On Identity as Cultural Appropriation

This blog is 3 1/2 years old.  It is tremendously bizarre to me how far I have come in those years.  I read some of my older posts and think, "I can't believe I said that!"  But that's what this is.  A chronicle of my life, growing up, and whatnot.
Speaking of growing up, this post is one about some oddities of my upbringing that make me uncomfortable.  I swear on me mum that it is pure weird coincidence that I am writing this on the first day of black history month.  I've been thinking on it for a few months but...you know, "stuff" has been "up."
The first thing you need to know is this: I am a white girl.  My mom, a Lehman, is a white lady.  Her mom, a Wolff, is a white lady.  We're not pure German, like my dad's side, or German-Irish-Polish like Husband.  We don't really know fully where we come from, but that's not important.  What is important is that I joke, in the summer, about bringing back the "Elizabeth I look," and that I spent my formative years in suburban/rural Wisconsin.  I am a white girl.
And yet.

On Memory, Inevitability, and Healing from Wounds You Didn't Know You Had

(Consider this a warning, both for the length of this post, and for triggering material)

If I could go back in time, there are not many things I'd change.  Mostly because you can't know how little changes might affect you, and in making changes to my past, I'd be killing myself.  Which is all nonsense, as every time I see sci-fi shows where someone is faced with helping the heroes put back the past, they struggle with the knowledge that they will kill themselves in the process, and I think, "Well that's dumb.  Don't they know it's better this way?"  But that's not the point.  Better or not, at the end, you become a new person, and whoever you would have become down that alternate timeline, whether they liked themselves or not, whether they were a good person or not, they are dead.  Chances are, it was not so straightforward - everyone is a mix of good and bad, everyone likes and dislikes themselves or part of themselves at times.  Maybe weathering this battle made them better and stronger, and although the whole world is better because the battle never happened, something will be missing from this version of that one person.  They are dead.
If I could go back in time, I've said before that there were things about my wedding I would change.  Certain things that I had fixed in my head that were unnecessary, because at the time, I was a staunch traditionalist.  I still am, in my way.  I debated for a long time whether to have my mom or my step-dad walk me down the aisle.  My mom has been there for me forever.  She's always been my primary parent.  At the same time, my step-dad and I had formed a close bond, and he had been my dad for 20 years.  I chose him, in my own way symbolically adopting him.  I chose him.
When he walked me down the aisle, he was already cheating on my mom.  He was already in the process of ruining everything.  When it all came out, the world fell down around my ears - the narratives I'd built up about second chances, about religious conversion, about all kinds of things.  For those reasons, I would go back and not choose him.  For a while, I thought I should have chosen my mom.  Now, I think, I would choose no one.

One of the great fears among a life of great fears...

"One of the great fears among a life of great fears, perhaps the last great fear is the fear of being no longer useful. We find a role in life, and we do that role to the best of our ability for as long as that ability is there. But all of us — even me, dear listeners — will someday hit a point where we no longer are able to do that thing that we define ourselves by doing. And more than the fear of injury, more than the fear of death, this is the fear that looms. The loss of self. The self that is self we imagined we were our whole lives. But we were never that self, not really. We were only a series of selves, living one role and then leaving it for another. And all the time convincing ourselves that there was no change. That we were always the same person, living the same life. One arc to a finish, not the stutter-stop improvisation that is our actual lives.
Worry less about the person you once were. Or the person you dream you someday will be. Worry about the person you are now. Or don’t even worry! Just be that person. Be the best version of that person you can be. Be a better version than any of the other versions in any of the many parallel universes. Check regularly online to see the rankings."
--Cecil Baldwin, Welcome to Nightvale

That's all for today, just that quote. Because I found, when I listened to this episode, that I needed it. Here it is, in case I need it again. Here it is, in case you need it, now and again.

The Great Loves

     So anyway
     ...
     That's probably the best phrase to start with.  Starting strong, you got this.
     ...
     So anyway, I was reading in a book the other day (The Road Less Traveled, by Dr. Peck - It's a book my dad has read like every year and written in, and now he gave it to me to help me with life or understanding him or something)
     ...
     So.  Anyway.  I was reading in a book the other day and came across a statement that the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone is basically sexual (though, not having been Reading, but just paging through, I'm not sure that's what the book was arguing).  I can see where that comes from, I guess.  One falls in love with one's spouse, then has sex with them; one loves one's friends, but one doesn't tend have sex with them.  But then I thought, "No.  People have sex with people they're not in love with all the time.  They might even have sex with a friend, someone they love, but that doesn't mean they're in love with them."  Basically, it doesn't make sense.

Lake Dreams

So, I don't have internet at home right now (moving out soon, then into my mother-in-law's for a bit, then into our New Tiny House!), which makes posting a bit tough. I've got two topics lined up that I want to cover in a bit, but they'll have to wait. In the meantime, here's a thing I wrote when I was around 19 about childhood and growing up. Nobody ever seems to catch that that's what it's about, so I probably did it wrong, but I like it.

Sketch

     It’s storming. I’m scared of the thunder, but Daddy, in his big grey sweater, holds me and shouts, “I’m The Thunder King! Have No Fear!” He tickles me until I forget to be scared.

     I know this memory is the oldest because my mom and dad are living together. After that, I can tell how old the memories are by which procedures I have to go through to see him.

     5 hour drive, Mackinaw bridge, birth certificate, 3 hours of tiny grey waiting room, 3 electric doors opened by a guard in a bullet-proof glass box, half hour limit, no touching except the hug at the beginning and end - that’s Hiawatha. We went in my Grama’s no-a/c full-size van and she drank out of her big 64oz gas station thermos.

     2 hour drive, fancy blacklight hand stamp, big white waiting room, all our stuff in the little locker, 2 electric doors, and one time we almost can’t visit because I can’t get my ring off my hand - that’s Ionia. Grama carries a giant bag - $45 in quarters for lunch from the vending machines.

     Later, he got moved to a lower-security place where I could sit on his lap and he read me books off the little cart. That one had a long name, and good vending machines. I got a Payday, Grama got a Butterfingers, and Grampa got a Snickers. I still get weird nostalgia when I use a vending machine.

     I see him once during his parole, kind of in secret. I don’t know it is wrong, and my mom doesn’t know he was there at all until it’s too late. It is my Great-Grama’s birthday party - must be her 80th. It has been almost 2 years since I’ve been to Michigan. Grama looks at me, holds me around my waist and cries and cries. Daddy introduces Hannah to me, and says they’re getting married.

Eyes Half Shut

"It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts.  Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome" -Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad 

Memory

“No relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is often the very essence of dreams...it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence,--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. No, it is impossible...we live, as we dream, alone” -Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

Can We Learn To Forget Our Memories? by Alix Spiegel (from NPR)