I'm shaving my head for Britney Spears.
Well, that's partially true, anyway.
When Britney's public melt down and subsequent head-shaving occurred in 2008, that is one of the first times I saw mental health issues in a real person in a real way in a real public sphere. It wasn't hushed up, it wasn't only talked about in whispers. Yes tabloids were bastards and no she wasn't acting in her right mind, but I respect what she did. It has never been said publicly what ailment Britney has, but a melt down she had nonetheless and some sort of mental illness, for sure.
So, when I say I'm shaving my head for Britney Spears I mean I'm shaving my head in solidarity of her and for each of us that suffers with a mental illness and doesn't hide it. She undoubtedly was not making some kind of grand statement about mental illness, nor was she trying to bring attention to the issues, but she was trying to bring attention to her suffering.
When we use hashtags like #StigmaFree, that is what we are trying to do, too. We are trying to bring attention to the suffering.
But we are also trying to normalize mental illness.
Since coming to terms with my mental illnesses, I have not been shy to discuss them. I am not shy about the medications I take or the past I have. This includes posting on social media.
Someone once told me to stop posting sad things on Facebook because people go to Facebook to "get their giggles." I found this exceedingly offensive and am no longer friends with her on social media. Do people go to Facebook for laughs? Yes. But social media is also an excellent way to share information and issues. It's how I became vegetarian and then vegan. There is a lot of power there.
This will also include my physical IRL life.
The hashtags we use and the suffering we experience are all a part of who we are and I don't think we should ignore any of it, nor should we ignore it in others.
Britney's breakdown in 2008 was so public and so painful. I never made fun of her and my opinion silently changed of those who did. It's the year I decided to see a therapist. Even though I wouldn't go consistently for another few years, but it saved my life. I don't remember if Britney's breakdown was a catalyst to that or a contributor in any way but looking back I can say that it definitely effected me.
So, when I say I'm shaving my head for Britney Spears I mean I'm shaving my head for me.
Please donate to this cause here.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
A Letter to My Mother
My body is not your temple.
I understand it is hard for you to see me this way. I no longer look like your little girl. I dye my hair, shave my head, and get tattoos. I'm no longer pure. But was I ever pure? You have told stories from some of the first years of my life that indicate how I have always been different. I have always been other in your eyes.
My body is my temple.
I can decorate it how I see fit. If that means having blue hair or shaving my head to raise awareness for a cause or just because I think it's beautiful or get art permanently etched onto my skin I have that right. My standards and expression of beauty do not agree with yours.
My self expression is not a rebellion, and it is not a reflection of you.
When you heard that I had blue hair, you asked if it would wash out. When I said, "Yes," you said, "Good." I don't think you understand that that exchange is an example of a microaggression that I have dealt with from you my entire life. No, you have never stopped me from expressing myself and you have always supported me financially, but this is how you've attempted to police my body for a long time.
I understand that you are afraid.
I know what you are afraid of, and I'm afraid of it, too. I'm afraid that people will not take me as seriously in a professional sense based on the way I look, but that is my cross to bare, not yours. On a particularly grungy day, I was followed at a Walgreen's by an employee. I have been treated differently.
But I am not afraid of what your friends will think. I do not care what the woman at Target will think as she checks me out. I have no concern over whether the person in the car next to me stares. I have a confidence in my appearance that I don't know if you will ever fully understand.
I feel no shame over my body.
I know you feel shame over your's. As long as I can remember, I have not heard you say anything positive about your body. You have always called yourself ugly or fat. This taught me to hate my body, too. I hope you know that. Your self hatred taught me that my body is wrong and bad. When you rolled your eyes and reacted with disgust when I can to you with issues of my body, you taught me to hate my body. When you resented doing my hair so much that you cause me pain, you taught me to hate my body. But you also taught me that you hated me because of my body.
It has taken me a long time to love my body as it is, and my decoration of it is an expression of that love not an expression of hatred for it. Anorexia, bulimia, binging, purging, diet pills, restricting, excessive exorcise, vomiting, calorie counting from the age of 12 to 19.
One day, when I was under 100 pounds and particularly hating my body, I had a realization. I realized that I love myself. Stopping restricting was not easy but I did it. I gained weight. And in a celebration of self love, I shaved my head.
Your support of that meant a lot, but would you have supported me if I had not raised money for a cause first? Had I simply said, "I'm shaving my head because it's beautiful and I love myself," would that have been enough for you?
I'm afraid not.
I'm afraid not because I don't think that is something you could have understood because you don't understand not hating you body. There is a lot of positive and even some feminist attributes to Catholicism, and this is something I struggle with myself, but it is taught that women's bodies are evil. Original sin came from a woman and all women are therefore punished through painful childbirth. With this as a message, something that you so deeply and truly believe in, how could you not hate your body? How could you not hate mine and expect me to feel the same?
You see, this is part of the reason I rebelled against the church at a young age. When I came to understand that teachings and that I am meant by God to hate my body, I could not longer support it. When I leaned on you during mass and you pushed me away, I could no longer support it. At a time in my life when I was just learning how to be myself, when my body was changing from a child's into a woman's, I realized the church hated my body.
I knew this partly because so did you.
You have always been an extension of the church in my eyes in in our family. Your actions are part of the reason I struggle with the church so much, both the love I have for it and the hate I have for it.
The church, like you, will always be a part of who I am. I have come a long way in learning to accept that. I am not proud, maybe some day I will be, but I am much more at peace with it than ever before.
Our relationship within the last 6 months has been better than it has ever been. I mourn for all that time and fear and pain and hatred. I mourn for the decades of resentment. I mourn for the missed opportunities. I mourn for the time I spent trying to find a mother figure to love me. I mourn for the time I tried to make you love me.
I hope that our future relationship will not look like the past. I hope that you will learn to love me for who I am. For my soul as well as my body.
And I hope that you learn to love yourself, too.
I understand it is hard for you to see me this way. I no longer look like your little girl. I dye my hair, shave my head, and get tattoos. I'm no longer pure. But was I ever pure? You have told stories from some of the first years of my life that indicate how I have always been different. I have always been other in your eyes.
My body is my temple.
I can decorate it how I see fit. If that means having blue hair or shaving my head to raise awareness for a cause or just because I think it's beautiful or get art permanently etched onto my skin I have that right. My standards and expression of beauty do not agree with yours.
My self expression is not a rebellion, and it is not a reflection of you.
When you heard that I had blue hair, you asked if it would wash out. When I said, "Yes," you said, "Good." I don't think you understand that that exchange is an example of a microaggression that I have dealt with from you my entire life. No, you have never stopped me from expressing myself and you have always supported me financially, but this is how you've attempted to police my body for a long time.
I understand that you are afraid.
I know what you are afraid of, and I'm afraid of it, too. I'm afraid that people will not take me as seriously in a professional sense based on the way I look, but that is my cross to bare, not yours. On a particularly grungy day, I was followed at a Walgreen's by an employee. I have been treated differently.
But I am not afraid of what your friends will think. I do not care what the woman at Target will think as she checks me out. I have no concern over whether the person in the car next to me stares. I have a confidence in my appearance that I don't know if you will ever fully understand.
I feel no shame over my body.
I know you feel shame over your's. As long as I can remember, I have not heard you say anything positive about your body. You have always called yourself ugly or fat. This taught me to hate my body, too. I hope you know that. Your self hatred taught me that my body is wrong and bad. When you rolled your eyes and reacted with disgust when I can to you with issues of my body, you taught me to hate my body. When you resented doing my hair so much that you cause me pain, you taught me to hate my body. But you also taught me that you hated me because of my body.
It has taken me a long time to love my body as it is, and my decoration of it is an expression of that love not an expression of hatred for it. Anorexia, bulimia, binging, purging, diet pills, restricting, excessive exorcise, vomiting, calorie counting from the age of 12 to 19.
One day, when I was under 100 pounds and particularly hating my body, I had a realization. I realized that I love myself. Stopping restricting was not easy but I did it. I gained weight. And in a celebration of self love, I shaved my head.
Your support of that meant a lot, but would you have supported me if I had not raised money for a cause first? Had I simply said, "I'm shaving my head because it's beautiful and I love myself," would that have been enough for you?
I'm afraid not.
I'm afraid not because I don't think that is something you could have understood because you don't understand not hating you body. There is a lot of positive and even some feminist attributes to Catholicism, and this is something I struggle with myself, but it is taught that women's bodies are evil. Original sin came from a woman and all women are therefore punished through painful childbirth. With this as a message, something that you so deeply and truly believe in, how could you not hate your body? How could you not hate mine and expect me to feel the same?
You see, this is part of the reason I rebelled against the church at a young age. When I came to understand that teachings and that I am meant by God to hate my body, I could not longer support it. When I leaned on you during mass and you pushed me away, I could no longer support it. At a time in my life when I was just learning how to be myself, when my body was changing from a child's into a woman's, I realized the church hated my body.
I knew this partly because so did you.
You have always been an extension of the church in my eyes in in our family. Your actions are part of the reason I struggle with the church so much, both the love I have for it and the hate I have for it.
The church, like you, will always be a part of who I am. I have come a long way in learning to accept that. I am not proud, maybe some day I will be, but I am much more at peace with it than ever before.
Our relationship within the last 6 months has been better than it has ever been. I mourn for all that time and fear and pain and hatred. I mourn for the decades of resentment. I mourn for the missed opportunities. I mourn for the time I spent trying to find a mother figure to love me. I mourn for the time I tried to make you love me.
I hope that our future relationship will not look like the past. I hope that you will learn to love me for who I am. For my soul as well as my body.
And I hope that you learn to love yourself, too.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Anger and Politics
I highly recommend everyone listen to Dan Carlin's most recent episode about political delegates, as it's the inspiration for this post:
Speed Dating for Delegates
Anger is an active emotion.
Recently, a friend of mine got divorced and her ex-wife, who was eventually going to move out to live with her parents, refused to pack and move until my friend ended up moving out to move to another state. This puzzled me. Why would she not be motivated to move out as soon as my friend had asked for the divorce?
I realized: she wasn't angry.
Sadness is a passive emotion.
Had my friend's ex-wife been more angry instead of sad, or rather, expressed her sadness with anger, perhaps she would have moved out much more quickly. But she didn't. She stayed were she was, sad, taking days off work to be sad, and she stewed in the life she was about to no longer have with the woman she loved but who no longer want to be with her. Sadness is immobilizing.
This story is an allegory for our greater political process in our country. I'm afraid that we are all sad; we're immobilized with this grief for the system we have when instead we should be angry.
Historically, nothing political has ever been done without anger. The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example, but here I will discuss the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
The AIDS epidemic in the 1980s was getting little to no political support or funding. When it was discussed in the political sphere, the tragedy of the lives lost was made to be a joke. The Reagan administration regularly teases reporters for being gay when the issue of the "gay plague" came up in press conferences.
Larry Kramer, playwright and activist, is one of the key members of ACT UP and one of the only surviving members. He was interviewed for the HBO documentary The Out List and in that interview he briefly describes ACT UP.
Anger made ACT UP. It saved people's lives. And people right now are dying in the streets, sometimes left there, and where is the anger?
I am angry. I am pissed off. I want change.
No matter what side of the aisle you are currently are on, we need to recognize that those sides and the aisle is bullshit. The elite political forces to clearly are not on the side of the citizens that it is unfathomable at this point that all people aren't also pissed off.
We do not live in a democracy, and this election is showing everyone that. That is bullshit. I want my voice to be heard equally to everyone else's and the only people who don't want that right now are the delegates and powerful within the Republican and Democratic parties.
I think it's time we do something. Bu first we have to get angry.
Speed Dating for Delegates
Anger is an active emotion.
Recently, a friend of mine got divorced and her ex-wife, who was eventually going to move out to live with her parents, refused to pack and move until my friend ended up moving out to move to another state. This puzzled me. Why would she not be motivated to move out as soon as my friend had asked for the divorce?
I realized: she wasn't angry.
Sadness is a passive emotion.
Had my friend's ex-wife been more angry instead of sad, or rather, expressed her sadness with anger, perhaps she would have moved out much more quickly. But she didn't. She stayed were she was, sad, taking days off work to be sad, and she stewed in the life she was about to no longer have with the woman she loved but who no longer want to be with her. Sadness is immobilizing.
This story is an allegory for our greater political process in our country. I'm afraid that we are all sad; we're immobilized with this grief for the system we have when instead we should be angry.
Historically, nothing political has ever been done without anger. The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example, but here I will discuss the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
The AIDS epidemic in the 1980s was getting little to no political support or funding. When it was discussed in the political sphere, the tragedy of the lives lost was made to be a joke. The Reagan administration regularly teases reporters for being gay when the issue of the "gay plague" came up in press conferences.
Larry Kramer, playwright and activist, is one of the key members of ACT UP and one of the only surviving members. He was interviewed for the HBO documentary The Out List and in that interview he briefly describes ACT UP.
Everything changed in July 1981 with the announcement of what would be called AIDS. I helped to start two major organizations; Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP. On the one hand, so many of our friends were dying and on the other hand we slowly had a small army of people that were working so very hard to save the rest of us. It was during that time that I realized, number one, how truly proud I am that I am a gay man and how truly wonderful I think gay people are.
I found that with AIDS the Times wasn't writing about us, nobody was writing about us, the Mayor wasn't answering phone calls, it was awful. People would rush up to me and say, "Have you heard of anything, is anything coming along, I don't think I'll be able to last much longer?" For many years there wasn't anything and you'd have to say to them, somehow, "Hold on, hold on." And give each other hugs.
And ACT UP made itself. We began every meeting with announcing who had died since the last meeting, and, boy, if that wasn't enough to keep you going then I don't know what. The first meeting had two hundred the next meeting had three. We had a demonstration that following week on Wall Street, several thousand showed up, and we were born.
It got more radical as we went on and we decided to have a protest at St. Patrick's. We had all been trained in civil disobedience and it was very carefully choreographed, what we were going to do. Like all good actors, these guys and gals really got into their parts. They faced the alter and yelled at 'em, "Stop murdering us!" Cardinal Connor was having a fit. We were crucified ourselves the next day and on. Every major network, every major newspaper said the most awful things about ACT UP. How terrible we were, destroying peoples' right to worship. And people were scared. "What are we going to do, they hate us!" And I said, "No they don't, they're afraid of us. This is the best thing we've ever done. We're no longer just limp-wristed fairies. We're guys in jeans and Levis and boots. We're here, we have voices, and we're gonna fight back." It made us, that action at St. Patrick's.
Every treatment for HIV that is out there is out there because of us. Not from the government, not from any politician, not from any drug company. We forced all of those things into being by our anger and our fear. And that's what anger can get you. You do not get more with honey than with vinegar. Anger is a wonderful emotion. Very creative, if you know how to do it. I really truly felt that for some reason I'd been spared to tell this story. Everybody I know is dead, all my friends. I shouldn't say everyone, but almost. I'm still here. Ok, thank you God, I don't believe in you, but thank you anyway. This is what I'm going to do to pay back.
Anger made ACT UP. It saved people's lives. And people right now are dying in the streets, sometimes left there, and where is the anger?
I am angry. I am pissed off. I want change.
No matter what side of the aisle you are currently are on, we need to recognize that those sides and the aisle is bullshit. The elite political forces to clearly are not on the side of the citizens that it is unfathomable at this point that all people aren't also pissed off.
We do not live in a democracy, and this election is showing everyone that. That is bullshit. I want my voice to be heard equally to everyone else's and the only people who don't want that right now are the delegates and powerful within the Republican and Democratic parties.
I think it's time we do something. Bu first we have to get angry.
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