If you're new here, you should subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and come back again soon!
You know how it feels when you hear a love song, and it is EXACTLY what you are feeling at the time?? This is not like this. This is what I imagine it is like to live with me. Hopefully, seeing this will allow me to get things right in the future. Hopefully.
Close enough to start a war
All that I have is on the floor
God only knows what we’re fighting for
All that I say, you always say more
I can’t keep up with your turning tables
Under your thumb, I can’t breathe
So I won’t let you close enough to hurt me
No, I won’t ask you, you to just desert me
I cant give you, what you think you gave me
It’s time to say goodbye to turning tables
To turning tables
Under hardest guise I see ooh
Where love is lost, your ghost is found
I braved a hundred storms to leave you
As hard as you try, no I will never be knocked down
I can’t keep up with your turning tables
Under your thumb, I can’t breathe
So I won’t let you close enough to hurt me, no
I won’t ask you, you to just desert me
I cant give you, what you think you gave me
It’s time to say goodbye to turning tables
Turning tables
Next time I’ll be braver
I’ll be my own savior
When the thunder calls for me
Next time I’ll be braver
I’ll be my own savior
Standing on my own two feet
I won’t let you close enough to hurt me, no
I won’t ask you, you to just desert me
I cant give you, what you think you gave me
It’s time to say goodbye to turning tables
To turning tables
Turning tables, yeah
Turning ohh
I was thinking about conformity and happiness today. Talking with my sister, we acknowledged how often we feel alone and as if we don’t fit in, and how we feel sad too. But she reminded me that the propensity for sadness is in us regardless, and is not due to non-conformity. One of my sons is a different child, and I know he will struggle. My goal is to help him love himself while struggling, and help him modulate his anxiety in healthier ways than disrupting class.
There are people in this world who are touched with darkness* and those who are not. Call it what you will, but I can generally feel it and sense it in people. The more difficult of my sons has it, but the younger one seems to not have it.
People who do not understand what it is to be “touched by darkness” often have little patience for those of us who do. We are told to snap out of it, to cheer up, to learn to fit in, to learn to get along in the world.
What people do not understand is that in many ways, the darkness comes from seeing the world EXACTLY as it is, and lamenting over the fact that nothing we do will change that. We take this as a tragedy and a personal failing, and often struggle to want to remain in this world.
A friend gives examples of what we hear: ”Why are you always so miserable? Why do you get upset so easily? Why can’t you just be happy? Stop getting worked up over things that don’t matter!” ”Just relax! Everything is fine!”
It can be soul shattering to hear those things – because we know the suffering that is going on, and we know we can’t stop it.
What people like me have to learn to do is to take our joy where we can find it, and learn to pretend to be normal to not scare the normal folk.
But inside, we are still just as touched by darkness as we always were. We have just learned to only share it with those who understand.
*I used to think this was basically code for mental illness, and while it certainly can mean that, I also think it signifies a heightened sensitivity and sense of empathy.
Last year, I was sure that discussing safe anal sex procedures in front of famed atheist/evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at TAM (during a workshop on sexuality) would be the highlight of my speaking career. Now, I am not so sure.
In April, on the weekend of my 38th birthday, I will be in Washington DC presenting a workshop at Momentum, at conference that is “making waves in sexuality, feminism and relationships through new media!” Not only that, but I will be presenting at the same conference as just about every single one of the women I have followed in the sex positive community, including Tristan Taormino, Always Aroused Girl, Anita Wagner, Jenny Block, Dylan Ryan, Carol Queen, Ducky Doolittle, and SUSIE FREAKING BRIGHT!!!!!!!!!!
My workshop:
A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Vanilla Go DownPresenter Heidi Anderson
Sexual assault prevention has generally been focused on two things: teaching women strategies to avoid being victims (watching your drink, parking in well lit areas) and teaching men that “no means no!” This not only reinforces the “women are the gatekeepers and men are the aggressors” sexual stereotype, but also patronizes, alienates, and makes heterosexist assumptions about the very audience it is intended to reach. In addition, the heavy focus on date rape drugs and stranger assault ignore the reality of what the majority of sexual violence actually looks like.
But what if we approached it from a different perspective? What would happen if we used the opportunity to share a vision of healthy sexuality, rather than using horror stories to scare young people into “good behavior?” What would a consent curriculum based on sexual negotiation techniques practiced in BDSM and non-monogamy look like? Can kink practices make sex safer for everyone?
Thanks to the evil machinations of FB friend Kelly Kel, supported by dozens of others, I have become a Doctor Who fan. It started with promises of hot gay sex on the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, and once I saw that, I was hooked into that universe. Or universes as it turns out.
Like many average looking women, I was completely bowled over by the character of Donna Noble. She is a temp who manages to cross paths with The Doctor and eventually become his companion. Not only is she not the drop dead gorgeous companions of the past, she actively harasses The Doctor in ways none of the other companions did. She pulls his Time Lord pigtails over and over again.
I won’t go into any spoilers about where the following passage comes from, or what the context is, but when I watched this scene in Doctor Who I found myself crying.
NEW DOCTOR
No, but you are. (looking at her as if he’s just understanding) Oh. You really don’t believe that, do you? I can see, Donna… what you’re thinking. All that attitude. All that lip. Cos all this time… you think you’re not worth it.
DONNA
Stop it!
NEW DOCTOR
Shouting at the world, cos no-one’s listening. Well… why should they?
DONNA
Doctor. Stop it.
This scene knocked me flat on my ass. Why AM I shouting at the world all of the time? Why do I have so much attitude, so much lip? Why do I see everything as a fight, a struggle in which I have to prove myself? Why do I make everything such a fucking battle?
Because underneath all that bluster, all that armor, all that stuff I think makes me look like a bad ass, a part of me is terribly afraid that nothing that I say is worth hearing.
It would be easy to stop here and wait for the chorus of people to chime in with accolades of my wit, my intelligence, my beauty, and my general awesomeness. But it would not work. It would be a quick salve that would last until I felt needy again, and then I would once again need to hear it outside of myself.
But guess what else is inside me? A growing part of me that thinks, no KNOWS, that what I have to say, what I have to offer this world is unique and worthwhile. The matter and electrical energy that comprises me has NEVER existed in this combination before, and it never will again. If I compare myself to other people, there will always be someone smarter, prettier, sexier, more feminist, more skeptical, a better writer, or even more bad assed. And that is ok – this is not a competition. But no one can EVER be Heidi Marie Anderson better than me, and I can’t be them.
As long as I try to convince other people of my worth, I will come up short. Haters gonna hate. Someone will always have issues with me.
But as long as I KNOW my worth, that worth can never be taken.
My sons were just watching Max and Ruby while I was making cookies. Ruby was the Princess, and Max and his grandmother (the Prince and the Queen) conspired to test the Princess’ true royalty by putting a pea under tens of mattresses to see if she felt it. She did feel it, of course, and her sensitivity proved her to be a real princess.
This annoyed me. I have always hated this fairytale. Why was her weakness/inability to find the source of her discomfort a sign of true femininity? What the hell does femininity even mean?
So it occurred to me that some women go through life complaining about being uncomfortable, but have no idea that it is due to the pea under their mattress.
Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test and still complain about being uncomfortable to be seen as feminine.
Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test, and then get mad as hell that someone put a goddamn pea under the mattress to test their femininity. These women then organize, tell others, and make it their life long goal to expose the vast Patriarchal Pea Plan.
I am still THIS person, the person who wears a tutu on her head for her Princess Son!
“ If women told the truth, the world would crack open,” Audre Lorde
This morning, I got an email that I knew would come. I did not know who would send it, or when it would come, but I was sure of its eventual arrival.
When I first started thinking about losing weight/eating better/etc, I remember being afraid of a backlash. Thinking that people who enjoyed my “fuck you society!” posts about being fat would be disappointed in me. Worried that if I wrote about something so mundane and trivial as weight loss and food, that people would think less of me. That I was “bowing down to the man” or selling out.
Several of my friends thought I was ridiculous to think that this would happen. All of those friends were thin. My fat friends knew exactly what I was talking about.
So this morning, I basically got the “Heidi, I am glad you are trying to get healthy, but why are you writing about it and posting your weight and focusing on this and I am sad to see you become this. You were an inspiration to me and now I am sad.”
And it hurt, but like most things, it hurt because it was true.
I AM writing about weight loss, and posting my numbers, and any petty thoughts I may have. I AM writing about being hungry and how it feels to wear smaller clothes, and the battle that goes on in my heart in regards to my love of being mobile and there for my children that sometimes seems at odds with my love of my curves.
But this is the price I pay for living “publicly” – when you put your thoughts and actions out in the public arena, people are free to comment on them. And I understand that.
But the focus on my weight is only the flip side of what was a false confidence about my weight. I have never thought I was ugly – NEVER! This is not about that. But part of the reason I focused so hard on building my identity into that of the “happy fat girl” or the “outrageous fat girl” was so that I would not have to deal with REAL ASPECTS of myself.
How many teenagers truly NEED sex education? Surely they know what they are doing, are practicing safe sex, having good boundaries, and making sure they are engaging in partnersex for the right reasons! Why am I so sure of these things? Because I was a teen who did all of these things, and I NEVER had Scarleteen! In my day we learned about sex the old-fashioned way, from our parents,schools, and churches! AND WE LIKED IT! None of this fancy “interweb” for us!
Everyone’s parents teach them to respect their bodies from the time they are tiny children – right? All parents pass on the message that “your body belongs to you and YOU choose what to do with it” and follow it up with a respect for boundaries! And what parent does not tell her child that she is allowed to tell someone NOT to touch her, for any reason? If parents did not do this, we might see an epidemic of sexual abuse in this country – as if!
It is just good parenting to teach children proper names for anatomy, including the names of the genitals of BOTH sexes, and making sure to include the clitoris, vulva, AND vagina! All parents explain the mechanics of sex to children in an age appropriate, truthful, non-judgmental, scientifically accurate manner! I mean, if parents can get children to understand the logistics of a fat man delivering presents to millions of children in one night, surely they can do the same with a matter as important as sexuality!
Parents and caregivers approach childhood masturbation and sexual exploration with a healthy attitude towards privacy AND encouragement of pleasure! Only in ancient times did people try to convince children that masturbation was evil and destructive, and that hellfire and brimstone awaited those who touched themselves! We live in an age of enlightenment where people recognize the need for children to develop their sense of sexuality for themselves BEFORE they try to share it with others.
While the role of parents, families, and religious communities is to provide our youth with a strong foundation for creating sexual values that work for them, schools focus on the public health perspective of youth sexuality. Thank goodness that all of our youth have access to healthcare and information on contraception, disease prevention, and the range of variety in sexual orientation, gender expression, and healthy relationships!
Can you IMAGINE what it would be like to live in a society that did not train its members to be responsible sexual partners? Where variety was discouraged? Where people were encouraged to lie about who they were rather than be different? Where teens regularly face socially and institutionally accepted harassment for being 10% of the population? Where people learned how to be sexual from “Cum Sluts 2: Electric Boogaloo” instead of real live people they trust? INCONCEIVABLE!!!!!!!! There would be pandemonium – everything from girls becoming young mothers, STDs running rampant, sexual assault in high numbers, and even kids killing themselves rather than be honest about their sexuality!
If we lived in a society that sent mixed messages to youth about sex, pleasure, relationships, and their place in the world, I could see the need for an organization that has been the premier online sexuality resource for young people worldwide since 1998 and provides free, inclusive, comprehensive and positive sex education, information and one-on-one support to millions, and has never shied away from discussing sexuality as more than merely posing potential risks, but as posing potential benefits, something rarely seen in young adult sex education.
But let’s get real here – that’s about as likely as a creationist being healed from demons, shooting wolves from a helicopter, promoting abstinence while her own teen daughter is pregnant, being part of a failed presidential team, quitting her job, and STILL maintaining relevance in national politics!
*For the sarcasm impaired, here is the bottom line. Scarleteen talks to teens and young adults about sexuality in a respectful, truthful manner that seeks to honor where that person is on their sexual journey while at the same time encouraging responsibility and self-respect. And they do it on a shoestring budget of less than $70,000 per year.
To put my money where my mouth is (Is there a fetish for that? Putting your mouth on money? I guess now that I have thought it someone has made porn about it!) I pledged $20 per month to Scarleteen myself.
I posted a link earlier this week about a “new” tumblr blog that was very interesting. What I did not tell was that it was MY blog, and that it was centered around weight loss.
How does the author of a blog called “The Fat One in the Middle” start a new blog? By admitting my need for “Moving to the Front!”
And what kinds of riveting posts am I doing there? I am blogging about food, clothes, and my love of axolotls and how I am using their amphibian/fish nature to represent me.
Under a description of the blog, I wrote this:
Heidi accepts that she is fooling no one into thinking she is a selfless, deep, non-appearance oriented person just because she is fat. Radical shifts occur.
So how did this happen?
My husband took control of his health about 5 years ago when he started running, and his willingness to do that, and really work on our marriage, are what gave me the inspiration to transform my body and my mindset. He wants me here with the kids and he as long as possible, and wants me to enjoy life. I can’t thank him enough.
But even more importantly, I fucked up this year. A lot. With many, many different people in many, many different situations. I would like to continue to blame everything on my dad’s death, but it does not all come from that. I was selfish, petty, vain, self-centered, lazy, short-sighted, self-promoting, careless, dishonest, attention-seeking, and just plain rude to people I loved, including family, friends, and co-workers. I was NOT a very nice person.
And several of my friends called me on it. Some nicely, some cruelly. And guess what I learned?
Fat girl accepts that she is fooling no one into thinking she is a selfless, deep, non-appearance oriented person just because she is fat. Radical shifts occur.
I have always been a deeply emotional person. I was a quiet child who was frightened and intimidated by my loud family, and much preferred to be alone and read or play with my dolls. After my parents divorced when I was a toddler, I lived with my father, step-mother, and sister five hours away from the rest of the family. I had friends in elementary school, only a few mild cases of bullying bitchy girls, but felt completely invisible. Unspecial. Bland. Boring. Unworthy.
However, as I watched my father, mother, and sister interact with the world, I discovered that I could emulate their flamboyant, outgoing, and outrageous behavior, and people loved it! Not boring at all!!! People would listen and people liked me! I was good at it and it came naturally.
Usually this behavior was tempered with the other aspects of my personality – kindness, thoughtfulness, attention to others, talent at making people feel loved and special themselves, and other qualities that helped balance my egotism and need for attention.
But since my father died, I have done everything in my power to create drama. Not just in my own life, but in the lives of the people who loved me and whom I loved. I protested that “I did not want this” or “How do these things keep happening to me” but as my sister said recently, I am not as naive as I pretend.
So why? Why would someone do this? Why would a fairly average attention whore turn into a a gaping maw of need and energy from others? Why did I keep doing things that were clearly driving people away? Why did I want to stir up the drama that hurt others and myself?
And once again, the wise words of my sister showed my why – because the opposite of drama, emotion, and feeling is numbness. Feeling dead inside. Feeling completely drained and empty.
I have been doing everything in my power to keep feeling. Anything. Positive OR negative. Just feeling instead of dealing with the boring, monotonous work of grieving.
Death is not as exciting as it is in the movies, where someone dies in front of you in a dramatic fashion and you drop to the ground screaming and yelling “Dear GOD!! NO!! NO!! Don’t take them from me!!!” And then you attend the funeral, hug your family, and feel grounded that at least he was loved, and life goes on, and metaphorically hold your cub up in the air and sing “The Circle of Life”.
Sometimes death is boring. Sometimes death is waiting . . . waiting for days for the person to die. Feeling guilty that you are waiting for the person to die. Watching someone be unable to get comfortable standing because they are so tired and unable to lie down because their lungs fill up with fluid and then for the first time in your life following your instincts and climbing into bed with him so that he can nap and breathe for hours while propped up on your chest despite the pain it causes in your back. Feeling that time spent with him in the past hating him for not “getting you” was wasted because not understanding someone does not mean you don’t love them. And then watching the man who raised you go from being incoherent and forgetting who you are to bedridden and absent from his body. Hearing the “death rattle” and then mentally placing bets on how long it will be. Then discussing these horrible thoughts with your siblings and finding out they are doing the same thing in their heads as well. Sitting beside your sister, both of you on your laptops, chatting with each other on gchat about how the grim reaper better “bring it” because he has not had a man like Ray Ray before.
When my brother came and woke me up at 4am on Sunday, March 7, 2010 to tell me dad was about to die, I put on my glasses ( I guess to see the event better??) and ran downstairs. When I got down there, he was exhaling his last breathe. It was not dramatic, it was not beautiful, it was not an event. Death had been a process, not an act. There was no light exiting his body, no peaceful look on his face, no feeling of his “spirit” in the room. He was gone, and what was left was the shell of the man he had been.
But I loved that shell, and so did my family. We sat in his room with his body for a couple of hours until first the hospice nurse and then the funeral home people came. We did not close his eyes, because it was not like he looked alive with them open. He was dead. Gone. Elvis had left the building and a big Cadillac* was coming to take him to the sky.
Since that day, I have been numb inside. What is worse than feeling pain? Feeling nothing. Fearing that you will never be able to feel again. Knowing that despite the love, and joy, and time we have here on Earth, that Cadillac* will roll up for all of us, and we have to live as if that does not scare the shit out of us.
I remember when my grandmother Agnes died in 1993. One of my first thoughts at her funeral was “The rest of my life is going to be spent watching the people I love die.” And it has been. I have seen my friends and family die, and in horribly cruel situations, children of friends die. It is not fair and it sucks. I don’t like it and it brings me to my knees emotionally.
So to the people who have gotten to know me in the past 8 months, I am so sorry that this is who you think I am. I am normally a joyful, loving, arrogant, fun, dramatic, friendly, selfish person.
But right now I just miss my dad and feel numb.
*It was technically a minivan – and I think that is bullshit. I want a big black Cadillac. FYI
