god, everything sucks right now

that wasn't meant as a letter, but it could be. dear god, everything sucks right now, maybe we could work on that?

things to which to look forward

Is that right? "Things to look forward to" is sort of wrong, but this sounds even more wrong. Good thing I've lost my ability to do grammar just before starting the three papers in three weeks marathon.

But at any rate, after a much needed phone date with one of my girlfriends yesterday, in which it was decided that during our winter visit to Dallas we will be taking a road trip to Austin (destination: queso), my determination/motivation to make it through the next few weeks is restored/renewed. That and my ambivalence about being in Dallas has shifted somewhat, and I can actually get a little excited about going home.

One of the highlights of going home the past few years has been driving by our old high schools with Erin while she screams out the window (at Clark High School), "Fuck you, Clark!!! Fuck you!" Our road trip means not only all the joys of road tripping, of seeing Erin, and of planning a trip around queso and gingerbread pancakes, but it also means that I get to drive by the place where I did my undergraduate degree for the first time in four years and tell it: Fuck you.

Oh, this is going to be great.

All my tests came back basically normal, so in one sense that is good news. On the other hand, it would be great if there were some easily identifiable way to fixeverythingallatonce. But no, of course, there's not. So, instead of (that is, after) getting overwhelmed, I decided to draw a picture of all my major problems with lots of arrows and question marks and sarcastic exclamation points (religious baggage!!) so I can make sense of how things relate to each other, in order to prioritize and figure out some central place to start treating all of this, recuperating and maybe eventually even convalescing! So now I have a pretty clear picture of what is going on, which is exciting because the hardest thing lately has been just getting things clear in my head. And I'm even kind of optimistic because I think that if I can address/knock out this one big problem, a lot of the rest will be much much better/more manageable. So, now it is just figuring out a treatment plan that will work for me.

november 5, 2008

I'm struggling lately with how to critically engage views that are different from my own. Rather, I'm reaching out, fumbling around, and coming up against the limits of my ability to engage these views.

Three examples. In class, talking about truth and narrative, questions of truth and narrative, I shut down when a classmate aggressively argues at me that the initial response to the narratives of *alleged* survivors of sexual assault should always be one of skepticism.

[two and three deleted because they're boring and worth forgetting]

My head is spinning in these stories, my stomach turning, my body shutting down, my mind shuts down, rejects, rejects these views. Because, no more of this crap can be internalized and I still survive. Somehow, somehow I need to distance myself, but at the same time I am still finding my way out of long bouts of numbness and apathy. And part of me knows that I need to find a way to stop shutting down, because how can I begin to communicate and respond and make peace with those folks whose support is needed--needed for all of us to survive. I just can't make my way right now to the place where I accept that fucked up, bigoted views are going and going to exist.

I just don't know how to stop shutting down without opening myself up to being wounded by folks whose views I find so deeply broken and hurtful that I can't even get my mind around them. This is a problem.

I think this is the first time I've known what it feels like to believe in a candidate, to feel like my vote matters, will make a difference, because the person I'm voting for has given me hope that there can be differences made. It stings, to in the very next moment see so many people voting against marriage rights for gay people--it takes the edges off my hope and faith in communities of people to care and fight for each other. And I need that hope and faith and have been without it for awhile now. It's just, how do we come back from this, knowing that at every corner we have to face this kind of disregard for whole groups of people. How do I not become one of those people who disregards whole groups of people, when their views compel them to limit the rights of others in ways I find so deeply hurtful, damaging, and sad.

Choosing when to engage, when engaging is worthwhile and when it will only exhaust and wear me down without making a difference at all. Choosing when to listen. How to listen, how not to stop listening.

not that I have been doing anything, not that I have been a part of any real movement for awhile now, because I have been exhausted for years now, not that this is an excuse for me to never do anything, but as a way of being kinder to myself this bears my hearing/listening to/remembering:

What I would share with you from my own experiences–it’s ok to be tired. it’s ok to say, i need to stop, i need to rest, I need to just not think any more.

I always thought that ‘community’ meant being willing to sacrafice *everything* for the community (I am a Latina after all!! :->) and so for me, it’s been a revolutionary moment to realize that 1. it *doesn’t* mean that–but also 2. *everybody* in the community must be willing to give the same amount, or ‘community’ is just a recreation of harmful hierarchies. what could be more revolutionary than stopping the rebuilding of the same old structure and saying we need to rebuild–and we’re going to rebuild on MY HEALTH? the foundation of our new world will be my health?