My heart is breaking for at least 108 different reasons.
Reason 1. My friend lost her 24 year old son to suicide. As a mother it’s an overwhelming thought. I’ve been looking deeply into my children’s faces wondering if they’re ok. Wondering how long I have with them. Wondering what tragedies are being held in their stars. It feels like drowning. I love them so much. I always wanted to be a mom, and as hard as it is sometimes I adore it. I adore them. I love figuring out how to navigate 13 year old boy hormones, and 8 year old boy sassies, and 5 year old girl messy imagination. I love sleepy cheeks and holding hands and the sound of their voices and their sweet puffy kisses. I just can’t imagine any of that being gone. And that’s my selfish heartbreak.
Reason 2. My friend lost her 24 year old son to suicide. She is one of the most resilient, loving, generous, brave people I know. She’s survived so much – been in relationship with those struggling with addiction, she’s experienced violence, abuse, heartbreak. She’s heroically raised 3 boys on a single mom/yoga teacher income. She dreams big. She forgives big. She loves big. It seems so unfair for someone who has already lost and overcome so much to lose more. I want to scream at the sky – hoping my voice travels as far as wherever God is – HOW DARE YOU!?!?!
Reason 3. My friend lost her 24 year old to suicide, and she didn’t deserve it. Tell me there’s a god somewhere who “giveth” and who “taketh away” and then tell me where this “god” lives so that I can call out the fake. Why would a divine being take anything away from anyone? Some streams of religion would subtly whisper about sin, or karma or something horrible like that – as if anyone DESERVES to lose a child. I’m wrestling with god right now. But I’m wrestling with an idea, a shadow that was created by humans, and the more I wonder the less I believe and I need to be able to believe in something, and this breaks my heart. When good things happen to me, am I being blessed? When bad things happen am I being punished? Am I only being blessed but not punished? How would that work? Does god punish? Does god bless? What does god actually DO? Where IS GOD?
Reason 27. Did you know 27% of college women experience some form of unwanted sexual contact? What is going on in a world where women’s bodies are still treated like an object that men are entitled to? What was she wearing? What did she say? How much did she have to drink? WHERE is GOD?
Reason 28. This whole situation with Brett Kavanaugh has left me reeling. It’s not even the politics of it. I can’t even deal with the heartbreak of where our country is right now in that respect. What has left me reeling, is a high school memory that I guess I’ve tried not to make that big of a deal of my whole life because “boys will be boys.” When I was 14 years old, and a freshman in high school, I was groped in the back of a suburban by a bunch of football players. I didn’t know that the one who came to the door to meet my parents (family rule) wasn’t the only one in the car. I don’t remember how I ended up in the very back – like where there aren’t seats – or when or how the other guys ended up back there. But teenagers do dumb things like ride in the trunk of cars – or at least they did in the 90s. And I was a dumb teenager on my way to a party to see the guys I liked – and I was also scared of getting teased. So I got in. I was kind of a late bloomer, so I didn’t have a lot to “grab,” but there were hands up my shirt and grabbing in my shorts. To the few people I’ve told this story they ask – What did you say? What did you do? I did nothing. I froze. I let them touch me because I was scared of what they would do if I tried to make them stop. I went to the party and tried to find the boy that I liked, tried to pretend everything was ok. And by the next week in school a rumor went around that I’d had anal sex with the whole football team. I was a virgin.
Reason 29. After that experience, I carried around the belief that boys only wanted me for my body. So I used my body to get their attention, in hopes that they would find the rest of me interesting. Let’s get one thing straight. I was a huge flirt AND also a total virgin for my entire high school experience. But I got used just the same. Used like “I don’t want to be your boyfriend I just want to make out with you.” You’ve been in high school. You know what I’m talking about. And now as a 42 year old married woman, I am realizing that there is an undeveloped part of me that still doesn’t believe that I’m worthy of being loved intrinsically and unconditionally, versus what I look like, how easy going I am, how little I ask for, or how often I say yes to sex. There is a part of me that still behaves as though my body is a transaction, an object to “want” or “have.” And that it’s my obligation as a woman, or as a wife, to give it even when I don’t feel like it. That it’s selfish or silly to hope for romance or deep emotional connection while having sex.
Reason 30. For the times I didn’t know how to say no. For the times I should have said no. For the times I didn’t say no. For the shame I felt for not saying no.
Reason 31. For all the women of the world who said no and they took it anyway.
Reason 32. For continuing to live in times when a boy’s past is the past, or his future is so bright, that it isn’t worth one girl’s body – one girl’s heart, or soul, or mind – her self-esteem, her sense of value, her right to be respected- to bring him to justice.
Reason 54. Considering the unfair-ness of loss, of suffering, of violence, of injustice… All I want to do is be a light. I just want to do something to HELP create CHANGE. Why does it so often have to feel like climbing up a mountain of ice?
The heart being broken is a good thing. The rawness has it’s power.
As the poem by Alice Walker says, “the world has changed: it did not change without your prayers without your faith without your determination to believe in liberation and kindness; without your dancing through the years that had no beat”
Om. Amen. Hallelujah.
durgamama 