When A Tragedy Comes Along, Focus On The Little Things

I went to Umpqua Community College last year at the time of the shooting. For the first few days and weeks afterwards, I obsessively went through my room, getting rid of things. I cleaned everything in my room that I could. And I spent time with my two new kittens, which my mom bought for herself and me the day of the shooting.
And now this thing has happened in Orlando, which brings up all of the bad memories for me again. Now I'm focusing on cooking all of the food in my freezer and again, cleaning my bedroom. Among many other little, seemingly insignificant things. They have become very significant, all of a sudden.
Cleaning is very good for one's self-esteem, I believe, though I'll share my complete thoughts on that another time. But cleaning enables one to feel good about themselves, regardless of mental or physical disabilities (when they clean as much as they are able to), career or job prospects, money issues, other issues, etc. It gives a certain piece of mind, even when you're only able to clean a little bit, or only a small space such as a counter top. As long as the space is your own, and you do it for yourself and not for others, it is very rewarding, when your life is in chaos, to have or make some order.

I sometimes think that is why I'm near-sighted, if psychology has anything to do with eyesight, as some people think. My world becomes smaller, so I don't have to look at what upsets me.
If I did look at how I felt, I would think, "Okay, I'm upset, worried, angry, grieving, and scared by this--now what do I do with that?" I wouldn't break down; I don't break down. I would just feel unhappy and miserable, and that's it. It's not cathartic, at all; so why be unhappy, if it doesn't lead to any kind of closure or feeling better?

Sometimes I feel sad--grieved--for seemingly no reason. And I think it's because of having to deal with two shootings in one year, and the year is far from over now. A friend on Facebook remarked that she didn't even have time to get over one shooting, when she had to deal with another. That is exactly how I have felt, for what seems like years. I always seem to have multiple great losses stacked on top of each other. And I wonder how many of them I'll have to deal with in my lifetime, and whether I can ever have just a few years of peace. For once, being young does not seem like a benefit.
The world is getting better and worse at the same time. If this keeps up, almost all of the population will soon be wearing rainbows for equality--on our everyday wear, or what we currently know as bulletproof vests. I understand now why movies set in a dystopian or apocalyptic future are so popular; they are much like our own world. It's the same old shit, served up in a different way so that we don't get bored or burnt out on it.

So I focus on the little things. I get rid of some hats that I no longer like. I try to use up all of my beads. I watch more TV as an escape. And when I feel sad, I talk with my mom or allow myself to cry on the inside, even if I can't on the outside. I just focus on the little things, things I can control, and that's what keeps me going. Sometimes that is all I can do. So I focus on these things, and that makes life a little more bearable, at least for a time. And sometimes you really must take it one day at a time.

The Creepiest Bridal Shower Ever

When I was about eight or nine, I went to a bridal shower with my mother. I remember this party vividly, because there was something about it that confused me, and still confuses me to this day.
The guests at the party played a game where they guessed trivia about the groom. The groom wasn't even there. I didn't like this game; this party was supposed to be about the bride, not the groom. The man had his bachelor party, and even then, I could never see a bunch of men answering questions about a woman. Why all this attention, when the party was about women, and one woman in particular, and her man wasn't even there?

( I'm really proud of my little baby feminist self; can you tell?)



The answers were baffling to me. And boring, when they weren't creepy. It didn't help that the groom had the same first name as my dad, and so I imagined my own dad giving these strange answers as his favorite things (though I knew it was a different person)
Favorite car? I thought it should be the Batmobile, naturally! I can't remember what the groom's favorite car was (probably some sports car), but that wasn't it. I was extremely disappointed; what a boring answer. Typical grownup.
Favorite song? Apparently, it was "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by Brittany Spears. I remember thinking it was incredibly off-putting, that he liked a "girl's song," and one loved by young girls like me.
That party was creepy and un-feminist on so many disturbing levels. In my admittedly limited knowledge, I've never heard of another party like that one, before or since.

But when I was there, I did what I always did when I got bored, which was make up Buzz and Woody stories in my mind. (I still do that, after a few years of giving it up because I loved it too much and thought that God would surely think it was an idol. I now have permission to be my childhood self.)
In this particular fantasy, I imagined Jessie and Buzz were getting married, and Bo threw her a bridal shower. The women there answered trivia questions about Buzz's favorite things, and Woody happened to be walking through the room at the moment. He started easily answering all of the questions, that the bride herself didn't even know, because he knew Buzz best. He stole the show and made everyone angry, and proved that he was closest to Buzz, and not her.
And looking back on the things I came up with, I can see a whole lot of homoerotic subtext there. Woody was obviously Buzz's true soulmate all along, even if convention said that Buzz should marry a woman. I now laugh and symbolically pat my inner child on the back. Even before knowing much about gay people at all, she sure knew how to ship them! She may have even known something about my bisexuality, too, before I discovered it only a few years ago.

Pastor Assclown In Drag

I wonder, just a little bit, if my ex-friend, the closeted/homophobic Pastor Assclown, tried to put a "hedge of thorns" or some other "spiritual warfare" thing in my life, a few months ago. I had this very strange dream at that time, in which he tried to curse me, and I broke the curse in the name of Jesus.
I know that the address on this site contains the word "atheist," but it is an old name. I don't know if the atheists will have me, anymore, since I hope God is real, if God is good (and I don't think God is all-powerful, if she is good; there's no way).
I still don't know for sure if Jesus even existed or not, and I probably will never know. But I am grateful for the useful psychological trick, if it is nothing else. That's one of the few good things left over from my desperate-for-God's-approval evangelical background.

I had a dream that I had a roommate, a young woman who called herself Divine. She was trying to put a voodoo curse on me, which I discovered by finding her chocolate voodoo dolls. (Yes, I ate them! They were delicious.) But later, we were eating dinner together, and the food kept spilling all over me. I realized that she had cursed my food to do just that, and she was laughing hysterically at me.
I got tired of it all, so I looked down at my plate, and said, "I break you, cursed food, in the name of Jesus!"
She stopped laughing. Then she took on her true form, which to my surprise was Pastor Assclown. I looked straight at him, and said, "You picked the wrong girl to fuck with!"
He just stared at me in astonishment, so I went on, "You know how you're gay? I did that!"
I told him that I cursed him to be gay, since I knew that he couldn't break that in the name of Jesus. I was confident that that would not happen, since if it could, my kind gay Christian friend, Michael, would still be with his wife, and not his husband. Even the husband would still be with his wife.
And I wanted to look powerful, more powerful than Pastor Assclown's magic. I also wanted him to realize that since he couldn't break that with spiritual warfare, then maybe it was something that was not actually a curse or from the devil.

I woke up, and realized that he had been disguised as a girl. He had been in drag! And he had called himself Divine, after the drag queen that Ursula, the Sea-Witch from The Little Mermaid, was based upon. And he was a witch, trying to curse me!
He was also closeted, like I suspect all homophobes by default. He had not denied that he was gay, had not even been able to answer me--had simply stared at me. I then realized that I had a plastic figure of Ursula literally sitting on a shelf in my closet. This was in real life. I still have that Ursula statue.
The layers and layers of meaning are incredible, to me at least. But I do know one thing for sure: If he did indeed try to declare spiritual warfare on me, then he picked the wrong girl to fuck with. I couldn't have said it better myself!

A sea-witch and a mermaid. And lots of cats.