Why I'm Shaving My Head for Mental Health Month

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.

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.

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.

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.

Raynaud's, Ulcers, and Surgery

After neglecting this blog for two years, I've decided to write a post.  So, welcome back, self!

Before I begin with this story, I want to clarify why I'm writing this.  There aren't a lot of blogs I could find about this subject, but I know of one post that really helped me not totally freak out.  I hope that my story might be able to help someone else not totally freak out, too.

The past year an a half has been pretty crazy for me for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was medical.  I have an autoimmune disease called mixed connective tissue disease, which is pretty rare, but one of the symptoms is Raynaud's phenomenon.  Basically, when I get cold or stressed the blood in my fingers and toes leaves and they turn white and painful and numb.

This is how I know it's cold.
(Not my hands)

It sucks.

One thing about having decreased blood flow to your fingers is that if you, say, accidentally bang your finger against a dog's tooth one day and don't think it's that big of a deal, your finger isn't getting enough blood to fight off an infection and eventually it turns into an incredibly painful ulcer!  Actually, I read somewhere something like, "if you've never had a digital ulcer, you have no idea of the pain."

Look at this!  Look at how painful!
(Also not me, but this is how mine looked just on a different finger)

Which also sucks.

It's especially painful when that ulcer turns into a bone infection due to my stupid brain thinking it was healing when really it was getting worse.  Advice: If you have Raynaud's and develop an ulcer, go to a doctor right away.

What ended up happening with me is that I was admitted into the hospital for a week where I was given IV antibiotics.  After getting the PICC line put in (basically a more permanent line that goes directly into your heart from a vein), I gave myself IV antibiotics for 6 weeks from home.

(Again, not me, but yeah, that's what it looked like)

Then!  Some hand surgeons didn't think I was healing fast enough, so they decided to give me a digital sympathectomy.  On my right hand they made four incisions where they removed the sympathetic nerves from the arteries so that the blood flow would increase.  Basically.

Before getting this done, I got a bilateral angiogram done of my hands.  I wasn't put under for it because I opted to drive myself home and it took about 2 hours.  Advice: Get someone to drive you home.

Here is my hand after the surgery.  They made more incisions for me because more of my fingers had fucked up arteries, as the angiogram showed, but normally they would just do the one on the finger.

  

Frankenhand.  As you can see on my thumb and first finger, it wasn't a perfect fix.

Healed version - I still have some pretty intense scars on my wrist.

The best advice is to prevent them from happening in the first place, duh.

(For an early Christmas present, my parents got me some heated gloves, which I will be using often.)

But for those of us who get these, or have them and don't know what to do, what do we do?  Go back in time and not accidentally injure your finger and instantly know that it's an ulcer and find a primary care doctor and go on antibiotics?

Well, in the future, yes.  But the past is that past and bad things can happen and you deal.

Going forward, if I get a wound or one develops into an ulcer, I've figured out a method that works for me.  Everyone does something different, but here's mine:

1. Put honey on it and keep it covered with a bandage
2. Change bandage twice a day and when you do, wash hands with anti-bacterial soap and soak finger in warm water and chlorhexidine solution for ten minutes.

Eventually, the gross ulcer-y part that's preventing healing will come off.  Keep the honey-bandage on there until it's healed, though.

Even though you got to do what you got to do as a rule, I am vegan so I try not to use animal products as much as possible, including honey.  So, I ordered this antibiotic stuff that's supposed to be all natural and work.  I say work because triple antibiotic ointment does shit, don't use it.  Hopefully this'll work.

In the end, I still have an indent on my finger where the ulcer was.  It's not that big of a deal considering one of the options discussed was removing the top of my finger entirely.

But even if that had happened, it's not the end of the world.

Shit happens.

E-mail From the ACLU

I just received this e-mail from the ACLU, and I thought it was important to share in case anyone didn't get it.  In just 3 months we've done some amazing things!

Here's their message:

                                                                            

In the three months since ACLU Action launched, hundreds of thousands of us have stood together to secure crucial victories in the fight for civil liberties. So before we all go off to enjoy fireworks and family barbecues for the Fourth of July, we want to take a moment to celebrate all that we've done together:

• We smashed CISPA. After we learned CISPA would have allowed private companies to hand over our personal information to government agencies (setting the stage early on for our most recent fight against NSA spying), over 50,000 ACLU Action supporters and a big coalition of partners demanded that President Obama promise to veto CISPA if it passed Congress. Then to turn up the heat, hundreds of us chipped in money to take out a full-page ad in Politico, which hit the desks of almost every politician on Capitol Hill. It worked. President Obama issued his veto threat and CISPA failed to move.


• DOMA is history. Edie Windsor had been married to her partner Thea Spyer for years, but after Thea's death they were treated as strangers under federal law. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Edie and deemed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. This was an incredible moment in a long journey (the ACLU took its first LGBT rights case in 1936), but the fight is not over. In 37 states same-sex couples still cannot marry, so we've just launched a major push to fight for marriage equality in states across country.
  
  Want to stay up to date with the latest news and actions? Like ACLU Action on Facebook.


• Animal abuse whistleblowers in Tennessee won't be jailed. Ag-gag bills that seek to suppress undercover investigations of the inhumane treatment of animals in factory farms have been popping up in a number of states. With our allies in the animal welfare community, over 30,000 ACLU Action supporters pressured Tennessee Governor Haslam to stop ag-gag legislation, ensuring that whistleblowers are not criminalized for practicing free speech. On May 13th, the Governor vetoed the bill.


• Bayli Silberstein secured her right to form a Gay-Straight Alliance. After her year-long fight to form a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club at her school, over 50,000 ACLU Action supporters stepped up to stand with 14-year-old Bayli against the school board's proposal to ban all extra-curricular clubs. We flew a plane banner over their board meeting, packed with hundreds of supporters, to make sure they heard our message. The board finally relented when faced with a lawsuit and Bayli's GSA is now able to meet, affirming Bayli and other students' right to organize freely against homophobia.


• Private companies can no longer patent our natural DNA. Myriad Genetics' patents on two important genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) make critical tests for genetic predisposition to cancer inaccessible for many people - like our client, Kathleen Maxian, who is now living with late-stage ovarian cancer. Kathleen's story became the centerpiece of our petition demanding the United States Patent and Trademark Office stop issuing gene patents. Soon after, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in our favor that companies like Myriad cannot patent genes, opening the door for more women like Kathleen to be fully informed of their cancer risks.

This is only the beginning of what we as a community can achieve when we come together to defend all of our rights and liberties. 

Join us on Facebook - and stay connected to the movement to ensure the great promise of liberty is a reality for everyone in our country.

Between last week's Supreme Court decision to curtail the power of the Voting Rights Act, our ongoing struggle against the surveillance state and the battle raging in Texas right now to limit the personal health decisions of women, we know there is still much left to do. Let's keep at it together!

Thank you for making all of these wins possible.
Anthony and the ACLU Action team 

                                                                                 

I hope you're all as exited as I am about these actions.

Vegan Mint Pasta

Today, I was given a great bushel of mint, causing me to think about what I can do with so much fresh mint.  Other than snacking on it, that is.  I decided to make a mint pasta dish!  The majority of the recipes I found I couldn't make due to lack of ingredients and laziness to go to the store, so I made up my own!  Definitely try it, I am enjoying every single bite.


Vegan Mint Pasta

1 cup fresh parsley

1 cup fresh mint

olive oil

8 oz whole wheat pasta

1 bunch broccoli

1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed

1 handful of spinach

salt, to taste

I started by putting the parsley, mint, and olive oil in the food processor and ran it until it looks like pesto.  I salted it a little, but not too much.  (I'm not sure how much olive oil I used, I just dumped some in.  I never measure olive oil, so all of this is guess work in this recipe.)

Meanwhile, boil the pasta until al dente.  After draining, put a little olive oil in to keep the pasta from sticking.

In a large pan on high heat, I cooked the chopped broccoli for about 5 minutes in olive oil.  Usually, I either give the stock to my dog as a snack or add it in.  Today I did a little bit of both.  I always salt my broccoli when I cook it, but be careful not to add too much, you just want to bring out good flavors.  I added the garbanzo beans, and after about 3 more minutes, I mixed everything together in the pasta pan.  Then, I added the spinach.  This allows it to wilt a little, but mostly stay stiff.  If you want more silted lettuce, add it to the skillet after the garbanzo beans, mix it up, and then dump it in the pasta.  I also should mention that I like my vegetables crunchy, so if you like your's more soft, cook the broccoli longer over lower heat.

Serve and enjoy!

                           

I have to say, I did an amazing job.  This recipe is just the perfect combination of fresh-lighness, from the mint, and hearty meal.  Also, the mint and the parsley together are amazing!  I might use this combination for my morning smoothies, too!

Why I Love Cliches

At work today, my boss said, "Well, even though it's a cliche; you win some, you lose some."

I responded, "Cliches are cliches for a reason."

Which is true.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and cliches are cliches because they really do touch on the reality of the human experience, just a little piece of the human experience packed into a nice little package that can be used whenever you need.  And they're catchy.  Whatever poetic or intense experience you have is not any less meaningful when placed inside this package.  If anything, it validates you and your experience as normal and human.  It lets you know that you are not alone.

In the work we do at the veterinary clinic I work in, things sometimes are a matter of life and death (and sometimes not, making the sarcastic version of this valid as well.)  The situations she was talking about were.  But you know what?  Life is hard, and it's like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're going to get.  But despite that, I love it.  Really, how else are you going to get through this?  Because love is blind.

I recently read an article about how Lana Del Rey is nothing but cliches, and apparently this is why music snobs dislike her.  I agree with this article completely; this might be why I absolutely love Lana Del Rey.  I found her music when I was going through a break-up with someone who both treated me wonderfully and like shit at the same time, and it was a break-up that wasn't my choice.  Her first album was just a musical embodiment of this confusion, and while it's a long series of cliches, it was what I was experiencing and therefore comforted me.  I'm sure if she was more poetic about the lyrics, she wouldn't be as disliked as much.  But then, would the message get across as well?  I maintain, no.

Many movies are just drawn out, artistic versions of cliches.  While most movies with romance involved embody "love conquers all", there are indie films that "hipsters" love that are also a drawn out cliche.  Take Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for instance.  The move can be summed up in fourteen words: "It's better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all."  Does this mean that this movie was not beautiful and heart-breaking and soul-wrenching?  I supposed that's up to the viewer, but I maintain, no.  It is still one of my favorite movies, and maybe even more so because these fourteen words are true.  And see?  See how true it is?  But we have this package to put it in so that we don't have to show this movie to everyone every time what we really want to say is, "It's better this way."

I decided to look up cliches while writing this post, and found quite a few I didn't know.  This one is my favorite that I found:

Life is such, and it's getting sucher and sucher.