Political Correctness or Lack Thereof: Part 2 (Oklahoma Edition)

I wonder how many have heard of the incredibly disgusting display of "college pride" yet. No? Really? Because it is all over the damn place. I'm not going to bother with putting down anymore links because I am not a deejay for the emotionally stunted but I will go on ahead and add my two cents.

1.) It isn't just about you.

If you read the comments section on any news page that is reporting on this giant mess, you will see a large group of people who I'd like to refer to as the, "I-Have-a-Black/Gay/Handicapped-Friend-So-It's-Totally-Okay-For-Me-To-Say-That" group. I think in a situation where people can get offended, we should follow the lead of the ones who are offended. It is very short-sighted to assume that because you are not affected by an objectionable statement, that no one else will be. In fact, I would think anyone who knows something is discourteous to an entire group of people and doesn't care is not "politically incorrect." No, we call those people assholes. Don't believe me? Let me give an example.

Ladies, let's say that you are walking along the street and a guy from your work comes up and says that he would like to play your breasts like they are a pair of bongos. You point out that the statement is offensive and quite frankly, a little disgusting and he responds with, "Don't be so sensitive! I have female friends and THEY weren't offended by it." I guarantee that you would be giving him the side-eye from then until the end of time and if the scenario took place at work, you'd put a call in to Human Resources.

So why are people allowed a pass in this situation?

2.) Because "it happened forever ago!"

Forever and 175 years ago, are not the same thing. 

History lesson for the unlearned: The Trail of Tears was a forced massacre of the Native American people. Five tribes (at least) were forcibly removed from the Southeast thanks to President Andrew Jackson and marched to present day Oklahoma. Thousands upon thousands of people died; men, women and children. 

When the Third Reich started to slaughter the Jewish people in gas chambers and concentration camps, the American people got involved. Granted our military involvement increased mainly after Pearl Harbor but regardless, Hitler's genocide was not tolerated by most civilized people on the globe. Why is our own personal annihilation of the Five Civilized Tribes not also seen with the same disdain? 

Oh, right. We're Americans. The mistakes that we make are white-washed over (pun slightly intended) because, "The Native Americans/African Americans should have known that we would come after them/their land and therefore, not our fault!" I'd like to clarify that while our entire country isn't guilty of this kind of professional victim-blaming, there is a large division of the population who actually believes this crock of shit. Granted they are often also the people who think rape culture exists mainly to poison young women's minds and target innocent boys. 

I am positive that these two forms of victim-blaming can absolutely be compared. In one, you are suggesting that a group of people shouldn't be offended because they "got what was coming to them." And in the other, you are suggesting that a group of people shouldn't be offended because they, in a way, "got what was coming to them." They are both suggesting that the fault doesn't lie in the aggressor but in the one that should have remained vigilant of the aggressor's potential actions. We can't just say, "Don't rape" or in this case, "Don't pillage and walk to death several tribes of people." We have to also say, "And don't let yourself be raped" or "don't let yourself be walked to death by those with technology far outweighing yours, numbers far outweighing yours and resources far outweighing yours." If you still can't see a connection after that walk-through of it, I can't help you.

So where is the disconnect? Why won't anyone see that their words can be so much more than they intend for them to be? That minimizing these problems doesn't help but hinders the people that are speaking out against it. 

3.) We are just plain lazy.

Every time I read the comments on a news page or a friend's post on Facebook regarding this kind of thing, there are a hundred people out there screaming of their "tiring of political correctness." I don't know about the rest of you but I never tire of being respectful of other human beings. Except maybe the human beings that tire of being respectful of other human beings. (Ha! See what I did there?) But seriously, every single link I find suggesting that learning more appropriate terminology to approach political correctness is merely a Band-Aid to cover-up the problem as a whole makes me want to bash my head into something.   

Maybe the blatant racism/sexism/etc. that exists in our society today is the bigger problem. The bleeding pustule of a problem, no less. But to keep this wound metaphor rolling, what do you do when you have a wound that is infected and needs to be treated by a doctor? You clean it and cover it with a bandage of some kind until the problem can be properly addressed. Yes, political correctness will not solve the problems of the world but it will definitely set a guideline to what is acceptable in our society. If racist jokes and sexist remarks are acceptable in our society, then we are promoting a society of racism and sexism. We are saying it is copacetic to slight millions of people and their everyday struggles. And that is not okay.

Saying things like "that's gay" or "totally retarded" is a great example of this problem. Sure, you can say those phrases. Chances are you are going to offend someone, since there are both gay and mentally handicapped people at large in our world. Instead of using them though, how about you use better and more descriptive vocabulary words that don't provoke others? Is it too difficult to find an alternative? I haven't found that to be so.

Now for story time, where I also share how I have also been part of this sad blight on humanity: A year ago (maybe longer) I was having a conversation with my friend on the phone when I said how I had been "gypped" by the telephone company. He immediately stopped my story and asked me if I knew what "gypped" meant. I knew what the definition was but I had no clue what the origin of the word was. I was absolutely humiliated when I realized what it meant and that I was propagating a stereotype. I do believe at that moment though, I immediately went on the defensive. That is also normal. It is normal to feel embarrassed once you are made aware of distasteful phrases that you use. What is not normal is being advised about it and ignoring it entirely. It is okay to make mistakes. It is okay to learn. We are human beings and will spend the rest of our lives learning and growing. Don't let one of your mistakes be that you refuse to change an existing problem when you have the power to do so. 

Political Correctness, or Lack Thereof: Part 2 (Oklahoma Edition)

We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends... Who are a Thousand Miles Away

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” --Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss

Sometimes, despite my best efforts, I can't get past the lack of motivation that comes with being depressed. I know last entry, I wrote a lot about the irrational thoughts and the severe fatigue but I didn't get a chance to write about exactly how much of my life the lack of motivation affects. How much guilt it manifests.

I used to have a lot of friends. I used to be extroverted... or more accurately, I used to be something resembling extroverted because that is what was expected of me in order for people to like me. As I've grown older, I've come to realize that I have to take care of my own wants and needs. However, the line between my wants and needs becomes blurred once the depression settles in. 

When does the line cross from need to want? I have no idea. But I do know that often I find that I'm at war within myself over something as insignificant as a trip out with my friend. I have the feeling that once I am with my friend I would find amusement and comfort in their company but in the few hours before I go to meet with them, all I feel is dread. I cast my eyes longingly at my office chair or the ever so captivating sheets of my bed and wonder why I ever made the appointment in the first place. I don't want to talk. I don't want to laugh. Well, that's not entirely true, I want to laugh but I don't want to put effort into making them laugh and that makes me feel guilty. How can I call myself a friend when I am using this person for the sole purpose of making me feel better? That isn't how friends work. I start to ask myself if I can pull it together long enough to get in a few witty quips for them. No, I don't think I can. After this conversation in my head, I feel even less motivated and even more sad. 

So one of two things will happen: First, I will go and be relatively miserable for the entire trip. I might laugh a few times. I might make them laugh a few times. Overall, I will feel overwhelming guilt because I don't want to be there in the first place. I will feel a secondary guilt for being out with my friend when I am sure that I won't be able to muster enough energy to spend on my family when I get home. The second scenario is the more likely of the two. I will call and cancel. Again, I will feel tremendous amounts of guilt for being "flaky" and cancelling on my friend.

What is truly sad about this (as many of you with depression are well aware of) is that those so-called friends of yours will probably exacerbate that guilt tenfold. At some point in the trip out, if you go that is, they will comment on your lack of interest or ask "why are you yawning so much?" or "why do you keep zoning out?" If you cancel, you may get the new friend title of "Flake." There is not much understanding that comes with depression beyond the professional field and even then, psychiatry is still a tween compared to other medical research. The requirement to "will yourself out of it" even if it is just temporary and for their benefit is way more settled in our society than the need for others to understand our needs to be the fuck alone.

 You can't force someone out of a depression and sometimes, the mere attempt to do so is more damaging than one would expect. To require someone to pretend to be something they are not, is telling them that they aren't good enough for you unless they are perfectly normal. They can't be damaged or unorthodox in any way. They can't be a "buzzkill" or "party pooper" or "enter your own insult here" because that makes us uncomfortable. We can't be bothered to look beyond our own little bubbles and see that an entire species of people exists with differences and needs. 

So the next time your friend cancels on you for the third or fourth or fifth time, instead of calling them rude and/or flaky, why don't you look beyond your own little world. Could they perhaps be suffering from depression? Could they perhaps be lacking the motivation? Could they just need something more low-key than you are willing to give them? Can you not put aside your expectations for one evening for them and maybe curl up on the couch in comfortable clothing and watch a movie or play a game or just... sit... do something for your friend that you wouldn't normally do? Because I guarantee you this, if you are willing to go the extra mile for me once in a while (and this is something that I have not experienced yet at all) then I would gladly, albeit with much effort, try very hard to put aside my feelings and distracting thoughts for one evening to give you the same treatment. I would come out of MY comfortable little bubble if you would do the same for me. Think about it and look at this cartoon for inspiration.

Living My Life, One Day At A Time

"The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." (spoken by Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring.)

It is easy, as an outside observer, to make the claim that depression is due to nothing more than a lack of willpower. It is also easy and accurate to describe those outside observers as delusional or total assholes. Here's why:

My oldest son, little Korben, is a Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia survivor. He was put into a medically induced coma as a sick but otherwise perfectly normal two year old. Two months later, his muscles were the victims of atrophy, his sides were impaled with two chest tubes and his throat had been sliced open to make way for a tracheostomy. Despite having just mastered the skills of walking and talking, he was required to learn how to do them all over again. His tiny body was ravaged by adult doses of chemotherapy and full body radiation, turning his skin into what can only be described as the worst sunburn that I've ever seen. As is usual when they are irradiating the body, he had sores completely covering the inside of his mouth and the top of his tongue; during this time, we discovered that he was the third person in the entire world to be allergic, dangerously so, to T.P.N, the nutrition that they give patients intravenously when they are unable to process solid foods without pain or distress. Most of the friends that he made up on the tenth floor of O.U. Children's, the other patients similar in age to him, passed away within a year of his diagnosis and treatment. By the age of three, he had had more surgeries and more life experience than most people ten times his age. He's managed to work his way through it with counseling and understanding from his family.

Tobe, well, he was the most complicated of the pregnancies. A mere five days after his birth, I called my husband with severe shortness of breath and edema. We rushed to the hospital to discover that I was suffering from a peripartum cardiomyopathy, also known as heart failure due to the increased pressure on the heart from pregnancy. I was also diagnosed with severe pneumonia. My primary care physician insisted that I be admitted into the hospital to be treated but I was emotionally fragile and couldn't stand to be away from my newborn and four year old. Heavy doses of Lasix and nebulizer treatments got me through the major hump but I still occasionally experience heart palpitations and shortness of breath. I began seeing a cardiologist who dropped the bomb on my husband and I that having another baby, would likely kill me. We struggled with this news for weeks and I constantly battled back and forth between wanting to have the tubal ligation to prevent future pregnancies or continuing birth control. 

Before we could make a decision one way or the other, I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. I cried myself to sleep for weeks, WEEKS, trying to decide whether to continue with the pregnancy and possibly killing myself in the process and/or terminating the pregnancy right then and there. After weeks of grueling pros and cons, I decided that the only way I could live with myself was to try to carry the pregnancy to term. If I had to terminate the pregnancy or die, I would terminate the pregnancy. We luckily made it to full-term, even survived nearly two weeks of passive labor, and now have a beautiful baby girl.

We've lost a house. Were kicked out of our apartment because we had already given our notice. We lived in a hotel suite for two weeks but not before living with my grandmother. 

We've acquired normalcy, in the face of near financial ruin when I was laid off from my job after taking out a large loan to purchase a larger family vehicle, our now paid off minivan.

We've managed through the death of my grandfather and Zach's oldest sister, who we attempted to honor by passing on her middle name to our daughter, Skyler.

It has not been an easy life. It has been a grueling, demanding and heart-breaking life. Obviously, it has not all been downs but there have been a lot and within short succession of one another. How could anyone, after looking at this long line of painful memories, how could anyone honestly believe that the only reason we still trudge through a river of crap is due to my refusal to will myself out of this black hole? Willpower will not get rid of depression. Willpower does have something to do with depression but it has absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of it altogether. In fact, because I am feeling generous, I will tell you what willpower has to do with depression.

Every morning, I wake up and fight to get out of bed. I use all of my energy just to toss my legs over the side, set them on the carpet and walk the four feet to the bathroom sink to brush my morning breath away. I stare blankly at the mirror, trying to figure out what my husband sees in me and why he continuously puts himself through the trauma that is dealing with me and my disorder(s). Then my irrational brain begins to wonder if he does love me and if he only manages to make it through his days because he has someone else on the side. Someone who loves him and holds him and lets him ... just be. It becomes so overwhelming that I have to get away from the mirror and the reflection of that awful person that is standing in front of me. Even if it is me. By this point, I'm completely drained. I'm completely drained and it's only 6:35 in the morning. I'm completely drained and I still have to feed my son breakfast before school and get him to the bus stop. I have to give him snuggles and hugs good-bye, even though my irrational brain has taken over again and I am terrified that I'm sending him off to his school bus of doom or that a mass shooter is going to target his school. After that, I try to get an hour or two of sleep. Anything to recharge my brain just a little bit before I have to get up again for work. More often than not, I don't get any sleep. I just sit there and feel the exhaustion course through my veins. I desperately want to sleep... for days or weeks... whatever it takes just to reorganize the chaos in my head. Then I feel guilty, because I am a mother and a wife and a friend and I can't just lay in bed and be useless. 

By the time work rolls around, I am on the verge of a breakdown. Not because I hate my job. I don't. I love my job. But depression has taken anything and everything of value to me and made it cumbersome. Work is cumbersome. My kids, whom I love dearly, are cumbersome. My husband is cumbersome. And I hate myself and I hate my brain for that. Even if it isn't my fault, I hate myself for it. I can logically know that it isn't my fault and still wish that I weren't here, so that my family wouldn't have to go through the rigorous schedule of helping me recuperate from this disease. But then there are two things that keep me from just "selfishly" offing myself: the people that care about me and fear. The first is the fear. I am afraid to die. I am afraid of what will or will not come when the light leaves my eyes. I am afraid of that nothingness. The second are those people that care about me. Those that will feel my loss. That will grieve the future without me. As the depression's severity increases, I slowly care less and less about those people. The one thing that doesn't change is my fear of death. If that fear of death were to change, I don't know where I would be... or wouldn't be for that matter. It is a very sharp, fine blade that I am teetering on. One wrong move and I either fall off or slice myself in half or hell, maybe I'll swing out of there with nothing but a paper-cut small incision but either way, I don't feel like I will ever get out of this unharmed. 

After faking my way through work and patient's homes, smiling and laughing and ignoring the knot in my throat that has taken refuge there, I have been drained to the negatives. I have nothing left to give. I have a few snuggles that I can bear to pass out to my family. I can pretend to smile just a few more times. But the lure of my bed and the cool sheets are just too much to ignore. My body will sink into the bed, comforting and quiet, but I go right back to feeling awful and guilty again because I can't will even a little bit more energy for the ones that I love. Before I know it, the little bit of sleep I've managed to get is over and I have to start the new day over again, often with an energy deficit. 

I am not in my right mind. But even if I was, who would willingly put their family through such a troublesome existence? You say depression is weakness. That suicide is selfish? If this disease were to physically manifest as something else, would anyone be quick to judge and force the diseased to live as if they are normal? Is it just because it is invisible... silent... that you all can ignore the pain and suffering of those affected? Or have those of you that feel you have the experience to say what you do, just not lived the life of someone who either has had or has dealt with someone who has had depression? Depression is not weakness. It is a very strong individual that tries and fails to fight a disease such as this every single day but tries again over and over. That is admirable. And all of the ignorant, chair quarterbacks out there would be well to recognize that that strength is also beautiful. That uplifting the fallen is a worthy cause because some of these lost souls may have so much to give, they just need the strength to give it.