Choosing NOT to sit 'idly by'

(Note: After reading this over several months after it's publication, I can see that at the time of writing this blog I was clearly overcome by a hate-filled rage. To be clear, it's catching. So, feel free to skip this first section - I've included a bolded/italicized section at the end of the rant and before the cooling off bit - or just skip this one altogether. I will honestly understand. I'm leaving the entry here as the CC with Sandy blog is about "consciously calibrating" and I want to be honest about my journey, even the ugly bits.)

I’m irritated to the extreme right now. I probably should go back to bed and get a bit more sleep, but then I’m sure I’d wake up and be neutral again. I don’t want to be neutral.

I also want to live in peace. Unfortunately, we live in a society where that isn’t possible. To live in peace, I would need to know there is no injustice in the world.

I can be peaceful within myself. For the most part, but not always, I can set up my day so my interactions with people, with news, with social media, and so on is limited or limited to the mostly positive. BUT I can’t live in peace – as in sit down, shut up, close my eyes, cover my ears, and keep my mouth shut – when I’m surrounded by chaos and chaos spreaders.

A little background here might help you understand where I’m coming from – I fudging hate injustice. I was born rooting for those who are bullied (in all its forms, from mild to murderous) and I was born ready to fight against the bullies. Unfortunately, I got knocked down a lot. I quickly learned that the world is not a nice place for all people. I learned that what adults say isn’t necessarily what they do. I learned that children are taught to have manners and know right from wrong, but that doesn’t mean adults have to follow the same moral code. I learned that if someone does something truly heinous to you, you should shut up, be quiet, and deal with it on your own because you would be an awful person if you disrupted the life of the person that hurt you and, by default, all the people attached to that person. It also would create scandal or drama and we can’t have that because secrets are always the way to go.

No. Just no. I’m fucking sick and tired of society’s bullshit. (Yes, I swore, and yes, I’m a little bit sorry about using foul language. But not enough to go back and change it. Not today.)

In case you know me, this is not about anyone specific. This is not about my parents. This is about the society I grew up in, the adults, and the children, and the toxic fucking energy that was constantly swirling around me. It’s still here. And yes, I do know that it’s not “just” here; I do know that there are many other communities throughout the world that have the same corrosive tendencies. But I don’t live there; I live here. And I’ve had enough of the bullshit. And I’ve had enough of the silence.

Boys here are raised to see women as property. Don’t argue because it’s true, I’ve seen it generation after generation after generation… in the poorest families to the wealthiest families. As it was when I was younger, the men (and sadly some of the women too) support this toxicity. They support it. Girls accuse men of molestation. The girl is ridiculed while the man (or boy) everyone knows actually did what he was accused of doing acts like he’s so offended and then somehow manages to escape conviction, you know, should it ever get that far, which it seldom does. You probably think you know which girl and which man I’m talking about, but I assure you that you don’t. There are THAT many, too many for you to have a clue who I’m talking about.

I’m angry. I’m livid. I’m tired of living in a society that not only encourages silence and secrecy, but also openly defends wrong-doing, the kind of wrong-doing that someone might call evil. Racism. Prejudice. Sexism. Ageism. Classism. The list goes on. These things are abhorrent. These are not things to stay silent about. Black Lives Matter is not a terrorist group, it’s a human rights movement that we should all be supporting. Feminism and the women’s movement is not an “I hate men” group, it’s a movement pushing for equity, not to mention basic human rights. Being Christian doesn’t make you a good person. In fact, when I find out someone’s Christian, I assume they’re hateful and not to be trusted, not until they show me otherwise. Believing in the liberal value that everyone – absolutely everyone no matter who – deserves basic human rights does not make me a crybaby, a communist, a snowflake, or whatever it is the really unhappy spiteful people are calling it these days. It makes me a good human.

Right now, you’re probably thinking, “Gee, she’s being awfully negative today. I don’t want this negativity to touch me so I’m not going to read this and I’m not going to talk to her anymore.” (Or maybe you’re not. It’s hard to say.) That’s okay. I respect your choice, and I don’t want to be the reason you have a bad day. I really don’t.

I’m angry. I’m allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to be angry. There are MANY things happening today in our society that SHOULD be making us angry.

Saying, “I don’t want to get involved in politics or any societal-type drama” is the same as saying you’d rather not be breathing.

Life is political. Being alive and breathing is a political act.

People, not just politicians, make it that way. Being forced to work in a low-wage job or, no doubt, three, to almost pay your rent, but still not have enough to buy clothes and food for your family? That’s political. Not being able to rent an apartment or buy a house because they’re priced so far above what any minimum-wage worker could afford? That’s political. Being afraid to go out for a walk alone at night in a very small town with less than 2,000 people? Political. Not being able to access the internet or a computer so you can attend school like everyone else? Political. Not being able to be who you are without the threat of someone calling you names, tossing insults, trying to take away your basic human rights, or endangering your life? Political.

And if you’re sitting on the sideline and pretending like it doesn’t affect you, like it’s not a political issue, then you are part of the problem.

We can’t continue to stay silent.

I was kicked off a Facebook group in June for speaking the truth to a bully. To be clear, and I realize this probably doesn’t need to be said because you usually can’t have one without the other, but it was an uninformed bully. Standing up to him, speaking the truth, being “negative” or “political” got me kicked out of that group. I’m good with that, that’s not what this is about. (I actually received an invitation by a member of that group to rejoin the group today, which I declined. Also, I should admit that when looking back, I may have implied that the man was stupid, and I am sorry for that – I should have said wrongly informed or uninformed or both.)

In any case, this just happened to come up today at the same time as so many other examples of injustice, not to mention criminal behaviour, are being thrown in my face daily. The most frustrating thing is that we’re finally in a time when more people can see and hear the injustice, but too many are sitting idly by. Things are getting to the point where we can – in many cases – almost talk openly about what’s happening – like the 250 per cent increase in rapes in my hometown – but then we don’t. Somehow, some way, the topic gets shut down and it gets shoved under the rug where it can’t be seen. The end. Once again, nothing is done, and people go on pretending like life is okey-dokey. It’s not.

I’d like to take the fudging rug and burn it.

Stop letting your daughters be molested. Stop letting your daughters be raped, whether its by a stranger, a boyfriend, or their husband. Stop letting the kid with no lunch get picked on. Stop making the kid with hand-me-down clothes feel like they’re somehow unworthy of living. Stop acting like being homeless or poor is a crime someone is committing; it’s not. It’s a crime society is committing against them. We all have the right to have our basic survival needs met. Children shouldn’t be homeless, hungry, contracting AIDS or other diseases, and so on simply because the capitalist society we live in has determined that those rich bastards, who can, and do, take advantage of the system, earth’s resources, and those who are at their mercy. The world's children - and people in general - shouldn't have to suffer so some enthusiastic capitalist can have three yachts, four private jets, and ten mansions strategically placed throughout the world.

In some countries, children are wading through dumps trying to find scraps to sell for money so they can provide food for the rest of their family. To be clear, no one deserves to be born into that kind of poverty. And, again, the majority of the women having children in these types of situations are not doing it out of choice; they’re doing it because they’ve been raped, because their husbands have the right to sex, because they don’t have access to birth control, and so on.

Here in Canada, we have children living without access to good quality fresh food. We have families living in areas that aren’t safe for children to play. We have people living on the street because they don’t have enough money to pay the exorbitant rental fees or because some landlords simply refuse to rent to them. (This happened to me in my hometown after my divorce. It wasn’t about being able to pay because I could. At the time, I could have paid the rent several times over. The man, who will remain nameless here, said, “If you’re a single mother then I don’t want you renting my apartment. I don’t rent to people like you.”)

We live in a country where whole communities don’t have access to fresh water, and where whole communities don’t have access to fresh produce, and the fruits and vegetables they do have access to cost more than a minimum-wage person can make in three hours of work. We live in a country where our history has proven that our country’s politicians and its people have often been short-sighted at best or downright hatefully racist and bigoted – and all the abuse that entails – at worst.

We live in a country that boasts about its multi-cultural diversity and so on. Really? Aside from the one woman who assumed the position of prime minister after the white, middle-aged, university-educated, wealthy man who was voted into the position had to step down, has there been another feel prime minister? No, just the one. That’s it. One woman for a few months. Canada is over 150 years old. Also, guess how many of these white, middle-aged, mostly university-educated, wealthy men were not white? You got it, zippo. And don't get me started on religion.

Listening to conversations, seeing news reports, and reading comments online during our last federal election proved to me that Canada is still highly racist and xenophobic. We are not nearly as advanced as we let on that we are to the outside world or even to ourselves. We are not where we should be.

Here are some point-form issues to think about. This is NOT a complete list, nowhere near it. This just happens to be the stuff that is coming to mind right now in this period of intense pissed-offed-ness that I’m in.

No water on reservations. (Not to mention the long list of transgressions against this community that go back to the colonization days.)

While I’ve studied this history briefly in university, I have to say that I do not have first-hand knowledge. I’m white passing. I have native blood, but I grew up not knowing anything other than that I was “half-Indian.” Not the correct term for today, but it is the one that was used when I grew up. My biological father didn’t marry my mother because his mother didn’t want him marrying into a family of “a bunch of drunken Indians.” So, basically, this is not something that was talked about, and it wasn’t something I had to face in terms of racist attention. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my mother and some of her family because they’ve definitely faced racism. So, with that said…

We live in a country where the original inhabitants are forced onto sectioned off pieces of land, where many don’t have access to the resources or services they need, where they’re treated like the “foreigner” when, in fact, we are the foreigners – the colonists and the descendants of colonists are the foreigners.

Water – fresh drinking water – is a basic human right. We don’t own the damn planet. You don’t own your country or your city. The land belongs to everyone. It’s here for all of us. (And not just people, but I realize that concept might be too much for some.)

I’ve never lived on a reservation. I’ve never had to face racism. I’ve always had access to clean water, semi-safe education (as in I’m still alive today), and a roof over my head. I don’t have first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to face these particular challenges, but I do know enough to know that what’s happened and what is continuing to happen here in Canada is not right. We don’t have the right to treat anyone with such contempt or indifference.

Our government needs to find its courage, stop being puppets for big business and the wealthy, tell their political opponents to go “love” themselves, and get clean water to every single community in Canada now. There is no justifiable reason why this can’t be done.

Vaginas matter too. Penis or no penis, we all deserve to be treated equitably and with respect. We all deserve to feel safe in our own homes and in our own neighbourhoods. (Also, if you’re born with a penis, but it should have been a vagina, then you should have the option to change your body without ridicule. People should have the right to be their authentic selves.)

For every five women you know, statistics say that four have been sexually harassed or assaulted in some way at some point in their lives. (I’ve been molested, harassed, and raped, not to mention the blatant sexism.)

I am so tired of hearing women blamed for this or that. I’m tired of a woman standing up for what she believes in being called a troublemaker when a man doing the same thing is called a hero.

I’m tired of people referring to men spending time with their own children as babysitting. They’re your children, that’s NOT babysitting.

I’m tired of women being shamed for breast feeding in public, while men ogle women in bikinis, at strip bars, in girly magazines, and so on. What? Breasts are only beautiful if they’re serving the sexual appetite of men? No. Just no.

Women who work should not be shamed for leaving their children with sitters, and women who choose to stay home with their children should not be accused of being lazy. Having done both, I can assure you that I loved my children as much when I was working as I did when I wasn’t “working.” Also, when I was a stay-at-home mom, I worked 24-7 rather than the typical 8-5.

This is one I could write a book on, but there are already a lot of them out there. Read them, please. Standing up for equity between men and women does not make you a man-hater. Being a feminist means you believe in human rights.

Poverty. Again, I could probably fill multiple books on this subject, but there’s enough out there already. People just need to read them. Or take a genuine interest and go find out what it’s really like to live in poverty.

Society is making it harder for people living in poverty to survive, let alone get ahead. For instance, someone with bad credit – no doubt gotten because they don’t earn enough to pay the bills – can’t buy a car at the same rate of interest as someone with good credit and lots of money. By the time a poor person is done paying for their crappy used car, they’ve generally paid enough to buy two to three brand new cars, and that’s if they’re able to make it that far before the insane interest fees, and other poverty-related issues jump in to make it impossible, which usually ends in the car being repossessed while the person is still expected to pay for it. (Even if, technically they’ve already paid for the car and another half-a-car, but still have two cars worth of interest left to pay.)

Single mothers are being stereotyped as drug-addled sluts with uncontrollable children that aren’t right for “this” neighbourhood. (That happened to me in my hometown. I’m not a slut. I don’t do drugs. And my children are amazing people.)

There should not be one single homeless person in this country. Not now, not ever. And before you give me your “I worked for everything I have” bullshit, just don’t. We don’t all get the same start in life. We don’t all have the same supports. We aren’t all looked at or treated the same by society. That’s a fact. I’ve worked hard and while I may be okay, it’s because I have support from family. If I didn’t, the laws and regulations, not to mention societal biases, would have kept me from moving up or, possibly, even surviving. I’m lucky. I’ve been so incredibly lucky in my life and I’m super grateful for that because if I hadn’t been, I could be in a gutter today with my neighbours looking down and saying, “She did it to herself. She should have known better. If only she had done this…” Heck they may be saying that anyway, I don’t know.

Also, while we are living in a country where people are forced to live in tents outside on public property, we should not be punishing them for it or treating them like criminals. The government that allows the economic inequality that currently exists is at fault. The people with money complaining about people tenting in the park are assholes.

Mental health and addictions are not things people choose. It’s not something you can smile your way out of either.

Those of us who have addictions, have them for a reason. I know people who have had lifelong drug addiction issues and their family, friends, neighbours put them down for it – “If only they had done this or that, their life would have been so much better.” The people I know who are drug-addicted are people who were sexually molested by more than one adult male in their life. They were forced to say it didn’t happen. They were ridiculed and made to feel like they’d hurt the perpetrators when they finally had the courage to say something.

People don’t get addicted without an underlying trauma. To be clear, I don’t think any of us are born with the inclination to go out and traumatize ourselves – it’s the communities we’re born into.

Just because it hasn’t happened to you, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Your experience is not the default. How you handle a situation is not the default. If you don’t believe in depression or stress because you’ve never felt it, then you’re very lucky. Probably a little bit delusional, but also very lucky. Be thankful. Don’t shit on people with real mental health issues and say they just need to suck it up.

If you’re not a rape survivor, it’s not because you did something special to keep yourself from being raped. It’s because of a number of factors – the society you grew up in, the people you had around you to watch and protect you, and you were just plain fucking lucky. Take your “I wouldn’t have done this, or I would never have let that happen” crap and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Fat people. I’m obese. I’m obese because my addiction of choice is food. Currently, I’m mostly on level ground and the weight is SLOWLY coming off, but I have to be very careful about what I read, watch, think, or do when it comes to food, exercise, or body talk because I’m prone to ups and downs. What I mean by that is I’ve been both anorexic and bulimic. Neither is good. Bingeing isn’t good either, but it’s what I’m left with until I’m able to somehow work through whatever it is that needs to be worked through – facing my feelings, I guess. My point. Yes, I do have one. My point is that fat people aren’t less worthy of equal treatment. We deserve medical help, just like you do. We deserve to get that job based on our qualifications, just like you do. We deserve to be seen as the beautiful souls that we are, just like you do. Stop telling us what to eat, what diet we should try, what exercise regime we should be following, or how you think we shouldn’t be putting a strain on the taxpayers with our “fat-related” medical issues. Some people are fat for medical reasons. Some are born that way. A few may like to eat, I don’t know, but I’m thinking they, like the rest of us, probably fall into the mental health issue category. And guess what? We weren’t born with that particular mental health issue; that’s all thanks to the wonderfully fucked up anorexic-is-best (if you’re a woman) society we live in.

I’m not sure this fits here, but I’m putting it here anyway. Women don’t have to get married. They don’t have to have children. They don’t have to look the way the women on tv or in magazines look. Women don’t have to be eye-candy for men. They don’t have to be servants, caregivers, or sounding boards for men. They don’t have to sacrifice themselves and their lives for men and children. Women have just as much right to live the life they want to live as men have the right to live the life they want to live. Girls are raised with too many limitations, the kinds that create mental health issues, the kind that tell them – silently or loud and in their face – that they are somehow worth less than their brothers because they don’t have a penis.

I could keep going. I won’t.

(Here is where I try to stop the negative-energy anger-filled rant and transition into a more positive frame of mind. By the way, I completely understand if you skipped the above section. After reading it again several months after writing it, I can feel the intensity of my DARK and ANGRY emotional state at the time of writing - almost like it's catching! I thought about taking it down completely, but it feels like censorship, like I'd be denying the anger that was in me that day, and clearly it was a raging, hate-filled kind of anger. Yuck! Clearly, I'm uncomfortable with anger, especially my own. It scares me and I very seldom get angry or express that anger, so there's a good chance this was an explosion of all the unsaid anger I've felt for many, many years. Either way, if you did read it and you caught the anger bug, please take a deep breath and release it, as I definitely don't want to be spreading hate in any way, shape, or form.)

I want to live in a peaceful world. I want to live in a world where everyone is working together for everyone – we all work together – “all for one and one for all.” I want people to love one another and to get along. I want us all to have food, clothing, housing, fulfilling work of our choice, hobbies, access to nature, and, above all, unconditional love.

I want to live surrounded by people with high-level positive energy.

Yes, I want to be a positive person. I want to be kind, caring and compassionate. I even want to find a way to forgive and, when possible, try to understand where others are coming from – even if it seems like the answer might be from the bowels of Hell. I believe every person on earth deserves a chance to get it right, not to continue doing harm, but rather to learn how to be the best human they can be, one that doesn't intentionally harm others.

I recognize that we are all humans without answers trying to figure out who we are and why we’re here. I recognize that we all make mistakes, some of them whoppers. I've made several myself.

So, what am I saying?

I will stand up for what I believe in whenever and wherever I am able to do so. I will not stay silent any longer. I will not apologize for being who I am. I like who I am. I’m not perfect and I never will be, but I will always try to be the best version of myself that I can be. When I know better, I will do better.

(Added later: Going forward, I will try to write when I'm in a calm and balanced state or, at the very least, not in a hate-filled rage. Honestly, the day I wrote this blog was a bit of an anomaly. I have some theories about what happened to trigger this intense rage that day, but I'm not ready to share them just yet, or possibly ever. Either way, my goal going forward is to NOT add any hate to the world - there's too much already. I want to continue sharing my thoughts, feelings, and challenges, but going forward I will do my best to only blog from a place of love.)