Blues for Persephone

I saw a question on social media that asked, “Ten years ago, did you expect your interests to stay the same or be different now?”

I had to think about ten years ago. I think ten or so years ago was when I realized that my life would never get better. I didn’t think it would suck as much as it does now but I knew it wouldn’t be great.

For most of my life I deluded myself into blaming myself for everything that had ever gone wrong. Maybe if I lost weight. Maybe if I made more money. Maybe if I moved. Maybe if I changed jobs, job locations, departments, friends, habits, patterns. None of that worked. I tried everything I could find or think of to change and I did change. Nothing else did.

Now I find myself with little lives that depend on my, on my life and health. I find myself in a repeating cycle that none of my efforts changed except to make it worse.

I find myself alone because of all that I’ve learned and all that I know and all that I understand, because all of that makes it unbearable to watch the casual cruelty, the nitpicky bullshit that people use to excuse treating each other and other animals like shit.

I become less and less articulate, less and less intelligent, less and less hopeful every moment of every day. I have a prolonged episode that is one of the worst my CPTSD has ever offered, then my rotator cuff is nearly cut in two pieces by a bone spur, then my mom dies, then I get a traumatic brain injury. I’m not sure what’s next but it isn’t anything that my self from twenty years ago hoped would come to pass.

Every time I hear something that might look promising I now realize it won’t happen, and if it does it won’t make anything better. It might change things. Change is easy to cause. Better is, well I don’t know how to make something better. I don’t know that I ever have.

Everything is say is reflected back to me as the opposite. Everything I do is inadequate. I am powerless and not in an AA way. That’s fine for whoever has found healing there. I find that stuff empty at best and torturous at worst.

This blog started out with my intention to help others. Now it’s just a place where I can talk shit. I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore in real life. I’ve been shamed for telling the truth on IG and if I say anything on Facebook people assume I’m vague-booking. If I ever am it’s because the real assholes will screen shot it and pass it around like high school bullies.

People all around the country are losing people they love. People who didn’t do anything wrong are dying because of people who did do wrong. If I didn’t have tiny mammals who depend on me I’d do a spell every night to trade my life for someone who is loved. I wish I could do that but I can’t. I have to wait until I’ve suffered through the four more little deaths that will gut my world before I can go. My deepest hope is that there is no afterlife, that my energy is dissipated into the dirt and goes one without my knowing. I am so tired.

Maybe you’re familiar with the saying, “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.” It all depends on who you are. I say that about San Diego because I hated living in San Diego County but some people love it.

Like Persephone I love the underworld. I love the Moon and all of her silvery glory. I like to vacation in the light of the Sun if there’s a cool breeze and plenty of clouds to diffuse the heat and light but I am absolutely not a light worker or in love with the blazing hot brightness of the Sun. That’s me. It’s a part of who I am.

That said, I love chiaroscuro. It was my email address for a while and I really felt for the rat of that name in The Tale of Despereaux. I saw myself in him.

I’ve always seen myself in villains because, as I’ve recently come to understand about myself, I am very frequently rejected by humans around me because I don’t meet their expectations. I don’t conform to cultures I don’t understand or relate to, so I am treated as a problem by those with control issues and those who lack the courage or strength or motivation to engage in self reflection. My values don’t match with theirs so I don’t behave the way they expect people to behave and the result is disdain or at the very least dismissal.

But what it’s come to is that I have a sense of self based in that rejection. I am used to it even though it has never been comfortable. I am primed to walk away and give up hope of being valued. That’s what happens to lots of people we reject because they aren’t what or who we expect them to be. We do it without thinking about it but it marks people for a long, long time. The fault is not with those rejected. It lies with any of us who reject others who don’t conform.

It gives me a unique perspective. I can see outside of groups, systems, relationships, etcetera because I AM outside of them. My way of being is not reinforced and is not welcomed. It doesn’t matter why.

It doesn’t matter why.

Say it after me.

What matters is the impact it has had on me and that matters way outside of me and my experience because I am not the only one who has experienced that impact.

Two years ago I was asked to observe in a teacher’s classroom because two students were having severe escalation episodes quite regularly. They would both be taken from the room to “calm down” in the social worker’s office. They would come to some peace and go back to the room and escalate again. Why? Because the teacher would greet them with a laundry list of what they did wrong and what was wrong with them and why they were such a problem. I heard one of them say, “You want me to die.”

(Do not complain that I told this story before if I have told this story before. Read it again or don’t. It’s an opportunity for you to see new things in the same thing and if you don’t want that then you are free to stop reading at any time.)

I heard that and realized that’s how I feel in my office. I feel like my bosses and some of my coworkers want me to die. I feel like they hate me. They would protest at both of those things and last year I gave some of them the chance to protest.

Realizing that gave me a lot of insight into my own choices and how they are influenced by that kind of behavior. For years I have sought to reject the conformists, to sneer and display my sincere shock at what they do so that they get an idea of what it feels like.

The problem with that is that they have years of having power behind them. They have years of acceptance and reward behind them. I am standing on thin ice.

It’s hard for me to have compassion for someone like that, someone who naturally makes others feel inferior because it’s always worked well for them. The thing is, though, there is no other way. When someone’s foot is on your neck it is unlikely that you are going to force them to see what’s wrong with what they are doing.

If you can’t avoid them, enlist the help of someone more powerful until you can avoid them. If you can’t do that, then use passive non-resistance. Go limp.

Don’t fight. They get stronger when you fight.

I have found such amazing people on social media.

They may not know it but they have kept me alive. When everyone else had knives in their hands, stepped over my exhausted body lying in the street, pushed past me to get what they want before I could see the thing because I wasn’t looking to get anything, they were steady like rocks that hold the water in the lake.

I want to start a list so I’m going to add them here. For when you just can’t stand to take another step, when you can’t bear to look another person in the eye, when you are all alone in this world and no one gives a fucking shit, this list might just help you through. They hold histories of resilience, of abiding hope and love, of barely stopping at the brink and managing to claw your way back to standing up and helping others as they catapult toward that edge. The held me together when it felt like every molecule of me wanted to split apart and dissolve into the atmosphere never to remember itself again. I’m just starting this list but I’m going to publish it unfinished and edit from time to time.

• The Body is Not An Apology
• Notes from Your Therapist
• The Nephilim Rising
• Refuge in Grief
• Self Compassion

This is a photo of one of my crow friends.

The wonderful thing about nature is that it doesn’t lie. These crows are around when there’s food and they appreciate me for giving them unsalted shelled peanuts from time to time. They are reliable, if sometimes noisy, and they don’t want to convince me that I’m crazy because I call out their abusive behaviors.

I am so grateful for the few kind and caring people I’ve found. Without them I would probably have had to find homes for my fur babies and would be living in my car somewhere worried about having enough $ for gas so I could move it to keep from getting towed.

I had no control over my mom’s illness, her death, the timing, or where I found myself when she died. For the rest of my life I will regret where I was when it happened. It made me regret all of my life choices from the time I left my undergrad until now.

Why did I choose a career where I knew no one would value me?

At the time it was because I wanted to help the people being crushed by the system who I knew were not being valued. I imagined that with the little power I could have as a teacher I could advocate for helping more than hurting. I hoped that I could effect some change that would be meaningful and that I could protect others from the soul crushing assumptions of those who fear the empowerment of others.

Turns out I was wrong.

At least, I was wrong about some of it. When I was in the classroom I could come to the defense of the children in my room. I could stand up to parents and teachers and administrators who actively worked against the empowerment and liberation of the vulnerable, the different, the creative, the ones who didn’t make them look good or feel good and who challenged their misconceptions about pretty much everything.

I love those kids. They are my people.

I approach everything I do with such tremendous love and care. I don’t like to do anything without including everyone. I will defend even those I don’t like because I truly believe that when we value everyone we all win.

Not the case with our existing systems. The existing systems reward shady, exclusionary, selfish, callous, unempathetic, and evasive behaviors. Back room deals and currying favor to promote themselves, lying to cover it up, and gaslighting those who would confront the corruption is standard operating procedure and has been the culture of the places I’ve worked for the 20 years I’ve spent in K-12 education.

It’s not funny but I look back and laugh sadly as I remember how earnest I was at first.

I believed that if I could just get the ear of the masses I could show them how kindness and concern for the welfare of others would help us all. That failed.

I believed that if I could get into a position of some power that I could wield that power to empower others. That failed.

I believed that if I could just say the right thing I could convince people to stop fighting over resources and start sharing. That failed.

When my mom died I found myself in a world where kindness was rare and was spit on whenever it was highlighted.

I found kind people here and there but they were in the same position I was and I was not able to support them because I was barely making it through each day.

My boss saw my vulnerability and decided to ride me harder and shove me to my knees every chance she got. She decided to call it support so that I could not argue or stand up for myself.

When my mom died I found myself surrounded by coworkers who had been responding to my attempts to share with them, to include them, with hostility and exclusion. When I found opportunities for training or participation in things that they valued, I shared the information with them. One of the managers tried to write me up for it. If it hadn’t been for my direct supervisor standing up for me he would have.

They knew where my skill and interests were and when they were invited to trainings or opportunities they invited each other and left me out. It all came to light after my mom died. I was alone and I was devastated and they sneered at me when I made mistakes, they accused me of being unprofessional and unkind when I spoke up against the way they treated me.

At probably the worst moment of my life I found myself having to force myself to walk into a place where I was met with cruelty, where I was forced to hurt myself to satisfy the controlling power hoarding needs of those with more power than I have.

At the time when I needed community and care and support I was scolded, and insulted, and excluded, and met with only rejection. For the rest of my life I will regret that was how it went down. I will always wonder what I did wrong to end up there. All I’ve done my whole life is try to help. All I’ve done is love and struggle to empower those without power or with less power than I have.

And now I just want to stay home with my fur babies. I can’t see any way to find the community I needed and still need.

I find joy and inspiration and kindness in small places with someone here and someone there. I feel like a ship that no one will allow to dock. Like the barge of garbage that wasn’t allowed to stop anywhere.

I am so grateful for the few kind and caring people I’ve found. Without them and without knowing that my fur babies need me, I would long ago have gone to a cold beach and sat there until I fell asleep for the last time. That sounds so restful.

Last year around my birthday month, I decided to embark on a new journey on a new path. It was just three months before my mom died. I am so grateful that I made that choice while she was still here to see me taking care of myself a little better.

The thing is, I chose to connect with my own feelings and feel them which is not something I enjoy. I vaguely remember a time when I was very, very small when I lived with my maternal grandparents and had my own little protector in the form of a poodle named Snoopy. He would sleep under my crib and bark and do a Lassie move every time he thought I needed someone to come help me. He was my number one fan. He was amazing.  I felt safe then, I think. That was the last time.

I won’t bore you or risk my self by telling you the details but I will say that things that happened when I was very young and things that kept happening since then have not allowed me to feel safe enough to feel my real feelings. The result was that I was like a fictional 50s housewife even when I was telling the world to fuck off. What I mean by that (and I’ve recently come to understand the problems with analogies as communication) is that I was always attending to everyone else and forgetting myself to a painful degree. When I would set tables or get drinks I would routinely get them for everyone but me. Five people, four glasses.

After yet another a truly harrowing experience (that would have been less harrowing if I’d taken care of it earlier) I realized it was the last chance to change course. I could learn to feel my feelings and develop my own way of self-advocating (I cannot stand the competitive, demanding, sneaky, underhanded, selfish bullshit way that most people do it… yes I’m still mad about it because I see it every damned day) or I could slowly lose my ability to live independently and then die. Because I love my furmily and I know they need me, I chose to get my shit together and take care of myself.

Also, I want to be more creative. I want to do art. I used to write, and make comics, and sing, and play instruments, and paint, and dance but I don’t do any of those things any more. Recent psych research and my own experience tell me that I stopped being able to create because I’ve stopped allowing myself to feel.

Now, all that sounds fabulous, good for you and all that, but it turns out it is really not. There’s a great (in size, scope, and quality) reason why I haven’t been feeling my feelings and that’s because they are not pleasant. It turns out that trying to be someone I’m not so that people don’t beat the living shit out of me for being different, or force me to give up who I am so that they feel more comfortable around me, or slowly undermine me and gaslight me into submission is really fucking painful. Dying before your body dies is the worst kind of death and I was doing it to be accommodating. Me, super fuck off punk rock you’re not the boss of me, was hurting myself to be accommodating. I had brutalized myself to avoid the pain I knew others were going to give me.

That is a common strategy in those of us who grew up with domestic violence, not to mention the long list of other ACES I was raised to tolerate and pretend to love. Victims of that kind of violent system will often try to trigger a violent response in the abuser because that way we know when it will happen and how bad it will be. Their primary, more powerful weapon is uncertainty. Not knowing when the pain will come and how bad it will be keeps us in fear and keeps us from rising up against the abuser. So, as a teenager that was my job.

Now, as an adult, I have found that working within an abusive system, where the abuser is not one person, that doesn’t work. My primary survival strategy gave me a massive, catastrophic career fail. It gave me a reputation as a crazy Latina, a diva, a mess. That’s ok. I like that kind of rep. In fact, in my 20s I cultivated a reputation as what we called a “psycho-bitch” because my heroines were always that kind of girl (Lilith, the Morrigan, Morgan le Fay, the list goes on) and I wanted rapists and abusers to know that if they chose to take me on it would be a fight they would regret fighting. It saved me a lot of grief.

But in my line of work it caused me grief. It still does. Sunny happy fake as fuck bullshit or mean and serious bat wielding asshole are my options. That is the law of the land here. I don’t fuck with that. I am still that claw having bitch that people hated when I was 20. I am not going to lie about it any more. I’m also the person who picks up worms and puts them back in the grass. I am also the person who will defend the little things and the vulnerable and I won’t tolerate the glorification of bullies. I will die on that hill.

So here we are. I’m back but I can’t rage like I used to because it will lose me this job.

I will, however, feel my feelings and whatever comes of that comes. I will feel the horrible, devastating hurt that comes from being rejected over and over for just being me. I will feel the heart sinking horror that comes from being the person that everyone wants to give their sins to as though I ought to tell them it’s ok that they tortured small animals for fun or believe that marginalized people don’t deserve rights or that they’re going to hurt me if I keep standing up for the rights of those who can’t defend themselves. I will feel it and if that means I can’t smile and laugh at those who choose to pretend they don’t see the blood on the walls then so fucking be it.

Yep. I’m pissed off and I should be because people show me their ugliness and then turn a smiling face to the world. I wouldn’t care (remember that I’m genetically designed and brutally trained for sacrifice without any credit) except that they hurt other things weaker and more vulnerable than I am and that will not stand.

The end of this is that I need to draw from my allies and from the Earth and from any other places will share their energy with me because I have to live underground at work until I can find a place where I can shine. When that happens, I’ll call the little things and the damaged things and the sweetest things to me and I will protect you, little ones.

For now I need to recuperate and I am creating systems that will make me stronger so I can learn to fight without blowing my own self up. No more falling on grenades, much less my own sword. My fealty is only for those who will go deep with me and will also die on that hill. To all of you who are superficial and can’t take the heat of battle, best wishes to you and vaya con tus propios dioses.

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