction myself. I was talking to a friend recently who had “found God”, and I honestly was worried about this person. Their newfound beliefs were pretty radically different from anything they had expressed before, and there was that major indicator that something had gone awry: this person was marginally less accepting of the queer community, in the sort of “the Bible says but it also says I’m not supposed to judge/love the sinner not the sin/I love you but…” way. I remember when talking to former coworkers about the fact that I started attending services at a local Catholic church that I stressed that I had not “found God”, that this was not a new or startling thing or “reawakening”; I simply wanted to be a part of a community and get out of the house, something that can be very difficult to do when you collect disability (and are therefore poor) and everyone thinks you’re a loser. That’s certainly one of the benefits of operating under a religious modus – they may hate you for being gay, but they’ll never judge you for being in need. So the question I’m positing to myself is, “How can I talk about religion without letting it overwhelm my core value system?”

I’ve talked a little bit about my “core value system”, if you will, here on my blog. In my “Manifesto of Intrinsic Human Worth”, I touched on the fact that I think every person has inherent goodness and intrinsic worth (call me a sap, an optimist, or perhaps just stupid). In “Ethical Consumerism as a Resolution“, I mentioned that I think that the dollar is a powerful tool in supporting my core values. I’ve talked about my views on abortion and that if you’re “pro-life” (or rather, “anti-abortion” or “pro-birth”), you need to put up or shut up. I think hitting kids is always wrong. I think love is about being there for someone and aspiring to contribute to their emotional, mental, and spiritual growth, and not about butterflies. I think atheists have just as much of a capability of being good people as religious people do. I think that people who are religious are all worshiping the same deity, one who appreciates and encourages diversity, and thus presents itself in many different forms (I’m a bit of a henotheist; what can I say?). I think that said deity is very accepting of gay and trans* people. And while we’re on that boat, I think that gay and trans* people deserve equal rights. Especially trans* people. And I think that reparative therapy is a dangerous crock of shit. I think that we need to stop the damaging aspects of rape culture and I think that we need to change the minds of men and have society say it’s OK for men to be feminine in order to best represent feminism and gender equality. I think animals deserve rights. I value intelligence and think it is as much about life experience as it is about books. I think ideas are better than beliefs because you can change an idea. And these things are not going to change because I’ve adopted certain religious practices or choose to discuss them. And if they do change because of religion, that is a warning sign and someone should slap me. My faith complements me, but it does not define me or overwhelm me. And that’s the way it should be.

x57 (the modern culture of casual dress in church)

A few weeks ago, I was pondering the modern culture of casual dress in church. I try to dress in business casual attire when I attend church, and it’s one of the few times during the week I put on makeup. I’ll be the first to admit that part of the reason I do this is not solely to show respect during the service, but to get “gussied up” in a way I don’t normally get to during the week. Going to church is one of the few social outlets I have, and it’s important to me to make a good impression when I’m there. I was raised in a solidly middle class family in Massachusetts (which, since the cost of living here is so high, we’d be much better off if we had the same paying job but lived in a different state), and my mother, a conservative Catholic, was raised in a wealthy Midwestern family, which meant that putting on your Sunday best was of high importance. I recall having a conversation with the local priest about the way people dressed in church, and we noted that we both longed for the days when the way you dressed showed respect in a place of worship. I also recall mentioning this to a friend of mine who noted that, as a single mother working in retail, she couldn’t afford “Sunday best” clothes for her or her two (constantly growing) teenage sons, and she didn’t want that to be an obstacle in her church attendance. So I had to ask some of my religious friends from various backgrounds: is the modern culture of casual dress a good thing or should people follow a prescribed dress code when attending church?

The first person I asked, a young man I knew during my brief stint in college, simply noted that he found dress codes in general to be classist. This was a valid point that backed up what my friend with two teenage sons had told me, and indeed shed some light on the reasons I myself dress up for church: isn’t dressing up more about showing off than showing respect? A young woman I formerly attended church with noted that, for her, covering up was more important than dressing up – this was something that was especially important in, say, Italy, where she once vacationed. She said that a tank top and shorts is much less respectful, but that jeans and a respectable shirt is appropriate for most days; Christmas, Easter, baptisms, confirmations, and other “special occasions” within the church were exceptions to this rule wherein you’d want to step up your church wardrobe. An older woman I spoke with had similar concerns – she said she was glad that the church she attended mandated that confirmation candidates wear robes over their outfits, because so many teenage girls showed up in strapless or spaghetti strap dresses, or with short skirts. This woman also noted that, when you are the parent of teenagers, you have to pick and choose your battles. Actually getting your kids to attend church in the first place usually takes precedence over what they wear. In her opinion, as long as they’re there, you’ve done your job.

One young woman who graduated from my high school alma mater noted that the culture of casual dress can make church seem less intimidating and help people find the courage to actually attend services when they would normally feel ostracized. While she could certainly see the merits of dressing up for church – it separates that activity from what you do the rest of the week, shows reverence, and can help put you in a different mindset – she had this to say about Sunday best classism: dressing casually can help wealthier church members show humility, a quality Jesus Christ praised. It makes church more accessible, and in some ways is more practical. She shared an anecdote detailing her experience teaching a Sunday school class to a group of four year olds, and noted that when you’re dealing with a large group of messy kids right before or after a service, you don’t want to wear super nice clothes that are easily ruined. Like the other young woman who was a former fellow parishioner at my local church, she also noted that on holidays like Christmas, she did dress nicer than she would for an average Sunday service. One young woman who was more agnostic or atheistic in her leanings recalled her mother telling her about needing to wear a chapel veil in church while she was growing up, and noted that something simple like covering your hair might offer a good compromise between showing respect and not alienating people through altering your whole outfit.

The final person I asked, a devout middle-aged Catholic woman, had simply this to say:

“[D]ressing up is a beautiful way to respect God but [I] also look to Jesus who was poorest of the poor. God wants our hearts.”

Overall, dressing your Sunday best on a consistent basis seems to be on its way out as a tradition, and with good reason. Creating this survey has helped me challenge my own classist assumptions on church attire when I didn’t even know that I had classist assumptions on church attire to begin with. For my own purposes, dressing up still serves me well and as someone who keeps tznius, I tend to look a bit overdressed to begin with. But I’m working on no longer judging people who come to church dressed much more casually than I do, and while I do think that judgment has a time and a place, I don’t think that judgment on attire serves a purpose in church. That being said, I could go on and on about the types of judgment that do take place in church and that are sanctioned by the church – but that’s another blog for another day.

x56 (the debut)

So, do you remember that project I talked about yesterday – the one that was the reason for my rehash of topic? Well, here it is: mine and my fiancée’s wedding website. It requires a password to access, which I will post on Facebook when this entry launches. It’s very bare-bones right now; there are a grand total of three photos that grace the pages (more will be coming eventually), and right now it simply serves as a separate wedding blog so that those of you who are not interested in the wedding planning process can read my regular blog and not feel inundated. I linked to two previous wedding related blog posts (one posted on this blog and one featured on Offbeat Bride), and there is one new blog post that appeared yesterday. While I aim to update this blog once a week on Thursdays, the wedding blog will likely be more like once a month, or as progress or issues surface. Enjoy!

x55 (manifesto of intrinsic human worth)

This week, I’m going to be giving myself a break as I’ll be working on a new project that I’ll reveal to you shortly. So I’m going to publish something that was originally posted as a note on Facebook (and which I don’t think anybody read, so technically it’s still fresh material!). This idea originally appeared in a letter I wrote to someone, and I worked to expand upon it in the wee hours of the morning one night. Enjoy.

No one can ever fully empathize with another person, and no one can ever truly understand what someone else is going through. What we can understand, however, is that we are all human beings. We all feel things, including pain. Pain and trauma is ALWAYS valid, regardless of why you feel that way, regardless of whether or not someone had it worse. There is always someone who is better off than you are, and there is always someone who is worse off than you are. Always. The pain, the trauma, the hurt you or anyone else feels, it is always, always valid, simply because you are a human being and you felt it. That’s it. That’s all she wrote. You have every right to feel pain, and no one has any right to take that away from you, ever, under any circumstances. Pain, struggle, they never make anyone less, but they never make anyone more. We are all human beings, plain and simple. We all have brains. We all have hearts. We all have blood. We all have souls. We all feel things. We are all born, and we all die. Someone is a good, worthwhile human being simply because they are a human being, because they exist. Someone is a good, worthwhile human being because they have a brain, a heart, blood, a soul, they feel things, they are born, and they die. The fact that someone is worthwhile, the fact that someone is good, is never under any circumstances a reflection on something they have or have not done, or something they have or have not experienced. It is simply because they are a human being who has a brain, a heart, blood, a soul, who feels, who is born, and who dies. Even if their brain or heart doesn’t work the same way someone else’s does, even if they feel things differently, or more or less intensely, even if there is not a lot of time between when they were born and when they died, regardless of the tragic or wonderful circumstances behind their birth, death, or life, they are a human being, and are therefore good and worthwhile. It really is that simple. There is no such thing as a bad person, only good people who do bad things. There is no such thing as monsters. Only human beings who do monstrous things. Human beings who are in an unimaginable amount of pain, who repress things, who do not know how to deal with their pain or who do not want to because they are terrified. There is never a simple answer for anything. There is always, always, always a myriad of complicated circumstances, reasons, things that are incredibly grey, behind any one event or occurrence, be it major or minor. Everyone wants to heal. Survivors want to heal, but offenders want to heal too. People who do bad things want to heal just as much as the people they have hurt. It really is that simple. Everyone just wants to be loved. To feel like they are loved, to know that they are loved. Sometimes, instead of loving a baby, someone hurts a baby. And sometimes that makes the baby feel really bad. And sometimes the baby feels like because someone hurt them, and because they feel bad, that they are bad. And then the baby goes on to hurt other babies. Everyone is someone’s baby. Even if someone never had a mother, even if someone gave birth to them but abused that privilege, did not love them, and hurt them instead, everyone is someone’s baby. Everyone deserves to be loved, and everyone wants to be loved, to feel loved, to know that they are loved. Yes, we have choices. We have to accept certain things that we cannot control, but we can choose to feel better. We can choose to change certain things that we can control. We can choose to make cycles stop. We can choose to feel better. But one person is never truly or completely accountable for any one thing. There are other people who enabled them. Who encouraged them. Who told them not to talk about it. Not to ask questions. To accept it. If someone does something bad to someone else, then yes, they need to take accountability. And they do have a choice. But the people who enabled them, who encouraged them, who allowed things to happen when they had the choice to stop it, or change something, they need to take accountability as well. The people who made someone feel bad enough to do something bad to someone else, they need to take accountability as well.

x54 (grocery shopping while female)

Today (or rather, last Thursday, since I won’t be posting this blog immediately), I had one of those experiences that are colloquially referred to as “walking while female.” Or rather, in my case, grocery shopping while female. As I was in the self checkout lane putting my groceries in my bag, a store employee I’d seen before on previous shopping trips approached me. He had a bag in his hand and appeared to be on a break. He came up and said “hi”, and I said “hi” and smiled like I usually do – I inherited my mother’s Midwestern politeness and friendliness. He then said something about how pretty I was. I smiled, laughed awkwardly, and said “thank you.” After I had put my groceries back in my cart and was heading out, he continued to follow me, driving home the point that he thought I was very beautiful. He even mentioned that, with a figure like mine, I should be a model. Once again, I smiled, laughed awkwardly, and said “thank you.” I felt a wave of relief as I left the store and didn’t have to deal with him or his odd compliments anymore.

I’d like to back up for a minute. First, I don’t think that women generally expect to be given heavy compliments on their looks while grocery shopping. It’s pretty common to show up to grocery stores dressed very casually because you’re running errands on your day off. Sweatpants, pajama pants, and grungy sweatshirts are all the norm. I wasn’t feeling particularly pretty – I didn’t have makeup on, my hair could have looked nicer, my face was broken out, and I was wearing an old sweatshirt that wasn’t terribly fitted. I think what makes this all the more baffling to me is that I keep tznius, or Jewish modesty law (I’ll get into the why of that in a later blog). This means that I only wear skirts and that I keep up to my knees and elbows covered. Since I’m not actually Jewish, I take a few liberties that may be more popular in some Modern Orthodox circles; namely, the three finger rule – if it’s within three fingers length of your elbow or knee (or hairline, if you’re married and covering your hair), it’s acceptable. My skirt was a little shorter than I would have liked (but certainly not “short” by normal standards), although my legs were covered with opaque cotton tights, so I felt that it was still appropriate. Overall, I recall feeling a bit like Mayim Bialik in her interview on Craig Ferguson’s “The Late Late Show”.

Thirty seconds into the video, you can see that she sheepishly says “thank you” and laughs nervously when Craig Ferguson tells her that her sleeves are “sexy”. She had this to say on Kveller, where she blogs about being a Jewish mom:

“When Craig brought up my sheer sleeves being sexy, I cringed. In many Modern Orthodox circles, women wear sheer sleeves. And since I’ve stopped reading Facebook comments about how immodest many Orthodox women find me, I’m going to go ahead and type the following… I felt kind of odd having him mention my sleeves as sexy, because that made it feel overt. And I wasn’t trying to be overt. I was covering them in some way. But I suppose that’s why stringent women don’t consider sheer sleeves modest… I can’t get too hung up on any of the debate. Suffice it to say, I was glad when he moved on from the topic. And I love my sheer sleeves. Even if not everyone does.”

So in addition to not looking my best because I was simply grocery shopping, I felt a bit odd – like I was cheating at a game – when I got this (unwanted) compliment while trying to keep tznius. As Mayim said, I wasn’t trying to be overt. I wasn’t trying to be sexy, and my goal was not to get random men to come up and compliment me or hit on me. The guilt is compounded by the fact that I have to wonder if I would have been this uncomfortable if the man had been younger, more attractive, or if a woman had paid me this compliment. I can hear the “he was just giving you a compliment, you should be flattered!” in the background already. I can’t quite place why the situation made me as uncomfortable as it did – perhaps it was the unexpectedness, or perhaps it was the physical proximity. He was standing very close to me and made a point of following me as I left the store. Maybe I shouldn’t be making as big a deal of this as I am; maybe I shouldn’t refer to this as “walking while female” – certainly far worse things can be said, or I could have been touched, something I definitely wasn’t inviting. Overall, I think the situation was so uncomfortable for me because it felt like he was hitting on me simply because I’d been nice to him in the past. On the East coast, at least, any bit of friendliness is interpreted as flirtation, especially because so many of us are “Massholes”. If I had been in a bar, the situation might have been different, or I could have at least understood him approaching me. But the situation in the grocery store felt forced, uncomfortable, and awkward. If you’re going to take anything away from this, it should be that while paying a compliment – particularly regarding someone’s looks, even more specifically a woman’s looks – please keep an appropriate distance and be quick and polite about it. Don’t get too close, most certainly don’t touch her (him), and don’t carry on. Also, keep in mind the situation and background – like I said, had this taken place in a bar, I likely would have been less phased. And please remember: just because someone is nice to you, does not mean they are flirting with you. Even if you live in Massachusetts. Especially if you live in Massachusetts.

x53 (blogging the human experience)

Writing personal essays, otherwise known as “blogs”, is scary.

Very, very scary.

Kate over at Eat The Damn Cake wrote about it in her blog post “Why Personal Essays Are Really Important”. The point of her essay is that personal essays are important to create solidarity between human beings and, more specifically, young women – the bulk of personal essay bloggers. The following quote sums it up nicely:

“They allow people to tell their own stories, instead of waiting for someone else to show up and record and edit them. In doing so, they give the writer control. They place inherent value in the human experience, in every shape it takes. They emphasize small, meaningful moments. They connect us with other people by exposing the similarities that exist even in our very different lives. Because of this, they create community, because honesty surrounding particular experiences draws other people who also want to be honest about the same issues. They give people who have been silenced a platform to speak. They celebrate non-famous individuals, investigate mundane but serious problems, and reveal meaning in everyday life. They allow us to learn from the mistakes of people we’ve never met. They tell us the truth about experiences we’re curious about but can’t ask about in polite conversation. They make it clear that there are many, many truths, and help keep our perspectives diverse and more tolerant as a result. They encourage openness and vulnerability in a world that can feel impersonal, cold, and disinterested. They acknowledge that people’s experiences, as well as reported facts, are innately interesting and relevant. They reassure us that we’re normal just when we were worried that we were weird and unacceptable; there’s someone else out there going through something similar. And so much more.

Personal essays provide us with historically relevant and valuable accounts of what people’s lives are actually like. They are an amazing opportunity to learn about other people and ourselves, and in doing so, to delve deeper into the human condition.”

But something else that Kate talks about that really speaks to me is the fear of being judged harshly. She goes into her own experiences with vitriolic comments left on personal essays wherein the main point was simply to help reach out to other people going through similar experiences. While I’ve never had the traffic on my blog to warrant trolls, there’s still a big fear of the response I may get from family members and friends who are exposed to my blog entries on Facebook. I don’t think judgment is inherently a bad thing (remember “Judge and Let Judge”?), some of the things I write about in the interest of human solidarity are very personal issues. The fear of judgment and victim shaming is what keeps me from writing more about my experiences as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, despite the fact that I believe “paying it forward” and talking about my experiences can be helpful to other survivors struggling with similar issues. There’s a lot of fear about being accused of making things up, of being told I’m not actually a survivor, and especially a fear of people asking me who the abuser was – something I have no intention of disclosing and a question I have been pressed on in the past. The fear of judgment is what keeps me from discussing my religious beliefs and journeys in my spirituality, because of my dearth of religious friends and my abundance of atheist or agnostic ones. I feel very alone in being an intelligent, rational, liberal, queer person of faith. I know my experiences have the potential to be helpful in establishing a place for a queer person in a faith community, but I’m scared to talk about them. The fear of judgment is what keeps me from writing about more academic subjects, particularly race/racism and feminism/gender equality, because I dropped out of college and fear that because I haven’t studied these topics extensively in a classroom setting I will therefore have less valid or coherent opinions.

Overcoming my fear of judgment is probably the biggest boon managing my blog has given me. It may take some poking or prodding from my fiancée or a close friend, but putting myself out there and being honest about my experiences helps give me power over them. It’s a challenge, but it’s one that I welcome and I embrace your patience with me as I continue on this journey of solidarity of the human experience.

x52 (hospitals suck)

Apologies for there not being a post last Thursday; life got in the way. But I’m back, and I’m back to talk about the following game (which you can view on Youtube): The Cat Lady.

Despite the fact that I suspect this game to have been created by pretentious self-suffering art students, it was pretty good. The synopsis of the game is that a woman who suffers from depression kills herself and, instead of going to hell, is given a second chance – on the condition that she kill five serial killers, or “parasites”, that are not doing anyone any good. While I don’t necessarily agree with the concept of any human being a parasite or worthless, regardless of the mistakes they have made or the horrible things they have done, the game gets pretty into what it’s like to feel depressed and seek treatment for it. And overall, I thought the game’s portrayal of these topics was pretty accurate. One of the things that I thought was really accurate was the shitty way the game’s main character, Susan, was treated when she was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. The game appears to take place in England, so I can’t really speak for what it’s like to be hospitalized in a different country, but in case you were wondering: yes, psych wards suck. The main reason for this is that you’re stuck with care providers that you can’t change as easily as you can change a therapist, and many of them are super jaded or really should never have applied for that job in the first place. In my experience, the care you receive is sub-par and not all that intense – you meet with someone (who doesn’t know anything about your background except what you tell them) who adjusts your meds, if you’re on any, and who prescribes you meds if you’re not on any. There are various group therapy sessions you can attend, and if it’s your first time in a ward, they might be helpful to you. That being said, a lot of the therapy sessions get pretty redundant after a while, and you probably aren’t going to benefit from any of them over a longer period of time except the opening and closing groups of the day, where you can discuss your feelings in an open setting.

I have some pretty big problems with the way psychiatric hospitals are run, due to some bad experiences I’ve had during both voluntary and involuntary hospitalizations. The first time I was hospitalized, I was thirteen and so the decision to bring me in was left up to my parents, and considered “voluntary” because they were the ones who submitted me in for care. My therapist tried to convince my parents that I needed a long-term stay – six months to a year – and after about two weeks, my parents decided that was a load of bullshit and had me released. When I entered the psychiatric ward, I was still getting over a pretty bad case of scarlet fever. I explained this to the nurses, but instead of letting me rest until I was better, they told me I had to participate in all the groups or else I would have privileges taken away. A few days later, while hanging around in the common area, I blacked out and collapsed. I was still conscious, but I couldn’t see anything and I was very weak from being sick, so down on the floor I went. When I reported this to one of the nurses, he gave me a glass of water and told me that he thought I was just making up my symptoms for attention, and nothing was done. When my mother arrived that night during visiting hours, I explained the situation to her and she furiously approached the staff. She pointed out that my face was swollen and I was covered in a rash, and she asked if they had even bothered to take my temperature. At her insistence, they did, and sure enough I was running a low-grade fever. I was finally given medication and was allowed to rest from my scarlet fever relapse. One of the other inappropriate happenings that I recall from this hospitalization was that a young boy – maybe eleven or twelve – forgot to hand his plastic utensils back in to the nurse after eating. Because the plastic utensils were considered sharps, if you had the privilege to eat in the common area or cafeteria, you were given the utensils and had to make sure you gave them back to nurse when you were done eating. Throwing them in the trash was against the rules. When it was realized that the young boy had thrown away the utensils, the nurse in charge gave him a pair of plastic gloves, told him to empty the trash out onto the floor, and made him dig for the plastic utensils while the rest of us were ordered to stand around and watch. It was a pretty demeaning experience for the kid and completely unnecessary.

The second time I was hospitalized, I was fourteen and it was involuntary, due to the fact that I’d taken an accidental overdose and this was labeled as a suicide attempt (it wasn’t, but most accidental overdoses are processed this way in our mental health care system). The first thing I remember from this hospitalization was a warning from a fellow patient. I walked in and a girl pulled me aside. “Do you see that woman over there?” she said (for the record, I can still remember what she looked like). “Be careful of her. Don’t let her see you naked. She’ll try to touch you.” Great. One of the nurses at the hospital was a child molester. This particular hospital was very lax in their security – so much so that, a few years after I was there, a patient died while in care. They had been admitted for a drug overdose, were left in their room alone, and the nurses never bothered to check on this person. By the time the hospital staff had realized this person was dead, rigor mortis had already set in. It takes about four hours for that to happen, and at around hour twelve it when it hits its peak. If I recall correctly, this person had been dead for a full eight hours before someone checked in – and these checks are supposed to happen ever half hour or every hour, depending on hospital policy.

The third time I was in a psychiatric hospital, I was nineteen and it was a voluntary hospitalization. I was deeply depressed and suicidal, and I knew I needed intensive help. I was deeply disappointed. There was all of one group therapy session that was helpful, and most of them (with the exception of the day’s closing group) were over by noon, which left a lot of downtime and a lot less time spent in therapy than I would have liked. I could have gotten the same care outside of the hospital, and been able to sleep in my own bed, and use my computer and cell phone. While upset one night, I left my room visibly in tears, hoping to talk to one of the nurses. I was carrying my teddy bear that my sister had given me for my fifth birthday for comfort. When I reached the front desk, the nurse in charge of the night shift looked up and coldly said, “You can’t have your personal items outside of your room.” A few days later, one of the nurses started prying into my religious beliefs. I tried to explain that I was a Neo-Pagan and what that meant. The next day she showed up with one of those obnoxious “Jesus will save you” pamphlets that the door-to-door Jehovah’s Witnesses pass out. But my “favorite” experience from this hospitalization was the discharge process. During the week, I requested to be discharged on a Saturday, and was told that this would be fine, despite the fact that apparently most discharges were supposed to happen during the week. When Saturday came, the on-call doctor (who was different from the doctor I’d seen during the week) was called in to interview me to see if I was well enough for discharge. After a five minute conversation, he decided it would not be a good idea to discharge me because I was a danger to myself and others. I had no idea where he had gotten this impression – he clearly did not look over my notes, and the doctor I’d seen during the week obviously did not communicate to the weekend staff that yes, I was OK to leave. I brought my concerns to the nurse on duty, and she informed me that because this was a voluntary hospitalization, I was free to leave whenever I wanted to. That being said, she also told me that it would be recorded in my records that I had refused treatment, meaning that my insurance company may charge me extra money or refuse to cover my care at this hospital, and that future doctors could refuse to treat me because I had refused treatment in the past. Furious and sick of being in a hospital with all the restrictions, I opted to leave anyway.

I think it’s important to share bad experiences people have had in the mental health community, not to frighten people from receiving treatment, but to improve the process for others who need to go through it. While I’ve had nothing but bad experiences in psychiatric hospitals, there are plenty of other treatment options for when you are in crisis. Your therapist or the Emergency Room at your local hospital should be able to refer you to the area’s crisis center, and you can opt to stay in a respite center instead of a psychiatric hospital, or receive intensive outpatient treatment. I’ve enjoyed my stays in respite centers, and you have significantly more freedom than you do in a hospital setting. You still get the same (minimal) care that you would receive in a hospital, but you have access to your phone, a computer if you want to bring it (although there probably won’t be internet access), and you can shop for/cook your own food. The visitation hours and leave of absence rules are also much more fluid and allow you much more freedom. Also, if you are feeling suicidal and/or have made a suicide attempt, you can still contract for safety and still ask to be placed in a respite center over a hospital – in my personal experience, because you are interested in your own care and want a say in things, they will consider this seeking voluntary treatment and allow you a bit of leeway.

It’s always good to be interested in and take a proactive role in your treatment options. This way, you can advocate for yourself and receive the care that is most helpful to you. One of the things I regret not doing was reporting my bad experiences to hospital staff at the time these things were happening – these hospitals will never know that their behavior was inappropriate and the problem won’t be fixed for people who are looking into future stays there. You do have rights as a patient, and you should absolutely exercise them. One of the most powerful things about the game that I mentioned above was not that it was so accurate about the bad things – the feeling bad and the bad hospital stays – but that it highlights the point that, yes, it does get better. It’ll take some work on your part, but you can be happy and move through your darkest points. Just make sure to advocate for yourself and take an active role in your treatment, and the process of healing will be much smoother for you.

x51 (“recovery” sucks)

Today I’d like to talk about an article I read on XO Jane, which somewhat relates to last week’s blog, and which will transition us to a new topic. The article, titled “THE MEDICALIZATION OF EATING DISORDERS IS KEEPING US SICK”, brings up a few valid points about the process of “recovery” as dictated by mental health professionals:

“And that’s when I started to question it — is identifying myself as an eating disordered person for the rest of my life really serving me?… At what point is it acceptable (or even helpful) to declare yourself “recovered” with a “D” at the end, rather than “recovering?”

I soon learned that there is a growing movement in Psychotherapy that functions under the assertion that diagnosing “mental illnesses” the way you might diagnose a physical ailment is rudimentary at best, and may actually be harmful to patients over the long-term.

“It’s very different to say our actions are unhealthy versus we are unhealthy” says Sheryl Canter, counselor and author of Normal Eating for Normal Weight. “If we’re just doing something unhealthy, we can stop. But if we are unhealthy, we’re doomed.” (She says this on her website, where she critiques the “Disease Model” of overeating in OA).

“There are a growing number of psychotherapists who don’t diagnose, and who advocate a movement away from…mental health diagnosis,” says Matt Lundquist, a New York based, non-diagnostic therapist. Lundquist asserts that one of the primary flaws with mental health diagnosis is that it assumes that the problem lies within the patient — it “assumes that you are the problem.”

As I did more research, it became clear that there is concern amongst psychotherapists that the “internalization” of a mental health diagnosis — i.e., a patient’s belief that something is fundamentally wrong with them — may have a negative impact on their psyche and behavior.”

I never had the experiences that this author did with her eating disorder. As I went into last week, I saw a specialist and a nutritionist. I was nine the first time I saw a therapist, and I’ve been in regular therapy since I was twelve, so any discussion of my eating disorder happened in a generic therapist’s office who had no training specific to eating disorders, and I was never in group sessions outside of hospitalization. Again, any group sessions in hospitalization were generic and not specific to eating disorders. When I was fifteen, I put on a considerable amount of weight and was therefore considered “cured”, so I no longer saw my specialist or nutritionist. I have never discussed in therapy my second relapse wherein I equated my body with food – or rather, I never discussed it with someone who was trained to deal with that type of eating disorder. I brought it up and it was dismissed. I don’t know what it’s like to be in recovery from an eating disorder, because while there are certain behaviors (such as but not limited to religious fasting) that could trigger a relapse, I largely consider myself over my old habits. But an eating disorder is not the only thing that the psychotherapy movement applies the concept of recovery to – they also apply it to bipolar disorder. And let me tell you, that pisses me off to no end.

I was first exposed to the concept of “recovery” in the context of bipolar disorder while staying in a respite center over the Christmas holidays. We met in group therapy sessions, which I found to be largely unhelpful, and during one of them were asked to formulate a plan for recovery. I cringed. Two things popped into my head: one, that “recovery” was a term that should only be used for addicts and people coping with purely physical issues, and two, that “recovery” implied that there was something inherently wrong with having bipolar disorder. I’ll let you in on a little secret: there isn’t.

When you frame a list of coping skills with the word “recovery”, you suggest that bipolar disorder is both an undesirable condition and something that you can “get better” from. Bipolar disorder is something you’ll be coping with for the rest of your life, so really what is “getting better” is the sometimes harmful and self-injurious behaviors that are the hallmark of bipolar behavior. And while I hope and pray that my children don’t end up with bipolar disorder as well, the same way I hope they won’t be diabetic, there are some definite upsides to having a different chemical functionality in one’s brain. During my brief stint in college, I advocated something that got me a lot of backlash, but that could make sense under the right context: the idea of “bipolar pride”. Does having bipolar disorder suck sometimes? Yes, yes it does. But as of right now, there is no cure for bipolar disorder. Treatments, yes. Cure, no. And even if there was a cure, I’m not sure that I’d be able to take it. There was a Cracked article titled “5 Great Joys in Life that Healthy People Never Experience” that surfaced last summer, and it gave us this little gem similar to a quote from author/friend Nathaniel Brehmer that I mentioned in “Fears – Crippling Fears”:

“If you’ve never experienced serious illness before, then the first time it does hit you, you’re like the confused and panicky lead actress in a slasher flick — all running around screaming for people to believe you, so overcome with fear you don’t even realize half your tits are out, just terror-flopping all over the place. But if you’ve been really, truly sick before, you’re not knife-bait: You’re the jaded antihero. You’ve seen too much of this shit already, and sure, maybe it broke you a little — but you know what comes next. They’re Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws; you’re Captain Fucking Quint.”

Particularly when you’re diagnosed as young as I was, you build up a vast array of coping skills to get you through shit that most people would find a hell of a lot more difficult to survive. This is why I mentioned earlier that the group therapy sessions I attended in that respite center weren’t terribly helpful – it’s all stuff I’ve been hearing over and over since the age of twelve. You start to learn pretty quickly that regardless of how bad it gets, you can get through it and it will get better later.

One of the other bonuses of having bipolar disorder is the sympathy and empathy that comes along with it. It’s a lot easier to put yourself in someone else’s shoes when you’ve been through the ringer. This is one of the main reasons I don’t think I’d want to cure my bipolar disorder – I can’t imagine what it would be like to not feel so easily and be able to relate to people. It’s a common trait of bipolar manias to enjoy that particular feeling – the feeling of being manic, I mean – but the truth is there’s a pretty wide range of emotions in my repertoire that a neurotypical person may not experience in their lifetime. That large breadth of feeling is a pretty difficult thing to give up. My experiences and my struggles have made me who I am today, and my fear of being “cured” and therefore completely changing who I am is pretty valid.

While I do like the idea of having a diagnosis (and for the record, I think mine is incorrect, or at least incomplete) – it gives you a tangible thing to hold onto when you’re constantly questioning “why” you feel the way you do – I definitely agree with Sheryl Canter that there needs to be more of a focus on fixing the actions rather than fixing the person. Feeling depressed? You have every right to feel depressed and own that emotion, and it doesn’t make you a flawed person. Cutting yourself as a coping skill for feeling depressed? Well, I commend you for using a coping skill, but it’s an unhealthy one and you need to focus on changing the action, which is flawed, versus changing the way you feel. Feeling manic? It can be a pretty great feeling, and can spawn a lot of creativity and a great work ethic. Irresponsible spending habits because you forget that going into debt is a bad thing while manic? That’s a flawed action you need to work on changing. You’re not a bad person for it; you just need to change that little habit.

I’m not “in recovery”. I’m a person with a different chemical functionality who uses coping skills to deal with the sucky moments in life. I am not flawed, although like many people – including neurotypical ones – some of my actions are. It’s a simple concept, and for some people struggling with mental illness, a revolutionary one.