Explaining Depression

Celebrity deaths, although sad, don't usually phase me much. There have been a few recently, however, that were particularly sad for me. Maya Angelou, who passed away on my friend Jade's birthday, and Robin Williams, whose suicide brought out the worst in people that don't understand depression. Jade and I have both had issues with anxiety and depression, and we've helped see each other through some pretty dark times. When Ms. Maya passed he was locked up for some bullshit thing. I didn't know how to get in touch with him, so I wrote him a letter. In it I ruminated the depth of Ms. Maya's character, her essence, her spirit. Because it's difficult to be a sensitive person in this world. Some of us feel things deeply and more intensely than others. But you can grow from trauma and devastation; even if you are a highly sensitive person. She was a shining example of that. It's not easy, of course. Probably less so for people that feel more profoundly than many people.

Some people seem like they are perpetually happy. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but those kinds of people don't understand those of us that aren't. Some people can pull themselves out of a rut with a smile and plucky attitude, but not everyone is like that. And you can't explain it to them. I don't know if they think that they can make themselves happy so everyone else should be able to, as well. They don't understand that when a highly sensitive person experiences something, good or bad, it's exhausting. When it's good it's very, very good and when it's bad it's horrid. That's the Reader's Digest Condensed Version. Unfortunately it's not as simple as that, and unpacking it for people that have no intention of understanding is difficult at best, torturous at worst.

When I told my friend Blue that I'd been dealing with anxiety and depression and was on medication for it he said, “really?? I didn't think you were that kind of person.” That threw me. What kind of person?? A depressed person?? A crazy person?? A person that can't deal with reality?? A person that takes corporate drugs?? What kind of person am I to him now?? What does being “that kind of person” entail in his mind?? It struck my curiosity, but it also stung a little. He's very laid back and earthy, and I'm kind of intense and loner-ish with a wicked case of Bitchy Resting Face. It makes me wonder how people see me now that I talk about the issues I've had. Maybe it was just more convenient for everyone else when I didn't?? It sure as shit wasn't convenient for me. Hiding hurts. Evidently so does being honest.

Another friend, Eduardo, is just such a happy-go-lucky dude, and he constantly radiates positive energy. Most of the time it's great. He's so much fun. He's so friendly. It's so easy to like him and to be around him, except when you're depressed. His “everybody get happy” attitude becomes draining. When you're depressed, even just moderately depressed, you're not just in a bad mood. It's not just a funk or a grumpy day. Your brain chemistry is fuckin' with you hard core. You know you should be able to shake off a few bad days, or even bad weeks, but what my friend Ellie refers to as her “brain monkeys” won't let you. Things stop seeming as important. Your blood boils or freezes for no reason. That part of your mind slowly goes dark, and it becomes increasingly difficult to remember a time when you weren't depressed. The worst part is when you know that what you're feeling isn't rational but you cannot, for the life of you, figure out how to change it.

So when Robin passed away, the deluge of negativity about people with depression (suicidal or otherwise) was intense. I was balls deep in a depressive episode, and when I saw some of the things my friends posted about how fucked up people that are depressed and/or suicidal are and that they should just get over themselves. We're selfish, because everyone has problems. Don't we know that?? How can we just think about ourselves like that?? And what's with the pills?? Maybe when a normie has problems they should just take pills to make it go away, too?? That'll just, like, solve everything.

It's a chore to explain that the pills regulate the levels of serotonin in our brains, which is often the thing making us depressed. They're not magic, and for a lot of people they're a last resort. Diet, exercise, yoga, meditation, relaxation, therapy, teas, steams, long walks, good books, amazing friends; they're all great, but they don't always change your brain chemistry enough to make you “better.” It's not their fault any more than it is a depressed or anxious person. If anything, depressed and/or anxious people feel guilty for all the things they're grateful for not being enough to take the “brain monkeys” away. The anxiety pills are to stop an attack in progress, because happy thoughts are not enough. I want to tell people that if they've never experienced a panic attack then don't act like you know something you don't. It's terrifying. It's physically and mentally debilitating. The level of insensitivity of a person that tells someone with anxiety to “just calm down,” is astounding to me.

One friend in particular, Shasta, had a great deal to say online about the selfishness of depressed / suicidal people. I've only ever known her to be a sweet, amazing, intelligent, affable, lovable person, so it took me by surprise that she had such vitriol in her. She's one of those preternaturally happy people, so for her to get angry about something like another person's mental state was equal parts shocking and infuriating. To hear this nice person tearing down people that are in a bad place changed my perception of her a little bit. This woman is usually so openly loving and accepting of pretty much everyone. For her to have so much wrath for the depressed and/or suicidal struck me as . . . confusing. I made the mistake of trying to engage with her a little bit, just to have a conversation. Her response was something to the effect of “I guess I just have too much to live for.” What a thoughtful thing to say to someone that has just opened up to you about their experience with depression. Is she insinuating that people that are depressed don't have much to live for?? I don't know. That kind of callousness, especially from someone that is usually as caring as she is, made me sad. It's one of those things that shutters people with depression. When I'm depressed I isolate. Her response to what I had to say is a shining example of why.

This leaves me at an impasse. You can't force anyone to listen, or to communicate, or to understand. I wish I could, but I can't make people think. Some people are just going to be insensitive and think they know about things that they don't. It's how life is. And the more depressed people, or anyone on the spectrum of mental illness, feel like they need to shut up, the more they do – and the more depressed they become. For something as common as anxiety, depression, or even just being a highly-sensitive person, when you're shit on for it and made to feel weak and silly, a lot of the time we do just shut up. No one wants to hear it, so we clam up. We shut down. And that makes it all worse.

I don't know what the solution is. I do my best as a person that has experienced depression and anxiety and sensitivity to be honest and open as I feel comfortable with, to keep my weird moods in check as much as I can, and to be thoughtful about how, when, and why I communicate with others about what's going on. That's all I can do. Of course, I wish people would extend the same courtesy to me, but no one can make another person do that. I do wish more people would.

Names have been changed to protect the privacy of pretty much everyone.

Football Has Turned My Friends Into Zombies - From a Former Fairweather Fan

I'm really starting to detest football, and not because I actually detest football. I've just reached a saturation point. Which is unfortunate because the damn season has just begun. It's bad enough that it begins in the fall and continues through the darkest, most depressing months of the year. I used to enjoy going over to a friend's house on Sundays, having some beers and congregating around the tv, laughing and cheering and bouncing kids on my knee. I've never been a football person, anyway, but it was fun to be included in the festivities. Even during the SuperBowl this year, which as a general rule I give less than an entire shit about. But it was fun to see your hometown team doing well and partying with the neighbors.

However, since the Seahawks won the SuperBowl, things have taken a turn for the macabre. We now live in a Seattle where if you're not a rabid “12 Fan,” then there is something culturally wrong with you. I mean it. It's a full-blown obsession; the kind some people get mental health counseling for. Game days are like the beginning of a zombie movie: town overtaken by a consumptive fever that makes everyone lose their minds, falling under the possession of the blue and green. The Legion of Boom says “scream” and they say “how loud??” If you go out to the store and have the unmitigated gall to not be decked out in full regalia, the cashier asks you suspiciously if you're from around here. If you go to a restaurant or a cafe, everyone around you will be shrieking and foaming at the mouth. If you stay home, your neighbors will be wailing from their homes, causing all the neighborhood dogs to become apoplectic, including your own.

I have to sit in my room with the doors and windows closed and the tv on just to get away from the goddam noise in the privacy of my own chambers. Heaven forbid I'd like to do something like sit somewhere quiet and write or read a book, because there is no place that's quiet. I have to wear earplugs or noise-canceling headphones or listen to the barking; barking dogs, barking people, barking mad, for three hours. They think it's hilarious. I worry about their well-being.

I set my social media filters accordingly. I unfollow certain friends during football season and unsubscribe from several publications. Sometimes I get away from it at all. Filters are not enough. If you live in Seattle and you haven't been infected by the Blue Fever, then that's too damn bad. So I'm on social media blackout. I'm all for social media blackout time if it's for a reason that doesn't suck. Football is a stupid reason. I'm just sick to death of hearing about it. I have this feeling deep in my gut that there is something happening somewhere in the world that would be interesting to know about. Unfortunately, I live in Zombieland. The Seahawks are playing. Nothing else exists.

Kansas City recently usurped the title of loudest stadium in Christendom. If the level of noise around me is any indication, The Legion is not happy with that. It sounds like they think that even though we live fourteen miles from the actual stadium that “we” can take that title back!!

You know what would be rad right now?? Laryngitis.

Oh, and GGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, GGGIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDDDD SSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRIIIIEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I want to post that every five minutes and see how quickly everyone hates me, too, but I have other shit to do.

Of course people have every right to do as they please in their own homes and on their own social media. Conversely, if I have to sit in my own home and listen to it for hours on end, I have every right to comment on it. I think they're annoying, they think I'm annoying. I try to make it light and fun online when I can. Admittedly it was difficult the day I was in bed with a sinus migraine and surrounded, as I was, with barking dogs and fans wilding out, I was a bitch online. I'll own up to that. It's perfectly legal for your overzealous neighbors to make noise during the day. It just sucks when you're sick and there's nothing you can do about it. Y'all go ahead and make you noise and I'll make mine.

Unpacking "God Made Girls"

Okay, so I just heard the song for the first time and I want to get my first-blush response down. I know nothing about RaeLynn that I didn't learn from watching the video, so I have no reason to malign her as a person. I mean, yeah. When she sings she sounds exactly like the “dumb girl” voice I do that makes my mom crazy, but that's a critique of her lack of talent, not her character.

However . . .

God made girls to make boys get dressed and clean up and go to church?? God made girls to flirt and wear cute clothes??

“Something beautiful and breakable that lights up in the dark.”

Fuck you.

Now, I'm certain that most of us ladies have done one or more of these things at one time or another. I don't want to traduce the “girly” girls for being a certain way. All girls are real girls, whether they wear pretty skirts or not. Shit, I'm from Seattle – lots of the boys wear pretty skirts, too. If that's your genuine personality, you go!! But to intimate that girls were put upon this earth by some deity specifically to do these things?? Make him wait for us to get cute, “drag” him around, pressure us to have sex (“flirt” but “put up a fight”), I have to call bullshit. I think the song was meant to be sweet and innocent and cute, but it's really destructive.

I guess now that Taylor fucking Swift has come out of the feminist closet, straight, white, Christian, conservative Nashville needed a new it-girl; someone non-threatening that could drive home the message that girls were not meant to be self-sufficient or complete or okay unless they're straight, white, Christian, and conservative.

I usually avoid YouTube comments, but the ones attached to this monstrosity of a “music” video are doozies. Things like “who said anything in this song that's sexist??” Or, according the geniuses on YouTube, “sexest,” “sextest” or “sexiest.” Were we listening to the same song??

Just an aside, fellow feminists, but maybe that's where the movement has gone wrong all these years?? Some people don't know the difference between “sexist” and “sexiest.” Maybe they're not misogynists at all?? They're just dumb as a bag of hair.

I kid. Anyway . . .

Maybe I'm just old and bitter and gross, or whatever, but this fucking song is sexist. Saying in no uncertain terms that God made girls for boys is inherently sexist. That we were put on this earth to keep them clean and straight and to be “fragile” and their passenger - “singin' in the front seat” - smacks of patriarchy. I'm of the school of thought that a young woman can be flirty and pretty and wear a dress while being intelligent and funny and cool, but the song doesn't mention any of the latter. Some of us aren't soft. Sometimes when we're “loud” we're doing something other than crying and berating the men for not holding the door. Once more, none of these options are on the proverbial menu. The song doesn't say that God made girls to read books or sit in the driver's seat or go to law school. It's all about how we're here to be sweet and soft and fragile and difficult and to take care of our men. Those are lovely things, but that's not all we do as women, is it?? Ever?? That doesn't mean that every girl that doesn't go to law school is any less of a woman, but the song paints us into a corner. God made girls to do these simple-minded, silly little things. Don't get me wrong, y'all: some of the smartest, most hard-working, sass-mouthed women I know are SAHMs, conservatives and proud wives. But that's not all they are. God didn't put them here on earth to be decorations or nannies to their men.

It's pretty fuckin' degrading to everyone to assume that men need women to make them want to clean themselves, is it not?? Men are capable human beings. They can feed and dress themselves and get themselves to church of their own accord. I think that messages that they can't are why I know so many grown women that say things like, “oh, he's just a dad. He doesn't know anything.” Women with smart, educated, successful, nice, caring husbands can't be expected to remember to pick up their children from school, or to wear clean clothing because he's just a dude?? You have got to be kidding me. That is such a vile, condescending idea to sell anyone, especially young people. It does appear to explain to me, to least on surface level, the right-wing talking point that gender equality is bad for women. If they can instill the idea from childhood that women are meant to do these things and men are meant to do those things and everything else is against God's plan, well, then the conservatives are rescuing all the sweet, soft damsels in distress from the evil feminists that believe everyone is capable of choosing his-or-her life path and should be able to do so. 'You don't want to go out there into the world by yourself, sweet girl. Stay home. Look cute. Take care of your man. If you don't you're not only disappointing God, you're a militant ball-buster.' It's taken me a long time to even be able to get from point a to point b on that one. Believe me, without a map to follow that logic I became disoriented more than once. I still can't comprehend how or why that's a good thing. Hey, if you believe that God made you to be the way girls are described in this song, then that's all gravy. Yo go, girl. What I cannot get behind is the idea that it's how your God made all girls to be. I don't accept that.

I'm not always sure about the whole God thing, but I'm sick to fucking death of hearing how those of us that don't fit into this demarcated category are somehow doing it wrong.

God made girls to wear pink. And black. And sweat pants. And swimwear.

God made girls to argue and get loud, be opinionated – not just in the home but in the world. Vote. Teach. Run for office. Raise kids. All of the above. None of the above, if that's what blows your proverbial dress up. Hell, be Wendy Davis and wear a pretty skirt and pink running shoes while filibustering for hours.

God made girls “for dancin' to our own beat.” Ours. Whether that's bubblegum country or punk rock is for us to determine, with or without God and definitely without paternalistic condescension.

I can't wait for the parodies of this song, and I really can't wait until the drag queens get a hold of it. God's 'bout to tell everyone, “I'm 'bout to rock your world.” Because God also made gurls.

Place that in your narrow mind and stretch it, y'all.

"Abortion Clinics"

If you know me, or are my friend on Facebook or Twitter, then you know that I'm a total current events junkie and that women's repro health issues are something I read and post about frequently. Something has bothered me for a long time, and I've spoken about it on my other personal social media outlets, but I haven't done so here yet. So, here goes.

I have a strong aversion to the term “abortion clinic.” While, yes, places like Planned Parenthood do perform abortions it's been widely reported (and widely ignored by mainstream right-wing media sources) that most of what these kinds of clinics do for women is provide other services. I've spoken to a number of my more conservative friends and many of them have the same erroneous talking points. They act as though they know what goes on, but nary a one has ever stepped foot in a women's clinic of any kind. Save for some of the women I know that have children and have been to the gynocologist, which is sort of the same thing but not entirely. In any case, I listen to them and I feel like they've been terribly misled; they read something on Breitbart or The Blaze or saw something on Fox News about the evils of these so-called “abortion clinics” and they believe it without question, conversation, research or critical thought.

As an individual that has patronized Planned Parenthood and another non-affiliated women's clinic in the greater Seattle area, I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight to the best of my ability, because this anti-choice rhetoric is really pissing me off. It's like when anti-choicers call people that are pro-choice “pro-abortion.” It only serves to vilify people that think differently and to get folks all fired up on their “moral” crusades. I'm all on board with having an open conversation, but when the language becomes incendiary like that the walls go up and nothing gets accomplished.

So, gentle reader, won't you accompany me on my repro health journey??

When I got pregnant with my daughter I was seventeen. My mom's insurance did not cover pregnancy and promptly dropped me. This is how I landed in the offices of the local Planned Parenthood. I had a free pregnancy test done and when it came back positive the staff and I had a discussion about what I would do next. At no point did I feel pressured by them to have an abortion. Their job, and they were professional and courteous about it, was to help me get to the next step regardless of how I chose to proceed. I seriously considered having an abortion and decided it wasn't for me. You hear that, folks?? A liberal decided not to have an abortion. We do exist, and we're not nearly as rare as you've been lead to believe. But I digress. They put me in touch with DSHS and Washington Public Health so that I would have my prenatal care covered and would have social workers and advocates that would help me navigate the process of being pregnant. Because it is a process. It's not just BAM – you're pregnant. Here's your baby. There's a ton of paperwork, doctor visits, health decisions to me made. It's complicated and overwhelming, especially for someone young and inexperienced with these kinds of life choices. It was Planned Parenthood that got the ball rolling for me, as I have no doubt they would have had I chosen to terminate my pregnancy. When I hear the organization that helped me – and other organizations like it that have since – being lambasted and defamed it really makes me mad!! I read what some of this anti-choice crowd has to say and some of it is blatantly not true. They have no idea what they're talking about, and it's harmful to women who are vulnerable like I was: to be lied to. Granted I have never stepped foot into a Crisis Pregnancy Center, but by all documented accounts both visual and in print, they lie to women in order to further their “moral” agenda (because lying is so moral) and then have their friends (politicians, pundits, etc.) turn the tables around and say that PP is the place with the agenda. From my experience, nothing could be further from the truth.

Anyway, this is why I have such a beef with the term “abortion clinic.” I've been going to an “abortion clinic” regularly my entire adult life. They've hooked me up with repro health services like pap tests, breast exams, consultations, STD screens and birth control, either for free or inexpensive, since 1997 and for that I am eternally thankful. They're the ones that told me I needed to get my hiney to have a cancer screening and a cervical biopsy, which ultimately lead to my diagnosis of cervical and uterine tumors that would have become full-blown cancer if they remained untreated. This is what they do in addition to providing abortion care: they save people. They saved me, and I've had exactly zero abortions. And I am convinced that the reason I've had no abortions is because I had a quote-unquote abortion clinic that I could go to when I needed things like straight-forward information and birth control. Birth control: the thing that keeps women from needing abortions.

But, y'know. This is all anecdotal evidence. Very few on the right seems to give a shit about women like me, anyway, whether we have abortions or not. I just wish that more people would get down off their “moral” high horses long enough to listen to women like me who have been there and actually know what we're talking about. I've been called irresponsible, a slut and a libtard by strangers for speaking up about this, and I don't accept that. I try not to go around on the internet calling regular folks names for having a different opinion than mine (even though I do think Rush Limbaugh is a giant asshole). It's just that so many of the people that I've encountered, whose posts and comments I've read, ignore the experience of real people and jump straight to inaccurate conclusions they've drawn from propaganda. So many of them are the same people that can't believe that Chelsea Clinton is having a baby because all “irresponsible, slutty libtards” hate babies and all child-bearing women and think that all people should have abortions because they're so much fun. Not that there aren't liberals that do the same thing, but there's so much shouting going on that I think we've lost a great deal of perspective. The party of “personal responsibility” and “small government” would like to make sure that you do what they would do in a given situation. In any case, millions of abortions have been provided since Roe vs. Wade was established, and I have a difficult time believing that 100% of them were performed on liberals.

The language we hear is the language we use. It becomes the voice in our minds when we think, and this term just does not fly with me. It's bogus and I'd like to call it out for limiting how we think.

Anyway, maybe I've carried on enough about the subject for one afternoon. I just want to clarify. If you're ever in Seattle and in need of repro health services, I know a wicked cool clinic. They do abortions, but they do all kinds of other stuff, too. If they have an agenda, it's helping women out. That's an agenda I can get behind.

Out There: The Formidable World of Long-Term Unemployment

Being unemployed, or underemployed, is a royal pain in the ass. I suppose there's a more couth way of describing the experience, but why bother. In fact, why fucking bother?? Having run the gamut between part-time, temporary, desperately underemployed, off-time (as in unpaid breaks during sessions of classes and / or holiday breaks) myself, and now completely laid off, I feel as though I have enough experience as someone with a lack of a job to be at least kind-of an expert.

Where's the job listing for that shit??

Searching for employment in the information age, where everything is so available to us, can be especially excruciating when people ask with cloying sincerity, “have you tried Craigslist??” or “have you heard of Google??” I wish I were shitting you, but I've been asked that multiple times. I know that people – or at least I feel like most of the people that I talk to – are trying to help. Bless their hearts, but do they think I got my Bachelor's degree under a rock?? When the former editress of the college paper I was writing for legit asked me if I'd heard of Google, I wanted to end it right there. Honestly, I love her, but for me there was nowhere to go but down. And, for you double entendre fans out there, not in a good way. More of an Edmund Fitzgerald, Oso mudslide kind of 'down.' (Too soon??)

The application process has changed with the uprising of online culture. A good friend of mine suggested I go to the places I'm applying and speak to someone directly. While there are still some careers and some places where this is useful, now that I've pared down my search to online freelance work there's really no place for me to go to. Even local ads on Craigslist and Indeed don't often give potential applicants a location, let alone and individual to contact. It's probably smart on their part because of those of us that would totally be on board with pulling a Rory Gilmore and camping out in the lobby until someone gives us something to do.

The search itself can be bad enough. I've been asked for a headshot when applying for a job at a summer camp. I've been asked to submit my college transcripts (which cost money to obtain, yo) for a job that did not require a college degree. I've filled out numerous lengthy aptitude tests and ethics exams for jobs that paid minimum wage, some of which weren't even hiring at the time. I was kicked off Care.com for having my background check tell a potential client that I had committed six felonies in one day. That one was news to me. At the ripe old age of twenty-four I was told I was too old to be a promo girl. That one sounded more like, “why aren't you prettier??”

These are all such charming anecdotes, aren't they?? They'll make a really great book one day. Maybe.

Things more recently, however, have been looking increasingly grim. Not just grim as in unpleasant; grim like a Tama Janowitz novel. Looking for regular work has become a source of anxiety that I'm not proud of. It's still there, of course. It's just that no one really wants to hear about it when they're heard about it already. Anyway.

Cut to the recent rejections. A couple of them have been doozies.

I'm trying to begin a new career, and my progress has been hindered by this thing called life, but I'm still trying. I'm not going to stop trying. I'm going to grit my teeth and try again, no matter how much more painful, stressful, daunting and humiliating the results become.

Little did I know when I wrote that last sentence that they were about to get exponentially more painful, stressful, daunting and humiliating. Stay tuned.

A few months ago I received an absolutely scathing rejection letter. I mean, this place made no pretense of sparing my feelings. No “we don't feel like you'd be a good fit,” or “maybe apply again at a later time.” This one went straight for the jugular. My application piece was called “awkward” and “riddled with typos.” It wasn't, by the way. I proofread it both before and after the application process. They went on to say that they “simply do not have a staff of editors available to work with someone like me.” I thought I'd done a good job; or at least a halfway decent job. I admit it. I cried all day when I got that letter. It still burns, when I think about it. And how can I not think about it?? If I don't think about it, how will I do better next time?? At least sometimes, when I feel like getting my hopes up about something that seems like it would be cool and for me, and I know that whatever it is I'm doing is wrong and I have to fix it. But I've come to expect rejection, if I get a reply at all, and that ain't good.

My friends and former colleagues ask me to send them my resume, which I've tailored so many times I makes Paris Gellar look like Spicoli. On one unfortunate occasion a few years back, a friend's sister offered to stick her neck out for me and pass my resume along for a position that was opening up where she worked at the time. I told her I'd have my resume to her by Sunday, and after a busy weekend my flash drive had shit the bed and I had to start from scratch. Which I did: over cold, stale coffee, at 5 am Sunday morning, in the dark, in a room full of sleeping fifth graders that had a late-night sleepover party in the bedroom next to mine. It came as no surprise, although with a great deal of disappointment, that my pasted-together-at-the-last minute resume, which this time actually was riddled with typos (and absolutely no applicable experience for the job), was not what the company was looking for. I exhausted myself for jack and shit. And jack muthafuckin' left town. Now I'm afraid to send my resume to friends. I'm afraid they'll see how inadequate I really am.

I sent one to a friend recently that was willing to put in a good word for me at a company she used to work for. I didn't expect much, because there is nothing about me, my resume, my experience, my appearance, my demeanor, or anything else even remotely related to my person that says 'leasing agent,' but I am no longer in a place to be picky and she was trying to help me out. I've faked it and failed at ten other careers; hell, what's one more?? I waited tables in a strip joint, sold lingerie, cleaned houses, bartended, worked in a laundromat, taught gymnastics, nannied, taught preschool, had numerous unpaid writing gigs, written SEO content, worked as an executive sales associate, and interned at a production company. Sometimes I did several of these things at once because the jobs were either temporary, part-time, or both. One year I had 8 W2s. You can say a lot of things about me, but you can't say I didn't try my ass off to make ends meet. What's once more?? Shit, I recently read an ad for an actress to play a waitress for the Twin Peaks revamp: busty brunette. I could pull that shit off. “Must live in Los Angeles area.” Nevermind that Twin Peaks was filmed near Seattle. In any case, I never heard back from the leasing agent job.

Fuckit.

And then the truth hit the fan. A friend and former colleague recently suggested I apply for a job that was opening up at a place where I used to work. I checked it out online, submitted my application, and waited. And waited. Then came the long, rambling voice mail about how the position has been filled and I should apply again in the fall. The position was filled by a younger, less experienced woman from another facility; a facility I worked at when I was younger and less experienced. Another employee told me straight-up. No hemming. No hawing. No rambling. Just, yeah. And I feel quite a little fucked over.

Kind of like the last job I had, but I'm going to shelter you from that one. At least from now.

So what is the next step?? I've heard that some people hire someone to help find themselves a job. What I don't understand is where someone that is unemployed gets the money to hire someone to do anything. It's disheartening. It's discouraging. It's exhausting. Putting myself out there and being turned down, denied, repeatedly. If you Google 'unemployed' (or any related search term) you'll find a lot of cruel jokes about people like me. It's bad enough to be the eternal recipient of NO, but to be made fun of for it en masse just makes it more soul-crushing.

I know, I know. “Don't let it get to you. Don't dwell on it.” But riddle me this, oh, purveyors of undaunted optimism: how?? We're talking about years of let-downs. As a human being, how does one simply just not give a fuck when one is poor and living off the good graces of others?? I have the desire and ability to work. Yes, there are opportunities out there that are just not going to work out. But this is about how to handle rejection. Lots and lots of being passed over, being told 'thanks, but no thanks,' over and over and over again, what feels like ad infinitum. I don't want to be someone that gives up looking, but I have to be honest; I understand why so many people do. It starts to sound like you're not good enough, and then it starts to feel like you're not good enough, and that wears a person down over time. Platitudes are nice little conversational buffers when someone doesn't know what to say, but they don't really mean anything.

“Who cares what people think??” I've been asked a few thousand times. When you're unemployed?? Lots of people. When you submit a resume, when you apply, when you interview, you have to care what other people think. You're essentially selling yourself, or the idea of what a good self you would be to have around. If the person on the other side of the desk doesn't like you, or your credentials, or lack-thereof, or what you're wearing, or that your resume takes up more than 300 words, or that you took Oceanography as a lab science (true story), you're out-ski. Both of you have gone out of your way to spend time getting to know one another, so you kind of have to give a shit what the other person thinks. It becomes like a horrible date, especially when it does not result in employment. Yes. You have to care what someone else thinks. If you're lucky enough to have your resume and cover letter read and have the opportunity to be called forth for an interview, you bet your sweet tuchus you have to care.

Self-tests?? Been there. Practice interviews?? Done that. Frankly all of this means nothing when one considers the last interview I had was almost three years ago and it was for an internship. If I scored an interview today, I would be hard-pressed to not offer to wash the interviewer's feet with my hair just for allowing me into the building. Nevermind that none of my interview clothes fit anymore because, well, my last interview was ten lbs ago, and if the unfathomable happens and I actually get to spend ten minutes being scrutinized in person, I'm at risk for looking like I'm trying to look ten years younger than I actually am.

So, I'm tired. I'm flummoxed. I'm out of ideas.

Sluts.

Conservatives. I try not to take what they have to say personally. I mean, I know they're not talking about me-me. They're just making sweeping and erroneous judgment calls about people that are like me, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't piss me off sometimes.

This week I'm continuing to read about Hobby Lobby and their sanctimonious ilk not wanting to provide contraception to their employers because according to their uber-conservo logic, contraceptives are the same thing as abortion. Never mind scientific evidence and the simple fact that if one is not pregnant one cannot have an abortion. Reality appears to have no jurisdiction in their dark and scary land of cautionary tales; uteri littered with the remnants of tiny dead people, Kermit Gosnell and his house of – I think we can all agree on this – horrors. But they seem to be going us one more, and in a strange direction: any pregnancy that may have occurred but did not is an abomination. No condoms, no pills, no IUDs, no rings, no Depo, no nothing. Every sperm is sacred, as Monty Python once said.

And just so we're square, this line of 'infringement on religious freedom' is also brought to you by the folks that brought to the news an employee that said something pretty dickish to a Jewish customer about why they don't have Jewish holiday things there. But I digress.

Then the sex-negative education push gets in my mental pathway and I am left to wonder: if married grown-ups imbibe and use birth control, they're wrong, too?? Family planning at all is unacceptable?? In the world of failed abstinence-only education, even when married (or otherwise committed-to-one-another people) can't practice medical birth control for any reason whatsoever??

I can't get there.

I can't help but feel a little lost during all this nonsensical discourse. It's been a difficult year, in that respect. These policies, and proposed policies, hit me directly. Sometimes the comments people make hit me more directly than others, and not in a good way.

I've written about this in the past, so maybe you know this already. I got HPV from a guy that I had dated. Twice. HPV can clear up, but sometimes the damage it does to a woman's body does not. That's me. I had a hysterectomy at thirty-three because the HPV gave me such a tumor-ridden cervix and uterus that most of the baby-making factory had to go. I was fine with it. I wasn't planning on having any more kids anyway. It's still scary, though. This person that was with me and wanted to have a family, even though I didn't, gave me a virus that made it so that I would never be able to produce a family, in the biological and traditional sense of the word. Don't get me wrong; I hated being pregnant. He didn't know he had it, so I don't blame him. HPV affects women; not men. The irony of the man that was mad at me for not wanting kids with him made it so that I couldn't have kids with anyone, right??

Anyway.

I didn't qualify for any kind of medical care that I could afford until Governor Gregoire fast-tracked the policies of the Affordable Health Care Act in Washington State. One of the first things that happened to me once I finally had coverage, for the first time in my adult life, was my diagnosis. Scary, lonely, shitty. And all the while, all around me, people are shitting all over the ACA. The reason I'm not dying is such a bone of contention for so many conservatives.

How does this tie into the whole Hobby Lobby controversy?? Join me, won't you . . .

Let's take Pam Stenzel, for example. An abstinence-only “educator” that spent years working at the government-funded religious organization Crisis Pregnancy Centers, shaming sexually active young women, and now is paid to speak to young people in public schools around the country (and the world, as she claims).

Just let me side-bar for a second here and say that abstinence can be a wonderful thing. If that's what's right for you, then you go. There is absolutely no shame in abstaining. I want to make that clear. However, there should also be no shame in not abstaining, if that's your choice. I do not subscribe to the theory that sex is purely for procreation. It is okay to have recreational sex. We live in a world with lots of scary diseases, and an unplanned pregnancy can suck out loud, but we have a myriad of ways to make choices about the sex we choose to have responsibly. So when people that fancy themselves educators, such as Pam Stenzel, use shame and blame tactics to frighten young people into abstaining, I think that's kind of bullshit. Sex is biological. We all want to get schtupped, and that's okay. But shaming is mean, and it doesn't work. (Okie-dokie, Ann Coulter – you suck as a human being).

Pam Stenzel is quoted as having told a room full of high school students recently that “if you take birth control, your mother probably hates you.” That's not even slut-shaming; that's an attempt to shame something like 99% of all women, because that's about how many of us have used birth control during our lives. To call that “slut-shaming” insinuates that all these women are sluts, which is a smelly pile or bull feces. It blows my mind that this woman gets a big ol' paycheck saying things like that about most of the population of American women. What IS that??

I've read articles in which young women that are not considered “pure” are compared to ABC gum. What kind of a horrible thing is that to say to a person, let alone a kid?? According to these purity-purists, you're as disgusting as trash if you have sex outside of marriage. Not even recyclabes: TRASH.

And then there's the believe that people that can't procreate traditionally (an argument usually projected at gay people) should not be allowed to get married, because marriage is for procreation. If there are people out there that don't want to make babies, then they shouldn't get married.

This fucking sucks!! These people and their weird ideas for how others should live their lives are really, truly ugly and usually poorly thought out.

But during the time last year when I was scared for my dirty, slutty, cancer-riddled life, some of these messages got to me in a way I wish they hadn't. But they did.

I can't have babies, so I should not experience love or sex or a relationship. I should put on my spinster dress and get some more cats and plants. I like cats and plants and everything, but is my status as someone that can no longer produce really mean that I can't be loved?? Or, let's go there folks: fucked?? I don't deserve intimacy or companionship or kisses because I am one of the Slutty McSlut-Sluts that lost her child-bearing abilities to a virus that happens to sluts when they go around being slutty.

See?? Modest is hottest. Virginity is in. And if that's not you, then you are a whore and you deserve what you get.

Well, I don't accept that. I don't think other people should have to accept that, either. Some of these speakers receive exorbitant amounts of money to preach faith-based ideas in public schools which, frankly, should be illegal. But it also burns my biscuits that these assholes are paid to compare our kids to trash in order to get their point across. It's disgusting, and people that do that should be ashamed of themselves.

And that's where my difficulty begins. Are those of us that are unable or uninterested in furthering the species to be treated at second-class citizens?? Society is already pretty mean to gay people about it. We've been pretty mean to people of color about it. Women that don't wish to go into the baby-making business are treated pretty shittily. Is that really what all of this about?? That only the viably fertile deserve physical and emotional love??

Like I said, I try not to listen to these assholes, because they seem to have a pretty incendiary things to say to people with different ideas. But sometimes it works: it hurts. It's not effective in reducing rates of young people going at it, but it does do harm when shaming people that are already vulnerable. Part of me does feel singled out by the whole thing. 'YOU, Sasa, are a slut. YOU did this to yourself. YOU deserve every terrible thing that happens to you, because YOU did not do things the way I said God said to. No one will ever love you.”

This is how we talk to people, or allow people to be talked to.

1,000 Words on Carlotta Ferlito

I'd like to address the allegations of racism made against 18-year-old Italian gymnast, Carlotta Ferlito. It's received some mainstream press in the United States; not just on the “gymternet.” Following the balance beam final at the World Championships last Sunday Ms. Ferlito, who finished in 5th place, was quoted as saying "I told (teammate Vanessa Ferrari) that next time we should also paint our skin black so then we can win, too." Her comment was meant to be funny, but was not seen as so by the individual at which it was pointed: African American gymnast and newly-crowned World All-Around Champion and bronze medalist on the beam, Simone Biles. Or by pretty much anyone else, for that matter.

Now, I agree that what she said comes across as racist. However, she has publicly apologized to Ms. Biles and admitted that what she said was wrong. I'm the kind of person that is all in favor of second chances. One rude comment does not an inherent racist make. I know I've made stupid comments that hurt people's feeling before. I was fortunate enough to have not made them on an international livestream. She was trying to be funny and it backfired. I think we've all experienced the consequences of that in our lives, and I think Ms. Ferlito should be forgiven.

I'd been secretly wondering when some of the women gymnasts that have been around for a while were going to get sick of having their asses handed to them by little black girls from the United States. As an American gymnast, coach, gym parent, and fan, I am a huge fan of Simone Biles and Gabrielle Douglas, but I have seen them come out of nowhere onto the international scene and clean house. Of course, so did Carly Patterson and Jordyn Wieber. It remains to be seen whether that pissed anybody off, although Ms. Ferlito also stated publicly that she feels like the judges protect the American gymnasts and make sure they win. I'm also a big fan of the Italian gymnasts and their unique style and sass, but this could have less to do with abject racism and more to do with poor sportsmanship.

In the wake of her disappointing finish just four days ago, Ms. Ferlito also tweeted that Ms. Biles had done a bad job and that she did not deserve her medal. The fact of the matter is that no one had the routine of their life on beam that day. The favorite, Romania's Larisa Iorache, fell and the underdog, Russia's Aliya Mustafina won, and everyone in between did okay. It's true that Simone Biles was shaky and nearly took a bite out of the end of the beam on her dismount, but on a day when no one is quite 100% that's all it takes. There were scoring inquiries filed on behalf of both American gymnasts, Ms. Biles and “Fierce Five” member Kyla Ross. I thought this was to be expected. This is a new Olympic cycle and a brand new code of points. This is the season for controversy in gymnastics. And while I understand that the way things panned out for Ms. Ferlito was disappointing for her, the way she handled herself even outside of the potentially-racist comment she made was out of line.

In any case, I've only done a small amount of reading on the subject, but I know that there are African-Italian people in Italy. Other than knowing that they exist, I have no further idea of what racial and ethnic diversity is like in Italy. Her life experience may be one where her exposure to black people is limited, thereby causing her to speak out of ignorance rather than of racism. I hope that this is a learning experience for her and that she will be able to be more culturally sensitive in the future.

When you're a good person, it's difficult to have people think of you in the context as the worst thing you've ever done. If she takes from this experience a life lesson, then I see no reason not to forgive her her trespasses. If she does it again?? Then I'll call her a racist.

Just to make sure things got worse, a spokesman from the Italian Gymnastics Federation decided to jump in the hole and start digging. On the IGF Facebook page, one Mr. David Ciaralli defended Ms. Ferlito in a way that smacks of unfettered hubris and racism. What he should have said was “sorry.” What he did was delve into an unnecessary and insensitive analysis of the body types and abilities of people of African decent, like he's some kind of anthropologist. The whole thing read like a Tea Party politician mansplaining why white people are different from “colored” people. As it turns out, he had to apologize, as well. Frankly, Ms. Ferlito's bad joke was small potatoes when contrasted with the asinine diatribe offered by this stooge. And, yes. Sometimes people make mistakes. But it's much easier to forgive a younger person that said the wrong thing in the heat of the moment than a grown-ass man who had the time to sit and think about what he wrote and posted on the internet. All he managed to do was make the whole kerfuffle worse.

I don't like seeing my beloved sport embroiled in this kind of controversy. One of the things gymnastics is supposed to teach its participants is sportsmanship: how to show support for the other competitors and how to win – and lose – graciously and gracefully. It's a shame when things don't go down this way, especially when it becomes an international public spectacle. It's embarrassing and it's bad for business.

So, Ms. Biles, your parents were right: don't let what's happened this week ruin this moment for you. You've worked hard, you did your job, and the rest is in the hands of the judges. Ms. Ferlito, let this experience make you a better person and teach you to think before you speak. Mr. Ciaralli, please never post anything on the internet ever again.