the why

in the ups and downs and the heavy, dense pieces of my mind... things only make sense for scarce minutes at a time. Most often the moments come as I'm drifting off to sleep. I think of things I want to write down, but without the energy to move my arms I can only repeat them over and over... hoping I remember in the morning. I don't remember.

No matter their opinions on the subject, when I share with people that I'm about to donate an organ they all ask the same question. "Why are you doing that?"
I could write a book about (and I will) my answers to that question. But I could answer it in three words.
Because it's right.

The more people who profess carelessness, or the more people who say "but why should you care?"... the more alien I feel. I can't wrap my thoughts around it. I can't wrap my head around how we each feel that WE are the only beings that matter. How we assume ulterior motives when someone seeks to help "just because." How we cant help but ask, "what's in it for me?"

What is in it for us?
I was told by someone that it would be "too much to ask" of my organ recipient simply to pay it forward. That *I* shouldn't expect anything in repayment. (Is that what that would be??)
It boggles my mind.
I was told that I can't expect anyone to support me, help care for me through this "elective" process, because it's "not their problem." It makes my insides hurt more than any operation ever could.

Perhaps what's "in it for me" is the knowledge that there is still such a thing as altruism... should such a thing exist. I need desperately to prove to myself that there is still good in the world. That people do still care. Perhaps I need to be the change I want to see in the world. Perhaps what's in it for me is karma. Perhaps it's improving my chances that, should I ever need the help of another or a life-saving organ, the fates will shine on me. Perhaps it's just right.

Every person on this list of 111,136 (as of 9:15pm today) is a son or a daughter. Many of them are husbands or wives, fathers or mothers. And every one of them will die soon. Without help, or luck, that is. With deaths and impending deaths, the list that gets both shorter and longer every day. And for most of these men, women and children (90%), a new lease on life can be easily granted by others.

If I have two of something, but only need one... and someone else, anyone else, has none and will die without one... how could I not share my good fortune? How could I possibly look away? How could I possibly say No. You can die because of my neglect.
But it's not MY fault, you might say. Then whose is it?

We're all responsible for one another. We all depend on one another every day. We depend on farmers and ranchers to grow our food. We depend on truck drivers to bring our gasoline. We depend on law enforcement to lock away our murderers. We depend on surgeons to sew our broken pieces back together. Can we depend on each other for things that we are not paid for?
There are enough of us.
There are enough of us that truly do care for others. That have an answer to the "why do you care?" question. That would step up to protect another human being. I don't know if we could solve any problem. But I know we could nearly eradicate the suffering that we go through when our own bodies begin to fail us.

I could not bear to think of myself as someone who is not THERE when others need her. When I help someone I love, when I am there for them, there are those who say "well I didn't ask you to do that."
My response to that is, of course you didn't. You should never HAVE to. If you love someone, if you care for them, or even if you don't... they should never need to ask you for help. Help is an obligation.

Lately I have struggled to uphold this ideal. Not to fold under the pressure of an epidemic ideal: "well you don't help me, so why should I do help you?" Railing against it crumples my insides into tightly squeezed fists of doubt and anxiety. It can be so hard not to act out of pain. So hard not to turn your hurt back out into the world. Not to betray your ideals because of the betrayal of another.

It hurts to be good.

empty

will there ever come a time when my heart is not broken?

setting our minds

It's so strange to hear Americans buzzing with joy, proudly passing along the news that we have murdered Osama bin Laden. It's so odd to hear the President state that he ordered another man be killed. No judge and jury in this case. But it is okay, just because of who this man is. Surely we all agree. He must be murdered.
I'm an Obama supporter. I always have been.
"His demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity." I believe in peace. I feel quite strongly about human dignity. Yet I have mixed emotions about this.
By no means am I an Al Quaeda supporter or a Bin Laden fan. It seems he was quite a terrible man. I was horrified by the events of 9/11. But I was also horrified by our actions that followed. I was horrified by the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women and children who had no part of 9/11 or terrorism of any sort. We committed those murders. All of us did.
"America can do whatever it sets it's mind to."

Osama was clearly a man who believed viciously in what he thought to be true. So much so that he was willing to kill for it, willing to die for it. And no educated person can argue that there aren't abundant, legitimate reasons to hate Americans.
He fought and killed for his own beliefs, for his extremist faction. In that way, he was just like us. We too fight and kill for what we believe. And our beliefs are held just as fiercely as his.
There is no "right and wrong" in extremism. We are not right, and they are not wrong. We are all just believers, holding fast to morals that we can no more prove correct than our beliefs in adversary gods. His followers/sons/cousins/nephews will be incensed by his death, just as our parents/spouses/children/friends were enraged by the Trade Center attacks. And the killing will continue. Violence begets violence.

After the week I've spent being utterly disheartened and dismayed with virtually all of humankind, I'm puzzled by the cheering. I flash back to my disgust in the late months of 2011. The ignorant Toby Keith songs encouraging a "boot in their ass," the Muslim fear and hatred, the vilification of all people brown and the American flag stuck to every gas-guzzling Hummer and pick-up truck. I hated being American.
As everyone's profile picture seems to change simultaneously, Facebook reminds me of why I'm having flashbacks:




Last week I followed a car that had a bumper sticker that read: "Nuke 'em. It worked once before." I was tempted to ram into him, if only so that we might get out of our cars and I could scream at him for his asinine beliefs, about the permanent effects of radiation... and how it will sooner or later be our turn.

Today at Walden Pond I sat and wrote about how difficult I find it. Coping with my own anger sometimes, that is. How hypocritical it is for me to believe in non-violence, and yet become so very enraged in the face of ignorance. How heavy-handed and judgmental I can be when faced with the views I so passionately loathe. How I certainly do not always manage to treat others as I want them to act. How violence, even emotional or verbal... begets violence.


I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

above the roar

I have been giving a lot of thought to a quote (see below) I recently encountered. I had heard the name, but didn't know much about Pearl Buck. I hadn't read The Good Earth, but after reading her biography on wikipedia I realized where I knew her from initially: my childhood stamp collection.

But this woman, who died a decade before I was born, clearly knew me quite well.
I'm in love with the quote. It so eloquently explains how I've felt for so long.
I began thinking about my own sensitive nature, and some of the writing I did as a teenager (when undoubtedly at the pinnacle of my hypersensitivity). I described things in a strikingly similar manner. It seemed cruel, how my emotions and experiences seemed to be amplified to an ear-splitting level. Everything pounding into my brain from every direction, all at once, all so LOUD. The noise and white deafening static, the commentary... the suffering, blitzing heartbreak, blinding me with such hard black hits it leaves stars swirling about my head... the raging red anger of nightmares and pulse-pounding terror... the heart-swelling white joy of clarity.
As a teenager I feared that something was very wrong with me. As, of course, all teenagers do. But there was something different about me. I absorbed the feelings and physical pains of those near me.
I recall sitting in the high school gymnasium watching a basketball game next to my friend Jennifer, feeling perfectly relaxed until a panic attack struck from out of no where. Having always been extraordinarily sensitive to anxiety, I was quite familiar with it's precursors and triggers. I looked around, confused and unable to identify why my heart was suddenly pounding and my chest was growing tighter. Until I looked at Jennifer, and saw her rocking and biting her nails. It was her panic attack, not mine.
Being someone who never gets headaches (I can count the times in my life on one hand), whenever I have felt a splitting in my temples I have soon learned that someone near me has a migraine. I absorb the feelings, the aches and pains of those around me.
I've always been an empath, but some people say this degree is called clairsentience.
But it doesn't happen to me so often any more.
When I realized this yesterday- how long it's been since I've experienced this- I breathed a sigh of relief... thankful to be rid of such a curse.
And I felt deeply saddened. Urgently mourning the loss of such a curse.

Why did it go away? I'm less sensitive than I used to be, I realized.
Life still brings me great pain. But it also brings me awesome joy. The less sad I am, the less sensitive I feel.
Why? I'm an adult now? Loss of creativity? Loss of romance? I'm just a happier person? Have I gotten so good at filtering emotions, by nature of my work, that I am better able to protect myself? Have I developed of a numb, callous skin? Or it is just the anti-depressants?
What turned down the volume, bringing it from a deafening cacophony to only a frenzied screaming?
My emotions have always felt too large for me. Art has provided the only moments of relief; the psychic blood-letting that relieves my engorged heart and focuses my seizing brain. I have often attempted to incorporate my physical/somatic experience of emotion into my art.
How frequently I feel as though my body has been severely beaten with blunt force... how, when feeling love being torn from me, I feel the claws pierce and dig into my skin, tearing my flesh into smoldering ribbons.
Everything. Just. Hurts. So. Much.
When the sensitivity was at it's pinnacle, I described myself as being without a skin. I pictured myself as one of those anatomy models, skin stripped away, leaving only shining bloody red muscles, stretched in patterns across the body and tethered with tough white tendons.



And the emotion I experienced was a metal cheese grater being rubbed across my already exposed raw flesh.

While I'm glad the volume has, for whatever reason, been turned down... I fear losing any more of my sensitivity. Art not only vents it, it keep me in touch with it. It keeps me able to define the fires inside and know my self. My sensitivity has saved me. It has kept me from becoming the abuser, it has given me a purpose and a career.
And when the sunlight streams in through the blinds the morning, falling in warm golden slats across my pillow... or when the dog wiggles his golden eyebrows above his warm, unassuming brown eyes... or when I head for outer control and a sweet wall of fragrance from the inmate's newly planted flowers overwhelms my senses... or when I breathe in the familiar scent of a lover, our lips gently melding together as our souls mingle for just a moment in the small space between our kiss... or when I smell the scent of a mowed lawn and bar-b-queing chicken... tiny golden fireworks erupt in my brain. The darkness implodes with light and life feels as though it could be no better...
I am so, so thankful for that deafening silence.

pulled int(w)o

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:
A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create--so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off... They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating."

-Pearl Buck


more later

Dear God,

I'm sorry I haven't called or written in so long.
I would say I've been busy... but you would know that's a lie. You've seen me start this letter three times this week before running off to play Farmville or Mario Kart or call someone I didn't even want to talk to or do the dishes or just stare at the ceiling.
I wonder if you find it as hard to talk to me as I do you. I imagine you must.
I still always try to honor the promise that I made myself 11 years ago before I was baptized. Whenever I do pray, I try to say thank you more than I say please.
Thank you for allowing me to live this long, and for helping me to survive more than I ever thought I would. Thank you for giving me my intelligence and a mind that sometimes feels so much it borders on madness.
If you really are omniscient, if you're able to think the thoughts and feel the feelings of every tiny little being in the universe... I'm sorry. I can't imagine shouldering that kind of burden. Sometimes I can't bear to live within my own mind. Six billion more like me... I shudder to think.
My humblest apologies, for us.
Thank you for all the wealth you've given me, and all of us. I have a good home and food, I have clean running water and unnecessary amenities by the millions. I am very rich, and I know this... even though it's easy to forget when I get an overdraft alert or collections calls by the dozen. On the world scale of riches... these things in themselves signal luxury.
Thank you for my health. A body that always gets up out of bed, never fails me, and has yet to ever break down.
I won't talk about my wishes. The things I need help with, guidance on... you already know them. You see me sitting with these hurts weighing heavy on my heart, day in and day out. You hear my whimpers and complaints, you watch me crying and feeling sorry for myself. You see me struggle, sometimes feeling like a trout flopping about the shore. On nights like tonight, you see me sit for hours looking for the motivation to get up make myself food. Again I wonder if I frustrate you as much as I do myself. This time I'm going to venture to guess... no. You are much more patient than I am. Thankfully.
Thankfully.
I cling to the mantra hung around my neck and I pray that I do not get lost in my pain.
Sometimes I feel very lost.
Maybe we should talk about that some time....

me

for the Bible tells them so

These evening I went with my ex-girlfriend to a screening of For the Bible Tells Me So that she put together with the LGBT group at her Church (a United Church of Christ in Lexington).
I don't know where to start.

Most of the viewers were the teenage members of the church. And it was truly amazing to see their incredulous reactions to the film. Having grown up in the self-described "bubble" of liberal Lexington, the kids had no real concept of the sort of blind hatred and discrimination from "Christians" chronicled in the film. Their naivety was beautiful and refreshing. I hope that for everyone younger than me from this point in history on, this sort of reaction is the norm.

Having grown up in Colorado with a family from backwoods Missouri, the scenes in the movie felt like a painful personal memory. My own coming out - to myself - culminated in the beginning of my junior year at the University of Northern Colorado. It became an unavoidable truth that I could no long deny. For more than six months I grieved furiously, crying myself to sleep. The pain was intense. It led to two hospitalizations and months of suicidality. I would have done anything to change myself. I hated that this was me. I hated my fragile self even more than I did before.

It was at this opportune moment that my University was visited by the Westboro Baptist Church, led by hatemonger Fred Phelps and his "God-hates-fags" sign-toting followers. He came in full-force, as he always did to Northern Colorado in the fall (to protest the annual Wyoming/Colorado State homecoming game, reminding students each year of how many days "Matthew Shepard has been burning in hell").
And there it was. A hard slap to the face. Violently reminding me of what I had learned many years earlier when my parents divorced and my father lost his mind: The Bible is a weapon. And no one hates like Christians.

At this time in college, I wore around my neck a star of David imposed over a Christan cross. I had made it myself, as no readily available jewelry felt authentic to me. With my upbringing I couldn't honestly wear a cross, nor a star. But after the Westboro Church made their entrance... I vividly remember ripping it from my neck. To look at it made me sick. To look at any cross, made me sick.
And I realized this evening that this is the case even still.
I'm an intelligent person. It pains me and makes me ashamed that I have such a negative, visceral reaction to religious iconography.
It's not just because of a single instance. It's not because of Reverend Phelps or Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh or any other right-wing nut-jobs. It's because of years and years of denigration. Hatred both brazen and covert. It's because of being told over, and over, and over again that I was an abomination. Told that, in the name of Christ, I am an abomination...

It pains me to admit that when I see a cross - whether atop a church or around someone's neck - I see a symbol of hate. Whenever I hear that someone is "a good Christian," what I really hear is "ignorant and hateful." To me, all of Christianity had become a hate group.
Intellectually I *know* the error of this. I know that the hateful, ignorant people splayed across the news represent only a fraction of a percentage of Christians. I know that hate is not a hallmark of Christianity. Certainly not of true Christianity. But the hatred that I have seen scares me. And it scares me even more how drawn people seem to be to it, and how they buy in so whole-heartedly. How they flock so hungrily to Pat Robertson and James Dobson and so many others like them. Their power scares me. Their influence scares me. Their ignorance and hatred scares me.

I can only keep in mind the reactions of the youth. The shock and incredulity they showed in response to this hatred. It was blissfully foreign to them.
I can only pray, to whatever God, that the naive, loving bubble protecting the youth of Hancock Church can expand enough to engulf us all.