You Just Ignorant As Shit: An American Story

This is your fair warning that this blog post may not be to your liking. Leave now if you are likely to be offended by my wrestling with questions about equality.

Man. Remember when this used to just be posts about my worst dating experiences? 

Like that time I hit on a gay guy? 

Or that time an anesthesiologist started crying on our first (only) date? 

Or when that one dude asked me out for dinner and then just sat there -- foodless -- watching me eat?

Those were the good ole' days, eh?

I've never been a terribly balanced individual. A few decades ago, someone told me water was good for me, so I drank 3 gallons of it one day. When I was around 19, my mother told me you should only eat when your stomach growls, so I took her at her word, lost so much weight my roommates didn't recognize me, and developed an eating disorder. When I was 21, someone told me running is good for you, so I ran 3 hours in an afternoon.

I've been like this pretty much as far back as I can remember. 

It wasn't until I turned 24 that a psychiatrist finally diagnosed me with "OCD tendencies -- we don't like to say that patients are OCD anymore, because that's labeling, you understand, but here's some medicine. Hopefully this will help you stop counting things so much."

(My folks believed more in prayer, the laying on of hands, and anointing things with oil than in doctors and medicine. They are die-hard Conservatives. That may be important later.)

I often worry that the people who have known me the best and the longest are just shaking their heads at me and wondering when my next "phase" will occur and whether they can put up with me for long enough to get through this one. After all, I don't still drink gallons of water a day or run for hours at a time.

That was all Prologue.

Here's what I'm trying to say:

I'm confused by American Christianity. I've been confused for a long time, but I thought that as I aged, things would make more sense. Instead, they've just gotten cloudier and cloudier.

I am confused because I have shifted and the world in my immediate orbit has not.

I grew up in South Carolina surrounded by Confederate flags, listening to blatantly racist sermons in church on Sundays. It did not occur to me that any of this was wrong. How could it? My parents were fundamentalist Christians who took me to Pro-Life rallies and Billy Graham crusades. I was in a closed feedback loop.

Then I went to teach in Hazelwood and all hell broke loose. I realized I was going to lose my job if I didn't start educating myself about Black folks. That's the God's honest truth. 

The summer that Michael Brown was shot, I'd been in Hazelwood for 5 years already. I was still asking co-workers asinine questions like, "Is it true black people don't get bitten by mosquitoes? My friend's boyfriend is black and he says that's why he never gets bitten. Is that a real thing?"

Then everyone else in the Teacher's Lounge would chime in with equally absurd questions until one of the black teachers said, "Ya'll bein' racist."

Very soberly, I said, "I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to be racist."

When things like this happened, the typical reply was along the lines of a deep sigh and then, "Nah, you ain't racist T, you just ignorant as shit." Which I considered a really kind and generous thing to say, even at the time. 

But then Michael Brown was shot, and overnight everything changed: 43 HSD teachers quit in one week. When students chose their own seats in my classroom, there was an invisible line down the middle of the room now: black on one side, white on the other. No one knew what to do, how to act, and me least of all.

It's said that when things aren't working, you have to change something -- it doesn't even matter what. Just change anything at all, because it's never going to get better if you keep just doing the same damn thing.

As I said, I don't do anything halfway so I decided to CHANGE ALL OF THE THINGS!!!!!!!!!!

I started a GoFundMe to raise supplies and founded a drumline in Hazlewood. I moved out of volunteering with Beyond Schools and started volunteering with recently paroled men in North STL. I started reading every book I could get my hands on written by people of color. These books didn't even all make sense to me, but I just kept reading. And gradually, I changed and something inside of me began to shift.

An administrator in my book club said recently that there's no point in talk, talk, talking to people we know who are racist. They are going to be who they are going to be. Leave 'em be.

But I don't think that's true. I have to believe in the basic goodness of people -- despite growing up learning that we are all desperately wicked and depraved. I have to believe that if I could grow and change and learn, other people can too. It's the reason we are teachers. We believe in the human capacity for growth. I owe my own to many teachers who helped me along the way.

I didn't start out nobly. I took the job in HSD because I needed work. I started becoming involved with social justice initiatives to save my ass. But along the way, the men's stories became real, the beat of the drums started uniting the students, and the black authors started making sense.

I recognize that my personality tends toward extremes, and that maybe my zealous nature can make what I think or say or do off-putting to some. But one of the administrators in my North County book club said recently, "When you see the light on civil rights issues, IT'S LIKE YOU'VE MET JESUS!!!!"

And others immediately chimed in: "YES!!!!! It's like meeting Jesus!!! That's exactly what it's like!! You need everyone to know!"

That is as true a thing as I can say, on a deep and fundamental level.

We have this misguided conception in America that you are EITHER racist and evil OR non-racist and good. That's a fallacy though. Racism is predicated on two things: ignorance and power. It's not wrong to be "ignorant as shit." You can be a very good person and be ignorant as shit. 

But we are in charge of where we allow that ignorance to lead us. Are we safe in our ignorance because we have the luxury of saying, "This doesn't directly apply to me and my family?" (power). Or are we willing to take the much more labor-intensive road of loving and educating ourselves about the people who can't do anything for us, whose lives don't even *need* to intersect with our own?

I have to believe that Jesus would do the latter. Regardless of convenience. Regardless of prior bad experiences with people "like that." Regardless.

This is why you don't do online dating.

About 15 months ago -- January 18, 2019, actually -- I was on the dating app Bumble. I don't remember why exactly I "swiped right" on John, but the app then smashes your profiles together and says, "You're a match!!!!!!!" They probably don't actually use that many exclamation points, but in my head, it feels like they're yelling at me to DO SOMETHING with this information.

Women have to make the first move on that app, so I said hi, or something equally as scintillating.

John replied in a message I read at 5 a.m. the next morning. He alluded to the fact that we actually had already met, via his friend, my high school boyfriend Kurt (I would post a picture of Kurt here, but my high school photo album was destroyed. And also he would hate that).

I immediately "unmatched" from John, thereby cutting off any way he had of contacting me. You see, in high school, I was crazy about Kurt, but I was far less crazy about this older guy who seemed to be always hanging around him. John was 5 years older than us, and that's the difference between kids in high school and a guy already out of college. I thought it was weird at the time, and even beyond that, he rubbed me the wrong way.


On January 19, 2019, John found me on Facebook and messaged me there to say he'd been looking forward to continuing our conversation.

I felt guilty for being rude (thank you, Society), so I apologized for "unmatching" without an explanation. I didn't want to say, "I found you obnoxious many years ago" so I typed the first thing that came to mind... I told him Kurt had been really important to me (which was true), and that I had no desire to start up something with one of his friends. Then I added that we'd really gotten under each other's skin back then anyway. I finished this off by saying that I hoped he found the perfect gal.

John replied that he didn't really like himself back then either. Then he said, "I'll stop now, but should you ever want to grab coffee..."

I said, "Thank you." I did not allude to the coffee. I hoped that would be the end of it.

On March 19, 2019, I got more messages from John. He could not let it go. He found the list I put out every year of the dozens of books I'd read in the previous year, along with my reviews. He bought some of them. He thought it would be nice to discuss them. I did not reply. In fact, I blocked John from contacting me further on Facebook.

Months later, I received an email from John. I have no record of the email because it freaked me out that he'd somehow gotten my email address, and I deleted it immediately. I think it again alluded to books and coffee. I told my Dad about it because it shook me up.

On March 28, 2020, my father texted me to tell me that John had texted HIM to say he wanted to connect with me but didn't know how to reach me. I don't know how he got my dad's phone number. I assume it was from a mutual friend. Dad forwarded me the phone number, along with "I seem to recall you not being interested in this guy." (Thanks, Pop.)

At this point, I feel like I've made myself pretty clear:

* unmatching on Bumble
* blocking on Facebook
* not replying to email
* not calling when given the phone number

The night of April 3, 2020, John showed up on my doorstep. I had never given him my address or any other contact information.

I heard a knock on the door. I ran downstairs, thinking it was a neighbor coming to bring Graysee back. She's an indoor/outdoor cat and rules the neighborhood, but occasionally neighbors who have not yet met her will look at the address on her tags and bring her back, saying, "Our back door was open, and this cat walked right in. She yours?"

The guy on my porch said, "I brought your cat back."

I laughed and said thanks, without looking at his face.

He kept standing there and then said, "Also, you have an Amazon package."

I thought that was an odd thing to say, and I glanced at his face. I became very still, and said, "Why are you here?"

"I just brought your cat back and, you know, wanted to see what you're up to..."

"I'm wondering why you are standing on my porch right now."

He shook his head and said, "Just bringing your cat back," as I slammed the door shut.

I panicked. I locked all my doors and closed all my blinds.

The ONE TIME I saw Kurt in the last 15 years, he told me to be careful about my digital footprint! (He's in tech now). How massive must my footprint be, I thought, if this lunatic figured out I have a gray cat who wanders around my neighborhood?

I did a frantic web search for John, and to my horror, found that he lives only 3 1/2 blocks away from me. I started melting down, unsure of whether I should be freaked out that I might have a stalker, or that I was rude to a neighbor (thanks again, Society!).

I couldn't call the police. I'd deleted John's email. And my dad is 74, God love him... he has no memory of this guy first contacting him. Of course, the Bumble messages are gone too. What was I going to tell the police? "A neighbor brought my cat back, and I didn't like it!"

So that leaves us here, with this document, telling you to the best of my memory what occurred. Maybe it's nothing. But maybe it's something. And I just think that this is why the older generation always warned us against online dating.

UPDATE: On September 8, I received a text message from an unknown number. It read: This is John XXXXX. Kurt forwarded me your snail mail message. I'm not stalking you. Sorry for the awkward interaction months ago on your porch. Kurt told me you lived on Jackson and I regularly walk that street and saw you and thought to stop by. I wasn't prepared for what happened. Again... I'm sorry.

I responded on September 9: Kurt's betrayal at giving both my words and my phone number to someone he knew I was afraid of is truly breathtaking. Both of you, do not contact me or my family again.

UPDATE 07/26/23: He came across my profile on Bumble again and messaged me. Maybe a month ago?

Now someone in St. Charles is obsessively reading my blog and it's making me really uncomfortable.

 

Into the Woods, Part III: Breaking

Elon Musk said once that there was only a one in a billion chance that we are NOT part of an alien simulation. Think about that for a minute. That's damn terrifying, is what it is. That means all the pain and heartache we feel in life is completely made up! The aliens are just playing with us while we exist in those dumb Matrix-esque pods.

If that's the case, Aliens, I want a refund or else a different pod and a different personality. I don't really know how that works. You're smart, you can figure it out.

This has been one of the Top Hardest Years of My Life.

To be more like the people around me and feel like a "normal woman," I asked my doctor if I could quit taking my medicine over the summer. If I couldn't change the conversation, maybe I could change myself, thereby controlling how triggered I felt.

Around the beginning of September, I began to spiral out of control. By mid-September, I couldn't even keep my shit together at school. By November, I could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't.

I felt incapable of making decisions because I couldn't be certain that what I was experiencing was actually happening. I began to wonder if I really existed. I suspected that I did not, that I existed only in the ether that floated around and between all the "real people."

Andrea became worried. Christie became worried. Something was very, very wrong. Amid all the loss and heartache, I came to a point where I could no longer move. I was put back on my medicine, but it was too late.

In December, I went to the hospital for a routine OB/GYN appointment. While I waited for the Nurse Practitioner to appear, I stared at posters full of information about safer sex, HPV vaccinations, and pregnancy risks. At some point, I became completely hysterical. It turns out conversation isn't the only thing that triggers me now, posters do too! Hurrah!!!

In utter humiliation, I was wheeled down to patient intake.

I made it 6 years between my last hospital visit and this one. I made it a year and a half without tranquilizers. On Monday, I will check in for the start of yet another intensive treatment program, as I prepare for yet another absence from school.

Why am I telling you this? It's embarrassing as hell and really hard to write about, to be honest. But I think it's important to be authentic in our struggles. I tried hard to be "normal" -- but it turns out that my normal isn't anyone else's normal. I think I require extraordinary amounts of grace -- and possibly also a smidgen of pot.

As I've struggled to come to terms with my new realities (at least until the Aliens grant me clemency), one word keeps emerging: context.

It's something that only comes with time. Once you have put in a lot of years with someone, you recognize what's out-of-character for them, when they are issuing a cry for help, whether they are doing or saying things out of fear or anger or distaste, or if they are putting up a front to cover pain or deal with trauma.

As I look back on the fading year and look forward to the coming one, I have a hard time seeing things in context. Maybe it's because the pain is still unbearable. Or maybe it's because I'm really scared of what's to come. 

I've lost a lot this year. I've been immobilized. I've broken down. I've lost my hair. And I've experienced a surreal amount of what these white-coat people are calling PTSD. I am weaker, sadder, and more in despair than I have felt in a very long time.

But...

* Christie literally forces me out on date nights with her and Kyle or the kids, sometimes with my blessing, sometimes against my will

* Carole asked if she could fly me out to Californa to see one of my 1st students graduate law school

* Sasha or the Bluebird girls text me every day to say they are rooting for me

* Miss Mary told me in tears not to worry about what other people think, "because no one can hold a candle to you, E. They can't even come close."

* Spike told me she will go to Norway with me this summer if I need a travel friend

In the face of loss and heartbreak, I am learning to be kind, to take risks, and that it's possible to hold more than one feeling at the same time -- in short, the world is not black and white. Maybe gray just requires context.