...And Now for Your Regularly Scheduled Program

Whew-boy...

That was something else. I'm hoping I'm at the end of a period of my life. I think it will leave forever-marks on my psyche. Migraines are no joke.

Since December of last year, I've gotten my all-day, every day migraines down to once a week or less. Halleluiah.

Halleluiah. Halleluiah. Halleluiah.

Why does pain always feel like an eternity? Why does joy feel like but a moment?

What I learned:

1. Be grateful for every. little. thing. When I was first trying different things to stop the migraines, and I had been taking medications for a week or so (anti-seizure!), I got to the point where I wouldn't have a migraine until late morning. I became so grateful for that small grace period. I didn't know it was something to be thankful for before. Those small quiet times of peace. I know now.
2. If it hurts you (or anyone else for that matter) in the long run, don't do it. I can't justify eating any old way anymore. The consequences are too severe. My diet affects whether or not I have migraines and I keep to it diligently. I don't think about the foods I'm losing, but the freedom I'm gaining. It's too easy to reach for that which gives you the smallest pleasures right now, only to bring you the heaviest sorrows later. Don't be fooled--it ain't worth it.
3. Time is precious. I can't be wasting it dawdling or worrying over trivial things. There are too many significant things to look forward to and to experience. It's kind of paradoxical to me because I figure I should be living now like I'm already in heaven. There, I'll be making the most of my time, doing meaningful, significant work, even though I'll have all the time in the world. So why am I not doing that now, when I have so few seconds to spare?
4. I am who God made me. And God didn't make me in sin. That happened when I was born into this world. Therefore, I won't confuse my sin with me. Also, God wants me right now. That means all the things that people tell me: that I'm not good enough, that I should change, that they don't like who I am--that all don't matter. God knows who I'm supposed to be. So I'll only listen and answer to Him on the subject of where I am and where supposed to be--thank you very much.

It's not all over, however. I still have many periods of brain fog, during which I struggle to think and follow what's happening outside of me. I'm still fighting the battle. I'm still fighting. Because the last thing I learned is that pain does not endure. I endure.

Spring Cleaning

So I'm cleaning out my house, from top to bottom. All very gross. I've hit the outside and now I just have...well, my bedroom left. Every time I have something that I don't know what to do with, I just dump it in my room. Now there's stacks of boxes everywhere in here, and I have no idea what I will do with them. I asked my husband to get me a shelf, but that probably won't help that much.

Honestly, my mind could use a little cleaning, too. I'm okay where I'm at--though I'm not satisfied. The question is: am I striving for complete satisfaction? Isn't that an impossibility?

I'm trying to fill my head with positives and truths so that there is less and less room for negativity and lies. I think this is a legitimate strategy...I'll know soon enough.

Having critical, judgmental, ugly, vulgar thoughts jump in my head at all hours is wearing me down. I hate not being in control of what's going on in my mind. No matter how much I try to control my thoughts, I can't get them in hand. Not even to decrease them.

Therefore, I will be trying out this new strategy (better than doing nothing about it, I'm thinking). Positive thinking with a sprinkling of reality for groundedness is just what I need to keep my inner self from being a wellspring of bitter anger that I've picked up from the world.

When Will I Feel I'm Home

I'm an alien in a strange land. This is not where I belong. I'm on a journey to my home; every day I make a step closer to that rest, that promise.

My extended family on my mother's side has been here for seven or so generations. Yet I don't feel this country is truly our home. If I saw on the news that a bill had been passed and that our family had to pack up and go because of whatever loophole the government or whoever made up, I wouldn't be surprised.

I bet we'd go, too. And without a fight. This doesn't feel like our home. We're tolerated here. Allowed. Not welcomed, not accepted. How can this be our home? When can we go home?

New Adventure

I've been wrestling with something lately (well, something new), and I think I've been worn down enough to accept what I need to do.

The only problem is this seems like a lead thing, rather than a follow thing. I don't do so good with leading. No one wants to follow me, for one. And I actually want this cause to be furthered, for two. I don't think I'd make much progress by myself. And the thing is I think I'll be by myself for much of this. That's a big part of why this is a problem I feel I've been led to tackle.

I'm so scared. Mostly that nothing will come of this, and I'll know that nothing can be done about the problem even though there are solutions. Easy ones.

An adventure...and a long road ahead.

Why Peace Is So Stressful

Everyone wants more peace in their lives, right? Well, no. I don't think so. Peace is gained through struggle and sacrifice, not comfort and contentment. How can I be freed from worries and distractions and distress if I've never experienced them in the first place? Yet who wants more strife? Who wants to let go? Even when it's of something painful, we don't like to let go. That means losing--no one wants to be a loser.

So, we leave ourselves unchallenged. We settle, thinking we're satisfied. And we hold on to what we don't need and never empty our hands so that we have a chance to grab on to something of substance.

The hardest thing about peace is recognizing what it truly is.

Migraines

I've been fighting migraines for half the year in 2013, since July. At the end of September the sporadic pain became more frequent-- I'd wake up with a headache, experience it for the duration of my waking hours, and go to sleep with a headache.

One thing you have to know about me: I hate going to the doctor. I despise it. What's the going to this person who, even though it's her or his entire job to provide me with a service, acts as though I'm getting in the way of doing their job? I'm somehow wasting their time with my pain and sickness. Who needs to be treated like that? So it's a testament to how much pain I was in (and how much better my new doctor is) that I decided to make an appointment.

The Ibuprofen prescribed did shorten the duration of the migraines so that I wasn't having them in the morning, but that still left the afternoon and night. On top of that, after exactly four hours the pain would kick back in, even though they were supposed to work for six. My doctor called me after a few weeks, and she changed it to two new medicines: one to prevent, one to stop an oncoming attack. The one that's supposed to stop the pain does nothing. Nothing. Plus, the side effects were a bit too strange for me. I don't take that anymore.

The one that prevents the headaches does much better. Some days I don't get headaches, but I still get them a few times a week. Coughing/sneezing, stress, and fatigue sets off the headaches easily so I'm taking things easy.

My priorities have changed dramatically. I have to be careful even how I clean the house. I can't lose control of my emotions. I have to be careful not to overwhelm myself. These things make me look at my life very carefully to see where I'm dragging around unnecessary weight.

It's time to lose the baggage.

Forgiving without Forgetting

I'm called to not only forgive, but to intercede for those who have wronged me. They are people, worthy of eternity. This is so easy to forget.

However, their past deeds do not fade from my mind. These things leave scars that never heal. I'm left with the seams that I trail my thoughts over, hating the feel but unable to help the obsession. How do I get past it? I'm stuck here in this circular pattern. I want out of this trap.

I am a network of ridges, dimples, and scabs. Infections lay underneath, waiting to boil up and fester. Is this the result of forgiveness or un-forgiveness? I think I'm asking the wrong questions. It's the outcome of unmended relationships that have trickled down to every arena of my life. I absolved my betrayers' responsibilities, while believing that I must take them over. No.

I must let them go. I cannot carry them for they are too heavy and too painful to hold. The scars are unsurprising.

Yet even as I move on from the hurts, the memory of them follows. Can I outrun them? No, that would be an unnecessary effort. I am to use them, empower myself. They are evidence of bestowed strength, and I would be foolish to escape that.

I must never forget that, although at times my focus skews inward and I wallow in my pain because I am thinking small. The meanness of my perceptions pushes out everyone who stands beside me until I convince myself that I am alone. My vision then grows smaller and smaller until I can no longer see. I've blinded myself.

Now when I try to open my eyes, I am still in the dark. Even if light comes near, I turn away. It hurts my eyes. But the deepness of my void scares me, and I begin searching for that light. It's a futile exercise with sightless eyes.

I want out so I finally decide to find help. By this point I'm broken and ashamed--all because someone wronged me. I'm led back into the world and startled to find people waiting for me. But I forget that I'm not helped yet. I'm still holding onto something, my hands spasming.

Somewhere down the road I get used to keeping my hands closed. But I slam against a wall and to protect myself I open my hands. I drop those debts that don't belong to me, still unpaid. Then, I ask for them to be taken away. The burden that lifts amazes me.

What do I do know? I move on and use those ghosts that don't quite recede to build myself up and to keep my eyes open for those who are in the same position I once was. But what about the betrayer in my life. I forgave, but do I have a right to demand change?

That I don't know.

Double Standards

I think about things a little differently than most. I used to believe that my perspective was common, but when I spout off my ideas, the people around me look at me as if I'm a one of those homeless people who are slowly leaking crazy all over the floor, and why won't they quit babbling?

When it comes to ideas about women's rights and feminism, I'm ambivalent. That's a weird thing coming from a woman, I know, but hear me out. Top tier for me are human rights. Is this woman being treated fairly and rightfully as a human being? Are there some human beings receiving rights and benefits that she is not? Why?

I don't care that the answer is because she is a woman. I only care that she is treated fairly. How she is treated should have nothing to do with her gender (or sex--but that's a whole 'nother can of bananas). Yet some people make women's rights not about equaling up the playing field, but about women getting what they deserve.

It ends up with this weird mixture of regression and spite. For example, people behaving as if women should be the ones deciding if what's happening to them is fair or not. However, how is that different from our current system in which mostly men (of a certain demographic) decide the rightness of a situation?

I despise double standards. When the implications of a societal norm are not thought out, it leaves everyone hurt. Take, for instance, the issue of physical threats. We're in a bar. It's night and the place is crowded and boisterous. A man laughs loudly with his friends, making large gestures with his arms as he tells a grand story. He steps back in his reenactment and bumps into a woman behind him and spills her drink onto her blouse. "Sorry," he says. In response, the woman dashes the contents of her glass in the man's face. The man shoves the woman lightly.

In most cases, the man will be bounced or have the cops called on him. What happens to the woman? Oh well, you see...physical disparities. Well, let's change the woman to a scrawny twenty-one year old dude. What happens in this scenario? Why is it different? Oh, still a strength discrepancy? Let's make the man who spills the drink a linebacker. Well, the young guy should know better than to throw a drink in man's face when he has no chance of defending himself.

And a woman shouldn't? But, someone will think, the man shouldn't be resorting to physical violence at all. And the woman should? Throwing her drink in his face is an assault, no doubt about it. Oh, it burns me. I've read too many stories in which a man is maimed by some woman and she isn't even called out on it, let alone punished. I seem to be the only reader who is disturbed. This is an ideal situation? Why is this acceptable?

Why are rights treated as if they were non-replenishable and scarce resources? Giving women more rights doesn't mean they have to be taken away from men. Just because some men oppress doesn't mean that they are all inferior.

It will take a lot of relearning on all sides for gender relationships to become truly equalized. If no one is superior to the other, then no one should be treated as superior. That's a roundabout statement and not an obvious one at that. We women can sometimes demand contrary things. We won't our dinners paid for and our doors held open, but we don't want to pay for a man's dinner or open his door. No, we'd rather just pay for our own meals and open our own doors if everyone's going to get touchy about it. Remember this anniversary, we demand. Yet the things that are important to the guy we deem unimportant and fail to remember.

This culture of treating men as if they were expendable oafs is toxic. No one will win this war.

Chicken & Watermelon

My husband told me something extraordinarily funny: he won't eat watermelon in public. He thinks that  doing so would perpetuate a stereotype. He likes watermelon as well as any other fruit, but that particular one has too much negative meaning.

"Yeah, and then I'll bury my face in a wedge and spit out the seeds like a machine gun." He'd then demonstrate the seed spitting--side to side in an ignorant way. It was a messy eating of a person who doesn't know much. What would always make me laugh was how vehement he would look while doing it. "I's sho duz like me some waddermelons!" he'd say, pumping a fist to the side. Sometimes he'd add an irrelevant "Massah!" for effect.

There's sadness mixed in his portrayal. He can't be who he really is. If he reaches for watermelon, there's all of this judgment and contempt attached to it. It becomes a spectacle. Even if no one else around him would think that and he knew that, he'd know that image was in the collective mind. He wouldn't even eat any at a church friend's home because he said he can't in front of white people. His main problem was that it was still on the rind. It being cubed and in a bowl would have let him keep some dignity, I guess.

The simple act of showing like for a certain piece of food becomes a dilemma. I remember from my high school days an incident that occurred during our lunch. They had cooked too much fried chicken (they usually ran out of food) and since they didn't want to throw it out, they offered more portions to the students. Well, the principal came to the "black tables" first. I don't remember any of us accepting the offer, although some white kids did. We never mentioned what had happened among ourselves either. Why talk about the mundane?

Racism isn't the problem here. It helped to cement those stereotypes we can't quite run from, but that's not what I'm feeling now. It doesn't seem as if we can ever escape the past; we wear it on our backs like dowager humps.

There's all kinds of things that I don't dare do or say around those who aren't my closest friends (some of my closest friends are different ethnicities) because I don't want to be laughed at. I don't want to put an image in someone's head who doesn't know better that they will carry around with them and spread. It's beyond making a fool of me; I'm worried about making a fool of us. I think that's a little of what my husband faces when someone sets a plate of watermelon or fried chicken in front of him.

Just Stop

Please. Just stop.

I don't want to talk about "the election." Stop making this so miserable for me. I do not care who won or how he will ruin this country. I don't care.

You're telling me way too much about yourself. You're telling me what you really think of me, of my family. That isn't a good thing. It hurts my heart and frightens me.

We throw such hate at each other, scooped up from inside of us (don't worry; your supply won't be depleted). You fling it while telling me to get over it. It's just an opinion.

Your opinion stinks. I can't get it out of my clothes and my hair. I'm unallowed by tradition to state mine; this is what you get to dictate. I'd like to change those rules and you hate that. I don't need to know this. I'm trying to be your friend.

So please stop.

The Problem with Rap

"As long as it's not rap."

Then there's the awkwardness of people trying to look at me or my husband from the sides of their eyes. Trying to gauge our reactions without us noticing. But of course we notice. We see the false preoccupation with lint on shirts or pants or hair. We feel every scrape and creak of the chairs we sit in. All around us bodies make to go places, but are confined, going nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

We are black and so we must like rap. Are we offended? Not in the way one would assume. Rap is not my favorite genre of music, for one. Yet when people sneer at the thought of it, I become a target of that disdain, whether or not that was the intention (and sometimes that is the intention). At that point, I wonder what else this person is intolerant of. What else is presumed of me that they'd rather not exist?

Easily Offended or Easily Offensive (Black People Can Dance)

How should we deal with those who say or do things that can be perceived as prejudiced? Do we let that person know? Do we let it go? What if it's an ongoing situation with someone whom you are forced to interact with almost every day?

Pictured: "Blue Congealed 

Wobbling Blob of Copyright",

Abi Paramaguru

I like to avoid issues that deal with racial prejudices. It's not that I'm in denial or anything like that. It's that I'd like to move on from the whole situation of being “oppressed.” I don't like being reminded that my ethnicity or race limits me because of what others think about it. I could waste my whole life wallowing in the injustice of it. I think if I can live the life that I'm striving for that that will send a stronger message than focusing on what's wrong, what could be better. I'm trying to live better, and I think that I should be living for God and me, not somebody who's trying to keep me down.

Then there are the situations where it's not that the person is actively trying to keep me down, but his or her ignorance is nevertheless doing that. This is very difficult to deal with, when a person's intentions are not lined up with the actions the person makes. In fact, these very people may be only trying to help, but their underlying beliefs and values are doing the opposite of what they meant.

A Rose by Any Other Name: The Problem with 'African-American'

How do you know in any given place who are the marginalized, the oppressed, or the minority? Look for the groups who change titles every five to ten years or call themselves something different than what outsiders call them. What does that have to do with anything? The ones in power decide what the ones without power are named.

And that does not even need to be directly. A marginalized or stigmatized group will eventually have its name associated with the negative things people think of that group. It's gonna happen. They're marginalized. No power means that people won't know very much about them. They won't be seen as individuals because they are segregated to their own communities, e.g. mental hospital (In this case, even where they live has a name change). The majority does not have any contact with these people unless one or more of them does something newsworthy, and that usually means something negative. A black man is arrested for drug possession. A special ed child soils himself in class. A mentally ill woman harms someone else. So that's how the entire group is labeled. Addicts. Stupid. Violent.

The Race Card

My husband and I watched The Express over the weekend. It was an okay movie, even though it was a little distant, a little too pat and churned out. I hadn't wanted to see it because it seemed like one of those "racism" movies that have no purpose other than to make me feel angry and depressed. But, like I said, it was an okay movie.

The point of this pointless review is a line from the coach at the end of the movie. He said something about making touchdowns whether in Boston or Mississippi. What was odd to me about his line was that he named a yankee city and a southern state. Yeah, Mississippi is so homogeneously racist that you don't have to name any individual towns or cities because they are all equally bad. Moreover, people in northern states neither are racist nor experience racism.