Tolerances

I have always taken great pride in being non-judgmental of people.  I have always found myself to be exceptionally understanding of people and their differences.  But I discovered today that I am entirely the opposite.  I am extremely judgmental, but not of the “usual” people.

Many people see someone with a disability, any disability, and don’t know how to react.  Some are outright mean and cruel, others avoid them entirely.  Me?  I see someone with a disability and I see someone who has likely been kicked, mocked, teased, and abused most of their life and I want to help them.  I want to be a friend to them, to show that not all people are cruel, to show they have worth beyond their disability.  I can quite honestly say, for people with disabilities, I make it my goal to be their best friend.

It’s everyone else I am intolerant of.  I see a blond driving and texting; my first instinct is “bobble-head bitch that is going to cut me off soon.”  I don’t know why she is texting.  I don’t know if it is an emergency and she is being pursued by mad gunman planning on selling her into slavery.  I don’t know if she is rushing to the hospital because her son cracked is skull open on the playground and is being sent for emergency surgery with limited chances of survival.  All I see is hair color, gender, and cell phone immediately assuming “bitch.”

Similarly, I see a hot guy in a classy shirt and nice fitting jeans and automatically assume he is gay.  For all I know, he is model or is on his way to a date.  Interestingly enough, I have objections to him being gay apart from not being on the menu as a hot dish.  I was thoroughly disappointed to discover Neil Patrick Harris and Matt Bomer were gay, but I didn’t think anything less of them because of it.

This entire dichotomy came to light when I was remembering a conversation I had about Peter Dinklage.  I remember hearing about a statement he made where he said something to the effect of “women don’t see me for me, they see me for my money.  When it really comes down to it, women will chase after the six foot tall guys everything time.”  I was imagining what I would say to him if I ran into him on the street (yes, I do that sometimes…very active imagination).  I would say, “You’re wrong.  You are far more than your appearance.  Any woman worth her salt would see you for what you were and fall in love with the man not the money.”  I know, a lot of girls say that, but it’s true.

I have a friend in an online game that is 28, over 6 feet tall, skinny as a rail, and has a trachea tube.  He has never had a girlfriend, and swears he has never been kissed let alone anything else.  Yet girls tell him all the time how amazing he is as a friend and will cry on his shoulder when their gorgeous boyfriends hurt them.  They friend-zone him constantly, and it makes me so angry.  I know him through a video game.  In that world, appearances don’t matter.  Personality does, actions do, words do.  There, people can be themselves and be known for who they truly are beyond their appearances.  Or alternatively, they can be their alter-ego acting out situations they would never dare to try face to face.

Regardless, I thought I was above the judgmental assumptions, but in truth, I only assume the worst about the average person…or the exceptionally wealthy (that probably stems from being lower middle class and hearing about millionaires complain about billionaires doing whatever they want).  Today, I realized that in my attempts at being completely tolerant, I became exceptionally judgmental of many people.  Maybe now that I realize my habits, I can finally find a way to break the cycle and become truly accepting of people and their individuality.

Been a While

Like Lullaby Trial, I have been struggling with what to say. I know what I want to say and where I want to go but not how to say it nor where to step on my path. I am working on chapter 3 and am trying to determine how broken, how fragile to make my characters. I know this writer's block of mine stems from my own emotional struggles at the moment. I know I am hurt by the constant reminder of my miscarriage and the ever ticking timepiece reminding me of the family I seek to start.

But I also know my time we come and patience is required. I know I will have my family soon enough and I know the timing of everything could not really be better. I know I will be published and I know I will continue to write. And in the same sense I know what to do with my characters. I must simply be patient and everything will come together.

My grandmother has been reading my book as well. She called me yesterday to let me know she started it and is about 40 nook pages in. She really encouraged me.  For a while I was hesitant about sending it to her because I was afraid she wouldn't like it and be disappointed, but yesterday she said she found it very engaging and had no trouble visualizing my scenes. She said once she read the first page she couldn't put it down until the benadryl kicked in.

I was very encouraged by the entire phone call and admittedly had a hard time sleeping last night. I am still thinking about the animation and various different plot points. I am hoping to get my submittal checked for spelling and grammar soon so I can submit it. With any luck I can get some of my college friends to help me out on that.

As always, I will keep you posted.

Character Complexity: Contradiction

The most difficult thing in the world I have found is not calculus, or stoichiometric formulas, or astrophysics.  The most difficult thing in the world I have found are people.  People are complex, ever evolving (or in some cases devolving), and nonsensical.  People are probably the last great mystery in that we will likely discover all there is to know about the universe before we fully understand people.  There is a book with the title “Everything Men Know About Women” that is completely blank.  It is meant as a gag gift and a statement on the confounding intricacies of the female gender, but I wonder how much we truly know about anyone.  Sociologists, psychologists, and a bunch of other –ologists have concocted numerous bits of “facts” regarding behaviors, psychology, brain chemistry, etc. but I would argue most of that is simply hypothesis parading as fact.

The entire concept of Freud’s “penis envy” basically states the root of women’s issues is their desire to possess penises and the scientific community at the time gobbled it up.  While I firmly believe this theory is ludicrous at best, I would argue the overall premise may be accurate.  Women in today’s society may not want the organ, but many certainly want the equality.  Or do they?

Women today want to be viewed in the same light as men in their professions.  As a female engineer, I would be insulted if I was excluded from a project solely on the bases of being female.  However, there are numerous types of projects I would hope to get out of on the same basis.  As a female, I have the potential to become pregnant while serving an engineer.  There are numerous types of projects such as construction management or chemicals testing that I feel could potentially be too dangerous for my baby.  As a result, I would avoid these projects while pregnant.  However, in the same light, what would an employer do if a man walked in and said, “My wife and I are trying to have a baby, therefore I can’t oversee this construction project?”

Women want equality when it comes to pay and treatment, but we also want the additional privilege of avoiding unpleasant or potentially dangerous circumstances.  Today, I read a Tweet arguing that an article about “Diversity” included only male authors’ opinions.  While I am under no illusions of Twitter being a certifiable source, the concept is still well demonstrated.  Women wish to be included in the narrative.  I can understand that.

Here is a concept I have a hard time understanding.  My college had a cultural center featuring suites for each major ethnicity included in campus life.  I thought it was a wonderful concept.  They had this cultural day where each suite prepared culture specific food and sold it in the quad as kind of a “Tastes of the World.”  I thought it was brilliant.  Then I noticed something.  There was an entire pseudo-continent excluded.  There were no European nations represented.  No French, no Irish, no German, no Swedish, no New Zealanders, no Ice Lander, etc.  Basically, no caucasian of any kind were represented.

Now, if you think about it, celebrating diversity means celebrating anything different.  While I am in no way claiming discrimination does not happen, I would like to point out the simple sampling conducted at the cultural center demonstrated a clearly lacking populace.  For everyone out there that would like to trumpet the causes of diversity, please take into consideration the whole picture.  As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, he hoped for a day when we“…will not be judged by the color of [our] skin, but by the content of [our] character.”  This is critical.  Color is entirely irrelevant.  Actions matter, people matter, words matter, appearance does not.

And yet despite this call for universal acceptance, humanity also wishes to proclaim their differences.  As an example, members of the homosexual community want the world to know they are homosexual.  There is nothing wrong with that.  It is an individual’s prerogative and in no way am I in a position to judge.  My only question is why is that relevant in the first place?  Because people like to be different.  We want to be known as an individual, not by a stereotype, not by a label.  We want to be known as who we are and not be lumped into some broader category so some proclaim a label.  In my example, the label was “homosexual.”  They have chosen to identify with this particular label in order to individualize themselves from a broader category.

Do you see where I am going with this?  People are so complex, so contradictory.  By declaring a label, you jump from one large pool of people into a smaller one thus becoming more of an individual recognized on a different scale.  Yet at the same time, people scream for equality wanting to be treated just like everyone else.  Equality and Diversity.  Two completely contradictory mentalities effectively saying, “I want to be treated exactly the same, but you must acknowledge my differences.”  People are so complex like that.

It is this complexity that I strive to bring forward in my characters.  It is this contradictory nature that is so critical in making a character realistic.  I know my writing ability is not there yet.  I know my characters lack this inherent complexity.  But I am young.  I have time to work on it.  And in the end, I hope to create a character that is so complex, it could pass as human.  I wonder if we will ever truly understand people.

Press Enterprise

I submitted PTSD vs. Higher Education to the Press Enterprise Opinion Editor today. I doubt very seriously she will publish it, but on the off chance she does, I hope to open a dialogue with readers. With luck, maybe the financial aid system can finally be changed. I will keep everyone posted.

PTSD vs Higher Education

It is impossible for me to imagine what post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) feels like.  To me, the entire concept is nonsensical.  I do not understand the lack of emotional control, the social anxiety, the gut-wrenching fear of everyday activities.  As a child, I was abused by my step-mother and molested by a family friend, but looking back I do not remember feelings of stress, anxiety, or fear.  I only remember acknowledgment.  I remember accepting the fact that it happened and moving on.  I do not know how I came to simply accept it, and to my knowledge, those events do not traumatize me.  I have no concept of a life-altering traumatic event, and to be honest, I hope I never do.

About two years ago now, my mother was sexually assaulted at work.  At first, I did not understand why she did not just accept it and move on.  To me, it seemed like such a little thing.  Then I found out what her childhood was like.  My mother had been molested by my family throughout her childhood.  Couple this abuse with the bullying and torment at school and it’s a wonder my mother survived long enough to have me at all.  I remember as a child, she told me she contemplated suicide when she was 16.  She said the only thing keeping her alive was that she could not figure out how to tell God he screwed up, that her life was terrible, and nothing good could ever come from living on.

I do not want to say I blew her off or did not believe her, but I guess I never fully understood what she went through or everything she did to protect me.  When I was born, she set down ground rules with my grandparents.  They are both dead now so I cannot begin to tell you what those rules were.  I know the gist was “abuse my daughter in any way, either physically or psychologically, and you will never see her again.”  There were others, I’m sure, but this one laid the foundation for my relationship with my grandparents.

I won’t deny my family has its issues.  I think all families do, but growing up, I loved my grandparents.  My grandmother and I had our fair share of differences, but I loved them both very much and neither ever abused me.  So when my mother told me about the horrors befalling her childhood, it was impossible for me to rationalize the nightmare she described with the loving, compassionate people I knew.

When she was sexually assaulted, at first she tried to move past it herself.  But she could not.  She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t keep anything down, struggled to focus, and began having severe anxiety attacks doing simple tasks like going to the store.  Her counselor connected the dots between her past and present trauma diagnosing her as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  It’s been about two years now.  Nothing has changed.

She cannot go anywhere alone.  She carries anti-anxiety medication in her purse and is in constant fear of being attacked again.  Shopping is a nightmare and Black Friday?  That’s a “barricade the front door, pull the curtains, and hide in the tub” type event.  To be honest, I truly thought I was losing her.  Hope seemed a distant memory; laughter forgotten entirely.  I watched my mom sink into a deep depression.

Then suddenly…there was a glimmer of hope.  A program gained notoriety; it trained service dogs for veterans suffering PTSD after returning from war-zones.  My mom caught wind of the program and wanted to look into it once we moved out of our 900 square foot apartment.  Well, she is in the process of buying a house, her very first house, and now its time to research PTSD dogs.

She found a website called Dog Wish which trains service dogs for both psychological service and passive protection.  They research the applicant, find a suitable dog based on the applicant’s psychological needs, and train the animal for service and protection.  It sounds like an amazing program and as such, it is extraordinarily expensive.  Dogs typically range from $15,000 to $25,000 with a minimum of $5,000 down, ideally half.  Fundraising options are available, but $5,000 down is still a daunting amount.  Training takes about 6 months and additional costs apply such as travel and expenses.

While my mom is the one buying the house, it takes four adults to be able to afford it.  All of our collective savings are going into buying this house.  There is no extra money.  My mom needs a service dog, there is no question about that.  But how can I help her get one?  I am barely able to pay my bills as it is.  I have no savings, no extra income.  All I have is my book and the vague hope that I can publish.  But I already had a cause in mind for publishing proceeds.

My plan was to publish, hopefully earn enough to send my brother and husband through college, and then use left over proceeds to help Middle-Class Americans afford college.  That was my goal, my dream: to make higher education more affordable for those that slip through the cracks.  But now, I want to help my mother afford her PTSD dog too.  On the one hand, I know she needs the animal.  I know she needs to feel safe again, but on the other…I have a responsibility to help society, to do my part for a better future.

I have heard the “good of the many outweighs the good of the few” speech through history, politics, and literature, but now that it is my choice, now that I stand at the precipice…which way do I jump?  In Fable 2, when it came down to a choice between my family and my dog, I chose my family despite being more attached to my dog because I felt I had a responsibility towards a digital collection of people-shaped pixels.  But now…they are more than just pixels.  And now, it’s a choice between people I know and love, and people I share a tax-bracket with.  Am I crazy for losing sleep over this?  What would you choose?

An Inch

I don’t know why, but I have V for Vendetta stuck in my head.  I have heard several controversial things about the movie and quite frankly, I don’t care.  My favorite part, or perhaps its best to say my least favorite part, is Valerie’s letter.  Sometimes I can relate to it in ways I hardly want to admit, but the following is what I am reminded of today.

“I shall die here.  Every inch of me shall perish.  Every inch.  But one.  An inch.

“It is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having.  We must never lose it or give it away.  We must never let them take it from us.

“I hope that – whoever you are – you escape this place.  I hope that the world turns, and that things get better.

“But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may not meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you: I love you.

“With all my heart.  I love you.  – Valerie.”

Valerie chronicles her life, describing both love and hardship, and shares in a misery so horrific I cannot properly articulate it.  And in the end, with her dying will, all she has to say is “I love you.”

Apart from that devastatingly powerful conclusion, my mind is set on the first paragraph today.

“I shall die here.  Every inch of me shall perish.  Every inch.  But one.  An inch.”

Valerie is speaking of her integrity, mentioned earlier in her letter, but I believe it is more than that.  I believe her inch is also her voice.  “It is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having.”  Her voice is powerful.  It is compelling.  It is compassionate.  It is sincere.  And it is on toilet paper.  No one else will hear it.  Those that did expected to share her fate.

What draws me most to this letter is the terror that I will be like Valerie; that my inch will be as soft, as silent, as fragile as a sheet of toilet paper.  With every fiber of my being, I pray for the Valeries of the world.  I pray such a voice will not be silenced, that such an inch will not be lost.  I pray the words “I love you” will reverberate throughout the very fabric of society and that maybe her inch will remain.

Devil's Advocate Update

Devil's Advocate is my second unrelated novel featuring a pre-apocalyptic modern age. The main character is an ass in  nearly every sense of the word and is named after Lucci, a villain in the Japanese Manga/anime called One Piece. Credit is given in the text to the Manga as one character specifically names the ass after the villain. This may prove to be a problem in the future, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So far, I am at 29,000 words and have tentatively finished the first 8 chapters. The story is intended to be fully standalone, but could easily become a franchise style series.

This story, unlike Silent Symphony, is told from a male perspective and is shaping up to be far more sarcastic than I originally intended. One character dresses like a naughty nun with Gothic makeup and runs the homeless shelter and community center. She is an actual angel, tutors kids after school, kicks their asses at video games to keep them off the streets, and is your typical do-gooder... Oh, and she is also the primary drug dealer and supplier for 2/3rds of the city population. The catch? The drugs are secretly placebos and she had been slowly weaning the city off drugs while accepting local criticism.

My characters are rapidly evolving and becoming far more dynamic than I intended. Writing is so much more than a tedious endeavor. It is an extension of our creativity manifested in physical form. The simple act of telling the story forces one to critically analyze realistic situations, even if only on a metaphysical level. I strongly encourage everyone to write a story. Even if it is never published, the journey, both for your characters and for yourself, is an extraordinary adventure into your imagination.

Cheers everyone and may you write a story all your own!