When I was younger and trying desperately to be a good evangelical Christian girl, I was always told, or had my own religious ideas about, how I should feel about everything in my life. And it prevented me from actually being myself, and even knowing how I really felt and helping myself.
I remember, when I was thirteen in 2004, Massachusetts started issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, bringing this issue of marriage equality into public consciousness. I saw a picture in the newspaper of two men sitting together at a protest against a "marriage protection" bill. One was holding a sign saying, "I want to marry the man I love."
That broke my heart. I remember thinking, "I wish I didn't have to take that away from him." I wished that God didn't force us to hurt others, and punish people for love. But I had to suppress those feelings.
Our neighbor "needed" my mom's, and my, help, nearly all the time--every day. I hated having to babysit and work in the fields, and I hated being around that loud, dramatic woman. But I had to be a "good Christian," and an obedient kid.
I had to be okay with the idea of getting martyred or raped on the mission field. I had to be okay with hours of tedious King James bible study, with constant mind-prayer, with trying to control my thoughts so much that I couldn't relax and go to sleep, with witnessing when I was an introvert, and with praying for an hour or more when I had no idea what to say. And I had to like everything that was Christian, just because it was Christian.
And through all this, I was supposed to feel close to God, but I didn't. And it's hard to love someone, when you're trying this hard to please them, with no results. But I had to feel love for God--and not just love, but joy in all my efforts to be near him. I could never change how I felt, and all I succeeded in doing was wondering--no, demanding of myself--what was wrong with me, and beating myself up about it constantly.
And the worst part was, I knew that if I shared my struggles with any Christian, I would again be told how to feel, and again hate myself for whatever was wrong with me--that I somehow couldn't measure up, or even relax and stop focusing on measuring up.
And now I am 26, free from the tyranny of evangelicalism, and fully accepted as bisexual by my parents and all my friends. But there are still others who tell me what to feel, sometimes with quite a bit of hostility. And, well, it feels bad. I'm not "supposed" to care, but it still feels very bad and sometimes makes me demand what is wrong with me.
Most of what is out there to watch or read either has no LGBT characters, or makes their stories tragic or fatal. Meanwhile most straight romances totally lack chemistry and feel contrived, cliche, and forced. And according to some "allies" on the internet, I'm not supposed to care.
I have been catcalled a few times, even in my small town, and even when with my mother. And I'm not supposed to care.
My animals sometimes die or go missing and never return. And according to my grandfather, they're "just animals," and I'm not supposed to care. (That one makes me the angriest, because he knows me, knows how much I love my babies, and he cares about me. It's sometimes hard to be gentle with him, and I avoid telling my extended family about these tragedies because I don't want to hear him say it. It hurts.)
But...I do care. About all of these things. And more. And telling me not to care, is not going to change that.
I have found that, if I tell myself not to feel something, instead of dealing with that feeling, it never gets resolved. I end up going around and around in my mind, asking what is wrong with me, feeling like there is something fundamentally wrong with me. That I'm "too sensitive" or "too negative"--instead of just tackling how I feel and feeling better! And I think I deserve to feel better, even if I have to feel bad first to help myself. And I think I would know how to help myself, after all I'm closest to myself.
Sometimes I think that my life consists too much in dealing with negative feelings. But when I let myself deal with them--for example, writing about them, even if it's so negative that I have to keep the writing to myself--I eventually feel so much better. And my life becomes happier. Maybe I have so much to deal with now, because I couldn't or didn't know how to deal with these things earlier.
Telling other people how to feel becomes especially problematic when it comes to feminist or minority issues. If you're not bothered by lack of good LGBT representation in media--whether you're queer or not--then good for you. But please don't tell others that they're wrong for being bothered by these things. If it's okay to feel love, why shouldn't it be okay to feel other emotions too? We deserve to use our energy building good lives for ourselves and being happy--not wondering what is wrong with us.
If you're a man and you don't see what the big deal is with catcalling, please still respect women enough not to do it. And if you're a woman who takes it as a compliment, please still respect that other women feel objectified and sometimes threatened.
And especially if you're white, please don't tell racial minorities not to be bothered by police killings and microaggressions. And I say that as a white person. (Unfortunately, that still carries more weight to some people, whether they consciously realize it or not.)
My mom finally understood that I needed to deal with bothersome emotions my own way, when I related my feelings to grief. (Unfortunately, we've lost a lot of animals and have that in common. But I'm glad she can understand.)
Like grief, sometimes you just have to deal with being hurt, scared, or anything else. It is intense, and scary, but then you can eventually feel better. I have a mostly very happy life, even with the dark times that come and go.
So please don't tell people to just get over things, or that they're not a big deal, or how they should feel about something. All doing this will do, is seriously mess people up--and that's if they care enough to even listen to you at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment