Last Song I Listened To: “epiphany" by Taylor Swift
Last Person I Communicated With: sent a message in one of my grad school group chats!
Last Thing I Ate: New York cheesecake with chocolate
gelato
Last Thing I Read: my notes for the paper I’m working
on
Current Mood: pretty
good, minus the permanent undercurrent of anxiety and frustration
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: got motivated to
work on a potential paper!
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: write more blog posts (I have 2 in mind)
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: already thinking about
having to head back to Manhattan
One Reason I’m Happy Today: Mom’s birthday was yesterday,
and we celebrated!
Dear Apocalypsers,
It’s been awhile! I bet
you’re wondering about the state of the world. Here’s a quick rundown on some
of the biggest (and most ridiculous) things that have happened since my last
post:
People aren’t talking
about BLM on social media as much anymore, but the protests are still going onand going strong. (I try to share information about it daily on Twitter and
Instagram.)
Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) called
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “disgusting” and a “fucking bitch”…to herface
Civil Rights Leader, Rep.
John Lewis (D-GA) died on the 17th
Taylor Swift announced a
brand-new surprise album on the 23rd; it dropped at midnight on the
24th, and it’s given the Internet the first collective joy since
March.
Small personal joy: we
got a new dog! He was a stray my brother found at work. We named him Duck, and
he’s the biggest baby. I love him so much.
Me with Duck just a few days after I got
back to Alabama!
I’m sure I’m missing
things. I was so overwhelmed the last time I wrote, but I pushed through. I
spent a lot of time educating myself and thinking about my own actions, and I
can breathe a little bit easier now—literally. There were some days in early-to-mid-June
where my anxiety was so high my chest hurt. I still firmly believe that there
are terrible and unacceptable things happening in the world right now and that
it’s our responsibility as human beings to never shut up about them, but I’ve
adjusted to the stress, I guess.
He's 88lbs of cuddle.
I think it helps that I
came home to spend some time with my family. Yes, there are more COVID cases in
Alabama than in Kansas, but being with my family has really eased my anxiety.
It’s nice to have daily human contact again. I don’t have to actively remind
myself to stop clenching my jaw nearly as often as when I was alone all the
time. And, as we all know, I have some big control issues, so—even though I can’t
actually do anything—I like being near my family in case they need me. I
can go to the store for my parents and limit their possible exposure to the
virus as much as possible, so I feel like I have some semblance of
control.
So, I just wanted to pop
in with some updates for when I inevitably reread this blog in 40 years. We’ve
been quarantining for more of 2020 than we weren’t, and, because the U.S. is
being so lackadaisical with its regulations, I imagine we’ll be quarantining
for a while still.
So, to quote my girl Taylor
Swift—and to segue us into the next post that I’m already planning—“Are we outof the woods yet?”
Last Person I Communicated With: GroupMe chat!
(Talking about The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta)
Last Thing I Ate: chips and quseo
Last Thing I Read: I read song lyrics, does that count?
Current Mood: sad, scared
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: helped Mikayla and
Tyler move their new mattress out of my apartment (they had it shipped to me
while they were out of town)
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: again, feel less
sad (a common goal)
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: the world is a dumpster
fire (x2)
One Reason I’m Happy Today: Mikayla and Dustin came
over last night and we talked and watched Pitch Perfect 3 and Ben Platt’s
Radio City Music Hall performance
Dear Apocalypsers,
(Trigger Warning: This post discusses transphobia
and J.K. Rowling’s recent statements. Also, I use a few choice words, so please pardon any harsh language.)
I know that this isn’t the most important thing right
now, but I’m kind of feeling like my life is unraveling because of J.K.
Rowling’s recent statements. I do not recommend reading her full
post/essay that’s on her website. It’s super hard to get through. It’s not an
apology. She’s trying to define “womanhood” based on her own experiences, and I
know the Internet used to joke that she was “the queen,” but she sure as hell
isn’t God, so I don’t know why she thinks she has the definitive say on what
makes a “real” woman.
If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.
As anyone who knows me knows, Harry Potter has
been a huge factor in my life. It has, quite literally, shaped who I am as a
person. I read the second book when I was 7 (approximately 2003), because the
library didn’t have the first one, but I knew my mom had read them, and I
wanted to, too.
The books and movies were foundational to my
childhood; they helped me form my morals. They taught me that love is more
powerful than hate; they taught me that discrimination should not be tolerated;
they taught me about friendship and loyalty and doing what’s right even if it
means breaking some rules; they taught me that even those in authority can be
corrupt and fallible. Every book, especially fantasy books, that I tried to
read after Harry Potter fell flat. It wasn’t until my senior year of
high school that I finished another fantasy series. I read all of Richelle Mead’s
Vampire Academy books (including the Bloodlines spinoff) that
spring, and I read Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series and The
Infernal Devices prequels that summer. (Side note: when my friend was
trying to get me to read TMI and TID, she told me, “They’re my Harry
Potter.” I’ve never forgotten that. In an instant, that explained how much
those books meant to her.)
Harry Potter
followed me into my academics. My senior year of high school, my AP Lit teacher
told the class—but mostly me—that we only needed to write about works of “literary
merit” on the AP exam, and Harry Potter wasn’t considered literary merit
as of 2014. (To this day, I stand by my opinion that the third essay question
was begging for me to write about Harry Potter. [Am I allowed to say
what it was? They told us that it was a big “no-no” to talk about the essay
question topics. Is there a statute of limitations on AP exam questions? You
know what? Screw it. I’ll tell you. I already got a 5 on it and now have 2
college degrees in English. They can’t stop me.] The question basically said, “Write
about a work where a character’s sacrifice shapes the narrative.” I could write
a book on sacrifice in Harry Potter. Instead, I wrote about The
Crucible, and kind of how John Proctor’s death [when he could have lived
had he have just lied and confessed to witchcraft] was the culmination of
themes in the play.) In undergrad, I didn’t have much opportunity to write
about Harry Potter, but it made up a chunk of the paper that I used as
my grad school writing sample. I was analyzing Shakespearean references in pop
culture, and I talked about the parallels between the graveyard scene in Goblet
of Fire and a scene in Macbeth. I wrote “Words are our most inexhaustible
source of magic” on my undergrad graduation cap, because that’s what I’ve lived
by since 2011. (I know it’s a movie quote; don’t hate me.)
The rest of this quote is, "...capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it." I feel like Rowling has proved the former this week.
But grad school—yeah, I was kind of the Harry
Potter girl. Everyone knew. My statement of intent opened with a riff off
of the opening of Sorcerer’s Stone: “Miss Katie Cline, of Jacksonville,
Alabama, was proud to say that she was perfectly abnormal, thank you very much.
She was the first person you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or
magical, because that was just the kind of “nonsense” she held to.” I wrote my
Master’s Project on the gendered relationship between cats and women in the
series. I took an entire Harry Potter class (where I ended up writing
the paper that formed about a third of my Master’s project). I wrote two other
major papers on the series, one in my Intro to Grad Studies class and one in my
Illustrations seminar. Every single one of my conference presentations (that
haven’t been cancelled by COVID) have been about Harry Potter.
Me (center) last April at the Harry Potter-themed re-opening at The Dusty Bookshelf. (You can support them here if you want!)
But the things Rowling said are terrible. Now, I by no
means think the series itself is perfect. I’m able to critique it and
complicate it, but to see the disgusting things that creator said about
transgender people breaks my heart, and it’s unacceptable. How fucking dare she
say those things? Does she not realize what her books have done for people in
the LGBTQ+ community? (I am not a member of this community, but I’ve seen posts
from people sharing how Potter helped them.) Does she not care? Did her
millions of dollars make her feel safe or make her forget her humanity? Or,
worse, does she honestly believe these things?
Honestly, I have no love for J.K. Rowling anymore. I
can’t, in good conscience, support her. Not when she clearly doesn’t support
her readers (and, like, people in general). I used to be the teen on the
Internet who sang her praises. I thought she could do no wrong. But I’ve grown,
and I’m not as naïve, and I know that she is far, far from perfect—and that she’s
getting farther away from it with every tweet, it seems. Still, it hurt a
little when I unfollowed her on Twitter and when I altered my bio and when I
changed my Facebook profile picture to a graduation picture that didn’t include
a Potter book. I thought those books would be a constant that carried me
through every low in life for my whole life.
Now, I’m not sure. They may be just a memory.
(Every other sentence out of my mouth is a Harry Potter
reference. I really wanted to write, “The things we lose have a way of coming
back to us, if not always in the way we expect,” but it doesn’t feel right to
use her words when she can’t even live by them. Did she ever mean them?)
I guess everyone has to rebuild their life from
scratch at least once. For my parents, that moment was the tornado that
destroyed my childhood home in 2018. They had lived there for 23 years, and we
lost a lot in that storm. I feel like this moment might be my first (and
hopefully last, but I’m not that optimistic) moment to rebuild mine—but in a different
way.
My friend Dustin, who watched me try not to cry while
I tried to explain all this, is a saint. Honestly, one of the best people I’ve
ever met. We live in the same apartment complex, so he brought me a White Claw
and when I said, “I thought this [Harry Potter scholarship] was one
thing I had figured out in my life, but…now….” with my voice cracking and tears
in my eyes, he said, “I know a lot of your academic work has been about Harry
Potter, but you don’t have to decide right this second what you’re going to
do about it. But, if anyone could find a way to still write about it in a way that
matters, it’s you.”
One of my M.A. graduation pictures with my Master's Project...which I wrote on Harry Potter.
Like I said, Dustin is a saint. Because, I’m not sure
if that’s true. I’m a cishet (cisgender-heterosexual) white woman. I don’t know
if I’m the person who needs to write about Rowling anymore—and I cried as I
typed that, because that’s been what I’ve wanted to do for about 10 years now. But
I don’t know if I have the voice or the angle that the world needs to hear. I
can’t speak to the series from a queer, Black, or POC perspective. And,
frankly, there’s already been a lot of feminist scholarship on the
series already. I’m afraid that I’ve come around too late. And I’ll eventually
be okay with that—right now it just hurts like hell knowing that this dream has
been derailed for a while, if not forever. But I’ve loved reading these different
perspectives so far. (I especially love Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’ discussions of
Black Hermione in her book The Dark Fantastic (2019)!) And can’t wait to
see the scholarship that comes out in the next few years that takes an
explicitly queer and/or trans approach. I just feel like I might need to step back and let
those people write from their perspectives. (I say that like anyone ever
recognized me in the field, anyway. It’s not really stepping back as much as deciding
not to take up that space.)
Right now—in the middle of a pandemic, political
unrest, the Black Lives Matter movement, and just about 2 days after Rowling’s
latest tweets went out—I don’t think I have it in me to say goodbye to Harry
Potter completely, and I hope anyone who reads this can respect that I’m
grappling with a lot inside me right now. I wholeheartedly disagree with her
tweets and their message. Trans women are women. Trans men are men.
Nonbinary identities (and all identities) are valid, and no one is
entitled to more respect or humanity than anyone else. The books are just so
much a part of me, as I’ve tried to explain. In a statement with The Trevor Project,
Daniel Radcliffe wrote this:
“To all the people who
now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I
am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you. I really hope that
you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you. If these
books taught you that love is the strongest force in the universe, capable of
overcoming anything; if they taught you that strength is found in diversity,
and that dogmatic ideas of pureness lead to the oppression of vulnerable
groups; if you believe that a particular character is trans, nonbinary, or
gender fluid, or that they are gay or bisexual; if you found anything in these
stories that resonated with you and helped you at any time in your life — then
that is between you and the book that you read, and it is sacred. And in my
opinion nobody can touch that. It means to you what it means to you and I hope
that these comments will not taint that too much.”
For me, at least, I can separate the books from the
author. I completely understand if that’s not possible for everyone. (Trust me,
I feel a little guilty and dirty, like I have to keep one of my biggest passions
a secret now, because I can’t give it up cold turkey.) But I’d be lying if I
said the books didn’t change my life. I honestly believe they made me a better person,
a good enough person to see that Rowling is wrong.
I don’t know exactly how I’m going to go on from here.
I don’t know what my academic career will be about. I guess I need a new series
to become immersed in. (I’m taking suggestions.) Again, I know that this is the
most trivial thing to be concerned with right now, with so much else going on. I
contemplated even writing this, but, like I’ve said in other posts, writing
this blog has been a way for me to cope with everything that’s happening, and I
can’t ignore this. I can't leave these thoughts to fester in my head for any longer. My heart hurts too much already thinking about how this one chapter of my life has ended so forcibly and suddenly and painfully.
I’ll try to end this on as positive a note as
possible.
There have been a lot of responses to Rowling’s tweet
that have challenged her and flat-out disagreed with her and encouraged trans
fans that they are valid and loved within the Potter community. Besides
Daniels Radcliffe’s statement, Eddie Redmayne has issued a statement, and I’ve
seen tweets from Emma Watson, Bonnie Wright, Evanna Lynch, and Katie Leung (hers is pretty cheeky, and as one tweet I saw said, "the most Ravenclaw thing"), and
I’m sure I’ve missed some and that more will come. Other prominent Potter
people, like the scholar Melissa Anelli and the band Harry and the Potters have
critiqued Rowling’s tweets, too.
Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.
If Harry Potter was a source of love and belonging for you, that love is infinite and there to take without judgment or question. Transwomen are Women. I see and love you, Bonnie x
Trans and non-binary friends: I'm sorry we are back here. We love you. I know it might be hard to be a Harry Potter fan right now, but you helped build this fandom and it will always welcome you.
It’s nice to see that there are people who read the
same books I did, who developed the same guiding principles, who see the value
of all life and the beauty that transgender people bring to the fandom
and the world,
I don’t have a nice, succinct
“global statement” (like the aforementioned AP Lit teacher taught us to end our
essays with). I’m not sure I’ve processed this enough for that. I need to cry some more.
So, until then, may the odds be ever
in our favor,
Last Person I Communicated With: I sent a snapchat
that no one has responded to yet, lol
Last Thing I Ate: sugar-free caramel candy
Last Thing I Read: fanfic…again
Current Mood: reflective
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: glued my “grow” wall
hanging back together after it fell and broke
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: do my dishes
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: the world is a dumpster
fire
One Reason I’m Happy Today: Mikayla and Tyler are
coming back from Dallas this week!
Dear Apocalypsers,
I’ve been thinking a lot about
love lately. I know, who thinks about love when the world is full of so much
pain right now?
I think it’s a coping
mechanism. Right now, when there is so much fear and uncertainty and hate and
violence and injustice, finding a few minutes of love and happiness in a day
feels like a big middle finger to a cruel universe that seems to want us to be
miserable.
And, I really hate being
told what to do, so my survival mode is now “happy out of spite.” It’s not a
perfect defense. It’s sometimes difficult to keep up. It’s sometimes
exhausting. But I’d hate to think what I’d become if I didn’t have it.
“There’s some good
in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” –Samwise Gamgee, The
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
I agree with Sam, but I’m
always willing to recognize that we, as Americans and human beings, tend to
romanticize “the struggle.” The American Revolution is painted as this miraculous
“David vs. Goliath” story that led to our freedom from an oppressive
government, but we don’t want to think about what that was actually like. The
weeks or months without bathing, sweating and marching in suffocating summer
heat, covered in blood, mud, wounds, and God-knows-what else; dying from
frostbite in the winter because the militias didn’t have proper clothing or
equipment; starvation and dehydration. And the World Wars? We love to make
those sound like a sepia-colored romance. Sure, the soldier protagonist might
watch his buddies die, but he always makes it home. He always
gets the girl. And the U.S. always wins—because that’s history. We don’t like
to think about the families of our protagonist’s friends who died. We don’t
like to think about the families of the people he killed—and they weren’t all
monsters, you know.
One of my favorite poems
is “Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen. He wrote it about his experience as
a soldier in WWI. I’ll give you fair warning, it’s hard to read, but it ends
with the lines “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children
ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro
patria mori.” (Those Latin lines translate to “It is sweet and fitting / to
die for one’s country.)
I think about this poem a
lot. Owen understood 100 years ago that we glorify war. We romanticize a lot of
things. Especially history. The pessimistic reading of all this would be that
humans are foolish and selfish and that winners write history, so why would
they care what it took to win? The more realist reading might be that nationalist
victory stories sell, and a sad patriotic film or book won’t be as successful
as something with some kind of at least hopeful ending. The optimistic reading
is that we want to believe everything will be happy in the end; we want all of
the suffering to be worth it. I realize that I’m privileged enough to see the
world through the third lens. Not everyone has been able to take that approach.
And I always wonder what
that “good” is that Sam talks about. What makes humans willing to undergo that
suffering? What do we fight for?
I’m probably over-generalizing
here, but I think it’s some kind of intersection between love, hope, and
happiness. That’s what I would fight for, anyway.
I’ve love love in all its
forms. I say “in all its forms,” because I’ve never been in romantic love.
Still, when I can’t fall asleep at night, I plan weddings to calm myself down.
My Pinterest account is 80% themed weddings, 10% quotes, and 5% nurseries. If I
had a do-over in life, I’d be a wedding planner or open a bridal shop. And I’ve
always loved love. I still remember the first couple I ever “shipped”
(long before Tumblr coined the phrase.) They were two 6th grade
classmates who nervously held hands for a couple weeks and “broke up.” They’re
now both married to other people, but at the time, I fully believed they would
marry each other. I didn’t really understand love then.
Please enjoy my themed wedding boards. From L: engagement rings, a Broadway-themed wedding, a zoo wedding, a hipster wedding, a LOTR nursery, a Harry Potter Wedding, a Doctor Who wedding, and a LOTR wedding.
I guess you could say
that I don’t really understand love now, either, if my notebooks full of crossed
out “Mr. and Mrs. ____”/ “Mr. and Mr. _____” / “Mrs. and Mrs. _____” are any
indication. I’d say that love disappoints me about 98% of the time, seeing as
only two real-life couples that I’ve shipped have gotten married. (Shout out to
Katelyn & Griffin and Hollie & Daniel!) And, as someone who hates unnecessary
risk, I really should look at those numbers and accept that I shouldn’t be as
invested in love as I am.
Me with the new Katelyn & Griffin McDaniels at their wedding on
October 27, 2018. (I was the Maid of Honor!!)
Me with the new Hollie and Daniel Mayes at their
wedding on October 12, 2019. #PowerCOMple
I’ve witnessed a lot of
heartbreak between the ages of 12 and 24, and I’ve lost weeks’ worth of sleep
staying up consoling friends. (I wouldn’t have it any other way, so don’t try
to stop me.) I’ve perfected every way of saying, “You deserve better,” and “You
have so much worth even if you don’t have them.” When I was first introduced to
true heartbreak, I was in 8th grade. My best friend had just been
dumped by her sophomore boyfriend the week of their 2-month anniversary. She cried
in the cafeteria. At first, when faced with breakups, I’d ask my parents to
drive me and my friend to the mall for ice cream and window shopping. By high
school, we were old enough to drive ourselves. In undergrad, sometimes a text
or phone call was all we could manage because of distance; or, if it was one of
my friends from undergrad, we’d stay up late into the night, watching movies
and crying and hashing it all out in my dorm. With every breakup, though, my
heart broke a little, too. I always want my friends to be happy; I don’t want
to see them heartbroken; I want them to have that “happily ever after” (even
though I took a fairytales class last fall, and I know that the original
fairytales didn’t have the happy ending connotations that we think of today). But
despite all of the pain I’ve witnessed first-hand, I still shrieked when one of
my friends told me that she was seeing a guy and she wanted me to meet him. I’m
still planning the housewarming gifts for my other two friends who moving in
with their boyfriends this summer. I can’t seem to give up on love. I have too
much hope.
That isn’t to say that I
don’t have my moments of cynicism. There was a period of four days during my
first semester of grad school where I didn’t believe in love. It was a rough
four days, ask anyone. I can’t even tell you what sparked that episode, but it
honestly felt like a core part of my personality was taken away. All I remember
is that we were reading Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass (2000) in
class, and our professor asked us what we thought about the preteen
protagonists’ declarations of love at the end of the book. And I said something
to the effect of, “We might think it’s dramatic reading it as adults, but for a
middle school audience, I think it’s fine. They’re still young and believe in
love and that it can last.” Now, I don’t what it was—my words or my tone or my delivery—but
the entire class laughed, and my professor (whom I have so so so much respect
for as a person and a scholar) just blanched. Thankfully, a couple mornings
later, I saw a couple holding hands on the sidewalk as I was driving to class,
and I didn’t want to run them over with my car, so I knew I was “recovering.”
(Ignore the time stamp) This is me and some friends at my Sophomore Elite Night (Spring semi-formal) on May 12, 2012.
That was probably the
worst I’ve ever been. I had periods in high school and undergrad when I felt
down on myself for being single. (For instance, I’m still a little bitter that
I was never asked to any high school dance. That really got to me. I always
went with a group, and I had so much fun, but I was 14/15/16/17/18; I wanted to
feel wanted. Then in undergrad, I kid you not, that, for three of my four
years, there were 3 couples in our core group of 8 friends. I was
literally
always with at least one couple. [None of them are together anymore, by the
way.]
Me with some very good friends at my Junior Elite Night on February 16, 2013.
(My dad used to tell me
that boys were “intimidated by me.” Good. If they’re intimidated by me because
I’m smart and opinionated and great at talking about my feelings, then they
wouldn’t last a week with me anyway. I try not to think about how he and my mom
stated dating my mom’s junior year of high school and how they were married by
the time they were my age.)
Most of my core group of high school friends at my Senior Elite Night on February 22, 2014.
Then I got to grad school
and I surrounded myself with more single people. They were my age and older,
and they are some of the smartest, most talented and incredible people with
incredible dreams and the work ethic to achieve them. I’ve gotten really comfortable
being single these last two years, thanks to them. Because we took all the
energy we would have put into a romantic relationship and we put it into each
other, our schoolwork, and our friendship. We loved each other through the two
most difficult years of my life to date. And, okay, we didn’t get a marriage
out of our time together, but we got something that’s just as strong and will
arguably last longer: friendship.
Dustin (one of the aforementioned
smart, talented, hardworking, incredible, and single grad students) and I were
talking about this the other day, how we, as a society, put so much pressure on
romantic love. When you say, “I’m dating so-and-so,” everyone knows that there
are only two ways that can end: marriage or a breakup. I’ve always thought of a
romantic relationship as the beginning of something new and exciting, but, when
you break it down like that, spending literally the rest of your life with
someone or giving them the best of you and getting heartbroken are equally
terrifying in different ways. I can see how thinking too much about that could
mess with any relationship. When you make a new friend, though, there feel like
so many more places that relationship could go. I guess if you get technical,
it’s the same two possible endings: you’ll either be friends for the rest of
your life, or you won’t be. But there feels like more ways that a friendship
can end that aren’t as painful as most breakups. So many times, friends just
grow apart because of time or distance, but that doesn’t even guarantee a
definite end like a breakup implies. For instance, just recently, I reached out
to a friend from high school who I had been really close to. I said something
about Niall Horan’s Heartbreak Weather album, because I knew he was her
favorite member of One Direction back in the day. And we started talking more
than we have in years. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that we drifted apart—we went
to different schools and moved to different cities and only saw each other in
passing at church functions on holidays—but I wouldn’t say that we ever stopped
being friends. Not like I would stop being someone’s girlfriend.
When you take pics like this, you'll probably be friends for a long time.
And I just want to know
why.
Why do we expect so much
out of romantic love?
I can’t lie. I want to
fall in love so badly. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to fall in love
and have a big winter wedding. (Remember all those Pinterest boards? Well, I
also keep a running list of who I’d want my bridesmaids to be—you know, just in
case that comes up.) I want to have 2-4 kids, whose names I’ve been thinking of
since I was 12 and was convinced I’d be marrying Nick Jonas. (Cringey Katie
moment: I was going to name our daughter Nicole Denise—Denise after his mom. A
sweet sentiment, but such a boring name.) So, yes, “falling in love” is at the
top of my bucket list. But, like I told a newly-single friend the other day, I’m
not going to put my whole life on pause to wait for a boy to catch up with me.
I have a lot of other things on my bucket list, too: get published in The
Lion and the Unicorn and ChLA Quarterly, write a book, visit Europe,
get a PhD, see a show on Broadway, go to a Taylor Swift concert (and probably
more). When a man comes along who wants to do all that, too, then he’ll be
welcomed into my life with open arms. To put it another way,I like YA
fantasy, and in one of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments books,
Magnus Bane—the immortal warlock—comments about how mortals are like stars, burning
bright for a short period of time. Whoever ends up with me better like
sunshine, because I want to burn so bright.
Get you a group of friends who will form a Harry Potter trivia
team with you. (I love them even though we came in 2nd)
Clearly, I put just as
much pressure on love as society tells me to. (I called it a "rebellion earlier; that's a pretty big deal.) I mean, as a teenager, I had “goals”
of being married with kids by 25. At 15, those 10 years felt like plenty of
time to “get my life together.” Now, writing this at 24, I’m laughing. Married
with kids is not in the cards for me in the next 8 months. Sorry,
Teenage Katie…but I think you’ll be pretty happy with what else you’ve
accomplished.
Like I said, I’ve gotten
comfortable with being single. If you asked me right now if I was happy, I’d
say, “Yes. Very.” (Okay, maybe not right now, but, like, pre-quarantine.
I was really happy the end of February/beginning of March.) I don’t want a
relationship just to be in a relationship, and I don’t want a relationship with
just anyone. When I do something, I put all my energy into it, and that, I’m sure,
will include romantic love. (Just ask my friends how “extra” I am in our
friendships.) And I want that reciprocated. I want to feel desired and wanted
and loved and appreciated.
And I’ll get it. I know
it. Because I see much love in all its forms every day. Sure, maybe only ~2% of
couples I’ve known have gotten married, but the love I see in those 2% show me
that I shouldn’t settle for anything less than that. I see love in my mom, who
makes sure to call me at least once a day. I see it in my friends who are
willing to move our weekly Zoom chat a day because I’m feeling shitty and depressed.
I see it in the way my friend lights up when she’s just talking about her new
boyfriend. I see the hope that the idea of love brings to everyone.
At the very beginning of
this post, I asked what kind of person obsesses over love when there was so
much pain and injustice in the world right now.
To answer my own
question, a person who refuses to give up.
Maybe I’m naïve or
unrealistic, but hope—and, specifically, a hope for more love—is what’s getting
me to each tomorrow.
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: ran an errand / picked
up a package
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: being less sad
would be nice
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: I don’t even have the
energy to explain
One Reason I’m Happy Today: Group Zoom tonight
Dear Apocalypsers,
I’ve been trying to write this for days. Weeks even. I
don’t have words for what’s happening in the world. For the sheer hate and
bigotry that Black Americans are facing. For the way Trump has responded. When
I started this blog for class, I thought I was writing as if the COVID-19
pandemic was the apocalypse. In the last few weeks, it’s dawned on me that I am
living through more than one pandemic and apocalypse.
My words aren’t what the world needs right now. I
honestly don’t feel like I can say anything better than the countless posts I’ve
shared, so this post is for me. I’m trying to process what’s happening—to the
world and to me.
I am white white white on both sides. I was raised in
Alabama by college-educated, late Baby Boomer parents who moved to the South
from Pennsylvania a few years before I was born. My parents taught me to treat
everyone the same way and to treat them with respect and kindness. I like to
think that my judgement of people has always been based on their behavior and
not on factors like race, gender, socioeconomic class, religion, or
sexuality—but I know I’m not perfect. I know I’ve made incorrect, harmful
assumptions about people. I know that I’ve been silent when I should have
spoken out. I know that I’ve used and misused my white privilege in hurtful
ways, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes just ignoring the voice in the back of
my head saying, “You should do something.”
I can blame my silence and complicity on being a woman
from the South, where there’s still an unspoken rule about what being a “good
girl” means (and what that means is “sweet, soft-spoken, and agreeable”).
But growing up, I was never a “good” Southern girl, at
least not by traditional standards. I am loud. I like being in charge. I like
being the center of attention and getting my way. I love kids, but I want to
live out my dreams before settling down. My home has done and still does some
things I don’t agree with, but I can’t blame it for my silence.
I can blame it on my own anxiety about being liked. I
was never popular in school (like I secretly wanted to be), but I tried my
damnedest to be liked by most people. If I ever “failed” at that, I cried. To
this day, I can’t tell you exactly why; I just really wanted to be liked.
But if you know me now—and especially if you knew me
while I was editor of my undergrad newspaper—you know that I care so much about
protecting people. If someone in a position of power is abusing their power and
hurting someone else, I hope you know I’ll stick up for them. (Another thing my
parents taught me was to cheer for the underdog.) If I write an op-ed about how
that person in power is a bully who doesn’t actually care about the people who
work for them, it’s not about name-calling or making them mad; it’s putting the
truth out there and letting the affected group know that there’s some lowly
college newspaper editor on their side. The point is, I’ve never felt more
alive than when I was pissing off my undergrad administration, because I knew
they were in the wrong and that I was right. I didn’t care if they liked
me.
So, clearly, I’m capable of pushing aside my desire to
be liked.
So why have I not been louder on my social
media and in my own actions? It’s something I’ve asked myself daily.
And there’s no excuse.
The truth is that I’m learning to recognize my privilege
and change my behaviors and be more aware.
Please believe me when I say that I want to do
whatever I can to help end racism. I don’t always know what that is, and I
sometimes afraid to ask (but I’m trying to get better about that. And if you
have the emotional energy to give suggestions or point me in the right
direction, I’ll gladly take it.)
But I’m also afraid of being “that” white person who
asks the Black community to educate me, when, in reality, that’s something that
we each need to do for ourselves. We need to actively search out Black
voices and listen to what has been being said for decades.
So I’m looking. I’m looking for a lot of things, but,
right now, the two big ones are information and balance. I’m looking for resources
on systemic racism. I’m looking for petitions to sign. I’m looking for Black-owned
businesses to support and Black art to consume and share. I’m also looking for
balance, between asking for help when I need it and not stepping on the Black
community’s toes or out words in their mouth and checking on the people in my
life who I know are more affected by this than I am. I’m finding that it’s a
delicate balance.
(Here's just one of many lists available. This one is from NPR.)
I’m young, white, and privileged, but I’ve never
experienced a time in my life when the world felt as fragile as it does right
now. I’ve spent days in a depressive state. My nerves—already shot from months
of isolation and trying not to catch a virus in my immunocompromised
state—can’t really handle another large-scale crisis. But I force myself to
read a little news every day. To share links on Twitter and Instagram. To sign
another petition. To donate what little I can when I can. My heart hurts so
much.
(Here's a website that lists bail funds from across the nation and other resources, like mental health resources and Black revolutionary and anti-racist texts.)
But this isn’t about me.
Several years ago, I remember thinking that maybe the
reason I’d been given a relatively easy life was so that I could help other
people. (I realize now that there are a whole lot of problematic things with
that statement), and, at the time, I thought that just meant being as nice to
people as I could be. Being nice has always come easily to me, so it
made me feel good to think that I was doing what I was “supposed to” do by
doing what was easy.
Now, I understand more fully that doing what’s right
is often uncomfortable because it means recognizing your own shortcomings and
actively bettering yourself. When it comes to human rights, the right thing
sometimes requires a complete lifestyle change. And that takes work. I’m
working on it.
I’m not sure I’ve said anything groundbreaking. I
certainly don’t have all (or any) answers, but I will keep looking for them. I
will keep learning, and I hope every other white person takes up that task,
too. I want to be hopeful that this movement brings real change.
I know my generation will undoubtedly fail our
children. We will fail them spectacularly in ways I can’t even imagine right
now. I can only hope that we fail them in different ways than we have been
failed. I hope they don’t fear being gunned down at school or at a concert or
for who they love. I hope their skin color will not make them the target of
police violence, that they will feel safe going out at night or going for a jog
or birdwatching in a park or walking and playing in their neighborhood or
sleeping in their own homes.
