Hello hello,
The other day, my kids were driving me up the wall. With the cooler weather, rain, and dark evenings, we’ve been trapped inside more than usual, and after 9 months of quarantine, it’s all starting to be a little bit too much. I’ve noticed a marked decrease in my tolerance for toddler meltdowns and brother brawls. In the midst of the chaos, my husband said, “One day these kids won’t want to hang out with us at all…” My honest reaction was, “Promise?” LOL I’m sure I’ll be devastated when that day arrives, but in this very moment, it sounded quite nice!
I’ve been spiraling into a little whirlpool of self-pity lately. [As I type that, I can hear my husband say “lately?” and he wouldn’t be wrong!] Maybe it’s more accurate to describe my current state of mind as grief instead of pity. I’m officially mourning the Before Times. Regular school, date nights, work happy hours, traveling, human interaction. What luxuries! I’ve found myself professing “I won’t be happy until I can socialize with people again!” Like I have actually said this out loud multiple times. (Insert eye-roll emoji)
My patient husband is encouraging me to find other habits to fill the social void. He suggested I go visit the local parks, get outside, etc. My initial reaction to the suggestion was complete resistance, and I’m trying to unpack why. I think it’s because it goes against who I tell myself I am. My narrative self says, “I don’t like nature”, “I’m an extrovert”, “I get my energy by being around other people”. It feels like a threat to my identity so trying new habits to help get through the tail end of this pandemic isn’t something I want to hear. But, what choice do I have? I can continue to act like an angsty teenager, or I can try something new (as Michael Jackson would say, “make that change!”).
Anyway, let’s solider on. I stumbled upon a book called In The Dreamhouse by Carmen Maria Machado. The author was on an episode of the Codeswitch podcast, and I was totally intrigued. It’s not the typical genre I usually discuss here, but it’s too good not to share. The book is a memoir focused on the author’s abusive relationship with her girlfriend. There was a particularly poignant passage (p³!) where she discusses “minority anxiety”:
“I’ll never forget the gut punch I felt when one of the first lesbian couples married in Massachusetts got divorced five years later – a kind of embarrassed panic. I was recently graduated, newly out, trying to date women in Berkeley. I remember feeling dread, as though divorces weren’t the kind of thing happening all around me at every moment, as if they weren’t a complete nonentity. But that’s the minority anxiety, right? That if you’re not careful, someone will see you – or people who share your identity – doing something human and use it against you. The irony, of course, is that queer folks need that good PR; to fight for rights we don’t have, to retain the ones we do. But haven’t we been trying to say, this whole time, that we’re just like you?
It’s not being radical to point out that people on the fringe have to be better than people in the mainstream, that they have twice as much to prove. In trying to get people to see your humanity, you reveal just that: your humanity. Your fundamentally problematic nature. All the unique and terrible ways in which people can, and do, fail. But people have trouble with this concept. It’s like how, after Finding Nemo, people who were ill equipped to take care of them rushed to buy clown fish and how the fish died. People love an idea, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Even if they only know how to do exactly the wrong thing.”
I can’t count how many times I’ve read those two paragraphs. It’s beautiful writing about an unfair reality. The demonstration of humanity is necessary for minorities to be accepted and not seen as ‘other’; however, minorities can’t afford to make mistakes (aka demonstrate their humanity!) because they risk being stereotyped*. What a weight to carry.
It’s all interwoven with the work of Aiko Bethea (Dare to Lead Podcast) and Emmanuel Acho (Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man) especially when they rhetorically ask, who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who do we believe? To be given the benefit of the doubt is such a gift! It’s a form of grace that we humans too often only give to people who look like us, consciously or unconsciously. But I think we must be generous when offering the benefit of the doubt because if we are liberal in this offering, we invite everyone to demonstrate their humanity. And when we see the humanity in others, we can relate to people who are different than us. And if we can relate to each other, it’s harder to hold on to fear which manifests as hate. Major win! (Feels like a high-stakes version of “If you give a mouse a cookie…”)
Talk soon,
Jessica
#courageousconversations #blacklivesmatter #don’tbuythefish
*I fully understand this language is WAY oversimplified and is used only to make a high level point and not to claim all ‘minorities’ have a shared experience.