Policies and People: How to be a Good White Person?

Once, for a job, I had to tell a transgender person that the policy of the place where I worked was to live by their birth gender. 

I said this after talking to this person for an hour. 

I said this after a year of knowing about this person but never having spoken to this person before. 

I said this even though this person did not disclose being transgender to me. 

I said this because I was told to say it. 

I still feel ashamed. That's not what love looks like. 

You see, there are people and there are policies. You can have a policy, but you can't treat people like policies. I did not know them. By speaking out against them, I betrayed their trust, I made them feel afraid and defensive, and I demonstrated judgment. And I just don't think that's what Jesus would have done. 

Jesus led through relationships. He created change through relationships. He opened doors for difficult or awkward conversation through, you guessed it, relationships. 

By having that conversation, I did not communicate love or understanding. What I communicated was that a group of people had been talking about them behind their backs and had sent me as a spokesperson. I, a stranger, knew one of the most personal qualities about them. And, by speaking out against that quality without a relationship first, I nearly guaranteed myself that I would never have a relationship with them. I saw the pain in their eyes. 

I feel that same shame now. Navigating people and policies is so difficult, especially when you have close relationships on all sides of the spectrum. 

I have not been in any way hidden about my sentiments toward our current leader. Those sentiments have not shifted toward the positive in the past four years. In fact, his behavior, his tweets, and his constant fire-poking toward increased hatred and violence have only pushed me further into the political sphere when I once was not in any way interested. I have seen the impact on all ages, as his language use and behaviors validated voices of hate and made them socially acceptable. 

Hear me, these sentiments were already alive and well, but they had not previously been given an allowance to be communicated aloud without condemnation. The impact was immediate--I saw it wash over my small town, and I see it here in my larger city. I see the influence of those behaviors on the day to day of his people. 

Voting for him on a one or two policy ballot is irresponsible and dangerous, as the effects of his humanity are widening the gap of our country. It actually does matter who a person is in their real lives, especially when they broadcast a constant spew of hate and violence speak in such a non-stop, public way. Yeah, guys, his twitter really does matter. You may believe in God using unholy people for holy purposes. He is not creating holy outcomes. Not at all. 

This weekend, he has chosen to come to visit Tulsa, Oklahoma for the largest indoor even since the beginning of the pandemic. It is the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and tomorrow is Juneteenth (Freedom Day). Many Republicans (and family members) have claimed that this date selection was done in ignorance. His tweets suggest otherwise. 

This decision caused another tense internal debate between policies and people. This rally is in the midst of a second wave of virus reports, this rally is on an extremely important African American holiday, this rally is in the midst of race/police brutality protests all over the nation. My policy, as an introvert and someone who wants to be socially responsible, is to avoid large public gatherings. However, my humanity calls for action. I cannot be another Millenial to claim I care and allow that only go so far as to post online about it. But how do I prevent him from using a peaceful protest somehow in his favor? How do I avoid the violence which may be incited by his trigger-happy behaviors and the equally trigger-happy behaviors of his aggressive followers and white supremacists? How do I show up without somehow making the equally heinous Millenial mistake of acting only long enough to get the photo op or make something very much not about me, about me? How can I speak out without drawing attention to me and not the issue? How do I be an ally? How do I be a good white person? 

After a week of massive backlash, he moved his rally date to the day after Juneteenth. 

I told myself that it was only that which made me worked up enough to entertain the idea of attending a protest. But I don't think I could live with myself if I stand on the wrong side of humanity on this one. Remaining silent is to be complicit. It's to communicate that his behaviors, his lies, his location choice, his calculated language use as it relates to race and riots, and his presence in my city during a pandemic, national crisis, and grim anniversary, is acceptable. It is not acceptable. 

The policy is free speech. But that policy is being abused and manipulated to allow a stampede of the people. It flies in the face of our African American groups here, to the families of victims of Greenwood, and even of the health and safety of his followers. 

My sentiments have marked me as an extremist to many members of my family. In conversations, I immediately alienate myself. But Jesus threw tables in the temple. He cracked a whip, in fact. There are times when righteous anger is appropriate. I would rather alienate myself on behalf of humanity than disgrace myself with defending the degeneration occurring now with ideals of single-ballot issues. How is it less pro-life to defend the full lifecycle than it is merely to defend birth rates? I cannot reconcile it. 

We are still navigating the safest road to take, but safe is also not Jesus. Justice is Jesus. Truth is Jesus. Standing beside the oppressed is Jesus. Resisting evil is Jesus. So we will shut our mouths and put on masks and stand alongside our brothers and sisters in solidarity and, with hope, peace. We will listen to the stories of both joy and pain. And we will be there as a physical demonstration that balance and justice are necessary for trust. We are going because we don't know what else to do and it is no longer an option for us to sit back and watch from our place of privilege. 

Prozac Nation: A Confession of Allegiance

Today, I am starting anti-depressants.

It's a decision I have made willingly but have a history of staunchly refusing for the majority of my life.

No, I'm not depressed, but episodes of depression, headaches, nausea, and a whole host of other symptoms have added up to a long, frustrating history with chronic anxiety.

Whether it's social anxiety or the anxiety disorder I've been struggling to conceal since I was a child, anxiety has dominated most every conversation and interaction and self-reflection I've ever had.

I have long feared making this decision because I feared the consequences of what would happen if I were to go off of the medication. Would I be plunged into an even deeper pit than before I started them?

I think I was also scared of feeling "normal."
I've never felt normal.
My happiest moments in life have all been tinged with anxiety. Happiness in itself scares me. I've always worried that if I'm happy, it just means that unhappiness is about to catapult itself toward me in the subsequent moments.

I've gone to counseling, I've joined support groups, I have an accountability partner from group I don't even know the last name of, I've coped, I've exercised, I've gotten fidget tools, I've taken homeopathic helpers, I've prayed. It. Doesn't. Help. Not long-term, at least.

There's a weird mentality about being Christian that if I am a good enough Christian, if I pray hard enough, if I am prayed over, then this will subside. There's a mentality that this is spiritual warfare, not serotonin.

The truth is, this doesn't have anything to do with my faith:
I love God.
I lack the necessary amounts of serotonin receptors.
It is as uncomplicated as that.

I've never wanted to start them in the midst of a major depressive episode because that would be admitting defeat. If there's one thing anyone knows about me, it's that I'm tenacious. I'm insanely tenacious. If I can fix it, I will fix it.

Another frustration in friends and family pushing pills is that they don't deal with my anxiety. They may deal with the effects of my anxiety, but they have no idea what my disorder feels like. They just want me to chill the heck out.

You aren't taking pills! You don't know!!! Don't sell me on something you know nothing of other than researching them.

A year ago, I joined a support group. It's all online, just enough to troll through responses and whatnot. Through that, I met Lubs. She and I are similar ages, struggle with the same thing at the same level of severity, and get on really well. I never went back to the forums after that; we communicate, commiserate, and collaborate.

Her symptoms temporarily subsided around 6 months or so ago, and we lost touch.
Last week, she reappeared and we started our talks again. She had tried all that I had as well and finally had given in to trying medication for her anxiety.

For me, now, the timing is perfect. I'm still striving against my anxiety, but I'm not debilitated. I have a friend who is starting this process with the same struggles I do. I have camaraderie and I have sensibility. No one is pressuring me. It's finally my choice.

Shocker, I'm worried.
What is life without anxiety? Or rather, what is life with chemical stabilization?

I guess I'll find out.

Struggles to Human

Let's talk plainly about social anxiety.

Personally, I find it frustrating.
Yes, also debilitating at times, but frustrating.

For me, I gt so angry with social anxiety because social anxiety feels selfish to me.
There's an event, usually very casual, that's designed to be fun and easy and you, because you just can't handle it and just can't help it, make it about you.

At the same time, I recognize that it isn't something that I can think myself out of, though I have indeed tried.

There have been some methods of coping that I have learned and have imparted to other of my socially anxious friends. Things such as going to check out that restaurant/school/baseball field/shopping mall before you have to go there with a friend or date.
Things like searching on the internet for a campus map if you're visiting a university friend or a museum or a hospital.
Knowing the name of the person you're dropping by to see: "Hi! I'm here to drop off materials for Angie Smith".
Doing anything to get acclimated to the new surrounding.

For me, a lot of my social anxiety is over-stimulation.
I can handle brand new location if I'm with someone I'm very comfortable with.
Or, I can handle a brand new person if I'm in a location I'm comfortable in.
I can even handle brand new location with brand new people so long as I have one solid person I know.

It's when everything is new, everything is unstructured, everyone is new that my ears drown and I can't hear what anyone is saying to me and I can't differentiate shapes and shadows and my heart starts racing and my nails start sinking into my palms and I have missed that gap in time where I can recover and cope and have disappeared into the dark place where I need to run away and cry and find solitude and silence.

It's embarrassing. It's selfish. And yet, at the same time, it isn't intentional even a bit, which is a key aspect of selfishness I think. More than anything, we'd like to feel like we were a part of the wallpaper, able to observe without the pressure of engagement. Able to exist without being noticed too much but still kind of noticed. Noticed enough.

It's a struggle I sometimes feel I've learned to manage.
And it's a struggle that still knocks me completely flat and bepuddled when it isn't on my radar to prepare for.

Get Squeamish: Blood and Guts

I'll bet the majority of women spend their periods wondering how it is that women, for centuries, have been able to survive such a substantial amount of blood loss each month.

I was thinking about periods today as I was reading about the woman who bled, who reached out to touch Jesus, and who was healed in her faith.

Bringing up "that time of the month" can be really uncomfortable. Even my sweet daddy, who has been married for a bazillion years to my mom, gets stuttery when he tries to be polite and ask me if I need to pick up any "personal things" at Target when I come home to the "big city" and get stocked up on life supplies (small town struggles).  

I'm sure I lost many readers in the opening sentence even by mentioning that taboo subject (Is she really writing about THAT?).

The Bible sure doesn't shy away, though. It brings up Aunt Flo several times throughout its 66 books. That brings us to the gospels, Luke 8, and the woman who bled. 

This lady had a straight up 12 year period. 

What a miserable existence.

And often, I'll bet, that's where our thinking about her ends, with her blood and with her faith.

God never just stops at the physical though.

You ever pause to think about what her plague entailed?

Women in those days were considered unclean during their periods, banned from the intimacy of relationships. Periods are good, though. They represent a woman's capacity of inhabiting life, even if they didn't take that month's egg up on the option to. 

For our Luke Lady, though, it was a 12 year symbol of death, separation, and shame.

Can you imagine that?

We have nightmares of being turned down for a date, of standing naked in front of the class, of being singled out for our big noses, but those are all pretty fleeting moments of shame.

Picture being known by your qualifier for more than a decade. For her, being known for being "unclean" for 12 years and what that must have done to her personal sense of identity.

Men are thinking, "I don't have a uterus. I can't get there to empathy." So picture just this much: No physical intimacy for 12 years. Nothing. 

It hurts to the bone to go 12 days, 12 weeks without so much as a hug, I would know.

How excruciating that must have been.

And yet. (With God there's always an "and yet") And yet, how beautiful, how wonderful, what an ecstatic sense of relief and glory it must have been to have had that bloody old self ended in one desperate touch. In one desperate move toward hope.

That is the promise of Christ.

That is what we live for: to know that no matter the degree of our unclean existence or removal from dignity, humanity, God is capable and willing to touch us, love us, bring us back to complete selfhood. 

Supposed to be Happy

Three times in the past two months, I have felt shame.

It shouldn't count, I know it shouldn't. I should be able to shake it off, shake off my "image" and embrace the reality of who I am and what I have been.

And when you're in the midst of it, sometimes it's easier to embrace it because you are incapable of fabricating another reality for yourself.

When you're out of the middle, you deaden the memory and try to live as though it didn't happen, try to prevent those around you from knowing the full extent of your darkness.

The worst part is, unlike drugs and alcohol addiction or eating disorders or the like, depression doesn't look good on a Christian testimony resume.

Depression makes people nervous.

They don't know how to respond.

Partly because it's not something that ends; it's something that becomes managed.
The potential for it to rear back up induces anxiety.

When we speak, we are not seeking for your pity, we are not seeking for you to feel bad for us retrospectively or to "hurt" with us. Not usually. And if we do, it's not to make ourselves feel better but to help you get some perspective as a human being.

Don't look at me like I'm a limping puppy on the side of a highway.

We're speaking the reality of who we are.

Belfast.

You have been my friend and enemy alike.

Students who don't know me want to follow my example and follow me to the Emerald Isle.

And for the fourth time this semester, I have been asked for my advice and to speak on my experience.

The first time, I was in the class I'm auditing. The topic of the day was clinical depression, and the professor (who is a friend of mine) asked me to speak on the "Dark Night of the Soul" and my hole of depression. Of course I spoke, but I was shocked, as I was speaking, how clearly I began to re-feel, though I had shut those emotions down for so long. It was like muscle memory. I spent my night wrecked, absolutely wrecked, near to the point of vomiting with grief. Took me completely off-guard.

The second time, a student who had been there with me asked for my advice.
While there, I had been so cloistered and such a whipping girl, that they did not understand me nor what my experience was like as compared to theirs.
I do not speak to those students.
The person who was their RA is not me. It was this weird depressive alter-ego of me that only existed for a year. I can't face them. I am ashamed.

We met and talked for multiple hours, as I explained to her the different levels of thought she needs to consider before making the same move as I did.
She's seriously dating someone. How serious is she about that? Because you can't make half-baked life decisions that take you across the globe without taking them into consideration or hearing out their opinion. It gets messy.
She's prone to depression. That concerned me. Climate is a HUGE aspect of living there.

You can't just think about the academic program and the "adventure" and the story you'll be able to tell people. Life is not a fairy tale. You have to live it day by day, hour by hour, both with those you love and completely alone.

And, while I tried to remain objective in speaking about the different categories she needed to think about, my own life colored behind the facts, and she looked at me with this face...

The third put me on a panel of other graduated and post graduated English majors (JBU graduates) in front of the English faculty and current English students.

We spoke on the process of applying to postgraduate programs and what they are like to be in.
They were specifically interested in me, the international student.

The moderating professor, who knew me well as a fiery student with enormous plans and enormous love, pushed and pushed and pushed with very specific questions, first to the whole group then to me personally, until finally I had to admit my whys.
Why I had had to come back home for a bit in December/January.
Why I was no longer dating Noah.
Why I was back at JBU and not at Denver Seminary.

And the whys are just so messy, and even without admitting any of the specifics, admitting to people I had been viewed by as so strong and passionate, was shameful.

Then it ended.
Then the looks.
Then the gentle hand on my arm.
Then the car ride to Fayetteville to Bible study and the gush of tears and shadows I couldn't help.

Such pieces of me I want to forget.
Such pieces of me, if forgotten, will recur.

I needed to change, and I needed Jesus so badly to wreck into me.
But there are things too sacred even to remember, especially to admit to people who cannot possibly understand the heart of what you are trying to communicate.

God is good.
and maybe also, Think clearly about enormous life choices. 

That is my message.

You hear:
Depression sucks. Feel so bad for me and my misery. 

The fourth is yet to come. I've just received an email from a student, on referral from her history professor. What am I to say?
Her mere email is enough to bring tears to my eyes, in anticipation for the way it will drag my heart through its own muck.

My mother and boyfriend would chastise me with something to the tune of, "People don't need to know everything, Jamie."
Duh. I'm not some kind of self-named martyr with an agenda to broadcast her past wounds, but I am honest. And I answer questions with honesty.

Sometimes, though, that honesty makes me feel very small. Very very small.