Monday 28 December 2015

Hana Yori Dango

People are ignorant. Half the time we seem to have no idea how our words hurt each other.

The guy I loved most in the whole world, the guy who was my best friend for fourteen years, told me last year that he couldn't be with me because I wrecked his relationship with God. Not other women, just me. I felt like that was an indictment against my character by the one person who should have known me better than that. I'm still not over it. Maybe I never will be "over" it.

But you know, part of that is on me. If there's blame to be had, it's not all of the side of the people who say this sort of shit. Because they don't know. People - men and women - have been socialised for centuries into believing that women who enjoy sex or enjoy nudity are unholy, unworthy, dirty and wrong. Sometimes humans don't even realise how much we've bought into these beliefs until something unexpected comes out of our mouths - or until someone gets hurt when we didn't mean to hurt them.

Change happens when we communicate. And that means part of the responsibility is on those of us who get hurt by such comments to say so. To say to our friends, partners, loved ones: that hurts me. I don't feel that's a fair comment. That remark makes me feel dirty / unloved / ashamed / judged unfairly / etc.

Lest anyone read this post as victim-blaming, I apologise. That's not how I intend it to read. I am not saying that victims have a ethical responsibility to stand up to abusers, or that they deserve what they get if they don't speak up. I don't think that, not at all. But I DO think that in the cases of friends and family members, and particularly lovers, it can be more productive - not a question of morally right or wrong, but *productive* - to tell our loved ones that their words hurt us, rather than letting them fester.

You know me. I'm far more interested in what's productive, what's practical, what's possible, than what's beautiful and ideal.

My relationship might have survived if I'd had the confidence to tell him: that's not an okay thing to say to me. And I wanted it to survive, because despite that one crummy thing, he was a good man. This is something I've learned in the last few years. Good people say and do shitty things. Quite often, in fact. They have bad moods where they snap. They have days where they're just not with it and say something thoughtless. And sometimes, they just don't *realise* something is hurtful...because nobody has ever pointed it out to them.

I wish I'd called out my friend for his God comment. I wish I'd called out my ex for the time he told me I'm not marriage material. I wish I'd called out the guy in D.C. for the time he told me he resented having to spend the day with me instead of his girlfriend (after flying 8 hours to see him). I wish I'd called out my brother every time he called me diabetes waiting to happen (because he judged my everyday eating habits by what I eat on Christmas and Thanksgiving!), and the teacher who made me wear a T-shirt in gym class because my body developed earlier than the rest of the leotard-clad 12-year-olds, and the coworkers who make Mrs Robinson jokes year after year, and the sister of my foster kid who insinuated that my hugging him (and him hugging me) was inappropriate.

My biggest problem has always been taking whatever people throw at me. Insults appear to roll off me like water off the back of a duck. Very few people have ever been able to dent my composure, because I've always felt like I have a responsibility to maintain the smooth, unruffled façade, so as not to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But I am starting to wonder if this doesn't do more harm than good. Is a relationship really healthy if you can't call the other person out on their bullshit at times? If you go on absorbing what's said and done to you, and never let your loved ones see the scars they've wrought?

I don't think it is.

This post originally appeared as a comment on a Facebook link.

Wednesday 16 December 2015

The Last Message Received

I don't often talk about memes and viral internet stuff here, because - well, I'm usually woefully behind the times. Plus, it tends not to interest me much. I'd much rather talk about love, or Pokemon, or medicine, or cooking, or any one of a hundred things that interest me more than social media.

However, there's one site that's gone viral recently that's really captured me. It's called The Last Message Received, and it's a Tumblr page created by a 15-year-old named Emily Trunko, with a simple but captivating premise: people send in the last conversations, or last messages, with lost loved ones. Some have been lost to death, others to anger, or simply to the sands of time. Some of the messages are sweet, some are funny, some are angry - and some shatter your heart into little pieces.

I've had a lot of last messages in the last year. Four friends and a family member gone in the space of fourteen months. Perhaps that's why I find the page so spellbinding. Humans are incredibly complex creatures who exhibit almost unlimited variation...and yet in grief, as in love, we sing the same tune.

Sati's Message:



A couple weeks after this, I heard from his sister that they were trying to raise $80,000 to send him to the U.S. for treatment for an aggressive brain tumour. He got to the States, but they stopped treatment less than a week after they started - it was growing too quickly. All in all, it was around six weeks from diagnosis - or from hearing about his diagnosis - to death. And I knew, even before anyone told me, that something was wrong and I was going to lose him soon. It wasn't rational to think that. Eighteen years I'd known him and I'd never even known him to have a cold. He was a professional dancer, a nutritionist, and the healthiest person I'd ever met. I had no reason to think he could ever get sick. But I knew.

Love you, J. Every day for the last nineteen years, and every day for the next sixty-one.