power

I am having a boundary issue, and I don't like it one bit.

I know this is perfectly reasonable and understandable. No human being likes it when their boundaries are pushed or violated. I've spent a significant amount of time in my life focusing on boundary issues, what to do when boundaries are affected, how to comfort those whose boundaries have not been respected . . . and I'm still having trouble.

I hate confrontation, because I fear it. Because rarely have I had to face the prospect of not "winning" a confrontation, and part of me fears that one day, there will be a confrontation and I will "lose" - I mean really lose, lose something valuable - the fear is that some day, I will lose the ability to control my own boundaries. I will lose the ability to say "no," someone will take that decision away from me. That is the scariest prospect of all. I've never had to face it on my own behalf, and that prospective loss of power is terrifying. I face it on the behalf of others often, every day, but having my own choice taken away? Well, there's a reason powerlessness is a fear, a huge, scary, middle-of-the-night fear for most humans. It is hard to face the prospect of my real powerlessness. I mean, I face the specter of it, the philosophical idea of it, every day, and I've learned to live with that, but that is simply one way of many I've sublimated the fear. I do it in my sexual relationships - BDSM can easily be seen as acting out twin fears: the fear of what we do when we have power over another, and the fear of not having any power. I realized a few short weeks ago that the story I've been telling myself about my romantic/sexual relationships has been a narrative of other people acting on me, not me making choices as an actor in my own story. I think my volunteer work has something to do with it, too - people who've survived losing their power and lived to tell the tale. What if my reality had included no power, from the start? How would I deal with it? How does one exist in the world if one has never known the power to say no?

I don't know. There are people in my life who live this question in various ways - people who didn't have power over their sexual/body boundaries, because they started receiving sexual abuse very young. People who've never had certain assumptions assigned to them by society because of the color of their skin - they've never had access to some kinds of power. People who will never be able to fully engage with their partner in public because of the gender(s) of people involved. All sorts of ways. And this is another way being at the top of the heap has weakened me. This is not to disown my power - all the power I do have, which is plenty - but more to say, having never bounced back from the lack of one kind of power, I'm afraid to lose any of it. Not only is there a paradox of power - having so much, afraid to lose any - but there's also a paradox of resilience. People who've survived our culture in ways different from me - without the power of white skin, or assumed hetero status, or a life free from sexual violence - have survived. That's the point. I'm like those "bubble kids" the media writes about every once in a while - with parents so scared to expose them to germs, to scrapes, to failing grades, that they've never had to navigate a difficult experience. Never had to negotiate falling or failure. Which doesn't raise strong kids, it actually weakens the kids quite a bit. That's how I feel. Unsure of taking a few tentative steps on my own - never having fallen, I do not know it's possible to pick myself up.

Many of our ideas, memes, and tropes are about loss of power over oneself, loss of choice. I think this is why I fear confrontations that don't even involve me - because someone will "lose," someone will end up feeling shitty when probably they were just trying to defend themselves against a perceived threat. I do not trust the world to respect my boundaries, the lines I draw in the sand.

And I know that I am right in this confrontation, and there is no real prospect my boundaries will be disrespected. Rationally, I know this. Irrationally, I fear this confrontation - this basic communication about expectations at work - as much as any other, perhaps more, because even though the person I'm confronting poses no threat to me, she does have power - she's my boss.

what you really need to hear

i'm in a very strange sort of mood.

i went to the dead poet's slam, which was wonderful, as always. it made me want to write poems, and to recognize that i don't know nearly enough to write poems. it made me want to do romantic things and ostentatious things and a lot of things i really am too practical for. i'm no romantic, though in the secret coves of my heart i like to pretend sometimes.

i should be freaking out over my conference tomorrow but i am strangely zen. (initially wrote sex instead of zen. don't know why. i am strangely sex.)

i spent most of the day in a somewhat-tizzy over going abroad. two months and one week from now i will be in a country i've never visited, staying with a family i've never met, meeting all new people, speaking a language i don't understand. none of that is metaphor, either.

i want to believe it will be wonderful. because it will.

"how can something 'was, was not, forever is?' i'd like to was, was not, forever is myself." - marie howe, on a line of a poem we read

told you it was a strange mood.

i don't know what proposals will take place in my life (so far none have), but i want one of them to happen in the rain. i love rain.

i want to go home, to eat good food, to feel comfort and the prospect of adventure. "you get a phone call: come home. soon." (another line from a poem, this one at the dead poets slam.)

i want to go home. i want to have a home that is mine and not someone else's. i haven't really created a life for myself, not yet.

i want the next two years to come out okay. i want to close my eyes at this, the start of the roller coaster ride, as the days rush faster and faster and where they land i don't know. i want to close my eyes and open them and be somewhere safe, and in love.

i hate my government

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4440664.stm


this grieves my heart.

the U.S. used white phosphorus in the attack on fallujah. i saw that headline on the BBC front page and thought, oh shit, that can't be good, and decided to find out what it was. (of course, we lied about it afterwards.)

white phosphorus starts burning on contact with oxygen, and doesn't stop until A) deprived of oxygen or B) until it burns itself out. as some military guy is quoted in the article, "it'll burn down to the bone."

the horror of this is . . . i want to say incomprehensible, but i know it isn't. i know too much about DU, about agent orange, about the flattening of vietnam, about the army essentially giving my grandfather hodgkin's, about gulf war syndrome, about john crawford, to even pretend to believe my government wouldn't do this because oh yes, it would.

it is bad enough to know my government, with money from me and my parents and my grandparents, is lobbing bullets and "traditional" bombs (by traditional, in this case, i mean bunker busters - bombs that weigh more than i want to think about and create craters wherever they land, including houses we "mistakenly" pick out as targets) at the Iraqi people. we are literally raining fire down upon the people of Iraq.

it's a chemical weapon when launched at civilians. (why it doesn't count as a chem weapon when launched at "combatants" - as if we're even pretending there's a line in iraq - is beyond me. i am lucky: most of war is beyond me.) of course the army fucks are claiming we didn't lob it at civilians, but there is much evidence that those guys are NOT to be believed, isn't there?

no one deserves to have a chunk of this shit burning through their bodies; terrorist, father, brother, cleric, or otherwise. i am sure - sure as i know anything - that this DID hit civilians, and that means grandmothers and babies, with clothes burned through, screaming about a fire they did not know how to stop, fleeing into the streets in the hopes they'd be shot - anything to stop the burning.

the beauty part is the U.S. is not a signatory to the section of a treaty that would make this bombing illegal. (don't even get me started on our lack of "fair play" on treaties and the international scene.)

i hate my government.

i want to believe this shit will stop, but . . . i know too much.

in the new world, first it was the indians, and then it was the africans. it took us a long, long time to fuck up three whole continents' worth of people. (anywhere from two to four, actually: north america and africa, definitely, and south america too, and europe if you believe those on top are hurt as much by the actions against those on the bottom.) but once we were done with that, we turned outward: the phillipines, the conquering of Hawaii, the way we treated immigrants, vietnam, cambodia, the list of misdeeds in central america is longer than i can recount. we have sponsored death squads in dozens and dozens of countries. there's always another set of people to hate, whether it's the commies in vietnam, the jihadists in afghanistan (remember afghanistan?), or the saddam-sympathizers in iraq. this will not stop on its own.

this has been a long time comin

dear C, ex-TWIL -

it sucks that our relationship has vanished, and i don't really blame myself.

i am not cool enough or activist enough or whatever enough to take up space in your life, to fit into your busy schedule. thank you.

if i could've made it better, if i could've improved it, i would've liked to know. and you, for all your professed honesty, didn't offer me anything. and if you didn't respect me - which is the vibe i got - you should've said it. when my friends do things i don't respect, i call them on their shit. similarly, if i'm *not* doing something and you can't respect THAT, then tell me. don't just spend a year confiding all of this shit in me and then . . . just stop. that's not fair. i really wanted to keep you around.

maybe i'm *not* cool or activist or whatever enough. maybe i am sitting on my ass in college. maybe i'm becoming more apathetic, not less. maybe i do feel a bit like my life is stuck in the mud and i can't wait for it to begin and MAN do i hope this feeling doesn't last beyond this semester, but if you recognize that, again, BRING IT UP. just don't leave me flailing about for an explanation. argh.

and it reinforced a notion i didn't need reinforced, namely that i can walk out of people's lives, and they won't care. that's a shitty idea that i have, and i've been trying to let it go, trying not to test my friends and the strength of my friendships but actually accept people, and then there you go and fuck up. grr.

also, it confirms a sneaky suspicion i had: that you talked to me just because i was there, just because i was around, and that you had 50 other friends who could've filled the exact same niche. i really, really didn't want to believe that, but now i kind of do. so much for the uniqueness of our friendship. but then, part of me is confused - it seemed like we were close, like in some ways i was different than the other 50. maybe that was a lie, maybe some other shinyshiny prospect has come along and you just forgot about me, or (i suspect this is it) your life took a turn or two that i didn't make with you, and you don't know how i could possibly fit in now.

i don't know, maybe my stupidity and ignorance became too much for you. for the record, i was not planning on using you to work out my shit: i'm a grown-up. you could've told me to shut my trap and that it was not your job to educate me or whatever if you felt it necessary. i feel like, through action or inaction, i offended you in some way, and i was never informed or given the opportunity to rectify that.

this sucks.

sarah

hermit

i feel like i'm failing college. and i love this place academically, and as an institution, and i love my teachers, and i even like my shitty student jobs. but . . . the people not so much. it's the same thing everyone says about sarah lawrence. alums talk about the faculty here, not the kids. there aren't any people here i'm really close to, and the ones i could get close to, i don't know how to approach. i don't know how much of that is the SLC atmosphere and how much is me, but it sucks. and it makes me very, very nervous for the rest of my life. i have awesome friends now, but i would like to grow at some point. i feel like i'm unhealthily pulled to santa, to people related to santa, to all things new mexican . . . it's beautiful here, but i see a picture of the southwest sky and man i just want to be HOME. and i don't like feeling like i'm not completely committed to my life here. it's one of my least favorite qualities about myself. this sucks. i don't want to live in the future and the past, but i keep forgetting that. i suck.

in keeping with my theme, i am very excited to be in chicago in less than three weeks. i'm also looking forward to this semester being over . . . and so scared for my interpersonal skills while abroad. what's wrong with me? i can't make connections with human beings! WTF? i feel seriously socially inept. and i feel like anyone i talk to will just make me feel worse and/or give me crappy advice, or remind me that i have non-slc friends. i am a failure. (i'm also my mother. she kept in touch casually with two people from college, besides my father. less, really.)

i don't want to be in school anymore, and i hate that feeling because i know i'm a fucking broken record. i wish i could take time off, but i can't, due to family financial constraints. (i mean, i could, but then if i wanted to finish college i'd have to go to UNM, which is not a compromise i'm willing to make.)

fuck.

lucky*

this is my "sarah's upset about rape" post. if you think i'm being whiny, you are probably male, and no matter your gender identity, you are kindly invited to fuck off.

rape is everywhere right now: on the boards, in the book i'm reading, in my mind. i'm preoccupied.

having sarah here has reminded me. we have that whole aaron/adam history. (i liked aaron, he and i had a relationship of sorts, he sexually assaulted sarah. sarah had a relationship, a serious one, with adam, he sexually assaulted me. i hated adam but didn't feel free to make that known because he and sarah were still dating at the time. sarah had no qualms about hating aaron right out loud and subsequently i removed him from my life with a jolt. maybe it's not as resolved as i thought it was. i never dealt with the adam thing; i think it wasn't that big of a deal. i don't know. tangled webs and all that.)

sometimes i feel like i'm living on borrowed time. rape is a reality that haunts me. i put so much energy into being safe, into paying attention. how can i not? it happens here. it happens everywhere. it happens to women i know. i don't want to be among their number and i'm not sure i can keep myself from it.

i'm reading alice sebold's Lucky* right now, which is a memoir of a rape survivor, and i can't not take it into myself. this is a quality i have. i cannot process information without taking it into my brain, inside myself. i cannot stay distant from most situations about which i learn, i cannot stay distant from the emotional states of my friends. it's really hard for me to draw those lines. and with rape, it's even blurrier.

i don't feel like i can walk into the hall and say, hey guys can you keep it down in here, i'm steeped in sadness over the fact that the world is not a safe place for any of the females in my life. that sounds crazy. it is crazy.

my mother insists this "sensitivity" is a good thing. i'm not convinced. i was telling her, i'm scared, mom, that it's not a matter of if but when. and she started lecturing me on fighting back, on protecting myself, and i said, OF COURSE that's what i focus on usually and that's what i think about and that's what i want, but alice sebold fought back, she fought and it didn't work. i have no guarantee. i have no assurance. every day is sorta a roll of the dice. all i have is the hope that i AM "lucky." but i know better than to count on that.

i just wrote a really long post elsewhere about "if ____ ended tomorrow" - the ways my life would be different if rape ended tomorrow, or had never existed, and homophobia, etc. the list that came out was really long, especially considering i'm not a survivor. but then i got even more pissed, realizing that if i have this much to say and i'm not even a survivor - rape isn't even my lived reality, "just" a threat - how pervasive it must be. how common. how unimportant and unnoticed. it's just an expected part of our culture.

this is something men can never understand, and they need to own up to it - you will never know what it is like to walk around in a woman's skin in this culture, in this country. and don't you dare blather to me about how common rape is, or how it has always existed. that does not change a simple fact: you do not have the skin of a woman. therefore, you do not know what it is to simply wear your skin and have that mark you as a potential victim to everyone who sees you. this is so common, in fact, that we don't even see it. we don't consciously think "that woman could be a victim" because we know it already, the same way we already know she has red hair. men cannot imagine this reality. i can barely grasp it, and it's been there my whole life, and certainly ever since you could tell i had breasts.



*the book is called lucky as an ironic comment: the police later tell her, in the same tunnel where she was raped, a girl was killed and dismembered. alice, by comparison, was "lucky."

the one who won't go away

nutshell.
me: what turns you on?
boy: can i just say "you"?

you most certainly may, good sir.

it was partially out of laziness, as i tend to exhaust him with my endless questions, but that's a great sentence.

(unlike, *ahem*, "if i'm going to be sexual at all it won't be with you." BAD SENTENCE.)

five years and we still make each other crazy. five years and he'll finally be vulnerable, at least in some ways. going on six. soon to be six years of me being as insane as i want and him loving it, six years of me worshipping this boy who never deserved it. six years of exasperating each other.

i make it sound like we're in love. we aren't. i was, at one point, he never. i don't understand it either, not sure i understand how you can go through so much with someone . . . there's a difference between loving each other and being in love with one another. and yeah, ultimate cliche, i might always be in love with the *idea* of him.

i don't know what binds us. but i do feel bound. it's such a strange relationship, and i've never encountered anything like it, never known anyone else who had the same thing with someone. for two people who love definites, our relationship lives in this eternal, infernal gray area between dating, fucking, and friendship.

it's always this boy vs. every other.

what it is

okay, so here's what's really bothering me.

(for those of you who don't know, i've been hemming and hawing over whether to spend money i *really* don't have to go to chicago for thanksgiving. now that you're all caught up . . . )

one of jonathan's last myspace blogger posts was "the joys of poordom." and i keep thinking about that. and it keeps reminding me that money is not important. even if i had an extra grand in my pockets going to central america, i don't think it would vastly alter my experience there.

and, and. look where money got jonathan, a part of me argues. part of me is terrified that i won't see *this* boy again, at least certainly not for a long, long time. like, all of 2006 and probably beyond. i'm going to have to start living my own life sometime, right? my family is scattered, this year, more than ever before, and it's only going to get worse with sean graduating and various people interning and graduating and whatnot and sarah moving. and once mana and sarah and em are flung to the far reaches of the globe, chicago will not be high on my priority list. and i don't want to lose this kid. i didn't get to say enough of a goodbye in august. that's what it is. i'm scared, and the rollercoaster is just starting to crest the first peak, just about to take off.

according to me, this is how we live, my friends. no money, ever, but happy. jonathan spent two whole paychecks on those goddamn skis.

and part of me, always, is terrified. what if i don't go and regret it? don't tell me it's farfetched, because obviously it isn't. if it's buying a cute shirt in guatemala versus regret for the rest of my life for not going, the choice is obvious.