Oh, Right, I Have a Blog
I’ve been in a bad mood lately.
Perhaps you’ve noticed!
There’s a mix of things going on. In my personal life, there’s a situation involving neighbors that is really unpleasant. It’s going to resolve itself just fine, without any kind of intervention from me, but in the meantime, I have some neighbors that are acting like the biggest assholes in the land of Assnia. It’s much like watching a bad driver, speeding and swerving and changing lanes without signaling and tailgating and right turn from the left lane what the fuck and also they’re in a Hummer. The best course of action is to just let them jettison past you into their own bleak future of mayhem, but instead you get all, “OH THAT FUCKER I’M GOING TO FLICK THEM OFF WHEN I PASS THEM BY AND ENTERTAIN A FANTASY OF SLASHING THEIR TIRES” because it’s intolerable that they get to exist in the world without having to know they’re assholes and you hate them. It’s kind of like that with my neighbors right now. I should just be letting it go, because this situation does not need me, but I really really want them to know they suck, and that leads to a black hole of incessant hate thoughts.
There’s also some work stress. I really, really like my job. I’m so awesome there. I get to do things that really interest me, and am discovering what an organization nerd I really am. It’s easy to go overboard, and I don’t realize until I get home just how involved I am in my job. Right now, I am like that woman in the romantic comedy trailer. The narrator smugly says, “Harriet was a career woman,” and cue a shot of me on the phone, saying, “If you don’t know the answer, who does? No, I’m not accepting that. I won’t get off the phone. Get me your supervisor.” Cue a shot of my boss saying, “This office would fall apart without you, Harriet!” Narrator says, “She didn’t have time for a personal life.” Cue a shot of me getting home, exhausted, making grilled cheese sandwiches, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my underpants, and sighing to myself about how I wish I was working right now. The narrator comes back in to say, “Until the day she met somebody who was just as tough as her…” At this point in the trailer I’d normally bump into an unshaven dude who would insult my tits, call me a bitch, and then emotionally browbeat me into revealing personal fears and insecurities that he can make a show of forgiving, thus becoming my sweetie forever. Except, in this case, the asshole guy I bump into is actually a blog full of people with reading comprehension problems and Operation-like buzzers that go off if somebody just breathes near their personal issues. And instead of revealing personal insecurities that have pathologically caused me to want to succeed and avoid assholes and receiving some concern trolling in response, I’ve been like, “God, what a bunch of crybaby assholes,” and diving back into work.
In the past, that is not how things have gone with my blog. Partly because I hated my job, had little to do, and was perfectly happy to fuck around on my blog all day. If I got an influx of fuckhats, I’d ban ‘em without a response, or, at best, I am like, “Hey! You have an opinion. I see it there. That’s cool. People? They got opinions. All over the world, they got them. That’s a fact, mister. Anyway, moving on to things that interest me…” But in the past, I’ve been writing about things that I have a lot of experience navigating in real life. I talk about feminism a lot in real life. It’s a personal issue to me. It’s something I base personal relationships on. Not all my friends are feminists, but all my friends know to keep their mouths shut about their unfeminist bullshit around me, because that is a clear boundary that I set and maintain if a friendship is to continue. It’s important to me, in my personal life, so I’ve learned to deal with the fallout of difficult conversations and ended friendships. I’m practiced at that. It’s not as hard as it once was.
But adoption, that belonged to my professional life. And the person I am professionally is very different, because in a profession, it’s not about me. It’s about who I work for, and what they want. In a profession, I give up the right to enact all my personal boundaries, and accept my employer’s boundaries for the time being. And when you’re employed in the adoption field, unless you’re employed by advocates for adoptee rights, your new boundaries include a lot of soft-talking, a lot of nonjudgment, a lot of hair-smoothing and back-patting and therapist-smile. Which is perfectly legitimate in most contexts; if you’ve set up shop in a place where people go to get help, the least productive thing ever would be to scare off the people who need help, even if they legitimately need to be scared. And the people who need help the most are usually also the biggest assholes, either because needing help for so long has put them in a rotten mood, or because they were arrogant and ignorant and that’s what got them in over their heads in the first place. The people who have their shit together? The people who could hear a difficult thing, unsugarcoated? They don’t need you.
If this were professional Harriet’s blog, I would have been hand-holding, apologizing, backtracking, “maybe kinda sorta”ing, “I see your point”ing, and generally Al-Anoning the shit out of this place. But this is personal Harriet’s blog, and it operates by my personal rules, which are plainly intolerant and judgmental. Usually, I do well with that, but I’ve got a lot less practice dealing with adoption talk on a personal level. I get blindsided a lot. I spend more time chewing through bullshit arguments, because I haven’t yet realized they’re bullshit, categorically, and I’m under no obligation to redefine the wheel for everybody who comes by. I don’t yet know all the patterns that happen in these conversations.
If we’re talking rape? I can tell you from a person’s uncomfortable posture just what fallacy they’re going to spit out at me, not because I am some master of observation, but because I have had so many rape conversations that I just don’t get surprised anymore. I also have a pretty good handle on my emotional reactions to conversations about rape or feminism. I know when I need to back away and take a break. I know when I’m okay to keep going. I know when it’s not worth getting angry, or when I’ve lost my point. I don’t know these things about adoption, and you have witnessed my awkward learning attempts, which basically ended with “THAT’S IT YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKERS.”
So, I’ve now learned something I didn’t know about the depth of complexity in people’s emotional states surrounding adoption, and just how much redolent, personalized, misdirected horror can be dredged from the deep by pointing to a fucked-up industry and proclaiming that it’s fucked-up. I know how to react when I say “Hey, guys, rape is bad” and somebody comes back with the brain-crushing illogic of “BUT GIRLS GET LADIES NIGHT AT BARS,” but I am just frozen in my tracks by, “Hey, guys, the adoption industry is pretty fucked-up” and getting hit with “MY CHILDREN ARE NOT STATISTICS.” I shouldn’t have even published that comment, but jesus christ, what the fuck happens in people’s heads here? We’re mad at applied math and science now? Applied math and science that never showed up in my post? I wasn’t, like, “Adoption is fucked-up sometimes, see chart 1,” I was like, “Adoption is fucked-up sometimes, now three pages of swears,” and yet, somebody took the time to get mad about statistics. For those of you who don’t have blogs, here is a fun fact: you are now the repository for conversations that have nothing to do with you, but are too hard for the other person to discuss with the person they actually have to do with. I am pretty sure that lady had a bad run-in with some shit about statistics. I am very sure that it wasn’t me who gave her that run-in, and equally sure that she decided to shit on my blog because I’m a safe and easy target. I mean, this isn’t a workplace. I can’t ask you to leave your personal life at home. But goddamn, don’t finish a conversation with me that you started with your snotty neighbor.
Anyway. ANYWAY. Let me quit on that track. Because that was not what this blog post was supposed to be about. This blog post is actually (SURPRISE!) supposed to be about God, and anger. CURVEBALL
Neighbor stress, work stress, and blog hate have all coalesced and made me a very angry person lately. It’s taken me by surprise. My neighbors, I am not going to talk about what they did, but I am going to call it Event A, followed by Douchey Arguments. After Event A, I spent a night kind of gripping the edges of my seat, saying to myself, “God, I hope they don’t follow this with Douchey Arguments, because that seems like the kind of thing a person who does Event A would do now.” I successfully talked myself down, telling myself that hey, hey now, you don’t know if they’re going to make Douchey Arguments, why waste extra stress and anger in anticipation of badness? Badness will always come, you can be sure of that, so you’re never going to miss an opportunity to be pissed. I think you can safely let this opportunity go by until you know for a fact that they’re going to douche the place up.
Then they douched the place up. And suddenly, it was a fucking constant litany of hate in my head. Those fuckers. Those little fuckers. Oh my god, if I see them in the hall, here is what I am going to say. No, THIS is what I am going to say. Oh, god, I hope my landlord does THIS to them. And I hope that in later years, THIS happens to them, because they DESERVE IT. And I will LAUGH. But not before I say THIS to them. And on and on. Even though EVEN THOUGH this shit they’re pulling will have no effect on me in the end, what they’re doing is so crappy that I just want them to be taken down several pegs. Like, a whole universe of pegs. I know I am being vague. They did not beat up a baby or something. But rest assured, if I told you what they did, you would be like, “Wow, what a bunch of shitheads.”
Anger is relatively new for me. For most of my life, anger was not anything I was allowed to express, or even admit to feeling. That doesn’t really describe it. For abusers, it’s not enough to make their victim cease to behave in certain ways. Abusers want to make their victims incapable of conceiving of that behavior in the first place. It’s not enough that a victim stops complaining about the way she’s treated; she needs to believe this is how she should be treated. Otherwise, the abuser’s control extends only as long as he’s in direct contact. Flint needed to be sure that when he wasn’t around, I wasn’t coming to a slow realization that things were really awesome when he fucked off. My dad needed to be sure that when he wasn’t around, I wasn’t getting up the guts to tell a teacher what he did, because he’d gotten me to believe it was my fault and maybe even normal. So it’s not so much that I wasn’t allowed to express anger, though I certainly wasn’t; it’s more that I wasn’t allowed to even consider anger among the possible emotions I could experience at this or any date in the future, plus other duties as assigned.
That didn’t mean anger didn’t exist for me, but it got suppressed and came out in other ways that I didn’t recognize. Instead of being angry, I worked. Or I cut myself. Or I worked. Or worked. Or maybe did some work. And then took a break to cut myself. Maybe sometimes I’d get kind of sad. Or feel helpless. And then I’d make a list and do some work. On the list, maybe I’d write down “cut yourself.” I didn’t conceive of any of that translating into “anger.” In my mind, that all translated as “Harriet is too fucked-up to be a normal person so she better work hard to be worth something.”
Getting away from Flint, the first thing I had to learn was how to re-translate my feelings as what they were, instead of the safe avenues where I’d learned to express them. I’ve learned to realize when what I’m feeling is anger, and learned to accept and encourage that as a good thing. Mostly, it is. It’s a gift, to be able to get indignant on my own or somebody else’s behalf, instead of becoming withdrawn, self-hateful, and bitterly resigned to “the way it is.” I’ve also had to learn how to cope with anger in healthy ways, ways that let me admit that anger is real and there and shouldn’t be shut down. I breathe. I think things through. I identify abusive self-talk when it starts and shut it down. Lately, I thank God.
The God thing is new. I’ve never been religious. I’ve never been an atheist, either. I’ve always believed that there is something bigger than me, something that encompasses everything on the planet and in the universe, and it moves strangely. I generally don’t assume that “something” is universally relevant, at all times and to all people, or even to me at any time. I haven’t always thought of that “something” as something separate; mostly, I think of it like a Transformer. Like, all the consciousness and inanimate objects of the world click together and transform into Yeshivatacon. And sometimes I’m moving with Yeshivatacon, listening to it, and sometimes I’m not, ’cause I got my own shit to do. The times I’m moving with it, I feel in tune, I feel calm, I feel like I get it. I feel like I’ve been meditating. The times I’m not, I feel a little unbalanced and chaotic, but I get more freedom of movement.
The God thing has always kept me from doing more than academic reading about 12-step stuff. It’s also kept me from being able to understand anything emotional about religion. I know that other people feel things about God, but I have no concept of what it means to feel God. Since I don’t have a religious background, most of the explanations for using God in recovery just had no basis for me. A while back, I read a description of the necessity for the whole “God” aspect in 12-step stuff that finally resonated. The book said that believing in a “Higher Power” was crucial for addicts, because addicts believe they are the “Higher Power.” You can’t believe that your life is out of control, that you need help, if you also believe that you can take care of everything by yourself. If there is nothing bigger than you, outside of yourself, and if you are a fucked-up mess, then everything in the world is a fucked-up mess forever and ever. There’s no third option; you either need help because you are not a high enough power, or you don’t need help. That was an explanation of the need for something outside yourself that I could get down with, control freak that I am. I could see the need for faith as an antidote to the destructive need for control.
So I thought, maybe this God thing, maybe it just takes some practice. Maybe this faith thing means jumping into practicing before you’ve got a firm sense of it. So that’s what I did. I started thanking God (using God as a generic term for “ye forces of the universe that I think are moving slowly out there, through everything”) for the things in my life when I felt sad, and when I felt frustrated, and when I felt happy, and when I felt angry, and sometimes when I got up in the morning, and sometimes just because. It didn’t make me more grateful, which is what I thought thanking would do. But it became a meditative mantra that filled my head with something other than hateful, angry thoughts. When nasty shit grabbed hold of me, I focused on thanking God until slowly, I felt the little pincers release. It also helped me get at the things that were really bothering me. The greatest sense of relief would wash over me when I finally hit on the right “thank you.” Such as thanking God for the ability to recognize when I’m being mistreated, because that is a gift I didn’t used to have, and allows me to admit that yes, this shit is sucktastic and I don’t deserve it, all in a very positive way.
Ever since that dream I had, I’ve had a face for God. I don’t believe that God has to have a human face. But personalizing a thing sometimes makes it more relatable, easier to talk to, and I’m down with that. I’ve had enough imaginary conversations with James Marsters as a 15 year old — where I reveal my innermost SOUL — to understand the usefulness of putting a comfortable figure on an uncomfortable conversation. I believe that “God” — my Yeshivatacon version of God, anyway — can touch and be talked to in a variety of ways. Sometimes I see or read or feel something that just makes everything click for me in a new way, and I feel like that’s me being open to the messages the universe is constantly sending out.
My bear, he puts it another way. He says that the universe, or chi, or zen, or what-have-you, is constantly sending you messages, but you can only hear them when you’re ready. Sometimes the messages are too obscure. Sometimes, when the universe really needs you to get this, the universe will put on a human suit to talk to you, because sometimes that’s the only way you’re going to listen. Maybe the universe puts on the suit of your best friend, or puts on your enemy, or puts on a celebrity on a commercial. But it dresses up like a human and puts on human pants to say, as directly as possible, “MAYBE YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN A LITTLE AND FIND A HOBBY.”
I felt like that dream I had was the universe putting on a person suit for me. And the person suit it chose was a middle-aged, frumpy social worker in a tweed suit. I can talk to her. I get her. And, more importantly, I can listen to her.
In the dream I had, God-as-a-social-worker basically told me that my job was to watch out for the kids. Her job was everything else. I’ve tried to take that to heart as a good message. When I get all wrapped up in, “But when are we ever going to buy a house and I should be trying to get discovered as a writer and is my job really going to take me anyplace and what if I go to that party and nobody talks to me,” I tell myself, “That’s God’s job. You leave that shit up to her. It’s not your job to worry. You don’t get paid enough, and you don’t even like it.” I could just as easily tell myself, “Don’t worry about the things you can’t change, take it easy, yadda yadda,” but that’s not how the message came through to me, and that’s not how it resonates, so now I do the God thing. I trust that God will take care of the things I can’t adequately control. I trust that as long as I am doing good work with a population I love, there isn’t really anything wrong with my life that needs to be fixed. I insult the life I’ve built for myself — which is good and fulfilling — when I try to grasp at shit what belongs to higher powers. It’s brought me an enormous sense of peace, and accomplishment, because I practiced a lot at figuring out God before she put on a social worker suit to come talk to me. I feel good about it.
AND THEN THE NEIGHBORS
I tried thanking God. I thanked God for my ability to feel anger so deeply, because that is new. I thanked God for the fact that I’m not them, because I think they must have perspectives that are very different and limited to behave as they do. I thanked God for a good landlord who will figure this out. I thanked God for a lot of things.
And then I ground my teeth all night thinking about them.
I finally had to try something new. Bump the God thing up. I asked God for help. That’s an area where I was never willing to go before. That is another place where I have no background, no understanding. I always felt that people asking God for help was just one long litany of mutterings into the ether. God’s not listening. God isn’t here to fulfill your petty whims. Help your damn self, you know?
But, unable to sleep for how angry I was, I realized that I was out of control. I couldn’t help myself. If I could have, I would have by now. So I prayed. Over and over, I asked for God to help me fall asleep. I didn’t feel God. I didn’t have a social worker dream. But the prayer filled my head up until I couldn’t think of anything else. Like a mantra. And I fell asleep.
The next morning, as soon as I got up, I started thinking of my neighbors again. Grinding my teeth. Feeling my blood pressure rise. So I pulled out an ACA book, read through the 12-steps, and then began asking God, humbly, to remove my defects of character. Because, I mean, what else can you call it? What else can you call having an anger so large that you can’t think, can’t eat, can’t sleep? That’s being out of control. That’s insanity. That requires help that I can’t give myself. I repeated this in my head for like A WHOLE DAY GUYS. Over and over and over. A coworker would ask me a question, I’d answer, then right back to staring at my computer screen thinking, “God, I ask you to humbly remove my defects of character.”
It didn’t work fast, and it didn’t work remarkably. It worked mostly because I didn’t allow myself room to think of anything else. Just that phrase, over and over again. There wasn’t room for imagining angry speeches to my neighbors. There wasn’t room for looking up things I could do to them with THE LAW. Every time I slipped and started going in for revenge scenarios, it was a quick reminder of why I was repeating this mantra — this is how defective my shit is right now, that any moment of lapsed concentration is IMMEDIATELY swallowed up by hatred.
After doing that for a whole day, I don’t have to do it anymore. I ignore my neighbor’s emails. I ignore them in the hallway. They don’t get a rise out of me. I don’t think it’s because God, some metaphysical being, came down and actually removed my defects of character. I think it’s because a whole day of praying not to hate people so much made me believe I was actually capable of not hating people so much, and that hating people THAT MUCH is such a waste of a day. It’s easier not to take the bait, knowing how out of control it makes me, and how much more I like feeling calm in the face of it. Even if my neighbors’ don’t get their comeuppance, I’m okay with that, because I value my peace of mind more than their pain. Besides, taking care of my neighbors? That’s God’s job. I don’t want God’s job. God’s job sucks, but hey, that’s what she likes, I guess.
At the end of it all, I did come to a realization. I finally had a sense of the word “humble.” Just like “anger” used to be a meaningless word, “humble” had no context in my life. It looked too much like shit I was already doing. I already devalued my skills and talents. I already felt like I wasn’t worth much. I already didn’t believe I deserved attention or help. I couldn’t understand why being “humble” was a good thing, while being a self-injuring victim of abuse was something that made me a weak-willed and worthless pariah.
But that starts out with an assumption that humble means degrading yourself somehow, making yourself less than. I’ve found a new understanding of “humble,” and it’s more akin to being in awe. I’m in awe of how much emotion I have got in me. I’m in awe of how much I can feel. I’m in awe of the power of this thing that used to be so weak. My feelings are so enormous I had to spend a day taking them apart, atom by atom, instead of letting them explode like a bomb. They never would have been a bomb before. I’m humbled by how big this thing is, how much work it requires to maintain. I’m humbled by how big I can get. I’m overwhelmed by how much I have got in me, and I need help to cope with it.
I feel a little silly sharing all of that on my blog. It doesn’t seem blog-worthy, but really, when I start digging into anything I write about, none of it seems blog-worthy. All of it seems self-evident, or important only to me, or nonsensical to anybody else. But it’s important to me to put a lot of myself out there, out loud. So, this is the kind of massive blog post you get.
Trackbacks and Pingbacks
- Well I’ll Be. « The Seedbed
- Revisiting “they should feel guilty” with HarrietJ as our guide — Lactivist Leanings
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You are such a fabulous gift to the world. Please keep writing and writing. And also breathe
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Hey, this is totally blog-worthy. Humble vs Victim is an internal battle I’ve had to fight, as well. It’s always amazing to find the difference and to wholeheartedly embrace the healthier of any two given options.
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What you say about humility reminds me of Gandhi’s quote about how the weak cannot forgive, only the strong can. Which I’ve always taken to mean that only those with power and strength to spare have the opportunity to forgive, as opposed to the idea that it’s always right to forgive because it shows you are strong (or whatever), ’cause that too easily veers into victim blaming type bullshit.
So yeah, it seems like a good sign that you’re able to be humble. I also (often being angry at the injustices of the world, including people who should be pelted with rotten tomatoes or, even better, sent to jail for being actually evil so far as I’m concerned) think it’s great that you can be angry, and can revel in being able to be angry.
So I guess my overall point is: go Harriet J.?
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Your voice is incredible. Reading your posts reminds me that there is a larger world out there than just my home. Thank you for speaking your truth. Sorry there is so much blog hate out there.
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I’ve been thinking about this pattern you describe where in an abusive situation the anger of the victim takes on other forms, and here’s what I’m thinking. You’re right to say that learning to identify anger as anger and work through it in a constructive way is the healthier way. Like long-term healthier. But in the moment, if you’re a person with no viable escape route, avoiding your anger and not confronting the abuse, even internally, is also healthy. Lately I’ve been reading this new take on the process survivors of child sexual abuse go through as they mature and come to understand the situation and events from an adult perspective. The theory is that since most child sexual abuse is not violent, and the kid doesn’t have an adult understanding of sexuality, it’s not generally traumatizing at the time. But as you grow up and come to understand it, you reconceptualize it as the shitty, coercive thing it was. But beyond the cognitive aspect of it, there’s also the fact that as you matured you probably gained social power so that now you’re not so dependent on the abuser and don’t have to retain his/her affections in order to have access to food/shelter/approval/affection/whatever. So now you can afford to acknowledge the reality of it, but at the time, avoiding it was the smart thing to do. And when you think about it this way, not dealing with the anger was a survival skill, and a healthy way to cope with your world at the time.
So this is strange because it sounds like I’m suggesting that we embrace our histories of cutting and other assorted self-destructive coping mechanisms. But in some ways we should, because they allowed us to survive and get through the shit and get to a point where we could escape the abuse and coercion and grapple with our issues and grow into healthier people. And maybe we should give people more credit for just surviving. Also, for most victims the most dominant aspect of the abuse experience is shame, and then we’re also taught to feel ashamed of these unhealthy (in the long-term) coping mechanisms we developed. But fuck that, because they did in fact help us survive, so what is there to feel ashamed about?
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I am very glad that you are putting yourself out there, out loud.
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This is a really powerful piece, Harriet! I warn you though that if you mention God online you’re likely to get deluged with smug geeks who will shout at you for being irrational and claiming that all the problems of the world are caused by religion. Perhaps you feel that having fielded comments from people claiming that rape is good, you can cope with anything the trolls throw at you, but I thought I’d flag up a warning because I imagine that you don’t have much experience of what happens when religion meets internet.
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Harriet… I have to admit that when I read “God” I had a slight twinge of “aw, fuck, not this”, but that came from a place of prejudice that–even if so small, and even if only in response to life experiences–is something I need to deal with.
Moving on, your description of “God”, in this entry and the post you linked to, is almost exactly how I’d describe my concept of ‘higher powers’. Not particularly in the human-skin you dreamed, and not necessarily in the form of a ‘being’ at all… but a lot like the all-encompassing, the underlying/overarching forces, the oneness of all, etc…
I came here looking for a place to rant. I knew this was the wrong place, and I knew that I would’ve been searching in vain for the right post to justifiably comment on with what’s in my head and heart right now instead of my own damn anonymous blog, and to be honest it’s more relevant to the content of this blog than I’m giving myself credit for. I’m sure I would’ve been hard-pressed to give my situation topical relevance to a particular entry, but even if I found one, I’ve read enough to know that this isn’t a place for me–personally–to rant, unless it’s extremely relevant and I think someone else may actually get something from it.
And so I went to Fugitivus, and I saw a new entry, and I thought “Why not? I’ve only been awake two or three hours past when I wanted to get to sleep, anyway.” And I read, and got past my initial idiotic “nevermind-it’s-about-”God”-fuck-this”, and I quickly got past my self-righteous “meeting new people that really trust me really quickly and happen to be rape/abuse victims/survivors and working that into my mental schema while living with a sibling who, unknowingly or otherwise, is an abuser” thought process, and much more gradually got past my most recent wave of seething anti-rapist/abuser “FUCKING-BULLSHIT-STOP-RUINING-THE-LIVES-OF-AMAZING-BEAUTIFUL-PEOPLE-AND-GET-TORTURED-AND-GET-FUCKING-DEAD-AND-GET-REMOVED-FROM-EXISTENCE” rage/hatred… to a degree, at least… because it got drowned under these explanations and stories of “how to deal with shit beyond your control”, and the deeply personal/intimate subject, and the clear and witty expressions, and thoughts of “what may I be feeling that’s just coming out some other way?”, and the difference between powerfully self-imposed anti-anger & externally enforced anti-anger, and “I think that stuff is out there, but if I don’t want to call it “God”, what DO I call it?”, and “regardless, I can and should do this when shit like this is affecting me this much, and it doesn’t even need ‘God’ to be just as valid or effective–for me, and probably others.”
Once I got through the end, thought about some stuff for a little while, and thought about the embers of despair/rage/loathing within me not glowing quite so brightly anymore, I felt and thought that I must thank you.
So, deeply, I thank you for posting this; for helping me to re-frame some stuff in my head; and for living through what you have and being present and willing share what you share.
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Something you said, not exactly the point of your post I don’t think, but something early on in it struck a chord with me. The part where “Anger is relatively new to me.”
So, I’ve been having panic attacks for the past… several years. I don’t have an exact starting point pinned down. And recently, I just started taking, you know – the little pill, and this isn’t really to start a big discussion on whether or not that’s a cure or just a band-aid, but I started on this pill and the panic attacks have went away. And suddenly, I’m feeling all these things, where panic used to be I get angry, or sad, or whatever, and I suddenly have all these reactions and emotions that used to be one, big feeling of “oh-jesus-fucking-god-this-is-the-end-of-the-goddamn-world.” And that’s good, that’s the idea, and that was something to be excited about, but it was also this big change, because all my coping mechanisms were just gone. There were times during the day I wasn’t on edge, and there were times when someone would do something and I’d get annoyed, and know I was justified in feeling annoyed, and that was great. It’s good to have healthy reactions to things, but I didn’t know what to do with them now that I was having them.
And no one tells you that. It’s like “oh, you feel ‘normal,’ time to start acting normal” and I guess someone could accuse me of over-thinking, but it’s not that simple. If feeling this way was “normal” then what I needed was to figure out how to function as “normal.” I needed to figure out how other people dealt with feeling these things that were relatively new to me.
And I’m really not here saying your belief system is just a coping mechanism, because I’m a big believer in people having to find their own way to deal with things, and a personal view of the universe has a lot to do with that, whether that is God, or a social worker in tweed, or nothing. But it’s encouraging, to see it’s not just me, that there is this aspect of change, of functioning differently from how you used to; that it’s not just about functioning, but also about figuring out how to be this person who functions differently, how to deal with all these strange, new feelings.
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@Rachel_in_WY: I am completely on board with you about this. One of the most helpful things therapy did for me was allow me to re-evaluate all my coping mechanisms as just that: coping mechanisms. I had always considered the shit I did to survive to be evidence of why I deserved to stay in situations where I had to survive — obviously I was fucking abnormal and horrible. I remember describing to my therapist all the scary, wrong, bad shit I did or said to myself, and she asked me, “The things Flint and your dad did to you, were they scary, wrong, and bad?” And yeah, they were, so maybe it makes a lot of fucking sense that in a scary, wrong and bad world, I felt scary, wrong, and bad. It seemed so obvious, but it was like a bell ringing in my head. OH RIGHT. There’s a REASON I felt so fucked-up. It’s because I was surrounded with fucked-up people and fucked-up situations. If I hadn’t felt fucked-up, that would have been something really wrong with me.
Now that I’m healthier, I can look back with some regret about the things I wish I would have done. But I also have to recognize that the only reason I can conceive of those things as options is because I am now healthier. At the time, I had no idea that anything other than submission to keep it from escalating was an option. And sometimes, that was the only option. I’ve had to stop being disgusted with and contemptuous of the part of me that was able to accept such a low standard of living, that was able to view submission — and whatever I had to do to myself to swallow that pill — as the best option and the one to pursue. Because when people say to me, “You’re brave,” or “I can’t believe you survived,” that’s the part of me they’re addressing. The reason I’m healthy and alive today is because the “weak” part of me knew when to give; if it hadn’t, I would’ve been so much more damaged.
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@individ-ewe-al: I don’t have experience of it with the internet, but I will tell you that Flint was a big asshole atheist. Not to say that all atheists are assholes, but oh my god when you combine the two, you get smug jerk at Thanksgiving telling grandma that she’s old and needy.
I’ve made a few God-like posts so far and haven’t yet dredged the smuggers up from the bottom, but maybe this’ll be the magic post.
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@Noma: Seems like a perfectly topical rant to me.
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@Randall: I don’t think it devalues my whole new spiritual bent to call it a coping mechanism. I think it definitely is. It’s just this new area of coping that I never investigated before, this thing I never perceived to be a hole until I decided to practice filling it. And now I feel more whole, with these new resources to work with and call on when I need them.
When I got away from Flint, I knew I was still going to have lots of issues to deal with. It wasn’t going to be a magic solution. It helped A LOT, much like I imagine the little pill might. Suddenly, this huge pile of distraction was taken away, and I was able to really see my issues for the first time. But I also had no idea how to deal with them. And it was the hugest mindfuck in the world, because now my life is all good. Now I’m away from abuse and I have a good job and a good relationship and I feel fucked-up ALL THE TIME. Maybe I really was always crazy? Maybe there is something just fundamentally wrong about me? I had to realize that I was feeling these things because I was finally safe to feel them. I wasn’t in a space where I could handle my anger, my fear, my sadness before — on top of the panic and abuse, it would have broken me. Now I was safe, so my mind was like, “Oh, thank christ, we can let all this shit go now!” I was flooded with what was supposed to be normal feelings, and feeling so fucked-up about it all that I had to wonder, oh my god, maybe I was never really normal. Maybe I can’t handle a normal life.
Like most things, it just took practice. But I couldn’t practice coping until I stopped giving myself shit about how I felt. I had to learn to trust that if I felt a certain way, there was a good reason, a legitimate reason, and I would never figure out that reason if I was filling up my head with, “Oh, great, now you’re depressed again. Fuck, when are you ever going to stop being so self-centered? Just get over it!” So I tried filling up my head with, “I don’t know why I feel this way, but I’m sure there’s a good reason, because I do not do things for no reason. So I will wait and pay attention and the reason will show up eventually, and if not, feelings don’t last forever. No biggie, there’ll be another chance to figure out this feeling.”
I feel like the new spiritual aspect of my life came out of my practice with the emotional aspect. I had to have faith in myself when I had no idea what that looked like or what it could bring me. I just had to believe that if I kept trying, I would learn a better way, I would find some comfort. But it took some glimmer of self-confidence, that I was worth paying attention to, that my feelings were worth attention, that my thoughts were worth managing. I didn’t start with that self-confidence. I started with the full assumption that if I started paying attention to my feelings, somebody was going to start mocking me mercilessly and I would deserve it. But the faith part was me just jumping in anyway, because goddammit, I want a different life, and even if I think I deserve to be mocked about that, I’ll just take those lumps and keep going.
Anyway. Good luck to you.
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I am now in my 40′s and I still don’t always experience my feelings until several days have gone by after something happens. It’s like I have this delayed reaction where something happens, argument, disagreement, just badness, and I go into some kind of emotional lockdown and just get through it, then a day or more later, I actually process what I’m feeling, how I felt, how I really feel and what I THINK about what happened, and then I may or may not circle back around with any people who were involved to straighten things out.
I’m not sure why I still need this coping mechanism, but I guess it still really works for me. I have been getting better at holding my own during an argument though (not bad argument, but discussion, figuring emotional things out argument). Instead of just hearing what the other person says and bailing out for a week. And, I tell myself that right now, it’s good enough. Things are working out for me. So, right now I’m just letting that behavior be, and accepting it for who I am right now, and accepting that if there’s a time in the future where I figure out what an “improvement” looks like I’ll work on it, but right now, it’s really good enough.
@Rachel_in_WY Your comment resonated with me so much. Thanks for writing it, because it put into words something I kind of felt, but didn’t have the words. This is why I read HarrietJ’s blog. Not only does Harriet write stuff that really needs to be said, but each of the comments adds a new level to the discussion. So Harriet, I want to thank you for your comments policy and holding to your high standards.
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A couple of things:
First, have you, by any chance, heard the pieces NPR has been doing on international adoption? There was one a few weeks ago that looked at baby trafficking in China and one this week on just the general issues with corruption and lack of oversight. They weren’t perfect, and definitely focused on the most objectively evil aspect of international adoption, but I thought they were pretty good.
Secondly, I’ve been taking a Sociology seminar called Religion and Health, and we recently looked at research that suggests that using God as a coping mechanism is correlated with better mental and physical health and actually does assist in the healing process and in learning to live with chronic disease or disability. The thing is, that there are many ways to use God as a coping mechanism, and some are more effective than others. Belief in a God that controls every aspect of the situation actually doesn’t help that much, because that usually entails the belief that God would fix all of your problems if he wanted to, so the fact that everything isn’t fixed means that you are being punished or have lost God’s love. the most effective model is the collaborative model, in which the person believes that she and God are part of a partnership, working together in the healing process, that God is powerful enough to help you but that it isn’t instantaneous or easy, that faith and effort are required of you as well. I feel like that’s a comforting thought.
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Oh! And one more thing. A while back you wrote a post about gratitude that I thought was so powerful. I started practicing it in my own life when things got really shitty. I had to pay alot more tuition that I had expected, one of my pets got very sick, my husband’s computer blew up, etc. etc. Just saying stuff to myself like “I’m grateful that I have a vet that I feel comfortable with who can see us at a moment’s notice. I’m grateful that I know my pets well enough to be able to tell when they’re sick. I’m grateful we got a tax refund that can help pay for the tuition. I’m grateful I have the day off today so I can deal with this shit.” It’s surprisingly helpful.
We had a Catholic priest in that seminar I just mentioned who is researching the impact of gratitude on health. He can go on and on about gratitude theory and Thomas Aquinas and stuff like that.
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I actually found god in the form of T.S. Eliot. My mantra has been, “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
I repeat that a lot sometimes. It helps, to release things. I understand how that works. Thanks for writing this, Harriet.
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Harriet, I do come from a religious background (Lutheran), and the experience of God you describe here is amazingly like mine, right down to the part about humility. I felt good reading it.
Like you, I shied away from humility for a long time because I associated it with self-hate. But I also had a problem with self-confidence, which problem I often kind of sum up as the fear that someone will call me stupid, fat, or ugly (these being a broad summary of the insults women often get). One day it dawned on me that the reason these reactions had the power to disrupt my self-confidence so much was because I must want to be better than stupid, fat, and ugly people. And when I really examined that, I thought, do I really think I am inherently better than someone who is developmentally disabled, weighs 400 pounds, or who has been disfigured in a fire? And the answer was no, I really don’t think that, or at least, I don’t want to. And then, thinking about how subjective “stupid, fat, and ugly” can be, I realized that in some contexts, or to some people, I could be those things–and I realized that I could accept that about myself. For example, if I truly believed I did not hate people for being fat, then I couldn’t hate myself for it, either.
Of course, in these cases I still had a problem: that someone was willing to insult me. But that was a totally different problem, and one that I started to see with amazing clarity and could deal with accordingly. Humility actually improved my self-confidence tremendously.
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Amazing, what you have to say about being humble. This was perfect timing for me: I’m in the midst of a personal Great Feminist Awakening, largely due to your blog. I’ve always had trouble staying away from arrogance, and I know that I hurt people the most when I get arrogant, but I wasn’t quite sure how to be a feminist–finally! stopped avoiding that term out of fear of being classed with “humorless man-hating lezbot feminist bitches”–and be humble. I like that about the sense of awe, and being overwhelmed by how big you can get, and all the gifts inside you. I think that helps me think about it more healthily.
I love hearing about the personal stuff as well. Your voice is so clear, strong and beautiful that I could probably enjoy reading a piece you could write on doing your laundry. (And in fact, I have thoroughly enjoyed some of your super-short posts about sweet, ordinary things that happened with your bear, because your writing was so touching.) I’m so glad to read about each new way you find to deal with your struggles in this fucked-up world. If you can have so much wisdom, perspective and hope, having gone through so much, I think I can find a proportional smidgen of that to slog through my–very real, but far less traumatic–issues. Thank you, as always, for writing.
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@Kel: I still have that emotional reaction, too. I just go cold and practical. It used to last for months, but now it’s really variable depending on how bad the issue was, and how easily I can be made safe after. There have been times where I wish I could break through that coping mechanism, like when a friend tells me about something horrible that happened to them — I’d prefer to be emotional with them right then rather than coldly practical and social worky. But mostly, I’ve viewed it as just an individual difference, not better or worse, that can be used to keep situations running smoothly. My bear has the same kind of emotional reaction. A while back, something really sad and horrible happened to one of his co-workers. While everybody else was having an emotional meltdown, my bear was keeping the company running smoothly. Then, after about a week, when everybody had gotten themselves back together, he handed over the reins and had his meltdown. Things don’t work as well, or run as smoothly, if there’s only one normal, so I view what I do as a different kind of normal that brings different strengths and weaknesses to the table. I can’t be go-to girl for immediate emotional support, but other people can; I’m go-to girl for holding it together while everything else falls apart, which isn’t something immediate emotional support people can always do.
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@ladysquires: I was reading a story in an Al-Anon book about coming to a Higher Power that really sort of resonated with me. A woman was having trouble dealing with the Higher Power thing, because the God she grew up with and the God she knew was a holier-than-thou, judgmental, angry God. Her sponsor told her to write down what her ideal God would be, every attribute that God would have. She wrote down a list with things like, “kind, loving, forgiving, friendly, accessible.” When she handed her list to her sponsor, he told her, “Well, there you go. There’s your Higher Power. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.” I really took that to heart, and it’s helped me get a personal sense of a Higher Power. My social worker god doesn’t have to fit into any kind of religious narrative, or meet any standards outside of what I need; she’s MY Higher Power, and I don’t have to share her with anybody.
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@Gayle Force: I like that!
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So there was this therapist guy named Murray Bowen who theorized that people (he studied families but his work is applicable to other groups) pass emotions around to one another. So, if something makes me feel bad and I don’t know how to deal with that feeling, I might be mean to someone else so that they feel bad and that temporarily makes me feel better. Bowen’s answer was to work on differention of self, so that when other people start trying to give us their emotional shit we don’t have to pick it up and can begin to recognize and minimize our contact with the kinds of emotional stimulus that make us feel unpleasant.
I’m simplifying this a lot, but it’s a pretty powerful framework through which to look at emotions and it literally changed my life. Now when my terrible boss starts being terrible, I am able to separate that from myself and realize that her shittiness is a manifestation of her problems and not about me at all, etc. There is a really accessible book on this called Extraordinary Relationships by Roberta Gilbert. If you are not looking for book recommendations, please excuse my overzealous recommendation.
@Gayle Force: I completely use a T.S. Eliot mantra too, “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”
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The conception of a higher power among my friends in recovery is really varied, but I think my favorite is my friend’s idea of a dude with good hair who shows up in a white Camaro to tell you when you’re being an idiot, whom she refers to as Captain Obvious.
Thanks for reminding me why I believe in a higher power at all, that humility =/= feeling less-than and hating yourself, and that sometimes the stuff we make up is more true than anything anyone has ever tried to tell us.
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For myself, I read Harriet’s piece and was like “oh well, I can’t really get into this particular point about God, but hey, I’m all for these other points that do relate to my experiences” and brushed past it. Because it was about her particular experience of life. I thought in fact about originally saying something to that effect, but decided that it just wasn’t necessary. I do, in fact, raise my hackles when I hear about another study showing how religion makes this or that thing better, because a) there are also studies showing that faith is detrimental in similar instances, so it seems like cherry picking, and b) those posts/comments make me feel like yet another person is telling me that my lack of beliefs makes me a lessor person, or less well adapted.
individ-ewe-al, you are the first person to bring up atheism. Frankly, it struck me as really jerkish, from the perspective of an atheist who has had people come to my blog to lecture me about being too strident (or whatever) and then harrass me on threads not related to religion, all because I’m out as an atheist.
People in our culture who have a religious bent are not objectively oppressed. And yeah, probably on some threads where people mention spirituality, trolls come along and do some stereotypical “atheist thing” (I note though that it hasn’t happened yet on this thread, even though you find it apparently very important to warn against the danger of it imminently happening here). But just as frequently, believers come to atheist blogs/posts and harrass the writers about not believing/being “jerks” by vocally not believing, and in a lot of ways atheists really *are* objectively oppressed against (for example laws on the books that state that atheists can’t serve on juries or be used as witnesses, presumably because we don’t have upstanding enough moral character, or the recent gallup poll that showed that over half of the US would refuse to vote for an atheist for president regardless of other qualifications, the lowest score in fact of the whole poll, and a whole slew of other examples). The difference between the institutional support that believers can get and that atheists get on a cultural level makes it feel really petty for you to warn Harriet about the impending horror of atheists on the internet.
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@TheDeviantE: Just throwing in my support that atheists do get the marginalized end of the stick in conversations about religion and/or life philosophies. Even though what I’m talking about here is a very, very personal kind of spirituality, very unstructured, very divorced from institutional religion, and very much non-mainstream, there’s still a certain degree of acceptance my views are going to get because they’re potentially under the umbrella of the word “religion.” That’s not how I think of my views, and I don’t like the word or concept of religion, but what I think doesn’t have a lot of bearing on how I’ll be perceived — I can explain till I’m blue in the face that I’m using “God” as a shorthand for a much more complicated series of beliefs that don’t actually involve an entity of any sort, but once I say the word “God,” I’m now in God club, which confers upon my beliefs a certain legitimacy that somebody who doesn’t use the word “God” to describe their beliefs isn’t going to get. Talking about spirituality in a public way grants upon me certain privileges I wouldn’t have if I talked about life philosophies divorced from spirituality. That is, while I might get a troll atheist coming around here, and I certainly won’t be surprised if I do, it’s very likely that an atheist blog will get dozens of troll believers, and that’s a lot of flack to take for saying things like, “My personal philosophies and perspectives do not employ metaphysical beings, though you’ll still find them rather similar to hundreds of philosophies and perspectives that do employ metaphysical beings and HEY WHY ARE YOU MAKING THAT FACE AT ME.”
I will say that I have known some serious asshole atheists, but, of course, atheism wasn’t their defining characteristic: being assholes was. Any input that went through their asshole brains came out douchefucked the other end; I have known people who managed to give to charity, volunteer for non-profits, and help the homeless in the most asshole-y ways possible, because assholes can make even the best behaviors and actions distasteful and gross. I expect individ-ewe-al has probably seen shit go off the rails due to a bunch of troll atheists, and having witnessed dozens of derailing attempts and successes as a blogger, I can sympathize with the gut reaction of, “Oh, I know the kind of trolls who are going to want to come to this party.” But I haven’t frequented atheist blogs, or their comments, and I’m very willing to believe the shit what goes on there makes any possible douchehosing here seem quaint and adorable. Not knowing what kind of shit atheists put up with is one of the privileges I have.
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I have a whole truckload of personal reasons to run screaming in the opposite direction anytime there is the slightest possibility that I might consider investing belief in any kind of supernatural, metaphysical, or otherwise unreal entity or process, but if I was going to pick a God, yours is probably the one I’d pick.
When I read the conversation in these comments about shutting down powerful emotions in the immediate situation, my first thought was that I don’t do that. My second thought was a correction: I’ve done it once, and pretty spectacularly at that. When my mother passed away, I had one minor breakdown a few days before it happened when I realized that she was coming to the end of her illness, and then for most of the rest of that year I was dead to the world. I walked, I talked, I emoted as appropriate to most conversations, but the part of my consciousness that should have been grieving went on vacation for six months. When it came back, it kicked me in the ass so hard I’ve been clinically depressed ever since. So there’s my barely-relevant anecdote for the day!
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Thanks Harriet (do you prefer Harriet or Harriet J.?), I was worried it’d be a little threadjackish and also a little worried that I’d get shut down for being an angry atheist (making it all about “me me me”) or something, which I tried hard not to do, but I was anxious (what’s a word like anxious but that also conveys a little bit of crankiness?) about the direction the comments might go with that as a jump off place.
And I also totally agree that all atheists aren’t sunshine. Just the other day I read quite possibly the douche-ist interview EVER with Christopher Hitchens (Trigger Warning just for the parentheses on the topic of child abuse: the man said that one of his literary heroes was fucking Humbert Humbert. I gasped in shock and rage when I read it), I’m just very wary of the meme that atheists are default angry and/or immoral and/or assholes.
I do really want to reiterate that I think it’s awesome that you’ve found this thing that makes it make more sense for you, and that praying (in the sense you describe) was useful (and will hopefully continue to be useful). I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so angry as you describe, but I’ve definitely been pretty close.
There are still people who I both hope that I never see them again, and that one day I’ll run into them and hurl really nasty words or rotten tomatoes (but that’d probably technically assault) at (and sometimes I think even meaner thoughts). And I certainly know the feeling of just wanting to find the exact most perfect retort to someone who just made me see red rage. And spending days just perseverating (isn’t that a cool word? I don’t think I use it nearly enough) on the thing they said/did that made me just so fucking angry.
And honestly, what you described as useful to you, I’d love to figure out a way to take it just that extra bit away from metaphysicality and perhaps use for myself. ‘Cause it’s true that being angry is good (and being able to be angry), but it’s nice to not be forced to be angry when I don’t want to, or it’s distracting me from things I like more.
Basically, again, you do rock indeed Hariet J.
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@TheDeviantE: Harriet or Harriet J. Just trying to get away from my original psuedonym, Harriet Jacobs.
There’s no reason you couldn’t do the same things, but invoking yourself. Because my spiritual view is all-encompassing — everything is part of the universe — I’m praying as much to myself as I am to anything else out there, because I’m part of the universe, too. When I’m thanking God, I’m also thanking myself, because God is as much a part of me as she is anything else. You could thank yourself for all the things you’ve learned, the person you are, and the ways you know you are open to changing in the future. And you could ask yourself, over and over again, to remove your defects of character.
Or, you know, what I find I’m doing is basically meditating. I’m filling my brain with a mantra that means something to me, so there’s no room for anything else. I chose those specific mantras partly because they have the weight of many, many people behind them — I know they’ve worked for others — and that gives me hope that it might work for me, and might be worth trying. But you could find some other mantra appropriate to any given situation and just fill your head with it entirely.
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Second paragraph made me laugh for like a minute straight.
Much love.
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Another great post – thank you so much for sharing.
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I’m a theologian and if ever in my life wrote something this good I’d… well, I wouldn’t hang up my hat, but I’d sure be pleased. Thank you for this.
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I’ve been mulling over your description of the anger you feel toward your neighbors, and I thought I’d proffer my own interpretation. I could be way off-base, obviously, and I don’t really know anything about the situation, but when I think of myself in your position, this is the way I imagine it.
A bit about where I’m coming from: I’m recovering from an abusive relationship myself (although it’s only recently that I identified it for what it was) and I’m definitely in the phase of discovering emotions – real, powerful emotions that haven’t been sublimated or redirected or suppressed in any way. Man it’s weird to be walking down the street and BAM! It’s anger. Or BAM! Waves of joy. I start crying at the weirdest moments, even because of relief or happiness.
I bring this up because there is one surefire way to trigger my anger, instantaneous white-hot, withering rage. This happens when I encounter someone who is being an self-righteous asshat – you know the type, self-absorbed, rules-were-made-to-be-broken, what-are-you-looking-at, anti-social asshat. RAGE. And I’ve spent some time meditating, and thinking about that where that anger comes from and mostly it comes from a feeling of “It’s not fair.” *I* was never allowed to be that selfish, that inconsiderate; how dare you intrude upon people’s lives in that way, when there are those of us who have spent our entire existence trying to be good, to be unobtrusive, to help and to smooth the path?! HOW DARE YOU??
Just thinking about it gets me prickly.
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Looking at the comments, I’ve seen some posts on religion and atheism and such, so I thought I’d get a word in.
I am an atheist myself, but I feel very happy for all of my religious friends who have found consolation and solace in their religions (and happy for you, Harriet). There are a lot of trolls online who whine about how religion is the cause of all problems and should be annialated, etc. I don’t believe any of those things, although I hope that someday all people will be able to stand on their own ground and be a good person without only doing so because their god/s told them to. Not all religious people have those problems, but I’ve heard enough people complain about how immoral atheists are because there is no god telling them to do what is morally right to get upset when people help charities and such because their god/s told them to.
What DOES upset me is when religion is suggested as the standard solution to a problem. The study about alcoholics you referenced here makes a little alarm in my brain go off. Being humble? Oh, yes, everyone should be humble. What I don’t like is that it says that the alcoholic must believe in a higher power or s/he will consider herself/himself the highest power. Maybe s/he will, but that doesn’t mean that s/he needs to join a religion, or, in a worse scenario, a cult (still a higher power) to get over his/her addiction.
Believing in higher powers goes against my own beliefs because I feel the need for evidence whenever I make big decisions like that. Many people believe in things because they just feel it, or they see it in a dream, or other things like that, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but my brain just refutes anything along those lines. I think it’s wonderful to be able to have such convictions. I just have difficulty putting my faith in something so subjective.
Does this mean that I have trust issues? Hmm.
Finishing up, I just reread what I wrote and I think I may have just come off as a bigoted jerk, or something along those lines. This was not my intention (although I doubt that anyone intends to come off as a bigoted jerk). Just know that everything I said here was completely sincere, and although I’m not always the best at expressing my opinions in writing, there was no sarcasm here. Sorry if the writing makes it seem otherwise.
I’m just going to stop. I think I might also be suffering from a lack of self-confidence. Or something.
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Hi Harriet
Angry Atheist here – just kidding, although not really. I did the cringe thing when I read the word “god,” but I love everything you write so I …perseverated.
Once again I experienced a zing of recognition while reading your experiences that I always tell myself have nothing to do with me until tears are welling in my eyes and I’m grasping around for control so I can finish reading without losing a contact.
Your writing is so very important and relevant and helpful for those of us who maybe haven’t come as far along in our recovery…yet. I feel validated somehow when I can’t escape the truth of my own past because other people went through this too.
Two weeks ago at a bar with friends who were using rape terminology to describe losing at a video game, I had a few drinks already and lost whatever silence I usually retreat into, and when they argued with me that it was okay to say it (and I mean argue, they were saying there was just nothing wrong with saying that, yadda yadda), suddenly I told a table full of seven people that it’s offensive to actual rape victims…like me.
My friends understand and mostly talked shit about “going to find the asshole” etc…but it was 20 years ago, and anyway that night I typed his name into facebook for fuck’s sake, and he’s right THERE. I looked at his picture, and realized that all the vague recollections over the years and the doubt that I remembered things right and the stupidity I felt for considering myself an actual rape survivor was just that. Stupid. I went ice-cold and everything came back.
I know this isn’t a blog about my rape/abuse issues, but in a way it is, because I always recognize myself in your words and feelings, and I know that I’m not alone or crazy.
Thank you so much, Harriet.
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TheDeviantE, I apologize for my bad phrasing, and for offending you (and any other atheists who may be reading). I meant to express actual concern for Harriet, and I didn’t at all mean to imply that atheists generally go around trolling like that. I was talking about a particular subspecies of troll, one which seems to be a bit over-represented in the white-male-geek world, the group who often dominate blog discussions. But I wasn’t clear at all, and I’m really sorry for contributing to the othering that atheists experience, particularly in American society.
I’m really, really glad to be wrong on this one. Fewer trolls harassing the wonderful Harriet when she talks about personal topics can only be a good thing!
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@TiG: Ugh. Rape culture creates such a fucked-up cognitive dissonance in people’s brains. Here’s the subtext of your conversation with friends, as I imagine it:
Friend: Rape is funny!
You: No, it’s not.
Friend: Yes, it is!
You: No, it’s not.
Friend: It’s totally funny.
You: I was raped.
Friend: Holy shit, rape is real? Well, I guess your rape isn’t funny.
I mean, jesus, could they not have cobbled together the possibility that they were talking about a real thing with real effects on the world, instead of a quasi-fictional parody?
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Harriet that is EXACTLY it! *sigh*
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I really appreciate your posts about anger. I seem to resonate with them on some level, particularly the bits about using will power/mantras to sidestep negative thought patterns. Somehow, reading about how you have been approaching anger is oddly calming to me. Perhaps, because it gives me an image of how I might do the same.
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Wow, individ-ewe-al, thank you. I was definitely a wee bit pissed when I wrote my first message, and (to be honest) assuming bad faith on your part about your original comment, and so was not expecting a respectful response. So thanks, both for the response and the reminder to not tense up in anticipation for bad things that may not happen.
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Just wanted to say thanks- You’ve just been my ‘God in a human suit’, tonight. Shit happened today, and your post was the speech I needed- the ‘calm down, this isn’t yours to solve’ speech.
So, just saying thanks.
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This post was important to me. It made me cry a little. I am what most would consider “religious,” but your posts about God affect me a lot than many things written by more typically religious people, because I can see how they would make someone a better person and the world better, and because I can relate so closely to getting eaten up by negativity and self-hate and needing to get free.
So, thank you for posting!
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I’ve been reading your blog for a few weeks, and I’ve got to say – you write really, really well.
I’m saving up all your arguments to use on real people all the time, because in India, the situation is really really bad. Feminism = women supremacy or huh? for most “educated” people. It’s really hard to argue sometimes because you get too emotional to talk sense, or face a wall of “women have it better” stories.
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Just a note on a small part of what you’ve written. Recently I read an interview with someone whose name escapes me now, but anyway he labeled abuse ‘communication’. I recognized the truth in it right away, but I’m still mulling over how to express it. It’s different thinking about abuse in terms of what was being communicated to me vs simply ‘what happened’. I suppose I could say that I lost track of my anger for awhile, but really what I lost track of was my ‘righteous indignation’.
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