OCD and Pens

Sitting in a room of 300 desks, math class in college - "Math for the Liberal Arts" for those of us who haven't used a quadratic equation since high school. I'm a Freshman at 21 and taking a full load of courses. I'm trying to keep everything perfectly organized. For English Composition class I have a green folder, green notebook, and use a green pen. For Leadership Skills it's purple; for Literature it's black. In Math it's blue.

We've gotten through voting methods and now we're on Euclidean circuits. I'm struggling to keep up with the TA's writing on the chalk board. Dammit! My pen is out of ink. I scrounge through my purse, through my backpack, through my coat pockets. Shit shit shoot! I'm pulling pens out of everywhere, but none of them are the right pen. I've got a No 2 pencil for test days, black pens, red pens, green pens, purple pens - no blue pens. My heart is beating faster and it's getting hard to breathe. The TA is filling up the third board and soon he's going to be erasing the notes I was trying to get down.

A girl beside me asks, "What's wrong?" I whisper back, "I can't find my pen!" She looks at me oddly, and as her eyes take in the office supply cache on my desk they widen. "Oh." I keep ripping through my purse, over and over, even though I've been through it already. I dump the contents on my desk. Cigarettes, hairbrush, caffeine pills - Dammit where's my PEN?? I start to cry. It's soft at first, fat tears rolling down my cheeks and landing on my notes, smearing them and making them illegible. The TA erases the first board and the second, and begins writing out a problem two or three ahead of me. I start to hyperventilate, knowing I can't catch up now.

Full of concern, the girl beside me raises her hand, "Uh sir? I think Angie needs to go to the counseling center." He sees me, falling apart, head in my hands, my racking sobs becoming audible now, and motions her to remove me from the room. She grabs fistfuls of pens and shoves them back into my purse, takes my notebook and text book and puts them in my backpack. She packs up her own things. "Come on," she tells me, "It's time to go." Blindly following her through the film of my tears, I let her lead me out of the room.

She walks with me out of the Mathematics building and over to Student Services. We take the elevator to the second floor and go through the double doors reading "Counseling Center." The woman behind the low wrap around desk in the lobby hands me a clipboard with a five-page checklist of common problems. I mark off more than I leave blank.

The girl who's name I don't know leaves me there, and I read and re-read the checklist, over and over again, making sure I haven't missed anything. My breathing is more normal now and my heart beat is beginning to slow down. Finally, after about half an hour, a counselor comes to see me.

We talk for about an hour, and I cry and choke and struggle to explain why exactly I had such a spectacular breakdown in the middle of class. "I didn't have the right pen," I keep saying, knowing by now how stupid it sounds. She roots around in her filing cabinet, and pulls out another checklist.

"I'm going to come back in a few minutes, but I want you to fill this out while I'm gone," she tells me. Again, I mark off more than I leave blank. She returns to the room, looks over my list and says to me, "You have obsessive compulsive disorder."

All my life I'd avoided getting a medical diagnosis - avoided hearing any "words of death" spoken over me that would give power to the demons, yet once she has said them I don't feel terrified; I feel relieved. There's a NAME for this? Other people know what it is? Counting "1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-3-4-5-6" isn't normal, but neither is it so crazy they don't know what it is?

She sends me off with a pamphlet and a note excusing me from the classes I've missed. I walk around campus, reading and thinking. "I'm not alone!"

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Red Light

I haven't yet figured out how to coherently write about my party days and nights, but here's an old poem I wrote at the time "Red Light"

Hotel party and late night wanderings
Has it already been a year?
Driving slightly under your influence
No, I didn't forget you dear
The beach with the light where you asked me
The phone conversation where I answered
We walked down the street soaked with laughter
And there's a girl we know who has my name
Dime bags and muscle relaxers
A ten-hour drive to never leave town
Too many people and not enough friends
but the happy yellow money makes me smile
Double your dosage, double your fun
My jaw is killing me. You got any gum?
Well I'll do that for you,
but what's in it for me?
Thrift store clothes and a water bra
Too many cops out at night
All the bad parts of town for all the good reasons
Baby, I don't care what you call me.
Let's stagger down the road of life
arm in arm, with a bottle in each free hand.
Red light.

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Hot Cis Mess

A couple months ago, I stumbled across the blog Questioning Transphobia*. I stepped right in, when I made a comment on the very first post I read, which apparently revealed my cis privilege. I was (rightly) smacked down by quite a few commenters, and quickly quit trying to defend my actions. Instead of storming off in an offended huff (which I'll admit, was my first instinct) I subscribed to email updates of the blog, and I read them and never, ever, ever comment. I'm trying to learn, and I'm trying to check my cis privilege at the door, and the best way I can do that is to shut up and listen.

But here's something I feel I have to speak about, to my own readers. The Tribeca Film Festival is slated to show the movie "Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives". The film's cis gay male producer/director/writer Israel Luna says "I don't consider myself an advocate. I'm not really a protester or anything like that." No, he's certainly not. He's just trying to get a couple cheap laughs at the expense of the trans community by making a pejoratively titled "campy" comedy horror film about transwomen being raped and killed. Because, you know, rape and murder are just full of the lulz!

"[My film's] like Grand Theft Auto. If you have a bad day at work, you can shoot some people, kill some hookers, trash your car and feel better. It's the same with my movie," he continues, in a quote that makes me want to vomit all over my keyboard. I had no idea killing hookers could make me feel better! Maybe that's how I should deal with the depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder I have as a repeated abuse victim! Rarely do I type when this angry. I'll let the community speak for itself, and recommend you check out a few of the articles I've read today that have me so fired up and pissed off.

goodbuy t'jane has a good write-up and includes the trailer for the movie on her page. It starts by detailing (in text) the graphic and brutal murders of two transsexual persons. I couldn't finish watching it, personally. It was triggering, to say the least and I am not a transsexual myself! I'm a ciswoman and a survivor of violent rape. I can only imagine how much more horrifying, brutal, and hurtful this would be if I had to constantly face discrimination and violence as a transwoman, minority within a minority.

Describing her own reaction to the trailer, she wrote

I felt sick. I have seen the lives and even the deaths of trans people appropriated by cis LGB culture before, but I didn't think anyone would be so crass as to describe in lurid details the deaths of two trans people (ironic in how quickly many cis gays were to distance Jorge Mercado from any sort of trans identity before) to promote a COMEDY. A drag queen comedy directed by a cissexual gay man.

Gina writes on Skip the Makeup (in some of the best sarcasm and snark I've seen in ages)

The line at the top of the poster reads, "it takes balls to get revenge." In case you don't understand, that's a direct reference to "trannies" (evidently an affectionate term all trans women use to refer to one another) having testicles and a scrotum. I'm just upset LaLuna Entertainment, makers of this statement of community pride were unable to somehow integrate the words "penis" or "cock" onto the poster but, after all, it IS going to be shown at a prestigious film festival where it will get national and international coverage.

I will never have to experience transphobia or transphobic violence. I will never have to encounter what people of color deal with every day, in discriminations and prejudices large and small. I will never have to constantly prove myself to be able-bodied and "valuable" because of a permanent disability.** While I identify as bisexual, the only real headache from that comes in explaining to men (or sometimes couples) that no, I am not interested in having a threesome, foursome or moresome. It's easy at times to feel like a second class citizen as a woman or as an atheist, but it's also easy to forget the privilege I do have as a white woman, a ciswoman, an able-bodied woman, a woman who almost exclusively dates men, and would face no challenges to marrying a man if I wanted to (which I don't.)

Please join the Facebook group against this film and sign the Change.org petition to the Tribeca Film Festival asking them not to give this transphobic snuff film a platform. GLAAD blog has the direct contact information for organizers of Tribeca, as well as a suggested-text email web form.

I'm gonna go stick my head in the freezer and try to cool off.

* On a side note, my spell check does recognize the word homophobia, but thinks transphobia should either be separated, hyphenated, or that I must really mean "transportable". I've added it to my ever-growing dictionary.

** Regular readers will know that I had to walk with a cane for three years, and I would definitely say I gained some insights from that experience, but it is nothing compared with the challenges (physical, social, economic, romantic, and employment based) that people who have permanent disabilities face.

(In case it wasn't clear enough, "tranny" is a pejorative term, on par with "n*gger" or "f*ggot" and we all know words matter.)

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Angie on TV & Radio

I've done several podcast appearances lately, and haven't provided any of the links (oops!) so let me amend that now.

I was on the ThinkAtheist radio show hosted by my good Twitter buddy @Synthaetica (or Synth for short) a couple of times. The February 28th episode on "The Week in Review" is here. I was also on the March 7th episode.

I was invited on Third Wave Radio and Infidel Guy, but neither show has put up the audio yet. (Sad face goes here.)

Issues for Your Tissues, hosted by Katie Vitale, did two episodes on the #livetweetingabortion issue. For the first episode, Mary Ann Sorrentino (whose slut-shaming "abortion is irresponsible but I'm a pro-choice warrior, really!" piece appeared on Salon.com) came on to explain her viewpoint and reveal her ignorance of how Twitter works. Yesterday, I was able to respond and Katie has already uploaded that audio. (Thanks Katie!)

As for mainstream media, here are my TV spots for ABC News and CNN (stupid embedding disabled by request!)

That's all for now folks!

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Jesus Hates Me, This I Know

Everything that worked in my favor was God pulling strings for me, and everything that worked against me was a result of my own sin. If life was good, God did it; if life was bad, I did it. That's what Christian theology taught me. God is good, right? "Every good and perfect gift comes from above" James 1:17 or Romans 8:28 which says "for those who love God, all things work together for good." So anything good was God helping me out. Anything bad was my fault, but God was *going* to use it for my good - eventually. "This too shall pass" and all that.

And you know what? It wasn't helpful. I'm dealing with a spot of depression right now, which was triggered by writing about my ex-husband yesterday morning, and really kicked in about 12 hours ago. It's easier for me to break out of black and white thinking now, and immensely easier to tell the guilt-tripping voices in my head to shut the hell up. It is hard sometimes, when thinking about my history of abuse, not to go back to that Christian space of thinking I somehow deserved it. I will never understand how people can say that religion helps people, or makes them feel good. I can't identify with that particular experience. Sure there were individual moments were faith in god, or thinking he loved me helped for a time. But more often than not, I would look at my struggles and think, "God doesn't love me."

My sister was never beaten, never raped, and never told to be more like me. I just thought God loved her more than he loved me. (Now I know that was just my family that loved her more.) Now it's something wrong with them, not something wrong with me. The reason I couldn't hear from god wasn't because I was broken or evil or wretched, but because he was never real.

I have a habit of hearing encouragement as silencing, because so often those platittudes, those "this too shall passs" statements are in some way an attempt to say "Stop whining." At least they were when my family said them. But now that I don't believe in an all-powerful all-loving god who is letting me suffer for some reason, I don't have to believe it's because I've done something horrible to deserve whatever pain I am bearing. It's just that life isn't fair. Somehow that's an easier pill to swallow.

I'm getting a referral through a government program through the kid's school social worker, so hopefully they can work things out to sign a 6 month or 12 month contract with a local mental health corporation. If they do that, my therapy and meds for a while will be covered. I told the guy yesterday, "I'd rather do nothing than go back on meds just to have the funding yanked away from me again. I've done that 5 times." Fingers crossed in superstition or prayers lifted to heaven? No. I can't exactly say I have hope this will work, but I am not doing so badly I am convinced this won't get better. I don't think it will pass on its own, but I'm hoping someone will be able to help me actually deal with this stuff, so maybe I really can put it all behind me. It's damn hard to write this memoir, and stir up all these painful memories, without the help I need to process it safely.

Suicidal thoughts are scary, no matter how fleeting, because when things hurt so much, it's hard to believe they'll get better. It's hard to believe I don't deserve it. It's frustrating to feel like I've done almost nothing of value and i'm a screw up this far into things. I feel like I'm so far behind where I wanted to be and sometimes it's hard to believe I'll ever catch up. I feel like I am failing at being a grown up. But honesty is worth everything to me, so here's the naked truth once again. I am trying to believe that if people really know me, that won't make them stop loving me. Maybe the way they see me will help me learn to love myself.

More than Jesus ever did, that's for damn sure.

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The Last Straw

This is part 2 of the excerpt "The Last Week" detailing the end of my marriage. Part 1 is available here.

I sat in the bend the huge blue sectional, with mountains of laundry piled up on either side and the baby in bouncer in front of me, and cried. It seemed like I was crying all the time. Ronnie and I fought constantly. He hadn't quit drinking when I had moved in, like he had promised, or when we got married, or after the honeymoon. Now our son was born and I was struggling to find a way to keep our rent and electric bills paid, but there was perpetually a 12-pack of Budweiser in the fridge. When we'd first met, he was drinking Miller High Life and other cheaper beers, but since we got married, he was enjoying the fruits of my better paying job.

I was in pain, with my right ankle propped up in front of me. I had spent the day taking care of Little Man and doing laundry - five loads of the Little Man's cloth diapers, my spit-up and milk stained shirts, and Ronnie's dirty work clothes and aprons - by crawling from the couch to the stacked washer/dryer in our front closet. I'd never wanted a cast so badly in my life.

...

I looked at the clock on the bedside table - 2 am. I was alone in the bed. Little Man was sleeping in a plastic laundry basket lined with blankets beside me and Ronnie was gone. (I'd planned on co=sleeping and we hadn't bought a crib, but then I'd been worried about dropping my son off the bed, or else of Ronnie drunkenly smothering him if I placed him between us.) I sat up in the bed and used the manual breast pump to collect a 6 ounce bottle, then crawled along towards the kitchen to put the bottle in the fridge.

I came out of the room and saw the kitchen light on and heard voices. What the hell was RJ doing over here at 2 in the bleeding morning? I hastily buttoned my pajama top and, using the wall beside me, rose up to standing and started to hobble their way. It wasn't RJ - it was some man I'd never met before. He and Ronnie didn't notice me at first.

*Sniff!* Ronnie straightened up and caught my eye, a rolled up dollar stuck in his nose, making him look utterly stupid and pathetic. It wasn't the worst thing he'd done, by far, it was simply the last. He'd promised to quit drinking, and had lied. He'd spent money we didn't have on things we didn't need. He'd yelled at me and humiliated me and stolen my post-partum Percocet. He'd cashed in Little Man's change jar just the week before for weed money. I didn't have the word for it yet, but he'd raped me too. Doing lines of blow with some guy I didn't know off my kitchen counter at 2 o'clock in the morning wasn't the worst thing Ronnie did in our three-month marriage, but it was the last.

I don't remember if I scolded or screamed or just gave him a look of disgust and crawled back to bed. The next day, with the help of my sister's husband, I moved back home to my mother's.

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The Christian God

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Angie the Anti-Theist talking about how Christians all seem to worship different gods. Is the "true Christian" god the one Fred Phelps talks about, who hates fags and loves IEDs or Rick Warren's god who won't let a woman leave if she's being abused in her marriage? Or is it the god of my old priest or my old pastor or of my crazy cult leading grandma? Maybe none of them are "real".

It's World Water Day!

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