It changed for me.

6/13/2020



As I am mainlining news, and sorting through the weird dreams overnight….. first the covid from when we first got back from the cruise… work changes, living changes, missing people, health worries…. And now over two weeks of protests that have brought things up…. Fragments of flashes of life as a teenager through my early 20’s…..

As an elementary and starting junior hi I didn’t really understand racial tensions… I had friends of all varieties. The most unusual thing would have been “boat people” a concept which I didn’t really understand. I liked the kids I met who joined mid school year, worked through language challenges and became friends with them.

I grew up honestly believing people are people and animals have souls and all life is sacred. no one could talk me out of those beliefs. People tried.

When I started into my teens I started to notice not everyone “knew” these things. I believed other people would see things as I did if they were talked to, and thought about and I held fast to that.

It changed for ME when as a teen I first heard my hippy father use a racial slur….. I was so stunned that we fought, and I got out of the truck and walked home and my perception was forever changed. I was taught all people were people… until suddenly they weren’t

It changed for ME when my best friend @ 14/15 years old suddenly changed towards me when I showed flirtation to her brother… after my family had treated her like family for years, we had done everything together for years, then suddenly I wasn’t family.  

It changed for ME when I dated the boy across the street and my dad said – “not where my union friends can SEE it” … love who you love, but NOT where it shows

It changed for ME when my father told me that if I kept dating those boys that “no other decent ---- insert my skin tone here --- boy would want me” and I told him to f-off and that if that’s how a person felt I wouldn’t want them either….. I was a sassy and outspoken girl.

It changed for ME when a girl I had never met charged across the street and punched me for her thoughts that I was dating her boyfriend….. (I wasn’t) and I wasn’t the same color so it pissed her off even more than if I was just some other girl. Getting punched hurt, getting punched and having no clue why really hurt

It changed for ME when Michael Jackson was the thing and I got teased for having the “curl” and wet hair look when I didn’t qualify and had no clue why

It changed for me when I found out someone who wanted to date me was afraid to because of my dad.

It changed for ME when I had my hair beaded and rowed by my best friend before her brother was interested in me and I was ostracized at school and didn’t get it. This was before cultural appropriation was a mainstream word. It just changed for me because I was being teased for something that my best friend did as a loving gift of her time and she even bought me the blue and clear beads in my favorite colors. I was called names that were not flattering to any race.

It changed for me when @,  20 I dated an older guy whom I grew I up with and who had lived behind my folks house my entire life and that my family was friends with and who always liked me and my family and we dated and I moved in with him… and they (his family, his parents, his sisters) wouldn’t speak to me, or invite him over for the almost two years I lived literally across the street from them in their family home (his house) and when the phone (still a landline) hung up every time I answered … just dead air. Car doors slammed if we met eyes from driveway to driveway.

It changed for me when I was dating same guy and one of my massage clients was irate and literally got off the massage table and left when she found out I was dating in “her” pool and that I was inherently bad and wrong for not understanding and breaking up a two year relationship when she explained to me that men in her pool were in shortage and it was my fault somehow, and I was flabbergasted that she thought I was somehow able to assign love randomly to someone who looked more like me instead of someone I dearly loved. She believed with every cell in her body that I should immediately break up and leave him to clear room and space for women “like her”. I thought that was making him an object and a possession and she thought I had no right to that opinion. I felt with my heart pain. Blinding pain and confusion.

It changed for me when in Hawaii I had my car towed twice for “parking in the wrong spot” (when attempting to be courteous to other residents) in a town house community that didn’t want me or my boyfriend there. We weren’t local enough.

All of these things were WAY before facebook. I grew up on star trek and sci fi and different cultures. I never did understand why hate would be used to combat hate.  All of these things were before cultural appropriation was a known word, before I had a larger world view and when I had not yet studied @ Evergreen and read more on cultural issues. All of those things were when I still had just my heart in the game and history taught in schools didn’t prepare me for the wider context.

And living out where I do and currently happening to be dating people who “match” it hasn’t been as present for me. My work, although not mainstream, only shows when I want it to. My relationship structure is only public if I want it to be.

In my work, one things stands out and that is the occasional client who in humble email, discloses their heritage to me and asks WILL I still see them… and how it hurts my heart that I can FEEL what they have been through to have to even ask…. In my work I choose my clientele but have heard from so many clients who are rejected by practitioners based on physical appearance. In my ads, on my web site and in my practice that has never factored in to push someone away, but I have seen it in other people’s work.

I look at my tv and want to fix this. All of it. I want a world where love is love freely without fear. I have no idea how to get there. I don’t know what to do home on health watch other than let all these things come washing back over me, be acutely aware that I have had a break from this conversation while I have been advocating for other things, like my relationships, my rescue pups (also political) my work…. Its time to keep those important things going AND start figuring out how to bring this back online and get back into the fray and somehow make a difference. I want that world where we ALL feel safe.

My heart isn’t enough. My thoughts and opinions aren’t enough. Sharing on facebook isn’t enough. Love isn’t enough. If we are going to get to that sci-fi world that the star trek cruise let us visit we are going to have to fight for it. I am still convinced people are all people. Animals have souls. Life is sacred. And I won’t shut up until people get it.