March 25, 2015 - 14:10
Sometimes, it feels good to risk being seen as “good” for the sake of being open about my intentions, which are not always good and often selfish.
“I wanted to go there, and sit at that table, and I wanted to make her uncomfortable”
Sam lit a cigarette. “Sara, sometimes, when you’re angry at someone, you just go crazy,” I knew by the way he said this statement that it wasn’t being passed as a judgment. But it set my mind into motion, in a way I am often unwilling to ignore, because I am afraid of what I might miss out on if I do. As I was formulating a response to Sam’s comment, I became so absorbed in the process that I forgot to respond entirely, instead, I got lost, exploring the concept of “crazy.”
Here’s where it starts:
I think it’s not so much that I’m crazy when it comes to being angry at someone, I think I am just more willing to articulate the “crazy;” to let others see that I am capable of being shallow, and at times vindictive.
Part of always looking for the good in others is being acutely aware that each individual is also capable of darker thoughts, and desires with less than pure motives; capable of being cruel, and manipulative for their own gain. It’s like, playing the believe/doubt game with what you know about each person you encounter, and ultimately choosing to believe in them, but still maintaining a critical understanding of them as well. I think this believing in the inherent potential for goodness in the hearts of others is often misunderstood as blind optimism or naivety, rather than a calculated choice, or an act of compassion. We are shamed for things like continuing to trust those who hurt or neglect us, or being too generous with trust too early on in a relationship. Even if it is foolish, I can’t help but think I’ve learned a hell of a lot more from being vulnerable and overly generous with my trust than I have with being guarded. I’ve learned to be frank about the darker and more shameful parts of myself, both as a form of confronting my own problematic desires, and as a way of making safe space for others to feel comfortable being more honest… Sometimes, it is even addictively liberating, to claim agency over your thoughts and feelings, to know you are capable of being malicious but are decidedly not, and to be aware of your own power in critically examining yourself.
“I wanted to go there…”
But I chose not to.
I believe we feel things that we are unwilling to admit because to do so is seen as shameful.
Shame likes to burrow deeply enough into our bodies, underneath skin and bones and organs and memory, until we can no longer feel it, until we can move about freely. This seems to be a way people (we? Me?) commonly function… it is a learned habit of survival; we move past shame by not thinking about it, seeking its erasure from our personal histories… But when we do remember where it lives, when a certain smell or word triggers it suddenly, (or maybe, if you are like me, and sometimes the trigger is chemical, and occurs twice daily, first around 3-4pm and then again at around 11-12pm), whatever our association is with being ashamed, it is a whole body reaction, as though the weight of gravity itself has shifted and became heavier, suffocating.
I think, speaking very generally about cultural perceptions, we understand even just the act of thinking or feeling certain “negative” emotions/behaviors as a selfish transgression; like the way some people believe that even just thinking that about another person as attractive when you’re in a monogamous relationship as a form of cheating… these transgressions are regarded with particular scrutiny when it is a woman doing the thinking and feeling… we encounter a variety of labels in response to expressing emotions, labels that become vehicles for teaching and learning to feel shame. Qualities of leadership, like assertiveness and confidence, are rewritten for women into being “bossy” or “controlling”…. Other times, women are described as “crazy,” rather than rational; “hysterical” and “instable”, rather than logical; “overemotional”, rather than emotionally intelligent and aware.
On a relevant but slightly distracting tangent: Media tropes perpetuate the myth of the “crazy bitch”, daughter of the mad woman in the attic, and idolized the “cool girl” in all her many splendid forms over the years- right now she trips up the stage to accept her award in the body of Jennifer Lawrence, and because “cool girl” overwhelms her media image, we can only talk about how cute and quirky she is, tripping unapologetically, instead of how she is winning an award… part of me can’t tell whose fault that image is; I can’t decide whether I should blame our patriarchal society for creating and circulating one-dimensional media tropes of womanhood and identity, which have insidiously permeated through collective cultural perceptions and determined how women of all kinds are treated, or whether I should praise the actress for intelligently building a loveable persona that the public can’t help worshipping; for capitalizing on qualities which make her appealing?
We stigmatize the language used to describe women.
Words like, “Sentimental,” leave a foul taste in our mouths. To be sentimental is to be womanly, to be womanly is to be weak… or is it, to be sentimental is be weak, and to be weak is to be womanly? To be womanly is to be sentimental and to be sentimental is to be weak? I think it works in all directions, and means different things with each re-wording... We teach that compassion is weak… we teach that to have compassion for ourselves is weak….
(and here I pause to wonder if my multi-directional thinking and inability to make singular, definitive/ conclusive statements overlaps with skewed depictions and perceptions of women as being “finicky”; “wishy-washy”; “timid”; “insecure”).
The cultural production of ascribing shame to certain feelings seems strategic to me; it is a way of facilitating insecurity deep into the fabric of womanhood; to instill a rhetoric of “rational” doubt to counter the authenticity of feeling as a way of experiencing the world… I’m recalling the words of Audre Lorde, read out loud to me by a close friend during my sophomore year, “I feel, therefore I am”. Even just our understanding of “feeling” as instinctual, as gut reaction, can serve to demote it on the hierarchy of human capabilities, can make it seem like a primitive function relative to the higher skills of logical reasoning.
But I am adamant that there is logic to feeling.
I am certain, despite the literal definition of logic, which locates it in contradiction to feeling.
Sometimes I think, (white) male privilege is having unabashed confidence in one’s self, the ability to be assured and unquestioned in one’s own opinions, to rarely feel the earth shake out from under one’s feet. Meanwhile, all other diverse identities (kinds of people?) in some ways, to all differing degrees, experience their identity as fractured; have in many moments, felt at war with themselves, and are unable to reconcile the division. Womanhood is one of those identity categories that is riddled with irreconcilable binaries, pushing and molding women into either one or the other; “virgin or whore”; never given enough credit to be considered capable of deep complexity, of holding contradiction in a single body. It’s no wonder! - It is entirely too predicable that someone could misunderstand my choice to believe in the humanity and depth of others as naïve, and overly optimistic… it is no wonder that I have been seen as childish, and at times, considered weak, or called a doormat for others to take advantage of. Do not mistake compassion for naivety. Do not forget my agency, or that I speak with intention.
If I don’t admit it when I can be a terrible person, how I will learn not to be? How will I let others know that it’s okay to admit that you’ve messed up, that you’ve been terrible?
Being a teacher, for me, is like re-learning everyday, that as we remind others that they are worthy of love and compassion, that we are also worthy of love and compassion. To be compassionate to others is a redemptive act for ourselves, one that can repair some of those fractures in soul, like open wounds that heal only through exposure to oxygen… in the very least, even just bringing the division to the surface, in revealing whatever it is that is supposed to be shameful, allows you to breath a little better in your own skin.
“IX
Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It's not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever's lost there is needed by both of us -
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key...Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I'm waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.”
Further thoughts for inquiry, and other things that didn’t quite fit in yet:
*Educational spaces are inherently unfriendly spaces to women because they exclude the emotional “baggage” that many women are taught to carry around. And this brings my project back to a closer look at the role gender plays in our academic experiences.
*Thinking further about the relationship between this entire piece of writing and my own privileges…
*Thinking further about how I am situated and how it influences my assumption… particularly one that seems to reinforce the power of language, and possibly suggests that some mode of speech/communication is the only way toward reconciliation/healing… and maybe the very assumption that others are “fractured” at all… I guess it’s important to note that when I say fractured, I don’t mean… I can’t exactly find the right word, but I know I don’t mean the kind of broken we call the public school education system in America…. I guess if I break that down, we call public school education broken as a way of suggesting it’s failing. I don’t think being fractured/divided in self is also to be a failure, or to be damaged. I feel like I need to clarify this because I’m using language that is also used to talk about victimhood;
But so many us experience being conflicted in identity and become further conflicted about being conflicted in the first place…
*How I had to stop pursuing these trains of thought because doing so comes at the expense of not doing the other work I have that should take precedence because it is for class, and how this might be another example of the way that self-discovery and contemplation is at times contradictory to being successful as a student… which probably relates somewhere along the line to some other rambles I started here, about making meaningful work within academia as a form of self-care/love… but I could also talk about how serendip has been, for me, a space to enter into my own personal discoveries, and a way of assigning self-reflection value in an academic sphere that feels otherwise absent from curriculum…
Works Cited:
1) Terry, Sam. Conversation held at around 5:30pm on 2/9/15
2) “Society”, I guess?
3) Literary Criticism about the Mad Woman in the Attic (gotta find that)
4) That article on the construction of the “cool girl” in the media
5) Rich, Adrienne, excerpt from 21 Love Poems
6) Gladwin, Sara. My Brain and earlier thoughts concieved prior to having written this. Also personal experiences
7) Dixon, Ann, here, inspiring me to experiment with the format of citations