Uncommon Understanding - Day 23

 

I frequent a message board where people who are in the LGBTQ+ community talk about their issues and experiences. It's often quite saddening and enlightening when you discover the lengths many go to in order to do what they love and be who they are in a world that has not fully embraced them.

Today, I read a post by a man who during the day works as a FedEx driver in Detroit. He's not trans, and he's not gay, he simply came to the board to talk and not be judged for who he is and what he does.

He began by saying that one of his coworkers, a woman in her 30's, has a huge collection of stuffed animals and dolls that literally span every room in her apartment. Some are just for display, but she has a special group of them that sit on a hammock type shelf by her bed. These are her "bedtime babies", and as you can probably guess, she sleeps with them. Now, probably nobody reading this would think anything of that. Many single women (and some not single) have "stuffies" or "babies" they sleep with. Sometimes it's a teddy bear from childhood or college, other times it's a valentine gift from a s/o. Nobody blinks an eye at this, and if anything, it's cute.

The man who made the post mentioned above also has a few stuffed animals and dolls that he sleeps with at night. His favorite is a little pink teddy bear with big blue eyes and super-soft fur. He also has a doll with yarn hair, and a flamingo with long floppy legs. In all, he has 13 dolls and stuffies that he sleeps with. He keeps their hair/fur brushed and clean, and launders the ones that can be washed.

He lives alone, and from time to time he will have friends over. In the beginning, he would hide his shelf-full of babies when he had company, as his apartment only has one bathroom, and to get to it, you must go through his bedroom. He got tired of doing that, though, and so came up with another plan. He got a couple of damaged dolls and stuffed animals and put them on a table in a corner with a bag of poly-fil stuffing and a sewing kit. He would tell people that he re-stuffed dolls and bears to donate to the homeless shelter. They saw this as noble, praising him for his generosity, --not weird and creepy like the truth would have been.

Reading this man's post really got me to thinking how far we have to go in equality for all. Not just in basic human rights, but in understanding. Here we have a guy who could have simply denied himself something he wanted in order to not feel "stupid", but instead embraced it, if only inside his own mind and heart.

Why is it okay for a single woman in her 30's to sleep with a doll but not a single man in his 30's? We all know the answer to this is rooted in gender norms, and because of those norms, we are tempted to think "He says he's straight? Yeah, right." However, his sexual orientation is irrelevant to this. He says he is straight, and so that's that. What is important is the judgment we place on him.

After a couple of weeks seeing the couple of damaged stuffed animals on the table by the bag of stuffing, he became inspired to actually do the thing it portrayed. He began finding pre-loved stuffed animals at Goodwill that just needed some TLC and cleaning them up, adding new stuffing to them, then taking them to the homeless shelter/battered women's shelter. At the homeless shelter, sometimes he would offer a doll or stuffed animal to a little boy who was already "too old" for them. He thought "What if this little boy is embarrassed to ask for a stuffed animal, but if I give it to him, it's a gift he can choose to give away, or to keep?" He began pinning notes to them that read "To keep you warm at night." as warmth is something we all need, regardless of gender.

What if we treated ALL people the way he is making his own life an example of?

I'm rambling. I've begun to feel like very few people read these, as the blog site shows me how many times my posts have been read. (Some of them less than 3 views.) For the few who do, thank you. It shows I'm not talking to myself.

Day 22 - We Are So Blind

 

Don't make decisions from a place of anger. 

Many of us have done that. I've hidden friends from my feed because of political division and missed their posts about family members hurting or even dying...all because I didn't want to see another post about seemingly hating me.

So I hope not too many will miss this post, because it was a wake-up call for me about something I know we all are tired of hearing about: Covid-19.

I know a lot of people don't have a lot of faith in Dr. Anthony Fauci. He's one of the smartest and most experienced infectious disease experts in the world, but when he criticized Donald Trump a year ago for his handling of the pandemic, Trump called him a "disaster", causing many of Trump's loyalists to "cancel" him. The equivalent of me getting angry with my doctor for telling me I need to lose weight, and so I ignore everything she tells me from then on, including things that might save my life.

Dr. Fauci was discussing pandemics the other day on NPR. He had been asked about his experience back in the 80's regarding HIV and the AIDS virus. He said the first step was figuring out how it was transmitted, and where it originated. The latter was ultimately impossible, but the former would be revealed through research. Dr. Fauci knew it was sexually transmitted, but it seemed to relegated largely to (at the time) gay males. He visited the bathhouses that populated the forced underbelly of that group at the time, and saw unchecked sexual activity with no precautions being taken against infections. Since condoms were primarily used to prevent pregnancy, that form of protection was not being used. Partners were regularly swapped, even in the same night, creating a hotbed for an STI to spread unchecked. 

When Dr. Fauci and other experts reported their findings, people fell into several categories in how they viewed this pandemic:

"I don't believe HIV is real. It's a hoax."

"I don't believe it's that serious, and certainly not deadly."

"Only the sick need to worry about HIV killing them."

"I'm not gay, so I won't get it."

"I am gay, and you can't tell me what to do."

"The risk of infection is low, so I'm gonna live my life."

"Screw you, Fauci."

"La-La-La-La-La-LAAAAAA...not listening!"

Because of these attitudes, HIV became a real problem. To date, over 35 million have died from AIDS. It took years for people to actually be convinced that HIV was spread through sexual activity, and wasn't just a "gay issue". A recent survey among young people between the ages of 17 and 25 showed that only around 60% of women insist on condom usage once they have developed trust with their partner. Males, on the other hand, were at a dismal 15%. In fact, 89% of males said they actively discourage the use of condoms with their partner, even if their partner has brought one, because of "lack of sensation".** Many women relent on this to show their love for their partner, and men often see the lack of condom usage and it's subsequent end result as "claiming" their partner, reinforcing the idea that masculinity is defined by risk.

Now we are faced with Covid-19; another pandemic that is receiving the same kinds of criticism. 

"I don't believe Covid is real. It's a hoax."

"I don't believe it's that serious, and certainly not deadly."

"Only the sick need to worry about Covid killing them."

"I'm being careful, so I won't get it."

"I'm an American, and you can't tell me what to do."

"The risk of infection is low, so I'm gonna live my life."

"Screw you, Fauci."

"La-La-La-La-La-LAAAAAA...not listening!"

In the 80's, HIV was often dismissed by many people as something that would go away on it's own. Or that it was killing such a small number of people that to take notice of it and take precautions against it was overreacting. The new variants of Covid that are popping up all over the world as the virus mutates are revealing a grim possibility: That being, Covid will probably not just disappear. In fact, like HIV, Covid may be here for good, and will require you to take precautions against it...forever. This may mean wearing a mask whenever you go somewhere with a large group of people, like a concert or a super bowl party. It may mean you getting an updated vaccine every year. It may mean (God forbid) you actually have someone die close to you that had attended an event you condoned as being "I'm gonna live my life and hang out with my friends/family on Thanksgiving, regardless."

Dr. Fauci was asked if people had taken the AIDS virus seriously when it was discovered, would the death toll have been so great. He said "I can't be certain of numbers, but I know the reduction would have been significant. Possibly by as much as 90%. We would still have HIV among us, but the transmission rates would be so small in number due to precautions being taken that cases would be minimal."

I'm wondering: What if we had listened?

**NPR News [Radio broadcast]. (2021, February 4). Dr. Anthony Fauci Interview.

 

 

Day 21 - D♭ Minor

One day, I was on a long layover at the airport in Munich, and I happened to hear music coming from down one hallway of terminals. It was a harmonica; I knew that. I followed the sound and found the player, a lone man in an empty terminal just passing the time. There was no hat at his feet as to indicate he was asking for tips. I sat down and listened. He saw me and nodded as he played. I didn't know the tune, but aside from that, it didn't sound like any harmonica I had heard before. It was somber, and ominous, like it was meant to be played in mourning.   

When he finished, I said "Sprichst du Englisch?" 

He smiled "Nein, Ench." 

I said "Wie heißt sie?" (What is it called?") 

He said "Die Loreley".

 

I came over to him and motioned that I'd like to see his harmonica. My grandfather had played, and I wanted to know what was different with this harmonica. Why did it sounds so dark? As I discovered, it was in a minor key, and not just like E-flat or C-sharp, but a minor harp. (Something I did not know existed.)

I never forgot that moment, and I made a note that one day if I ever decided to learn to play, I wanted to minor harp. A few years ago, I stumbled across one, and I picked it up for a good price. I played with it a bit, and finally put it away out of frustration. I picked it up again a few days ago, and I'm actually trying to actually learn now.

Be thankful you do not live in my home at the moment. (Haha!)

A Fragile Web - Day 20

 

When I started this blog, I said I was going to be open and candid about mental illness; mine especially. That means saying how it makes you feel, even if you think you will be judged, shamed, pitied, or laughed at. As I write this particular entry, the only things that worries me more than people not reading it (after me putting this much courage into writing it) is people reading it, because of how much this one seemingly silly aspect of it affects me.

When my uncle passed away back when I was a teen, I noticed how over the next few weeks and months my aunt began to hoard things that reminded her of him. Not just photos, as you might expect, but things. These things, as I would later learn from my own experience with grief, formed a chain of memories. He was not coming back, but there were things of his that remained. But those things created another link to the chain, and another. Such that had my uncle returned from the dead, he might look at some of these things and say "What on earth does that have to do with me, Harriet?"

My uncle was gone. But my aunt remembered the two of them visiting Louisiana the year before. It was one of the last things they did together where there was no pain and worry, so Louisiana became precious to her. That was the first link in the chain. While in Louisiana, they ate at a French restaurant, and she had fallen in love with the food. So she began cooking French cuisine, because it made her think of Louisiana, and of him. She began learning French, a little bit at a time. She collected French knickknacks. She found the dinnerware the restaurant had used, and ordered it. The plates had roses on them, and she planted roses in her back yard to match the plates. She would sit out on her back patio and look at her roses, listening to French music. The roses that matched the plates from the French restaurant with the music that reminded her of Louisiana, and of their last trip together. Those roses, then, reminded her of him.

I realize over the years I have done the same thing. When I came back from Romania in 2014, knowing it would be a long, long time (if ever) before I might return, my heart was broken over it. That was when the PTSD began. On the flight over to Romania, I had read a book I found at the airport. The book was set in Germany during WWII. I began wanting to learn more about WWII Germany, because it was a connection with Romania. Germany equals that book which equals that flight which equals Romania. (I now own 4 copies of that book, by the way.) In addition to learning Romanian, I also began learning German, because German equals the airport in Munich which equals Romania. One day, I was sitting in a bookstore that sold video games and there was a game playing on DEMO mode on a TV; FIFA 15. The song playing reminded me of music in the airport in Munich, so I bought the game and began learning the mechanics of soccer. I found comfort in that store, so I applied to work there, and got hired. It was so good for me. Unfortunately, the job ended with a management change, but while I was working there, I found this rubber ball behind the counter and I would play with it before the store opened as I stocked shelves. It was a red icosagon called a Moon Ball. The ball is one thing I have left from when I worked at that store and makes me think of the friends I made there, that I miss dearly.

The Moon Ball equals the bookstore which equals the video game which equals soccer which equals Germany which equals the book which equals the flight to Munich which equals Romania. This doesn't even include all the little smaller things along the way like Jacobs coffee and a harmonica in the key of Db minor.

What results is a complex web of things that, like my uncle, if the original person knew I had collected as a result of their loss would probably be very confused. (What does that harmonica, or that Moon Ball have to do with a little city in Northern Romania?) But a chain has been formed, and unhealthy though it may be, it has given me interests that had the original trauma not occurred, might never have become a part of my life, for better or worse.

Most who were a part of my journey to Romania will probably never read this. Most have probably moved on to other areas of their life, as I have in many ways. The point is, this aspect of who I am permanently ties that part of my life to that harmonica, or that rubber ball.

Maybe in reading this, there are others who will identify with this, and know they are not alone.