Joy to the world?
Dec. 9th, 2001 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
judecorpI'm glad I dragged myself out of bed this morning. I went to church this morning for the first time in a very long time of papers and finals and all of that. It was /packed/! My goodness... I don't know if the holidays are bringing them out in droves to First UU or if it's just become more popular in the month or so that I've missed. Either way, I'm glad I went.
The service's focus, believe it or not, was on depression. It's odd to have a service on depression, let alone in the middle of the "joyful holiday season." We're expected to be bright and shiny and festive like the lights we hang, like the presents we exchange, like the snow that falls. However, we all know that a good percentage of us don't feel that way, and we call them "scrooges" or "mopes" and chide them. "Where's your holiday spirit?" we ask, or instead scold, "Let's see some of that holiday cheer!"
The point of the sermon was that this sort of chiding goes against universal acceptance. It goes against loving people for who they are, for what they are. The good things we point out in other people during the holidays exist in them year-round, and the not-so-happy bits we see in people also exist year-round, though for some, the dark and the cold, or distant memories, intensify this. It made me think twice about expecting myself to auomatically love the holidays.
Now, the thing is, I /do/ love the holidays. Presents and lights and family and home-cooked meals and caroling and cards and phone calls and joy joy joy are right up my alley. I love to shop for people, and being able to shop for them all at once is thrilling. But there are moments in the day, and days in the week, and maybe even weeks in the winter where I'm not joyous, and I expect myself to be. I expect others to be. Don't we all?
Not anymore. I spout that we are all inherently worthy individuals, that we are all universally connected to each other, and yet, in this "joyous" season I exclude, point fingers, and look down upon. There are reasons for depression, either situational or biochemical, and that doesn't remove any worth, and that doesn't disconnect anyone from the web of life.
And on that note...
This evening, as I was driving west on the North Outerbelt heading home from Easton with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
binkiegirl, I saw one of the things I've come to like about Columbus. At night, driving west on 270, the bridge just west of 315 is all lit up with streetlights, year-round, and it's very pretty. I don't know why a lit up bridge is pretty to me, but it is. I like it. It makes me smile.
Columbus, though it's in the midwest and all and has no ocean which I simply cannot tolerate, is a pretty nice place. I like it. It's kept me well the past year and a half, and I will think back on it with fond memories, I'm sure.
...but it wasn't supposed to turn out like this. THIS, this current situation that I'm in, was not supposed to be Columbus to me. Columbus was a new start outside of Maine (Maine being synonymous with depression in the Book of Jude), the first place A. and I would live where we would /only/ be known as married to each other. The first place where 'L--------' was my last name and people would know me as that and it would be my identity. It was to be the first place that would be entirely ours, that we would discover together, and maybe we would buy our first house.
Well, people here in Columbus /do/ know me as Jude L-------, and we did discover Columbus together, but unfortunately, these things are not turning out to be positives. I'm going through the Maine situation in reverse - I'm correcting people and giving them my family name rather than my married name, and I'm finding those places that were ours and deciding they're not great places.
I'm having a good time these days, going out, being free. I've been more social in the last month than I have been throughout the entirety of our relationship where we lived together. That's good. No, that's wonderful. But it's not the whole story. The whole story is that Columbus is also the land of failure to me. I need a tshirt that says, "I got dumped in Columbus."
I'm finding myself in Columbus, too, and that's great. I learned that I could be queer again in Columbus. I got the strength to admit my difficulties with my body image to several people in Columbus. I rediscovered my inner nerd in Columbus, and remembered that people find me attractive. And heck, I got hit on by a boy in a sports bar - what could be better? *snicker*
I will move again this summer with a new degree in my hand and (hopefully) a shiny license to practice social work. I'll move again this summer with my old name, the name of my father and my grandparents and my brother, the name that looks like where it came from, the name that walked "off the boat" with my grandfather as a baby. I'll move again this summer with the independence and the free spirit that I lost in Maine, and I'll move again with body piercings and a song in my head and stronger muscles.
But I will leave Columbus with a failed marriage. And I will leave Columbus with severed ties, both to a boy I thought I would at least always be friends with, and a whole host of people I had only recently learned to call 'family.' And I will leave Columbus with 'my' things instead of 'ours,' and that is both a blessing and a curse. I will take my PEZ Dispensers and my smurf figurines and my CDs and my posters and my brand new bed and it will all be mine. Do I take the 'failed marriage' box with the photo albums and the cake top and the cards? Do I take the microwave we bought together? The television? Will I miss the cat I leave behind?
I suppose the lamest part of all of this is that I wonder if A. ever thinks about this stuff, or if he's so wacked and numb that he just goes through his motions, day after day after day, and won't give me a second thought. I suppose he should have thought of that before he asked me to marry him. I /know/ I should have thought of that before I said, 'yes.'
It's okay to think of these things. Even when it's the holiday season. Especially when it's the holiday season. Just as all of us are interconnected in the great web of life, so all of my experiences, feelings, and thoughts are interconnected in the great web of me. And as I can learn to accept my fellow humans for who they are, joyful or not-so-joyful, so I can accept those things in myself.
I'm not unhappy, so there's no need to fill my comments with typed hugs and random sentences of love. It's just been a long time since I've written in here for me and me alone, and I'm wordy and verbose and annoying and you know what? That's cool, 'cause I'm like that. Yeah. Imagine that. :)
The service's focus, believe it or not, was on depression. It's odd to have a service on depression, let alone in the middle of the "joyful holiday season." We're expected to be bright and shiny and festive like the lights we hang, like the presents we exchange, like the snow that falls. However, we all know that a good percentage of us don't feel that way, and we call them "scrooges" or "mopes" and chide them. "Where's your holiday spirit?" we ask, or instead scold, "Let's see some of that holiday cheer!"
The point of the sermon was that this sort of chiding goes against universal acceptance. It goes against loving people for who they are, for what they are. The good things we point out in other people during the holidays exist in them year-round, and the not-so-happy bits we see in people also exist year-round, though for some, the dark and the cold, or distant memories, intensify this. It made me think twice about expecting myself to auomatically love the holidays.
Now, the thing is, I /do/ love the holidays. Presents and lights and family and home-cooked meals and caroling and cards and phone calls and joy joy joy are right up my alley. I love to shop for people, and being able to shop for them all at once is thrilling. But there are moments in the day, and days in the week, and maybe even weeks in the winter where I'm not joyous, and I expect myself to be. I expect others to be. Don't we all?
Not anymore. I spout that we are all inherently worthy individuals, that we are all universally connected to each other, and yet, in this "joyous" season I exclude, point fingers, and look down upon. There are reasons for depression, either situational or biochemical, and that doesn't remove any worth, and that doesn't disconnect anyone from the web of life.
And on that note...
This evening, as I was driving west on the North Outerbelt heading home from Easton with
binkiegirl, I saw one of the things I've come to like about Columbus. At night, driving west on 270, the bridge just west of 315 is all lit up with streetlights, year-round, and it's very pretty. I don't know why a lit up bridge is pretty to me, but it is. I like it. It makes me smile.Columbus, though it's in the midwest and all and has no ocean which I simply cannot tolerate, is a pretty nice place. I like it. It's kept me well the past year and a half, and I will think back on it with fond memories, I'm sure.
...but it wasn't supposed to turn out like this. THIS, this current situation that I'm in, was not supposed to be Columbus to me. Columbus was a new start outside of Maine (Maine being synonymous with depression in the Book of Jude), the first place A. and I would live where we would /only/ be known as married to each other. The first place where 'L--------' was my last name and people would know me as that and it would be my identity. It was to be the first place that would be entirely ours, that we would discover together, and maybe we would buy our first house.
Well, people here in Columbus /do/ know me as Jude L-------, and we did discover Columbus together, but unfortunately, these things are not turning out to be positives. I'm going through the Maine situation in reverse - I'm correcting people and giving them my family name rather than my married name, and I'm finding those places that were ours and deciding they're not great places.
I'm having a good time these days, going out, being free. I've been more social in the last month than I have been throughout the entirety of our relationship where we lived together. That's good. No, that's wonderful. But it's not the whole story. The whole story is that Columbus is also the land of failure to me. I need a tshirt that says, "I got dumped in Columbus."
I'm finding myself in Columbus, too, and that's great. I learned that I could be queer again in Columbus. I got the strength to admit my difficulties with my body image to several people in Columbus. I rediscovered my inner nerd in Columbus, and remembered that people find me attractive. And heck, I got hit on by a boy in a sports bar - what could be better? *snicker*
I will move again this summer with a new degree in my hand and (hopefully) a shiny license to practice social work. I'll move again this summer with my old name, the name of my father and my grandparents and my brother, the name that looks like where it came from, the name that walked "off the boat" with my grandfather as a baby. I'll move again this summer with the independence and the free spirit that I lost in Maine, and I'll move again with body piercings and a song in my head and stronger muscles.
But I will leave Columbus with a failed marriage. And I will leave Columbus with severed ties, both to a boy I thought I would at least always be friends with, and a whole host of people I had only recently learned to call 'family.' And I will leave Columbus with 'my' things instead of 'ours,' and that is both a blessing and a curse. I will take my PEZ Dispensers and my smurf figurines and my CDs and my posters and my brand new bed and it will all be mine. Do I take the 'failed marriage' box with the photo albums and the cake top and the cards? Do I take the microwave we bought together? The television? Will I miss the cat I leave behind?
I suppose the lamest part of all of this is that I wonder if A. ever thinks about this stuff, or if he's so wacked and numb that he just goes through his motions, day after day after day, and won't give me a second thought. I suppose he should have thought of that before he asked me to marry him. I /know/ I should have thought of that before I said, 'yes.'
It's okay to think of these things. Even when it's the holiday season. Especially when it's the holiday season. Just as all of us are interconnected in the great web of life, so all of my experiences, feelings, and thoughts are interconnected in the great web of me. And as I can learn to accept my fellow humans for who they are, joyful or not-so-joyful, so I can accept those things in myself.
I'm not unhappy, so there's no need to fill my comments with typed hugs and random sentences of love. It's just been a long time since I've written in here for me and me alone, and I'm wordy and verbose and annoying and you know what? That's cool, 'cause I'm like that. Yeah. Imagine that. :)
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no subject
Date: 2001-12-09 08:32 pm (UTC)I'm just hugging you 'cause you're a supercool person, and my good twin, and one of the most emotionally with-it people I know. It's so much healthier to be honest with oneself and talk and think about one's feelings, than it is to bottle things up or insist that what you know to be true isn't really true.
*HUGS* 'cause you rock solid, and I love ya. =)
-Wolfie