Reflections on an Upcoming Birthday

Hey there!

Today is going to be another personal one. You see, my birthday is coming up soon, and I’m feeling rather conflicted about it. 

Photo by Lukas Rychvalsky from Pexels

No, I’m not worried about getting older, exactly. Age, up till reaching the challenges of extreme old age, has always seemed an enviable condition to me. Middle age, in fact, is something I look forward to. 

So, while the years themselves aren’t troubling, I’m still young and I know it, there are other challenges. This birthday marks a series of specific goals I have long held, goals I have not met, and am unlikely to meet in the 12 months following my birthday. 

Unfortunately, the internet being what it is, I have to be rather vague about both when my upcoming birthday will be, and how old I am. But, even without those details, I can discuss what this particular year was supposed to mean, the goals I had laid out, the things I thought my life would contain. 

It should be no surprise since I’m making this post, that many of the goals I am about to discuss have gone unmet. So, I’m also going to talk about how I’m attempting to deal with the differences between reality and plan a younger and more idealistic self first created. 

Let’s start with the big one. I will shortly be the age I wanted to start having kids. While I am still young, and in many ways still finding my way, I am older now than my parents were when they had me. I am older than at least one set of my grandparents were, having my mom and uncle. I have always known that my goal meant having children later than those members of my family.

But, I privately hoped it wouldn’t be much later. 

I saw first hand the benefits of having younger parents. While my friends almost uniformly had older parents than mine, I’ve never wanted that for myself. People talk about young adulthood as a time for partying, irresponsibility, and finding yourself. 

Well, I’m not much of a party-goer. I don’t drink much or often. I am much more comfortable behaving responsibly than irresponsibly. I did a lot of the work of finding myself as a teenager and in college.

I believe in life as a series of neverending becoming. I want to be myself. To allow myself to be a person in flux, always growing and changing. 

So, I’m uncomfortable, even ungrounded, in the descriptions of what this phase of my life should be. While I’m not comfortable with the idea of myself as a parent, because I know that becoming a parent will require growth and change into a person I have not yet become, it’s at least an idea of being I find familiar and desirable. 

It’s also out of reach. Neither my living situation nor my finances support making moves toward parenthood. I am not established in any career. My partner, while steadily employed with a good company, does not many enough to support us without help. We live with roommates, and they are not interested in children, so we need to move out before beginning a family. 

The steps it would take to make parenthood a reasonable goal are long-term plans. Things that will take time and energy to create, and which almost certainly won’t happen within a year.

So, this goal, my private marker of the age I should be when I become a parent, is going to go unmet. 

A secondary, but equally troubling fact. I have long thought that I would be able to establish myself as a writer by this age. Friends and family have been convinced that I would be published at almost any time for the better part of a decade. 

Meanwhile, I have always been less certain of immediate writing success, and more certain of eventual writing success. 

But, I am not a published author. I am a freelance writer, but I am the kind of freelance writer who struggles to pay the bills and takes just about any assignment I can get. I produce a huge quantity of writing in a week. Usually close to 20,000 words. But almost none of that mountain of production is my writing, my projects, my ideas, and inspiration. It’s writing to meet goals, deadlines, and the ideas of clients. 

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels

All that writing leaves little time for my projects, including this blog, organizing my desk and computer files, and working on querying for short stories. Not to mention the 2 novels I’m working on. 

So, while I’m paying the bills, progress toward my long-term goals has been glacial. 

Meanwhile, other friends and family members are creating successful careers and launching their dream businesses. As I help writing friends craft query letters and try to make time to read and critique other friends’ work, I find myself struggling with twinned emotions. 

On the one hand, I am happy for my friends. I’m genuinely proud of the work they are doing, and the tenacity, bravery, and skill it requires. I’m glad to see their successes. 

At the same time, I have to resist the urge to compare their successes to my failures. As I help a friend prep a manuscript for publication, I find myself lamenting the fact that I don’t have a manuscript of my own to prepare. As I share posts and art and try to boost the signal, I find myself wishing I had more of my own content to focus on. 

As my friends realize they want to be writers, I sit and quietly wonder why they are successful when I have been working toward this goal since grade school. 

It’s jealousy. And I know that comparing my life and work to other people is never going to be a fair or reasonable metric. But it’s a struggle not to when I’m helping others achieve my dreams, but cannot seem to do it for myself. 

This birthday, for me, feels like something to be mourned rather than celebrated. I know that I have most of a lifetime ahead of me to achieve my goals. I have most of a lifetime ahead of me to continue my journey of being and becoming. 

But, for me, this month is a marker of what may have been. What I may have done and have not. What I wanted, and cannot now reach. 

I am not sad to be growing older. Quite the opposite. But I think I am mourning for the child I am no longer, and for the idealism that created the goals I cannot meet. 

I think the cycle of joy and mourning is natural and normal. I’m not sad to be mourning, although mourning is sad. 

At the same time, I am trying to set my sights on celebrating the success of reaching another year. I have made it another year. I have overcome difficulty, I have grown and changed. I have learned. I have loved. I have spent another year on the path of self-acceptance and growth. 

Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels

I have made important achievements this year. I graduated with my Bachelor’s. I stuck to my dreams enough to start building an income from writing. I have learned to be kinder to myself in hard times. To give myself breaks in good times and bad. 

I am still learning these things. I hope I never stop. 

So. Here’s to an upcoming birthday. Here’s to conflicted feelings and uncertainty. Here’s to knowing that there is no one true path. Here’s to getting lost in life. 

I’ll keep a light on. 

-R. 

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Things They Are A’ Changin’

Hey There!

Wow. This has been an absolutely crazy couple of months.

I have a few blog-related announcements and well as just general catching up to do after being away for almost a full two months.

When I started writing seriously on this blog again this year my goal was to update the blog at least once a week, and preferably twice a week. I was doing really well for a while, and that consistency gave me my best traffic and viewership so far.

Thank you for that, by the way. Seeing that someone else actually reads what I write makes it seem a bit less like I’m shouting into the maw of a vast and uncaring universe.

But then my freelance work picked up and suddenly I was making a little money, and making that money took all my time.

That’s still largely where I am right now. I’m getting faster at writing my paid articles, which is why I have the time to put this out there today, but almost all of my time is still taken by the articles that (sorta kinda) pay the bills.

At the end of the day that means that the character of my blog needs to shift pretty dramatically for me to be able to keep up with it. And I think that you, the people who follow my blog and read it regularly, deserve to be kept informed of those changes.

 

The main thing is that, in an effort to get more content out, I’m going to start talking about personal stuff as much or more than I am putting out my typical social commentary and political analysis. Writing about whats going on, my new kitten, and other lighter subjects just takes less time.

I would rather shift my focus than lower the quality of my work and potentially not be able to adequately back up my views and opinions. I’ve worked hard to source and research the commentary articles I’ve put out so far, and I would hate to see that work sullied by inferior research and investment into follow up articles.

I still want to take on my Just World Hypothesis articles, as well as continuing to address the Democratic presidential candidates and the eventual 2020 Presidential race here in the U.S.A., but I can’t commit to any specific timeline on that kind of content since it does require time for research and analysis that I just simply do not have on a regular basis.

I also need to start making changes in this blog to build it into an income source of it’s own, which will allow me to spend more time on my writing here and less time ghostwriting other internet content to pay my bills.

Toward that end I want to hear from you. I’m planning to look into the Amazon affiliate program and starting to write book reviews as an amazon affiliate.

I am also considering starting a Patreon or Ko-fi profile and putting out novel chapters, short stories, and other works from my fiction writing there.

But for either of those thing to work, I need to know that you are interested in seeing that kind of content from me. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think of those ideas, or if there is some other type of content that you would be interested in.

Maybe there’s a topic I haven’t addressed and you’re curious about my take on it? Let me know.

If you’re interested in following the updates on what I’m doing you can also follow me on Twitter @RhianninB or on my professional Facebook page. I also will occasionally be posting on Medium, although some of the content there will be the same content I’m writing here.

Thanks for being here, and hopefully this next phase will be as exciting as the last!

I’ll keep a light on.

-R

Struggle Is Normal – It’s Okay To Be Depressed

Well Hey There!

I’m going to be very real for a moment. I deal with PTSD, it causes depression and anxiety in alternating strokes. It’s hard to deal with, it’s hard to do anything around it, it’s hard to motivate with it.

And yet, I’m still here, still writing, still trying to create something worth putting out into the world.

Earlier today, for most of my working day, I have been struggling to write and article that I have, in truth, been working on for most of the week. It’s personal, it’s political, and it requires me to put myself out there in a way that is uncomfortable and frightening.

I also think it deserves to be written and deserves to be shared.

But it isn’t what I’m writing right now. You see, I have also been struggling with a mental health crisis the last several months precipitated by the car crash I wrote about in more detail several months ago.

But one of the biggest struggles has not been writing, I do that all the time, it hasn’t been finances, I saved to make taking a shot at this possible, it hasn’t been interpersonal, my partner is the most loving and supportive human I have ever met, my friendships are stronger now than ever before, my family cares about me and also supports this attempt.

My biggest struggle has been going for this dream, still being depressed and anxious, and feeling like a failure because of it. Life is as close to what I want as it has ever been. The missing pieces are small, the benefits are huge. It often feels like I can’t possibly do this without loving every second of it.

That isn’t true.

Mental health crisis is a part of life. So is hardship, lack of motivation, and difficulty finding inspiration.

I don’t want to hide those things. This work is difficult. It doesn’t yet pay. It takes me doing research, writing well, and being honest with myself and with you.

I am learning, all the time. And I am often overwhelmed.

And yet it is still worth it.

I’m writing this to repeat and to emphasize a bit of wisdom that is often repeated, but, I think, less often listened to. It is okay to be depressed. It is okay to struggle. It is okay to occasionally be unhappy.

Your depression defines neither you nor what you do.

Even when your depression or anxiety becomes difficult to manage, when it makes you second guess everything, it is still not all that you are.

You can do great things while depressed.

You can be a wonderful person while depressed.

You can be fulfilled and make meaning in your life, while depressed.

It’s trite, it’s true, and I often need the reminder myself.

So. I’m posting this instead of the article I have been working on all week. That article is coming, as are future posts about the Just World Hypothesis, updates on my other writing endeavors, Cool Things Other People Do, and much much more. Because my depression and PTSD is not going to stop me from being the person I want to be and doing the things I want to do.

I hope you are well.
I’ll be keeping a light on.

R.

The Just World Theory has Infiltrated the U.S.

Hey there!

The world isn’t fair. It isn’t nice. It isn’t particularly Just.

I want to believe that it is, or that it could be, because a Just world makes so much more sense. A Just World gives us (humans) some control. We can enter into a transactional sphere where our actions have real and understandable consequences, good and bad, and those consequences make sense. Hard work = good job / successful life, etc. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.

Pride Month: An Update

Hey there! Happy Pride!

I knew I would come back to this. I knew it. Last year I wrote a post about pride month expressing my discomfort in queer spaces and identities, despite identifying as a pansexual genderfluid human. If you haven’t read that post yet it’s worth taking a look before diving into this one.

Leaning Into The Future (and Failure)

Hey There!

I mentioned yesterday that the future, post college-graduation, is both exciting and frightening. In a lot of ways I suspect that that feeling is not unique to graduation, any graduation, but to any moment where who and what you are is in flux, like it is when you leave a job, work toward a major goal, or even stick to a New Year’s Resolution. So let’s talk about it.

Graduation

Hey There!

It actually happened. I don’t know how it happened but… it did. I have officially earned a piece of paper more expensive than anything else I own. It might be a more expensive piece of paper than all the other things I own put together… I don’t know if that’s impressive or depressing.

The Notre Dame de Paris Fire

Hey Everyone,

 

Well the hits just keep on coming.

I guess that’s life.

I want to talk for a little while about the Notre Dame fire that burned for nine hours yesterday (4-15-2019). I was absolutely devastated at the news that the Notre Dame de Paris was burning. I’m neither Catholic nor any other denomination of Christian so the potential loss of relics and other holy items didn’t strike me particularly hard. But they, like the rose windows, the statues and gargoyles, and yes, the iconic spire that fell early in the blaze, are cultural items of extreme importance even to those of us who don’t practice the religion. Perhaps that’s because these things are centralized in Western cultures, but I doubt it. I’m sure an awful lot of Muslims would have been devastated to hear that the Crown of Thorns had been lost. I can’t find the clip (Google! You have betrayed my trust) but I can’t help but think of Hasan Minhaj talking about his deep love for both Jesus and Mohammed, and remaining Muslim because he could love and respect both prophets under Islam, but not Christianity. Thankfully the major artifacts, and most of the art, was saved. We don’t have to live in a world where that history, culture, and faith, has been lost. Even as a non-Christian, I am thankful for that. It may not have hurt as much for me to think of those artifacts being lost, but it certainly hurt. So I must, first and foremost, thank the French government and the many first responders who handled the situation skillfully and made the salvaging of so much precious history and creation possible. Thank you. Your efforts won’t ever be forgotten. Merci.

Early in the fire I feared the worst. Not knowing how hot the flames would be, or how much flammable material the cathedral contained, I imagined nightmare scenarios where the blaze reached sufficient heat to begin cracking the stone, collapsing not only the roof, but the iconic towers, and the rest of the building with them. I wept realizing that the best known of the rose windows was gone, worried that critical relics and texts and artifacts that cannot be replaced or rebuilt would be lost. I felt a deep empathy for Catholics and Christians across the globe, and an especial pain for the people of France, who were in limbo as they waited for word about the extent of the damage, to find out how much rebuilding would be needed, how long the fire’s scar would mark one of France’s  most well-known landmarks. I knew that that empathy, and the sympathetic pain that came with it, could not compare to the pain of the people most closely and deeply affected by the fire. Later in the day, upon learning that the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem also burned while Notre Dame was alight, I feared that we would, someday soon, learn that these fires had been deliberately set in an act of global terrorism. Thankfully the preliminary investigations aren’t finding indications of arson (More Here).

But as it became clear that the fire was less destructive than I feared, as videos and images of large streams of water being poured on the worst of the blaze contained the heat and spread of the flames, I have to admit that my mind turned to other concerns. Fires happen. We’ve lost and re-built cathedrals and mosques before. Sometimes the contents can’t be replaced, but we got lucky. Some glassworker, or more likely a team of glassworkers, are about to be hired for the job of a lifetime, carefully and passionately restoring the grandeur and majesty of Notre Dame’s stained glass windows. Artisans will be brought in to assist the restoration and cleaning of any damaged statues, Christians and non-believers like myself have already banded together in mutual mourning and determination. People across the globe remember their past trips to Notre Dame, or plan for new ones when the Cathedral is restored and re-opens. I can’t imagine what the French people are going through, but I hope that their mutual determination to rebuild reminds them, and the rest of the world, of their cultural and national greatness. That French pride is hard-fought and well earned and always has been.
My strongest reaction, however, was a need to create something beautiful. Notre Dame de Paris is and has long been a cultural symbol of incredibly beauty. It is, in small part, a monument to skilled and thoughtful craftsmanship and artistry. A symbol of productive passions made manifest, and the capability of thousands of humans working together. Other artists clearly had the same feeling, resulting in viral works of art like this one by Cristina Correa Freile,

Instagram here.

One of the stories of cathedrals, and of landmarks and world wonders that have survived to present day is our persistent determination to rebuild them. The rose windows I so mourned when I first heard the news were themselves reproductions. The cathedral was in the middle of renovations and restorations which is why so much of the critical art from the lost spire was out of the building when the fire broke out. Many in my immediate social circle, and elsewhere I’m sure, immediately began comparing this fire to the loss of the Great Library of Alexandria. I was one of them. Yet, this isn’t the Great Library. We’re in a position to repair and recover in a way humanity simply wasn’t when the knowledge of the Great Library was lost. As a kid I day dreamed about Cleopatra in Alexandria, largely thanks to a Royal Diaries book, Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile by Kristiana Gregory (Found here.) knowing, even as I imagined dry papyrus scrolls read by the light of a candle or torch, that not only could I never go to the Great Library, but that the papyrus I imagined might have been unique, and permanently lost. Notre Dame, by comparison, has been photographed literally thousands, possibly millions of times. It’s blueprints are available. It’s visual and acoustic qualities are well known. Short of acquiring 14th timber and stone for the reconstruction we can rebuild almost exactly as it was. But the intensity of the pain we are all feeling, the deep mourning many of us found ourselves in yesterday, and that we are still working through today, should be seen as a sign of how important and valuable works of culture and of beauty are to human society and consciousness. I say nothing of faith since I don’t share it, although it should not be ignored that Notre Dame is a great locus of the fervor and passion of the faithful. That millions of humans who have never even been to Notre Dame de Paris felt such a strong connection to that place should tell us how powerful such places are, how much they elevate us.

More than anything I hope that this reminds us that we can all create something beautiful, and motivates more of us to do it. Create art. To quote bad department store home decor, “Live, Laugh, Love”. Grieve. Cry. Mourn. Feel sorrow and joy deeply and honestly. And even if pen never touches paper, if you never open a tube of paint, or melt an ounce of glass, know that living and feeling is art all its own.

 

Yesterday I mourned. Today, I will be trying to turn toward hope. And I hope you’ll join me.

 

-R.

Checking In: It’s been a while

Oh hey there! Happy Friday!

So… you may not know this, but I disappeared for a while. I went from February 5th to March 15th without posting a single thing on this website. I know, I know, “big deal”, right? I’ve only had this site since 2016 and am I’m only starting to use it regularly now. Plus, I’ve posted two new things since that gap. I get it. But, this was part of a major commitment to myself to start having a real, tangible, presence as a writer. Blogging is probably the easiest and most beginner-friendly means of getting your voice as a human out there. And yet, as I have discovered, it is not in fact easy… Why? Well, mostly because life happens. When life happens, if your blog, like mine, is not a part of your income, it’s really easy to let it fall to the wayside.

Part of that, I think, is because we tend to treat blogs as journals. That’s pretty much what this post is about. Here in a moment I’m going to talk about what’s been going on in my life that stopped me from posting for that month. But I want to talk about what I’ve been thinking about in that time first. This blog is pretty much intended to be my personal social commentary platform. I’d like to monetize, and I’d like to start vlogging or podcasting, but all those things come with start-up costs and I don’t want to waste my own time and money (or your time and attention) with the monetization process until I can prove to myself that I can and will stick to this. Part of this is a continuation of my personal distrust of myself and my own motivation, but a lot of it is that I’m a pretty cautious person by nature. Social commentary is both socially risky and exists in a glutted market right now. In my social circle I can open up Facebook pretty much any time and get a LOT of social commentary from my friends. It’s valuable stuff, but that makes it harder to carve out a digital niche for the kind of content I want to produce. I still think that speaking up and out is valuable, I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise, but that also slows down the process of transitioning from creating content to making money from that content.

Why bring this up in a catch-up post? Well, it’s important to me to be transparent not only about what I think and what I’m doing as a content creator, but also to be transparent about the thought process behind it.  I want to monetize. I want to write consistently and to have this blog be a regular part of my personal internet conversation with the world. And, for a month this year (which we aren’t even half way into) I didn’t do that.

So what happened? Well… a lot. Early in February I got hit with a double whammy of a resurgence in the depression that comes with my PTSD. Late winter / early spring has been my least favorite season since I was a kid. Everything outside turns brown and gray and I live somewhere that usually stays muddy for months on end. We get just enough snow to stay in a pretty constant state of melt without getting to enjoy the soft white stuff blanketing the landscape. I also have a vitamin D deficiency significant enough that my doctor thinks I may be mildly stunted, which makes some sense since my brother is a giant. He’s also a redhead, and the recessive gene that causes redheadedness also comes with a change in the way our skin produces vitamin D, basically making it so that you get more vitamin D compared to the quality of sun you’re exposed to. It’s cool stuff. But he got the magical hair and the greater than 6 foot height and I got dishwater blonde hair and strictly American average height. Between the weather just being generally unpleasant, my PTSD, the vitamin D deficiency, and the fact that I live in the northern hemisphere, I am more susceptible to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Basically I get the winter sad, and it usually hits in February.

I’m also long-winded. I’ve been told. Please don’t stage an intervention.

This February I found myself questioning whether writing was a viable or reasonable path for me. I have a lot of people supporting me who think that going for my dream is a good idea, but I am plagued by the Gifted and Talented trap of constant imposter syndrome. People have always expected me to do well, and the fact that I have always done pretty well academically and creatively feels like a lie. Like most people, I look at the things I produce and can easily compare the actual product with my internal conception of what it could have been. That imaginary picture is always a better version than the final product. Because I can see those flaws there is also a part of my brain, lets call it the creativity-killing Gremlin, that thinks that the positive reactions of others are pitying lies. I was questioning whether I could justify trying to make money off a less than perfect end-result. I know how silly that is, I used to work for Comcast for goodness sake, and ain’t nothing there is perfect. I know. You know how I know? I spent eight hours a day hearing about how not perfect everything about Comcast is. But they are still a HUGE highly successful multi-media corporation that not only provides valuable services but also influences our interaction with fundamental parts of our lives, like the internet. Unfortunately the Gremlin isn’t great at logic, so reminding it of little things like ‘nothing is ever perfect’ doesn’t actually put it back in it’s crate.

Just as I was starting to come out of that funk, largely thanks to my wonderful partner and supportive friends and family, I was in a car crash. I was hit by another vehicle in a parking lot, my little Volvo hatchback was totaled, and I got a concussion. My partner was also in the car. Thankfully they are okay. So is the other driver. But, between the concussion and the suddenly precarious position I found myself in thanks to the totaled car, my depression came surging back. It’s been a few weeks now, and I still don’t have a car. We’ve looked at a lot of vehicles in our price range, but all of them have had some pretty major issues that would require urgent repair. I’m less in control of my own negative mental processes than I have been in a long time, in part because my brain’s ability to regulate it’s own chemical process is even more challenged than normal.

In the meantime I also have college. This semester has been better for me that school has been in a long time. I enjoy my classes, the material is interesting and the professors have new insight and analysis that fascinates me. My grades are also higher than they’ve been for a long time because I’ve been able to stay on top of my work and produce higher quality work than previous semesters. The concussion put all of that at risk for a while (although I’m mostly out of the woods now).

So, between my natural depression, college, a concussion, and the general stress and shakeup that comes with a crash like this, things have felt really out of control and impermanent recently. I had just recently put a lot of money into the maintenance on that car, my partner’s truck is older than either of us and needs some work before it’s drive-able. We also live about 40 minutes outside the nearest city, and there aren’t really any closer small towns. So we’re currently reliant on the transportation of our roommates. We’d carpooled for a long time, so it’s not really an issue, but our freedom to run errands, make appointments, or even just to do general chores is severely limited.

I talked earlier about how I think we tend to treat blogs like journals. I treated this blog like a journal because all of these other things became more important to me than posting here. I didn’t stop thinking about things I’d like to write and post, particularly in the political realm as the Democratic race for 2020 has started to heat up, but I didn’t write up those posts. Or, when I did start writing, I didn’t finish the piece, or decided that it had taken long enough to write that it was no longer relevant to the political conversation. I’m trying to second-guess myself less on those kinds of things. It’s literally impossible for one person without a research team to keep up with the 24-7 news cycle, so I’m trying not to hold myself to the impossible standard of by the minute relevance. I’m also trying to tell myself that the goal is to produce quality content, even if that content isn’t coming out immediately after something happens in our world. I also know that sometimes life has to come first. I’m not mad at myself for not posting, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge it. This blog isn’t a journal, and it needs a higher priority in future.

Wow this post got long. Thank you for sticking with it, and sticking with me, while I forage my own path toward this lifelong goal. I can’t promise there won’t be more bumps in the road. In fact, I can pretty much promise that there will be bumps aplenty. But I will do everything I can to be transparent and honest and real.

Whelp. That’s it for today folks. I’ve got ideas for some new content, so hopefully you’ll be seeing more soon. Let me know if you want me to talk about anything in particular in the comments, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

-R.

New Zealand Shooting

Hey there everyone!

I really wish I could be posting something else right now, and there will be a new post coming out soon about why I’ve been gone so long, but this felt way more important to post first.

Trigger warnings : Islamaphobia, mass shooting.

It’s happened again. Again. I don’t care that it was another country or that it wasn’t targeting people like me, I just sick of this news story. I’m sick of feeling jaded and running out of words to say and I wish I could still be as emotionally wrecked as I was the first time I heard about a mass shooting.

But I’m not. I’m not as sad as I should be. I’m not as passionate as I should be. When I first heard what I happened I just shut off my phone and turned away. When I heard that the shooters filmed the whole thing and people were actually sharing the footage my disgust wasn’t as deep as it should be.

Mostly what I’m feeling is anger.

I’m angry that there are more than 40 people whose families and friends are mourning because a senseless few value their own hatred above the lives of their fellow human beings.

I’m angry because my country has failed to identify terrorist attacks unless the perpetrators look like the people who died yesterday. (congrats to NZ’s Prime Minister for being brave enough to say that this was terrorism.)

I’m pissed I had to write that congratulations because naming a mass shooting a terrorist attack shouldn’t be difficult, shouldn’t be different, shouldn’t seem revolutionary. Yet, from a United States perspective, it really does.

Aside from the anger there is this intense sense of disappointment.

I’m disappointed that this all consuming kind of hatred and prejudice exists in so many different places in our world and in the cultures of the world. I want to believe that pockets of hatred and violence are truly anomalous and not a part of human nature, but, while the percentages of people who feel this way and act this way are infinitesimally small, they persist. It really feels like there is something fundamental about humans that leads to that tiny percentage being violent and cruel.

Despite that, there are beautiful and wonderful things that happen every day. I truly think 99.999999999% of all humans are full of incredible potential, power, and love. Which is part of why this is such a terrible loss. I don’t care if you are against the tenants of Islam, you should be sad this happened.

 

To all the people mourning across the planet today – You are loved and appreciated and valuable.

And to my Muslim brothers and sisters, you are valid and valuable and important. We can work to make the world a better place for you and everyone else. There is hope, and there are so many people with you. It doesn’t make this better, but I hope you know that there is always a path forward and that we can be more than we are.

 

-R.