Jul 21, 2011

At Peace

While I was visiting, my grandmother sat in her television room and lectured me about opening my heart to the lord so I could achieve peace and direction in life, wiping her plentiful tears on her pink nightgown trimmed in colorful rickrack.

I sat there on the couch, my computer in my lap because I'd been showing her some picture she'd wanted to see, staring back at her, blank faced and stony-eyed. What else could I do?

The thing that annoys more about my grandmother than all the holier-than-thouness, the selfish manipulating, the lies is how she demeans my opinions. To her, I am just a little girl. Whenever I express an opinion on something deeper and more important than a flower arrangement, she laughs at how cute it is. Somehow, I can't help but think deep down she knows I'm right (she is racist, my dad isn't a horrible man, she is judgmental). Her demeaning glance is her way of justifying her flaws to herself: I can't be right, I'm just a kid.

But I'm not a kid. I know what I know. The sixty years or so of life "experience" she has on me means nothing the way she's lived it. She preached to me for so long about how God has been protecting her her whole life. But all that means to her is giving up any personal responsibility. In her world, she was a neglectful mother because God called her to serve the church. Not because she was just a bad mother who didn't know what she was doing and ran and hid. In her world, she was fired from one church because the preacher had it out for her. Not because she's incapable of compromise and highly arrogant. In her world, I am "defiant" because my parent have corrupted me. Not because I'm capable of independent thought, and capable of seeing that I never want to be anything like her.

She simply uses religion to absolve herself of her mistakes. I thought Jesus was supposed to forgive you for your sins, not justify them.

She swears I can't have peace without this same kind of God. I have no god and I want no god.

What she fails to understand is that I'm only at peace without religion in my life. It only makes me feel uncomfortable in my skin, make me doubt myself, a weekly infusion of needless and undeserved guilt. I don't need the sort of justification she does.

I am peace when I know that I'm in control of my life, and that measure of control gives me the strength to deal with what is beyond it. She has no idea how her lecturing solidifies the beliefs she so desperately tries to drive me away from. She has on idea how strongly I feel about them, and how sure I am of who I am.

I played her "The House That Built Me" once because she wanted an example of the music I saw in concert, a song about finding yourself again in your childhood home. All it prompted from her was a smug look on her face and the question, "are you lost? Do you feel lost?" I knew she wanted me to collapse into tears, fall into her arms, and beg her to drag me into the light of God, or some crazy crap. But I simply looked her in the eye and said "no."

It's crazy how many different meanings one word can I have. To her, my no meant I was harboring religious feelings inside, that I secretly possessed a blooming and magnificent relationship with her God. My no really meant that I was happy with my decision to reject her god, that I never felt more secure in my beliefs then when I decided I didn't need or want Christianity. I am not lost, but to her I always will be. She can't comprehend a "found" that is happier than hers or different than hers.

I was lost when I was trying to humor her, I was blind when I tried to sit honestly in a sanctuary, I was a wrench when I lied to myself about my beliefs. But now I see, now I see.

Jul 6, 2011

A Reasonable Doubt

I don't usually write about current events here but having just watched what seems like hours of coverage on the Casey Anthony trial, I feel compelled to throw my less than two cents into the discussion. It's bothering the heck outta me.

Of course the death of an innocent little girl is heartbreaking, but it's not the only sickening aspect of this ordeal. Nightline kept showing a shot of the angry crowd shouting "Justice for Caylee" followed by a shot of the angry mob with torches and pitchforks from Frankenstein films. The resemblance is shocking.

Everyone knows the justice system is imperfect; it is made of fallible creatures, therefore will be fallible. But in this case, it might be beneficial to take a leaf from its book.

Everybody is so quick to shout "baby killer" at Casey Anthony, and I admit it very much looks to be true. She may have gotten off through a simple lucky break, or her lawyers were that good, or the "scientific evidence went over the jury's head" like Nancy Grace insists. But all of this seems disgusting to me for one reason: what if she really didn't do it?

We can all speculate til we're blue in the face, but nobody really knows what happened except for the five Anthonys, and their stories conflict. It's impossible to pick which to believe. None of us were in that courtroom, and certainly none of them witnessed her committing a murder. Why are people so sure she killed Caylee, when all they have to go on are sound bites from Entertainment Tonight and speculation by Nancy Grace? Why do they think they know so much more than the jury?

Oh, that poor jury. I couldn't imagine the pressure of sitting in one of those seats. It's easy to say you'd like to dole out the death penalty when you're holding a picket sign outside the courthouse, but what if you're Juror #12 with a vote that can put a woman in jail for life? I don't think the decision would be so easy then. It's literally life or death; that's why our legal system only convicts people beyond reasonable doubt.

It's only right to hand a life sentence to somebody if you're absolutely positive they took it upon themselves to take somebody else's life. How could a jury live their lives if they sentenced Anthony but weren't sure she did it? There's twelve more innocent people, sentenced to a different kind of life in prison.

Casey Anthony doesn't seem like a good person. She appears to be a liar (and even accused her father and brother of unproven sexual abuse), selfish, and a neglectful mother. But we simply don't know if she's a murderer, and maybe just isn't good enough.

Jul 1, 2011

Post-Op Procedure

I could never be a veterinarian. Doctors have the luxury of patients that can tell them when it hurts. Animals will ignore the pain, spit out the medicine, growl. It takes a special hand to feel what is happening beneath the fur, treat without ever really knowing how the patient is reacting.

My cat must think this is some cruel torture. He is sent off into the hands of strangers in strange smelling rooms, cold and clinical. They poke and prod him. Then everything just disappears for awhile.

When he wakes up, he finds his carefully groomed coat half gone, his face imprisoned in a plastic prison, a drain poked through the lengthy cut in his newly exposed skin, held together by stitches and medical glue.

When he's finally returned to the incompetent but loving hands of his primary caregivers, they keep him contained in a cage where he thrashes about in confusion from the anesthesia and experience. Deprived of his freedom, body, and routine, he does not understand these sacrifices are made for a greater good. He simply must trust.

I have to pity the sad creature sleeping on the floor in front of me. The ends of the drain poking out from his purplish smooth skin raise up and down with each rhythmic breath. He lays his head awkwardly to limit contact between his ears and whiskers and the cone. He licks the tip of his tail and the ends of his paws; they're all he can reach, but he's desperate for the comfort of the familiar action.

Yet he sticks his head out so I can pet his forehead beneath the cone, scratch where it's tied around his neck. Though we've put him through his awful ordeal, he trusts. After all, we have the food.