*WARNING: This will not be the usual relationship drama that you are accustomed to. It may, in fact, be a complete and spectacular train wreck. Read at your own risk.*
A couple of days ago, I made the mistake of posting an article on Facebook regarding religion and the hypocrisy often involved with that. Chaos then ensued. (My cousin calls it "good discussion" and really she's probably right, but I hate arguing so it felt like chaos to me.)
I know, I know. Please refrain from bludgeoning me with blunt objects. Anyone with half a brain knows you never, ever talk about religion or politics in a public setting if you don’t want to start a war, and it’s rare for me to bring it up because I consider my beliefs private. I don’t want to debate them, I don’t want you to tell me why you think I’m wrong or why your beliefs are more right. Each of us believes what we feel is right and I would almost guarantee that no one ever changed their mind from having one of those kinds of debates.
Anyway, the title of the article was “I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay." (Read it if you choose, but don't come scream at me until you hear me out.) The author uses Christianity as his primary example, and he gets a little caught up in the passion of the ramble, but his main point is that every group has extremists, and every person has judged someone for being different than we think they should be. I can’t imagine a single person in the world who wouldn’t stand up and say that they believe we should be kind and loving toward our fellow human beings, and yet all of us have had a moment or two when we have not behaved in a loving or kind way because we didn’t approve of something someone else was doing. If you say you haven’t, I’ll call you a liar.
It happens. We’re human. Part of being human is being flawed. The problem is that there are people who use their beliefs to justify hate and harm, and while they are often the smallest part of any group they are also generally the loudest. There are some amazing people out there from every faith and walk of life who quietly and tirelessly work to be the best people they possibly can be. They touch lives every day with love, acceptance, and the calm expression of the things they value, and they never make the evening news because they aren’t holding signs that say “God hates fags” or blowing things up. My grandmother was one of those people.
For all the years that I knew her, my Gram had this kind of quiet peace to her. No matter what insanity was raging around her, she had this serenity that would just wash over me every moment I was with her, and no matter who I was with or what I was doing she always just welcomed and loved me. When I would talk with her about some drama I was having she would share with me her faith and means of coping with crisis in her life. She never pushed, made me feel that my way of doing things was wrong, or left me feeling that she was judging me. She'd just say "Well, whenever I've felt like that I always pray, and then I feel better. Sometimes I have to pray more than once, but I just keep doing it." If I recall correctly, she and my grandpa were married more than 50 years by the time she passed away, and I asked her once how she'd managed to stay married that long. Her answer was the same. She said "Well your grandpa doesn't like to talk too much, so when he wouldn't talk to me, I'd talk to God." She fought leukemia for much of the last part of her life, and most of us never knew until near the end. When the doctor finally told her it was time to make some arrangements, she spent more time comforting the people she would leave behind than she did worrying about herself, and when she passed away, she went with a joy and peace that I'd never seen before because she had faith that she was going home. Her passing left a gaping hole in my life and the lives of so many others that she touched. There are a lot of things I've lost faith in over the years but I always believed in her because she always believed in me, no matter what. And she prayed. A lot. Rest in peace Gram. I miss you every single day.
It is those people who can change what people think because they live it and share their inspiration with love and acceptance rather than hate and judgment. They provide an example of what a life lived in love really looks like. The people who scream and wave their signs proclaiming their disgust with the world only serve to close minds and hearts to any message they may be trying to send. So what I'm saying is this: If you want to change the world, do it with love. If you want the world to hear your message, share it with joy. And if you want to make a difference, make it one person at a time, through the example of your life, and not the paint on your sign.
*We now return you to your regularly scheduled relationship rant.*
© Sarah Ultis 2011
“The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.”
― Mother Teresa
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Road Rage
Have you ever looked back over the course of a situation and found yourself running for the fire extinguisher to put out the flames where your hair has caught fire? It’s not one particular event that leads to the sudden need to spontaneously combust, but the building of one event upon another and another until the little trail of tiny flames becomes a giant bonfire of rage. My most recent breakup has been like that for me this past couple of weeks, though we separated months ago.
When a relationship ends it sometimes it takes awhile for the details to all trickle down. The “more wrong” person hides things so he or she doesn’t look like the “bad guy.” The “less wrong” person refuses to accept any responsibility for his or her own contributions to the relationship’s demise. Usually, when I finally get to that post-relationship “aha” moment, it’s a relief, regardless of the information gained. I’m a “Why?” kind of girl, and I need that answer in order to process things. When at last I understand the reason for what happened, I can look more objectively at whatever part I had in it, heal, move on, and rebuild. Not this time.
This time I’m more angry than I ever remember being. I’ve had people cheat on me. I’ve had them take advantage of me financially. I’ve had them do both at the same time, but this time I feel like everything I ever thought was good about myself, things I was proud of, values I spent a lifetime building, were taken, twisted, and used to manipulate and betray me, and now I don’t know who or what is left inside this battered shell. Even more enjoyable, the void left where those traits were continues to fill up with anger and hate till it spills out into the rest of my life. I’m angry. All the time, at everyone, for everything, especially myself.
I am enraged that I allowed her to manipulate my decisions. She told me things so I’d do what she wanted. She didn’t tell me things to prevent me doing things she didn’t want. Rather than being honest and allowing me to take a step back while she sorted out her feelings, she hid things so she could sort them out without the risk that I might choose to take care of myself and move on. I’ve talked about intuition, and there were warning signs all along the way, but I ignored them. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt because there was always some crisis going on in her life that took precedent: her health, her job, her “walls” caused by her own previous break up. I set aside my own fear and concerns to let her deal with hers. I was kind, understanding, patient, loving, generous, and self-sacrificing, and I find that I don’t want to do or be any of those things ever again because she took advantage of them, eventually wiping out the entire core of who I am. Adding insult to injury, she seems to be getting everything she ever wanted, thanks in part to my clearly misguided sense of kindness and fair play. All I want to do is scream at everyone to stay the hell away from me so they don’t get mowed down while I run around like Femmezilla with my hair on fire.
In the midst of this chaos as I chew daintily on the neighbors’ rooftops, casually swatting helicopters from the sky (Femmezilla SMASH!), along comes a woman who thinks I hung the moon and treats me like a princess. Instead of hiding trying to self-protect, she just lays it out there, the good, the bad, the ugly. She says “This is how I feel and where I’m at. I know you’re in a bad place but I’m here, I care, and I don’t want you to hurt anymore.” Holy hand grenade, Batman! What is this new devilry?! Femmezilla feel…..(cocking head to one side, car-antenna-toothpick prying shingles from a molar) not so bad. I feel not so bad. I might even venture to say that at times I feel almost (gasp, could it be?) good. Trust me, I still spend the majority of my time rampaging through Tokyo, but every once in awhile, this 50 foot tyrannosaurus is wearing a pink tutu and princess tiara, and feeling kind of silly stomping around. I'm still not sure that it's safe to stop being angry, but I'm open to the possibility that not everything I thought was good about me is a liability. Don't be hatin' on my tiara.
© Sarah Ultis 2011
When a relationship ends it sometimes it takes awhile for the details to all trickle down. The “more wrong” person hides things so he or she doesn’t look like the “bad guy.” The “less wrong” person refuses to accept any responsibility for his or her own contributions to the relationship’s demise. Usually, when I finally get to that post-relationship “aha” moment, it’s a relief, regardless of the information gained. I’m a “Why?” kind of girl, and I need that answer in order to process things. When at last I understand the reason for what happened, I can look more objectively at whatever part I had in it, heal, move on, and rebuild. Not this time.
This time I’m more angry than I ever remember being. I’ve had people cheat on me. I’ve had them take advantage of me financially. I’ve had them do both at the same time, but this time I feel like everything I ever thought was good about myself, things I was proud of, values I spent a lifetime building, were taken, twisted, and used to manipulate and betray me, and now I don’t know who or what is left inside this battered shell. Even more enjoyable, the void left where those traits were continues to fill up with anger and hate till it spills out into the rest of my life. I’m angry. All the time, at everyone, for everything, especially myself.
I am enraged that I allowed her to manipulate my decisions. She told me things so I’d do what she wanted. She didn’t tell me things to prevent me doing things she didn’t want. Rather than being honest and allowing me to take a step back while she sorted out her feelings, she hid things so she could sort them out without the risk that I might choose to take care of myself and move on. I’ve talked about intuition, and there were warning signs all along the way, but I ignored them. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt because there was always some crisis going on in her life that took precedent: her health, her job, her “walls” caused by her own previous break up. I set aside my own fear and concerns to let her deal with hers. I was kind, understanding, patient, loving, generous, and self-sacrificing, and I find that I don’t want to do or be any of those things ever again because she took advantage of them, eventually wiping out the entire core of who I am. Adding insult to injury, she seems to be getting everything she ever wanted, thanks in part to my clearly misguided sense of kindness and fair play. All I want to do is scream at everyone to stay the hell away from me so they don’t get mowed down while I run around like Femmezilla with my hair on fire.
In the midst of this chaos as I chew daintily on the neighbors’ rooftops, casually swatting helicopters from the sky (Femmezilla SMASH!), along comes a woman who thinks I hung the moon and treats me like a princess. Instead of hiding trying to self-protect, she just lays it out there, the good, the bad, the ugly. She says “This is how I feel and where I’m at. I know you’re in a bad place but I’m here, I care, and I don’t want you to hurt anymore.” Holy hand grenade, Batman! What is this new devilry?! Femmezilla feel…..(cocking head to one side, car-antenna-toothpick prying shingles from a molar) not so bad. I feel not so bad. I might even venture to say that at times I feel almost (gasp, could it be?) good. Trust me, I still spend the majority of my time rampaging through Tokyo, but every once in awhile, this 50 foot tyrannosaurus is wearing a pink tutu and princess tiara, and feeling kind of silly stomping around. I'm still not sure that it's safe to stop being angry, but I'm open to the possibility that not everything I thought was good about me is a liability. Don't be hatin' on my tiara.
© Sarah Ultis 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Welcome to Bedlam
Commonly referred to as “Bedlam”, Bethlem Royal Hospital was the first asylum in England for the mentally ill. While Bethlem in its new location is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric housing and treatment, investigation in previous centuries has revealed the monstrous torture inflicted upon residents in the name of medicine.
There are times that relationships have felt very much like being in Bedlam in the bad old days of water torture and electric shock therapy. I get little flashes of intuition, hints that things are not as they seem (also known as “she’s cheating”), but when I talk to my partner about them she assures me that my concerns are unfounded. (“Sweetheart, she’s straight, married, straight and married, just needs someone to talk to…” Insert excuses ad nauseum.) Up till now, I’ve loved and trusted this person, and I don’t really like what my flash of insight might mean, so I want to believe what she tells me is true, and yet my gut still tells me that something is wrong with this picture. This scenario repeats as needed until I begin to feel that I must be losing my mind with my attempts to reconcile the “truth” of my heart and the “truth” of her words but the “truths” can’t both be true so one “truth” is true but one “truth” is a lie and my brain can’t tell if I am being lied to or if I am lying to me until I can no longer tell the difference of the truth of the “truth” and the lie of the “truth” so it just rolls round and round and round beating me against the walls of my rubber room while I sing “They’re Coming to Take Me Away”. AUGH!
Then finally, one deep, dark, night in the pits of despair a tiny piece of evidence comes to light and she can no longer deny what I have known all along. She’ll try to explain away the proof of the lie in her “truth” and for awhile she may succeed in convincing me that even my own eyes and ears have lied to me, but little by little I will shake off the shackles, releasing the raging, tortured, madwoman inside me with a primal scream of hellfire and woman scorned.
There has to come a point when I listen more to my intuition than anything or anyone else, but there are so many factors that can influence that. How do I determine when unsettled feelings have legitimate purpose and when they’re simply fueled by fear and the ghosts of relationships past? I’ve tried upfront discussion, I’ve tried “trust, but verify”, I’ve tried “wait and watch”, I’ve tried “ignore it and hope it goes away”, but all these methods of dealing with it have all come down to the same simple truth. That truth is that no matter what I need to start listening to that little voice inside (the intuition kind, not the schizophrenic kind) and treat myself like a friend, rather than someone I don’t trust or even seem to like very much. When my friends tell me there’s something wrong I believe them. When they’re sad I comfort them. I have their back when they need someone to go to bat for them. The least I can do is give myself the same courtesy.
* And femme ladies, take it from me. If they’re hanging with your butch, they’re not that straight and not that married.
Bedlam. (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 22, 2011 fromhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/58154/Bedlam.
© Sarah Ultis 2011
There are times that relationships have felt very much like being in Bedlam in the bad old days of water torture and electric shock therapy. I get little flashes of intuition, hints that things are not as they seem (also known as “she’s cheating”), but when I talk to my partner about them she assures me that my concerns are unfounded. (“Sweetheart, she’s straight, married, straight and married, just needs someone to talk to…” Insert excuses ad nauseum.) Up till now, I’ve loved and trusted this person, and I don’t really like what my flash of insight might mean, so I want to believe what she tells me is true, and yet my gut still tells me that something is wrong with this picture. This scenario repeats as needed until I begin to feel that I must be losing my mind with my attempts to reconcile the “truth” of my heart and the “truth” of her words but the “truths” can’t both be true so one “truth” is true but one “truth” is a lie and my brain can’t tell if I am being lied to or if I am lying to me until I can no longer tell the difference of the truth of the “truth” and the lie of the “truth” so it just rolls round and round and round beating me against the walls of my rubber room while I sing “They’re Coming to Take Me Away”. AUGH!
Then finally, one deep, dark, night in the pits of despair a tiny piece of evidence comes to light and she can no longer deny what I have known all along. She’ll try to explain away the proof of the lie in her “truth” and for awhile she may succeed in convincing me that even my own eyes and ears have lied to me, but little by little I will shake off the shackles, releasing the raging, tortured, madwoman inside me with a primal scream of hellfire and woman scorned.
There has to come a point when I listen more to my intuition than anything or anyone else, but there are so many factors that can influence that. How do I determine when unsettled feelings have legitimate purpose and when they’re simply fueled by fear and the ghosts of relationships past? I’ve tried upfront discussion, I’ve tried “trust, but verify”, I’ve tried “wait and watch”, I’ve tried “ignore it and hope it goes away”, but all these methods of dealing with it have all come down to the same simple truth. That truth is that no matter what I need to start listening to that little voice inside (the intuition kind, not the schizophrenic kind) and treat myself like a friend, rather than someone I don’t trust or even seem to like very much. When my friends tell me there’s something wrong I believe them. When they’re sad I comfort them. I have their back when they need someone to go to bat for them. The least I can do is give myself the same courtesy.
* And femme ladies, take it from me. If they’re hanging with your butch, they’re not that straight and not that married.
Bedlam. (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 22, 2011 fromhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/58154/Bedlam.
© Sarah Ultis 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
There's No Crying in Baseball
In the late 1990’s, a compelling movie called “Courage Under Fire” was released. This movie starred Meg Ryan as a med evac helicopter pilot and crew captain who is shot down and eventually killed in combat. An investigation ensues as to whether she should be awarded a medal of honor. There’s a great scene in this movie where she and her all-male crew are huddled in a bunker over night waiting for rescue. An antagonistic crew member notices that she has tears in her eyes and begins to make fun of her, saying “Are you crying? Hey look everybody! The captain’s crying.” She looks him in the eye and says “It’s just tension asshole. It don't mean shit.” I love this line because somewhere in the course of the development of American culture we decided that displays of emotion such as fear, sadness, loss, or anything involving tears were weak and therefore only worthy of women who are the “weaker” sex, and certainly not allowable from anyone in authority. I have discovered over the years that many women ascribe to this same philosophy, especially women of the “butch” persuasion.
Just so we’re clear, “butch” to me isn’t just a more masculine manner of dressing. Butch includes a certain attitude, and behaviors that we would normally attribute to stereotypical football-watching, beer-chugging, crotch-grabbing, straight men. Among these behaviors is the belief that displays of emotion other than happiness or anger are weak and therefore should be avoided at all costs. I say all this with a smile because I adore butch women in all their glory, however I find it ironic that the traits we tout as strengths can actually make us weaker and less connected in our relationships and those we perceive as weaknesses can actually provide us with great strength and support.
Now I’m not saying we should all dissolve into tears at every possible opportunity, but I think that mature expressions of honest emotions within the context of close personal relationships are not only healthy but vital for the growth of the relationship as well. It is risky to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and display those types of “forbidden” emotions. I am well aware of how painful it can be to have those feelings ridiculed or rejected outright by someone I care about. As a result I believe it takes more strength and courage to open ourselves up and take that risk than it does to bottle everything up and pretend to feel nothing. If we don’t express our fear, or desire, or need, we deny ourselves the possibility of a deeper, more fulfilling relationship, and we deny our partners the chance to demonstrate their own emotions. If we decide our partners are not capable of handling our feelings or supporting us without allowing them the chance to decide for themselves we have done them and ourselves a great injustice. So let’s rethink our ideas on emotional expression, stop hiding our fears and tears, and start recognizing them for the act of courage they truly are.
But there’s still “no crying in baseball.”*
*Tom Hanks – A League of Their Own
© Sarah Ultis 2011
Just so we’re clear, “butch” to me isn’t just a more masculine manner of dressing. Butch includes a certain attitude, and behaviors that we would normally attribute to stereotypical football-watching, beer-chugging, crotch-grabbing, straight men. Among these behaviors is the belief that displays of emotion other than happiness or anger are weak and therefore should be avoided at all costs. I say all this with a smile because I adore butch women in all their glory, however I find it ironic that the traits we tout as strengths can actually make us weaker and less connected in our relationships and those we perceive as weaknesses can actually provide us with great strength and support.
Now I’m not saying we should all dissolve into tears at every possible opportunity, but I think that mature expressions of honest emotions within the context of close personal relationships are not only healthy but vital for the growth of the relationship as well. It is risky to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and display those types of “forbidden” emotions. I am well aware of how painful it can be to have those feelings ridiculed or rejected outright by someone I care about. As a result I believe it takes more strength and courage to open ourselves up and take that risk than it does to bottle everything up and pretend to feel nothing. If we don’t express our fear, or desire, or need, we deny ourselves the possibility of a deeper, more fulfilling relationship, and we deny our partners the chance to demonstrate their own emotions. If we decide our partners are not capable of handling our feelings or supporting us without allowing them the chance to decide for themselves we have done them and ourselves a great injustice. So let’s rethink our ideas on emotional expression, stop hiding our fears and tears, and start recognizing them for the act of courage they truly are.
But there’s still “no crying in baseball.”*
*Tom Hanks – A League of Their Own
© Sarah Ultis 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)