19 March 2003

I'd like to go to a war protest.

Or any protest at all, really. I'd like to stand in the middle of a street and yell and shake rattles and wave signs. Any sort or protest would be fine with me. A protest against English grammar textbooks that unhesitatingly describe run-ons and fragments as "incorrect." A protest against the mailman never coming before one o'clock. A protest against police brutality. A protest against burkas. Against spam email. Against SUVs, or unemployment rates, or stupid legislation made for stupid special-interest groups... Or anything at all, really.

Hell, I'd like to go to a pro-war protest. They have those here, you know. The anti-war people take one bridge, and the pro-war people take the next bridge over, and they all just carry signs and yell.

I would like to carry a sign and yell.

I'm very angry right now. You'd never know it by looking at me; I'm wearing this cute hippie dress that Louise gave me, and if I'd get up from the computer and wander around, I'd probably be smiling. But the unfairness of the world has really been getting to me in the past few months.

I'm not, by nature, an angry person. I don't like being angry, because I'm a fairly rational person, and I know there's usually not a damned thing I can do about my anger. I'm too small, and not well-built enough to punch somebody if they're threatening me. I'm not well-spoken enough to get into a logical debate with somebody who's pissing me off; I trip over my words. I'm not knowledgeable enough to really get much of anything done about issues I care about. And I don't have the guts to stand in front of a bulldozer if I'm angry about a house getting torn down. I'm not an especially powerful person, and I'm angry about that, too.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

It's the "serenity" part I'm missing.

I cannot change the war in Iraq. I cannot change the ridiculous conditions of Jake's probation. I cannot change the time the mailman arrives. I cannot change the fact that my baby is dead. I cannot change the gas mileage of Jake's truck, or the obscene debts we both have, or the pain in my back. I am powerless over everything, and my life is mostly unmanageable. And I KNOW this, but I'm fucking angry about it.

At one time, I really was a boundless optimist. To the point of being annoying, I mean. I could walk up to somebody who'd just walked in on the love of their life in bed with somebody else, and I'd say, "ah, but at least you don't have leprosy!" I could have been speaking to somebody who'd just been hit by a truck and was bleeding to death, and I'd say, "yes, but look how pretty the cherry trees are!" I used to really believe in being positive all the damned time. I used to think that would somehow make everything better. If your sandwich has too much mustard on it, just be grateful you have a sandwich.

I'm not STUPID, mind you. Nor am I innocent, ignorant, or naïve. I haven't really been any of those things for a long time. It's not that I didn't KNOW certain things sucked. I've known perfectly well that people can be very brutal and mean, that laws can oppress the hell out of undeserving people, that it's always the cute little kids and hyper-motivated geniuses who get killed in drunk-driving accidents, and not the drunk frat boys on their way to rape somebody. I've always just chosen to focus on the goodness in bad things... A drunk driving accident that killed a bunch of cute kids and hyper-motivated geniuses? And then the drunk driver frat boy escaped the scene and went and raped somebody? Well, hey, at least one of the cars is still in decent shape... I thought that by viewing things this way, I removed the power of the horrible situation to be horrible.

There's some Zen story about a mouse or something that was... oh, I don't know... falling off a cliff or something. The mouse was clinging to a root and facing imminent death, so it reached up a paw and grabbed a strawberry that was growing nearby. The last line of the story is: "How sweet it tasted!" And I believed this absolutely. How good it is that, in this world of war, despair, bleeding, bad pop music, unemployment, abuse of all sorts... how good it is that there are berries! How good it is to be in the Northwest, where, even though the unemployment rate is in the top five in the nation, even though the laws are often ridiculous and cruel, even though it rains every day for six months... where there is an abundance of blackberries...

I am furious that sometimes this simply doesn't work.

Sometimes, there's simply nothing good about a situation.

Sometimes, you're lying on a table with bloody sweatpants around your ankles, and doctors are silently raping you with various large painful instruments, which you know must SOMEHOW be for your own good, and you know your baby is dead, and you can hear blood splashing out of you and onto the floor... Sometimes you see your lover crying, and you feel the weight of those eight-thousand pound tears, and they burn your skin like some wicked thing from a chemistry lab... Sometimes they make you sit on the toilet with the bathroom door open, and they tell you to push out the masses of blood tissue that kept your baby alive and safe, while everyone is watching you. Sometimes they make you look at your baby after that, they make you look, "because it will help the grieving process," and because they want you to see the wicked thing you've done to her. Sometimes you go home empty, with nothing to hold, and nothing inside you, and then you have to explain what you couldn't do. Sometimes, after that, you have no friends, or school, or work, or apartment, or any other reasons you can really think of for continuing to breathe. And sometimes the blood keeps coming, day after day after day, just to remind you. Like the dreams. Like the mirror. Like the lover's beautiful eyes that don't sparkle quite so often as they did, that still love you, but will forever know about your lowest indignity and your deepest pain.

Sometimes, there is nothing good, anywhere in the whole world.

There is nothing that can alleviate the power of the horrible things that have happened to Jake and I. No jokes, no blackberries, no "at least you have your health" that can remove the badness, the nothing-but-badness.

I can't seriously look on the bright side of anything painful anymore. Oh, I can still make the jokes, can still anticipate good things with hope... But I'm just not a real optimist anymore. And this makes me angrier than almost everything else. I have lost ME. I have lost my ability to see the proverbial glass as half-full. Now I wonder where on earth we'll get the money for another gallon of milk with which to fill the glass. I am smaller now. I am humbled, humiliated, powerless, and barely managing.

I would like to go to a protest. And scream among a few thousand other people. I would like to stand in a street with a million people who feel the sort of filthy hatred that I feel for the things I cannot change. I do not believe that going to a protest could change anything. (I did believe that, once. I believed my sign, taped to the door of a politician, influenced his vote... Now, I sort of doubt that he read it...) I would like to scream, and shout, and shake things that make noise, and wave signs about the unfairness of it all. I want the world to see the screaming and the shouting and the shaking and the waving that's going on in some unnamed organ in my chest.

You all should know that mandatory outpatient drug-and-alcohol counseling is a crock of motherfucking shit. You should know that the State of Washington took away my voice and my right to speak for myself, and because of it, my life and the life of my dearest friend, companion, and lover, are fucked up. You should know that the midwife, the ultrasound technicians, and the emergency room people did not tell me how serious my condition was. You should know that I'm living with people who really cannot afford to be supporting me, each of whom has his or her own troubles and pains. You should know that a girl from my school died in an incredibly tragic way, and now the whole world seems to be criticizing her, and my school, and my classmates and me. You should know that some asshole was calling my mother and harassing her because she wouldn't tell him where I lived or how to get in touch with me. You should know that sometimes, like now, I feel like I'm hanging over the edge of a cliff, and there aren't any strawberries to grab onto.

I'm not really loud enough to project all of those things on my own. I would like a million other people to stand with me and shout those things. Or to shout anything, really. Anger is anger is anger. I could be standing on a bridge yelling, "FUCK IRAQ! LET'S BOMB THEM! NAPALM THEIR SCHOOLS!" and right now, it really wouldn't matter much. The anger within me is beyond words; the words don't matter, because none of them are hateful enough to express things adequately. Even the cause doesn't really matter.

So the United States is going to war.

The biological/evolutionary purpose of human beings is to create better human beings to populate the world.

As I see it, the world is currently populated with fools and assholes, and I have failed at my biological/evolutionary purpose.

I haven't given up completely; I still don't want a nuke to hit anything. But I think I'm angry enough to not give a shit if bombs rain down on this ugly world. Big, flaming, black-and-red bombs, like in Saturday morning cartoons. I want them to pummel the earth. I want them to make dents and craters. I want other people to hurt, so I know I'm not the only one. I want some folks to get machine-gunned: my ex-landlady, myriad irritating people on busses and in movie theaters, select police officers and extremists of various political and religious viewpoints, a few awful drug-and-alcohol counselors, a number of ex-bosses, that stupid band Tatu...

War barely matters. I don't LIKE it. And I suppose logically, I would rather NOT have a war, and I do agree with this Daschle fellow who said that Bush's diplomatic endeavors were crappy (if they hadn't "failed," as this dude said, we wouldn't go to war, RIGHT? So, yes, they failed... Why is everybody jumping down his throat over THAT?).

But really, I'm too pissed off to give much of a shit. And I don't have the power to change anything anyway. And really, I am really, really angry.

...Which is why I don't give a shit what bridge I protest from. I just want to yell.

~Helena*