"Patriot's Day"

It's 9/11. My Facebook feed is awash in patriotic sentiment - where people were when the planes came, when the towers went down. On some level, I understand that this is still a sense of processing, the need to relate a tragic event to your own life, a community engaging of sorrow and healing. Hell, I've done it in years past too (my daughter's due date was 9/11/01 but, as is her standard now, she was stubborn and came late).

Over the past few years, though, it's become more hollow and increasingly apparent to me what's really happening...

Blind patriotism is dangerous. We're all being conned.

Maybe I say that because I can not remember a time in my life when I've felt "proud" of being an American. I've never been inspired to wave a giant American flag or cry during the National Anthem. I don't view Fourth of July as anything more than a giant red, white and blue orgasm of fireworks, hot dogs and beer.

But don't try to feed me that "freedom isn't free" bullshit. I've been a military wife, have watched friends be lowered into the ground in service of a country that did not give a fuck about them, and been able to do nothing but cry and scream internally when they fired off the 21 gun salute. I raised my daughter alone for the first few years of her life while her father was in Afghanistan, Iraq... being shot at and killing people because he was told to do so.

But let's start from the beginning.

Many of our ancestors fled England due to religious persecution, poverty and indentured servitude. Think about that for a second.

They sailed over here in boats, full of hope and enthusiasm, proceeded to slaughter nearly an entire indigenous population and then become the very thing they were escaping from. Since then? We still persecute people who practice religion differently than what the "norm" is (or, god forbid, not at all *gasp*). The poverty level is not only obscene, but people are being judged, scolded and harassed for seeking any sort of help. We've relegated Native Americans to reservations with terrible education, alcohol problems and sexual assault (and set dogs on them when they protest the desecration of their burial lands and water sources). And slavery? Well, our ancestors must have forgotten about wanting to escape from that pretty quickly.

And we make today Patriot's Day? Fuck that. What is patriotic about today? We've become everything we hate, everything we try to bomb out of other countries. Sure, we may have more "freedom" then some of them, but do we really? We tell other countries what they're doing wrong and hold ourselves up to the world as some sort of golden standard... but totally ignore everything that needs fixing (and not just ignore...actively defend or deny).

We publicly abhor how other countries handle women's rights and sexual abuse, but we give rapists less than 3 months in jail and spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to take legal rights away from women and continually attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.

We hate Muslims, but let our Christians quietly become the KKK and say nothing (I'm not even going to begin to go into Donald Trump's rise to candidacy fame).

We wring our hands about North Korea and how unacceptable it is there, but then threaten to kill people who don't stand for the National Anthem.

We don't have segregated drinking fountains any more but we still are quick to call POC liars, niggers and drama queens when they point out how they're still being singled out.

If you ask the internet, the white man is the most oppressed group in the entire United States.

I call bullshit on all of that. I can't watch one more video of someone leaping out of the Trade Towers and somehow be asked to translate that into patriotism. True patriotism is helping to make this country greater, calling out its flaws and helping to fix them.

What we're constantly being asked to do isn't patriotism, it's nationalism. It's dangerous and I worry we're just now starting to see the turn the country has taken into terrifying territory.

2016.

It's here... a bright, shiny new year. A clean slate. A blank page.

But, is it really?

As human beings, we're always searching for finish lines and starting gates. The race, the real work of the thing, gets lost in concept.

I'm just as guilty as the next person.

This year, I want to finally get healthy. I want to write more. I want to paint more. I want, I want, I want.

But who am I already?

At my core, I'm a deeply imperfect person. I don't say that with any disdain. I love my life, my imperfections. Right now, I'm sitting on the couch, writing this, watching a movie and drinking a glass of red wine. There are many things I could and probably should be doing... my kitchen is a mess, my laundry needs done... but I'm focused on (and possibly hyperfocused - it has recently come to my attention that hyperfocus is a symptom of attention deficit disorder which I have been vehemently ignoring that I have for years) what I want to do.

At some point, all this arbitrary bullshit that we continually pile onto ourselves in an attempt to "become a better person" just ends up being too much, right? Work out, eat right, travel more, spend more time with family, with friends, with ourselves... when do we just embrace our genuine humanness and stop becoming a list of shit we should be doing?

Choice.

I am pro-choice.

Thankfully, I have never been placed in the position of having to choose to have an abortion myself. 

I have, however, seen first hand the decision making process required when I drove a close friend to a clinic thirty minutes away and sat in the car waiting for her, unwilling to bring my new baby inside. I didn't want anyone who had made that choice feel guilty.

Abortion is legal. It has been since Roe vs Wade in 1973, however, the history of abortion dates back to the 1800's in America. The first laws attempting to regulate abortions were passed in 1821. Think about that for a minute. Think about what life was like for women in the 1800's. Women couldn't vote. They were basically baby making machines, restricted to aspirations that could only include the home and family. 

It startles me to think of the new push to defund Planned Parenthood. The (mostly male) Republican candidates spit those words out of their mouths as though they were poison, something to be embarrassed about and cast away.

What they don't understand is that Planned Parenthood prevents abortions. Planned Parenthood performs breast checks that lead to mammograms that save lives/prevent breast cancer. They provide necessary STI checks to people who otherwise couldn't afford them. They perform pap smears and catch cervical cancer before it has a chance to become more insidious. 

And even if they didn't? Even if they did 100% abortions? 

Abortion is legal. You don't have to like it. You don't have to make that choice or even be nice to someone in your life that has made that choice (even though that does kind of make you an asshole). But to attempt to change the laws that make abortion safe and legal for anyone who has to make that choice so you can be more comfortable in your religion or personal ethical code? That is unconscionable. 

This world is built on personal choice. How to do your hair, what job you choose, who you marry, what religion you follow... all things that make you an individual, with autonomy.

Don't push your religion or choice on me. The right to choose is just that... a right.

And I'll be standing there, wearing and waving pink, making for damn sure you know how hard people have fought for centuries to allow that same choice.

Chelsea Dagger.

The last time I heard Chelsea Dagger, I was standing in a crowd of people at the Chicago Pride parade. The Stanley Cup sat proudly on the float, there was cheering and excitement.

I stood there, surrounded by cheering, and cried. My tears were tears of joy, of course, but they were also tears of grief.

Tonight is the first game of the regular season for the Blackhawks. I will celebrate. I will cheer. But I will, above all, miss my sweet puppy.

Chelsea was hit by a car just after the Hawks won the Cup. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't miss her with my very soul, that I don't wish she was still here, letting me hold her up and make her dance to the music.

Thankfully, my memory of seeing her tiny body crushed by the car, the noise of the impact and the feeling of screaming comes less and less frequently. But every day her absence is made clear.

Brambles.

My heart is brambles, barbed wire, landmines. There are days when everything is sunshine, days where I casually skip through the landmines with a grenade held gingerly between my front teeth, eyes closed, missing detonator after detonator.

Then there are days when I swing my feet to the floor and immediately hear the unmistakable click of landmine, prepping to explode. I hear the blast, I feel myself being ripped limb from limb and yet I am still expected to get up, put on a smile and put on a show. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

The truth is, I'm never fine. Even in my most pristine, flexible, death-defying moments I am still perched on the edge of oblivion. The specter of anxiety and depression looms directly behind me, breathing smoke and brimstone down my neck.

But I fight on. I breathe through it, even on the days the smoke chokes my lungs. Sometimes I look in the mirror and don't recognize my own face, don't recognize the look in my eyes and the person staring back at me. On those days, I smile. I nod at her and move forward. She knows.

Meditation practice.

Meditation is hard, you guys!

It's amazing how doing something as simple as sitting in one place for ten minutes can completely test one's patience. As an adult with ADD, sometimes the most simple tasks become exponentially more difficult.

And what could be more simple than sitting, focusing on the breath and clearing my thoughts?

Apparently, everything!

It is unbelievable how many times a mind can wander... and where it will go! I'm not quite sure if my brain just vibrates at a higher level, bouncing thoughts back and forth at an extreme frequency, or if it is a weird self preservation instinct. Regardless of why, one week into an attempt at a daily meditation practice, I am still having an infuriatingly difficult time just. sitting. still.

Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

Our whole lives are full of the stuff.

What's for breakfast? Am I going to be late to work? Does my boss like me? Do I like me? Should I gym or should I relax after work? Does my butt look big in these pants?

It's simply instinctual. And we're so used to it that silence is deafening.

Enthusiasm.

I miss my youthful enthusiasm. I'm not quite sure I can pinpoint exactly when it left me, floating away from me like a dandelion seed on the wind. It was suddenly just gone, vacated the premises.

I'm sure that it was the result of a variety of factors. Growing up is a tough process, full of bills and disappointments and responsibilities. It tends to beat the fun out of you with an invisible bat, one you can't see or hear or feel.

But, opposed to what it may seem, this isn't meant to be a depressing or sad post. It's one about hope, the hope that I'm on the path to regain some of that childhood sense of excitement I may have lost.

I'm 33, but I'm not quite sure how old I'm supposed to feel. Despite paying all (most) of my bills on time, I would rather sit on my couch with a good book or giggle with my friends than do something productive. I've lost touch with a lot of them over the last few years, mainly due to a serious bout of depression than rendered me slightly overweight and anxious and withdrawn.

Now, I can feel the thaw coming. I'm appreciating things more. I'm wanting to work on myself, my body, my health. I want to socialize, to get out of the house (sometimes).

It's nice to feel want although, as a Buddhist, I know I should work on being liberated from it as well. I'm just happy to feel it for now.