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Thanks to everybody who made this blog’s stay at WordPress.com a lovely one. I’ll never forget the top search that led here (“latex nun”) nor my wonderful title of “Bitchy Entitled Feminist.” Shout out to those adorable MRA people who think that this opinion of theirs makes sense at all. Bigger shout out to Lawsonry, who sent me even more (actual positive!) traffic. And the biggest shout out of all to the people that are actually reading this right now and who give a damn.

As Kimberly said in the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Movie, “catch ya’ on the flip side!”

Life goal: COMPLETED.

Also, I didn’t squeal/hyperventilate when this happened. Not. At. All. What, what’s that you say? There’s something in my eye? Yes. That is love and admiration. And a tear. Whatever.

Here is a small list of people that I’ve been thinking about-

• The person who overheard me being sexually harassed and made a point to come over, tell me that it wasn’t okay, and offered to tell off the harasser for me. The person who told me that I was precious.
• The person who let me in closer than he has ever let anybody in before, figuratively and literally, who was able to look me in the eye.
• The person who wasn’t scared to share with me, who I was able to talk with for hours, who was going to change his own life and triumph. The person who believed in me before I ever did.
• The person who shared his world with me, who smiled for me and who wanted to take care of me, the person who tried harder than anybody else ever tries despite every set backs, the person who made me feel like safety.
• The person who clicked with me, who was like me, who opened up to me and trusted me. The person who was and still is the best badass ever.
• The person who shared their life with me without even knowing me, who hugged me last, who kept in contact, who cried during my pain and celebrated my triumph, who called me a friend.
• The person who let me in, who opened up. The person who made me laugh constantly, and who let me share my thoughts and feelings with, who noticed me and made sure to keep me floating. Who inspired everybody.
• The person who I immediately loved, who I immediately clicked with. Who is precious to me, who looks so strong but can be delicate.
• The person who told me that I was going to be okay. Thanks for the glorious laughs, too.
• The person whose voice I’ll never forget. So resilient, so many layers, so much love. Who looked for the good things to be happy about, who shared my views, who wanted to sit with me.
• The person who bought me bags of food and gave me a ride home just to make sure that I didn’t hurt.
• The person who was honest, and loving, and caring. The person who was a mother to everybody but herself, but who finally stood up and made herself important, and who showed me what it’s like to do what you’ve always wanted to do (what I’ve always wanted to do).
• The person who checks in on me just to let me know that they are here.
• The person who is always herself, is always beautiful, is always kind, and who is beginning to inspire herself as well as everybody else.
• The person who will always be there.

These people are a constant inspiration to me. I spoke about them a few times yesterday, at the in-laws’ house, to various relatives of my boyfriend. I told their jokes and stories, and dreaded the implied question.

Where did you meet them?

Everybody that I mentioned above I met during an inpatient stay at a mental hospital, during outpatient mental health care, or during group therapy.

And they were all fellow patients.

I could talk for pages about the wonderful professionals I have worked with. There have been countless persons who listened, who guided, and who gave me the tools I needed to succeed. I could talk about my every day friends and my family, and the years of assistance they have given me, their homes, their time, their care. These are the people who have literally saved me multiple times over, and whose help I could never repay them for completely. These are the helpers that deserve to be thanked, constantly.

But I also want to thank the other patients who were right there with me. These are the unlikely candidates for help; even some inpatient professionals urge patients to not rely on each other, “the blind leading the blind.” However, these are the people that are right there with me, who share in my experiences, who know what it’s like. And, during the hours when we aren’t in therapy or when we aren’t actively working on coping, these are the people who provide support, reprieve, and even more therapy (just without a degree, in most cases). There is so much care, and it is so easy and wonderful to bond with somebody in this way. After all, when we leave, we know that reality will hit us again, and that these are things that we just don’t or can’t talk about with the everyday person, that we have to retreat back into our silence.

But, because I’m sure it’s expected, I’ll give a brief example of somebody’s pain. These are the stories people expect of me when I talk about inpatient, the horror stories of a life gone awry, taken over by chemical imbalances and unseen demons. So for that sake, and for the sake of reality, I’ll share.

This is a person whose first memory is of a suicide attempt at eight years old, of shoelaces across the neck and crippling feelings of guilt. This is a person whose strongest childhood memories in general are feelings of depression, of crying, of pain. It isn’t that this person didn’t experience happiness, it’s just that this person can’t remember much anymore thanks to years of medication, and this is all that sticks. This is a person who, being the only inhabitant of a bunk bed, built a cave by putting blankets all around the bottom bunk so that they could live only in this area. This person started to love small and confined areas, and, in Junior High, slept inside a nest they had made in their closet- a nest that included a jump rope tied to where the clothes were supposed to hang with a noose tied at the end, for a just-in-case scenario. This person dressed to disappear, and to be hated. This person, one night, punched themselves in the arm to bring about a bruise, to punish themselves, a habit that would stick for a decade. This person found respite through online relationships and through pretending to be other. This person had a few friends in their actual reality who loved and who prodded and who coaxed them into opening up, just a little bit. This person dreamed of healing and of being a good influence, and so this person joined a group to counsel others. This person started opening up, started listening, and started becoming positive, and started to dream. Still, this person cried nearly every day from pressures at home, from feeling inadequate. This person began spending hours every day looking at pictures of emaciated persons, started to limit themselves to eating solid food once a day at the most, once a week at the least, always keeping below 400 calories. These would last for a month or two, and then the feelings would ebb, but then come back, in waves, every time the sadness came back. This person threw themselves into other people, into their post-graduation life, ignoring the night spent in a ball, crying, thought that it was just part of their normal being. Until the depression became unbearable, and the feelings of suicide came back. Therapy helped until the feelings were too strong, and then the first hospital stay. A diagnosis: Bipolar II. The anxiety attacks started, like a darkness coming in over the whole body, the shaking, the fear, the inability to move. Home was a respite, but it brought on delusions, a belief in a dark demon in the corner that wanted to cause pain. More medication, more therapy. A return to university that was full of extra morning hours spent finding a reason to live and get out of bed, a reason to not chug down everything under the sink and deal with the pain until there wasn’t any, until there wasn’t anything. More medication. More people. Another hospital stay. Different medication, different doctors, more time. A light, through support and some love, but a darkness that came back from disappointment. Loss of function. No more showering, no cleaning, no cooking. Barely breathing. Back to home, back to fuck-ups, shuffling around, hurting everybody. Being forced into the hospital for the first time. Back home, more fear, more fuck-ups, more hurting, choosing the hospital again. Eight days. A new diagnosis, one that actually fits and feels like liberty from an identity that wasn’t theirs: Major Depression Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. An explanation. A new life. More pain, but an escape to where they could breathe, to where they could believe in themselves, more than anything. To lots of therapy and lots of support, but also to a good job, to friends and to love, and to some kind of life. To a life that seemed worth trying for. To an actual sense of steadiness, and of security, and of stability, that this person helped to create and worked for. To an end to self-injury, to promises to themselves, to a lot of effort. To months without depression or anxiety, to months without depression-tears. To seven months of functioning.

It’s November now, and I’ve been functioning for seven months. At twenty-two years old, I’m beginning to live and to try and to enjoy, and it’s the most beautiful feeling in the world.

But still, I cannot open my mouth to my future relatives and say “I met these wonderful people in a mental facility. I have a mental disorder. I have depression without reason or warning, and it took a lot of work to get me out of it, but I’m okay, and they are okay, and this isn’t rare. It’s everywhere, and it needs to be talked about.”

The stigma, in the end, is what suffocates us. It’s our community that is what saves us.

What saved me, in the end, was giving myself enough time with other people like me, with people who were trying. Was being able to see the truth: most people who live with a mental illness are successful, are wonderful, and who happen to have inner darkness or issues that they deal with. That the people who need help and who get it are the strongest, and that we are all, in the end, people. People who need each other. The voices I heard inpatient and in therapy are the strongest and the wisest. We aren’t the blind leading the blind; we are warriors who fight for ourselves and for each other.

So this is a post about support, and about love. About talking about things outside of therapy. I know that we talk about, that we already have to be brave enough. I know that we have to protect ourselves. But this is me putting this out there- I’m in my mental health journey that will never end, but I want to talk about life with depression, about coping, about being able to live with it. About treatment, about support. About the amazing people that I am in company with. About it’s okay to talk about it because my hope is that the kids in my life will grow up and not be afraid of their private pain, and that they will know that there are ways of treatment and ways of life. About ways where things can be enjoyed, and where reactions to things can be appropriate.

And, important for me and for many others: the treatment of these things doesn’t have to include a deity. It doesn’t mean “giving it up to [god here].” If that helps, great. But there is a full life without a deity, there is hope for atheists with mental illness. I am an atheist, and I have depression, and it’s not because of my lack of a god, and a god isn’t helping me at all. I have reasons to live beyond any kind of hope that a creator could give me. There is the hope that we can have in reality, in humanity, and in ourselves. There is so much to empower ourselves with, and this is important to talk about. Can we please just talk about this?

I didn’t want to write in here anymore, because I have been scared about repercussions, about reactions. But JT Eberhard is brave, and so I want to be, too. Thank you, JT, for being yourself. It is really the best thing you could ever do.

A friend of mine posted the article Don’t Let Your Kids Watch Chaz Bono On ‘Dancing With the Stars’, a Fox News op-ed about boycotting Dancing With the Stars over Chaz Bono’s participation. I quickly ran through the article and fixed it.

I do have a few more things to say about Dr. Keith Ablow, however, which are vaguely in line with that I said about Rick Santorum a few posts ago-

This article says that Chaz should be treated with empathy, and yet the entire article is about how his even being on television is a threat to the entirety of society, especially the health and mental well-being of children. So to you I say- go look up “empathy,” because you are doing it wrong.

People should be treated as people.

Just saying.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been trying to stay out of the Republican nomination race, but I just have to say something.

Transcript:

Anchor: Uh, I-I know you personally, a little bit, and my impression of you I’ll share with the viewers is you are an incredibly nice guy; you’re very compassionate, you’re very caring, you look out for other people. When I talk to some of my friends who are gay and lesbian, they don’t understand that characterization of you, because they think that you have it in for gays and lesbians, because you’re pro- you’re anti-gay marriage, and you’ve called it wrong and you’ve called it destructive of the family, and I want to give you the chance now to explain why they should not feel that way about you.

Santorum: Well I appreciate the opportunity, Megan, and the bottom line is we can have a public policy difference about what, uh, what the proper, uh, marriage law should be in this country and what’s in the best interest of society, and not hate somebody or-or feel ill will for them, as I’ve said many times I have friends who are gay, uh, I, uh, I accept them for who they are, but I disagree with them vehemently about what is in the best interest for society and what we’re going to teach our children in schools, what the impact of those marriage laws will be on our faith communities and their ability to be able to proclaim the truth as God has laid it out in the Bible- all of those things are ramification of a public policy debate where, again, I’m going to stand and be very vocal about, but that doesn’t mean that I dislike or hate anybdoy because of their orientation. I respect that decision, but I also, you have to respect me for feeling very differently about trying to take that orientation and then try to project an agenda on the American public that is consistent with that. That is where I’ll have a disagreement, but it’s not personal, it’s about policy.

Rick Santorum or anybody who has used this defense, I’m going to say this about as clearly as I can- I believe that you can tell yourself that you don’t dislike or hate LGBTQ people. But- putting policy into place that denies them a basic human right as well as equality under law means that you more than hate or dislike somebody- you are condescending, arrogant, and bigoted.

That is all.

(Except to say- can we please play “Conservative anti-LBGTQ buzz word bingo with this or what? It’s about the children and what they’ll be taught in school! It’s about an agenda! It’s about being anti-God! Yeah, okay. Because it couldn’t possibly be about people wanting to be accepting and celebratory about themselves, their lives, raise children, etc.)

Related articles

• Rick Santorum Defends Anti-Gay Views By Saying He Has Gay Friends: Video (towleroad.com)
• Santorum Says: I Have Gay Friends Whose Decision I Respect (lezgetreal.com)

However: I do think that, pointing out the outliers, when it comes to safety, can be important.

See: Christians Openly Advocate Killing Atheists on FOX News Facebook Page

And, my personal least favorite:

Obviously, the people who are going to “Like” FOX News on Facebook will be a fringe group, probably angrier/more extreme than your average person. And when you add “Christianity” into the description, I’m honestly not surprised about this reaction.

I’ve had many different adverse reactions personally to my proud atheism. I’ve been told that I am a Devil worshiper many times. I’ve lost potential friendships. I’ve been cut off from my immediate family, communication-wise. Yes, this is extreme. But no, it is not uncommon. And, while I’m sure that there could be some atheist parents who would do the same if their child chose to become religious, I would think that this would be an extreme divergence from the norm.

I started this blog to share different views with people who probably haven’t thought about it before. So here it is: religion in general, and Christianity specifically in the Western world, has been the cause of death and destruction where atheism has not. I would seriously like to know what possible, bodily threat atheism is. Has it brought about genocide? Absolutely not. The list of Christian serial killers is far larger than the list of atheist serial killers. The list of Christian pedophiles can top any other list by just including the priesthood. This doesn’t bring up any spiritual text at all, nor any other religious group, most of which can all be counted to be violent or harmful in multiple ways. By any “moral” measure, atheists stack up as much more moral as a group than any religious group does. As Jen McCreight sums it up: “I know this doesn’t represent all Christians, but it certainly debunks the notion that religion automatically makes you a good person.”

So please, somebody explain it to me: why kill atheists?

(tl;dr: Wow, I didn’t expect to be so angry about this.)

Edited to add: I want to add this to make the purpose of my post very clear: I am genuinely interested in hearing from people of all religions, and especially Christians (as I live in the United States, and this is the religion of the majority) what about atheism can cause people to treat atheists so negatively, beyond just disagreement.

Who are you more attracted to? Why? Image via Wikipedia

While I usually write about things that I have my mind made up about, I would like to rather start this post with the purpose of trying to spark discussion and questions.

When it comes to choosing a partner, can you clearly define the line between “having a preference” and “being racist”?

For example: it is well-known amongst my friends that I just “don’t like white guys.” I wouldn’t say that I have never been attracted to a white guy, because, when I was very young, I did have an affinity for white boys. However, as I got older and gained more experience with all persons, I started becoming more attracted to “anything-but”. I tend to blame this on my interactions with white guys in my church’s youth group (obviously not too positive) and started to characterize white guys in general as having a gross feeling of entitlement over white women, as though, by virtue of our shared skin color and their penis-having, that I should feel attracted to them.

Things get more complicated, however, when I consider my “attraction” versus “those who I want to pursue.” I have only ever dated men who have at least one parent from Mexico, and tend to date men who are full-blooded Mexican. However, I have been attracted to a plethora of different kind of people, and tend to find men and women of all skin-colors (except Caucasian, of course) very attractive, regardless of whether that attraction reaches the level of sexual-attraction. I, in fact, often find that persons with the darkest of skin tones are the most attractive. I find that the people who I want to date have more qualities that I look for in a mate, and that the Mexican culture is something that I find attractive for my life.

(Full disclosure, however: in regards to finding people attractive based on their personalities, I found Ryan Gosling terribly, terribly attractive in “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” but not until he started being attracted to Emma Stone. Terribly attractive. Wanted to cry and tear my hair out, he was that attractive. Definitely not even in conjecture with his “Photoshopped” abs.)

I’m sure that psychologists, sociologists, etc. would have a field day with this information. But I’m more interested in the reactions of other people- is my distaste for white men racism, given that it is based on personality/actions of the general population? Or is it purely preference, as I have, in small doses, been attracted to white men? How are you attracted to people? Etc.

While in high school, I was introduced to the idea of “freedom of opportunity.” Supposedly, this was an “American value,” the idea that everybody deserves the same chances in life, and that what they do with said chances determines their future success. In this way, the onus falls onto the government to provide the opportunity, and the people to use the opportunity.

It’s a lovely idea. And it’s bullshit.

I don’t claim that this is bullshit based on personal experience, which would be easy enough to qualify but does not carry enough weight. No, I’m calling bullshit based on facts and figures.

Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce recently published their findings regarding the amount of money an American makes over their lifetime from their employment. The following is a chart detailing pay gap:

From http://kaysteiger.com/

The obvious implications are that, as we have known, men make more than women. While this obviously makes my feminist heart sink, it is the rest of the study that makes me even more angry.

According to these findings, “[African Americans and Latinos] make close to a million dollars less [than Whites]” over their lifetime, even when working the same amount of time and the same position as their white counterpart.

These charts show the results of people from all walks of education, from those who never completed high school to those who have completed post-doctoral, professional degrees. Even those women and people of any other race or ethnicity than “Caucasian” who reached the top are earning far less than their white, cis-gendered male counterparts.

This doesn’t even take into account this simple fact: while women have, technically, surpassed men in numbers of recent college graduates, people of color are statistically less likely to reach a higher education level than a high school diploma. While being Caucasian at my high school technically put me into a racial/ethnic minority within that pool of students, there were far more Caucasian teachers and staff at my high school than there were teachers and staff of color. The reason why “freedom of opportunity” can never be a reality is because, for many cultures, family trumps education. Statistically, many families of color cannot afford to send a son or daughter to college when the family needs money at that moment. Many high-school students, graduated or not, find it much easier to take over the family trade and help their parents rather than to make the immediately-”selfish” decision to further their education. And the trend continues.

Perhaps we should call it what it is: we don’t have “freedom of opportunity,” we have “freedom of white people to make themselves feel better by pretending that offering specialized scholarship opportunities is the same thing as making a culture in which everyone has the same opportunity to succeed.”

That being said: after the last few days, coming onto my Dashboard and seeing support that was Tumblr driven has, well, set me at ease. So thank you, Lawsonry, and every person who has shown me kindness since. I’m not sure how you found this, but I’m glad that you did.

(Actual content is forthcoming, I promise.)