NaNoWriMo Word War!

Can we write a novel in a month? Should there be a contest, in which the person who's written the fewest words gets spanked? Tune in Dec. 1st to read all about it!

Or go to Coping in Crazyville--Writing and Whatnot to read any excerpts I've chosen to impose on share with the general public.

(don't worry, you're not seeing double, I just wanted this to show up in feed readers, too.)

The novel I'm working on has pretty much zip to do with spanking or discipline, but you might like it in spite of that, so check out the link and give me lots of positive feedback (until December 1st, at which point those with criticism can chime in as well).

It's funny what will bring me to tears.

People who are interested in "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (or, in the UK, Myalgic Encephalitis) and Fibromyalgia might be aware of the article published last week in Science, reporting findings that a large percentage of people with CFS were infected with a retrovirus (67% in the initial sample, compared to about 3% of healthy controls. Later research showed closer to 95% of people with CFS/ME had the virus or antibodies to it.)

I've had this information rattling around in my brain ever since. It's a vindication--all of these years I've insisted to doctors that yes, this is a real, physical, biological illness, that no, the antidepressants aren't making it go away. I hope that the test becomes widely available, and that I can take it. And then I will at least take it to my current doctor and insist that she accept that the fibromyalgia I'm asking for help with is a real disorder.

At the same time, the news is worrisome. W and I practice safer sex, in the sense that we know our sexual histories, know we didn't have any STDs, and don't have sex with anyone but each other. It's not that we engage in any especially risky behaviors, but DAMN. If I'd thought I had a retrovirus, something that could be passed on to a partner by contact with bodily fluids, I would have been a damn sight more careful. So there's that. I'm worried that I've passed this on to someone I love. I'm terrified of what it would mean for us, if she comes down with it, since right now, her ability to work full time is how we have a roof over our heads. (Yes, I do get SSI. But two times $460 a month doesn't even cover our rent.)

And there's the worry about having kids. See, when I wasn't sure whether or not it was communicable, I might have made choices like not donating blood (just in case, because the last thing someone getting a blood transfusion needs is this!). But I was still willing to risk giving birth. Because who knows, maybe it *is* triggered in part by child abuse, and that's preventable. But if it's a virus, it's a whole 'nother thing. I'm not completely ruling out having my own biological kids, but it's one more concern.


Then there's the hope, which I am more fighting against than embracing. I just don't have the energy to be disappointed, so I'm not telling myself "if they can find the cause, then they can find the cure!" Instead, I'm remembering that they discovered HIV in the early '80s, and there is still neither a cure nor a vaccine for AIDS.


So, with all of that as background, I come to the point of my post. I was reading an article about the virus in the New York Times. It's not that the article had any new information--I've been reading and re-reading the articles all weekend. But in a discussion over the controversy around whether CFS/ME is biological or psychological, they had this quotation in defense of a biological origin:

“There is a group who are young, healthy, active and engaged, and all of a sudden they are laid low by something,” Dr. Schaffner said. “Everyone tells the physicians these are people who are functional and productive, and this is totally out of character. They are frustrated and often quite disheartened. You feel that medical science hasn’t caught up with their illness yet.”

As I read it, it was like being smacked. All of a sudden, for maybe 3 seconds, I could remember. I could remember how my body felt twelve, thirteen, fifteen, twenty years ago. I could remember that strength, the activity. I could remember deciding to bike 5 miles out of my way, on a whim, because I felt like it. I could remember volunteering, and building fences, and hiking. I could remember standing up on a moving bus, without clinging to a pole in the hope of not falling down. I could remember going out dancing, spending time with friends, just doing things because they are fun, without worrying that the fun I have today will lead to intense pain and fatigue tomorrow.

Just for a few seconds, I remembered who I used to be. I could only handle it for a few seconds. One of the basic realities of my life is that some things are just too much to handle, and I can either live the life I have, or I can spend time thinking about the one I used to have.

But for those few seconds, I realized once again that this is not a disorder caused by a desire to be sick. I really liked my life a whole lot better when I was well. I haven't gained anything that comes close to making up for what has been lost.

By the content of their character

I wrote this for my Livejournal late last night, intending to come up with something more polished this morning. But in the end, I think it was a good post as originally written, so I'm just copying it here.

The tears surprised me. I had been trying so hard all day, not to hope, to prepare myself for going to bed tonight, disappointed, not yet knowing who would win the election, having the outcome precarious.

And then, as I was counting up the tally on the Google election map, they announced it on TV. Obama won. McCain conceded. And I noticed there were tears in my eyes.

I voted for Obama because I believe he will best represent my interests. I voted based on the merits. Intellectually, race didn't matter to me. Obama was the better candidate. Whether he will live up to the promises he has made, whether he will fulfill the hopes that people have piled on top of him, he is still the better candidate to represent me. Intellectually, I was willing to leave it there.

But when they announced that Obama won, I noticed I was crying. And the thought that kept running through my head was, "This is someone who is like me. Someone who looks like me. Someone who had some similar experiences. Someone like me is going to be the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES."

I am still just... awestruck.

The cynical part of my brain keeps analyzing the speeches, keeps aloof, looking at the ways that news reports fall back on a series of cliches; I look at the representations of supporters on each side--white, downcast supporters of McCain; jubilant or crying multiracial supporters of Obama. I analyze, I criticize.

But inside, I feel like my heart has filled up with wonder. That this moment should occur, that I am writing about it right now, tonight... it's amazing to me. There is a level that cynicism and intellectualization can't conquer. Today, November 4th, 2008, a majority of the United States elected someone like me to be president. And I think about all of the little children who will spend the next four--or eight--years with someone who looks like them in the White House. Who will have this example in front of them, as they imagine the possibilities in their lives.

It's a spiritual moment for me as well, and I just want to say "Thank you" to the powers that made this possible.

Politics

You preferred Obama's statements 100% of the time Voting purely on the issues you should vote Obama Who would you vote for if you voted on the issues? Find out now!

I could've predicted this pretty easily. I did some interactive online thing last year to see which of the Democratic candidates was most in line with my beliefs, and according to that, Obama had voted the way I would have preferred on something like 85% or 90% of the issues. So then I checked him out more. Yup, Obama seduced my vote with his charismatic voting record. (And BOY am I hoping two things: one, that he wins, and two, that he continues to vote the way I'd want him to vote as much as he did as a senator.)

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Listening to: Kelly Joe Phelps - Beggar's Oil

FLDS

Texas Court rules that children of FLDS should not have been removed from their homes

I don't know if you have been following the whole saga of the group of Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. Google that, plus perhaps "removing children," because I'm not up to describing the whole situation.

Now the courts have ruled that it was wrong to remove the children, that there wasn't sufficient evidence to justify taking them away. It's supposed to be a happy ending, the families reunited, everything just ducky. And I am frothing with rage.

I know that the bulk of the fury I'm feeling over this is on behalf of myself, as a child. But I don't think I'm just projecting. The assumption I see, over and over, is that the rights of parents to maintain control over their children nearly always trump the rights of the children to be safe, so long as there is reasonable evidence that the children will survive to adulthood. This is not right. It just isn't.

Yes, the I am furious over this because of my own experience. I don't think that invalidates what I want to say. So let me tell a little bit about where my own rage is coming from.

At least once during my childhood, someone called children's services. They came, investigated, and determined that there was nothing going on, or at least, nothing that required intervention. But they were wrong. I know for certain that there was physical abuse (it did stop short of breaking bones), emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect (I'm ambivalent on that one, since some of the neglect was unavoidable given my mother's lack of resources).

But because children's services determined that the kids in the household were likely to survive to adulthood, we were left there, and there was no other intervention.

And this just increased my parents' ability to continue with what they were doing. They punished me for having said things at school that led to the investigation (I'm unclear as to what, exactly happened at school; my memory is that I said something, not even realizing it was a huge red flag for abuse, and a teacher called it in.) And what I learned was, no one was going to intervene. What was happening to me at home was justified. For reasons I really did not understand, I deserved the things that happened, just as my siblings must deserve the things that happened to them.

It was a hard thing to figure out, particularly as I got older. When I was not quite twelve, and my youngest brother was not quite two, my stepfather was taking care of him, and beat him black and blue, from the middle of his thighs up to his lower back. And it was hard for me to see that this was justified, because what the h*ll could a toddler do, to deserve that? His crime? Not laying down to take his nap.

The thing is, the response within the family was largely that it had been wrong to do that, not because it is wrong to beat a child, but because my youngest brother had a heart problem and didn't get spanked like that. I mean, no one ever said that it was wrong to beat *any* toddler that severely. The only reason my brother shouldn't have gotten that "spanking" was because he was sickly.


I tend to shy away from describing my childhood as a time of unalleviated horror. It wasn't only horrible. And in many ways, my family did love me.

Would I want to have not spent my childhood with them? I really don't know. I can't imagine who I would be, or what my childhood would have been like, without that thread of abuse. I don't know who I would be, if that hadn't happened. Maybe it did make me stronger, or at least, more fierce in my anger at people who are treating children badly. It definitely made me more determined to succeed in school, because that was the only way I could imagine escaping: to get into a college on the other end of the country. But I'm pretty smart. I'm willing to bet that, even without the abuse, I probably would have been able to succeed in school. Heck, I might have done better, had I been responsible for less at home, had I been able to sleep soundly at night.

I'm not saying I don't love my family. In spite of all that was bad, there was also good. I do love them, and I wouldn't want to have had all contact cut off. But what happened was not ok. And when I see similar things happening, or the possibility of similar things happening, I am livid. The burden of proof should rest on the ones who are more powerful, to prove that they are not being abusive. Nobody, nobody has a right to abuse someone else.

What is more, having spent my adult life trying to understand that what happened to me when I was growing up was not justified, I shudder for the kids in these households. I was able to escape, because for all of her flaws, my mother also had times when she encouraged me to think for myself, and to protect myself (odd, from a woman who also would beat me harder if I tried to protect myself from her; strange, from a woman who felt it was right for her to have a full adult relationship with her teenaged daughter). And I spent enough time at school, around people who showed me a different way of living, that the thought was able to enter my head, "This is not right. This does not have to be happening." It was a very quiet thought, for a very long time. But it was there, enough that I could imagine escaping.

But the kids in the FLDS compound? They are being told that not only do their parents believe this is right, deserved, what they should do. They are being told that God ordains this. They do not have contact with anyone who is not a member of that sect.

Ok. So the court doesn't want to separate the children from their parents. Then they had damn sure better make certain they are keeping tabs, offering other thoughts, both to the children and their parents. But nothing I know about how children's services works, or how the negotiation between the rights of parents and the rights of children happens, leads me to believe that there will be any surveillance. The court has determined that these children are likely to survive to adulthood, so they are on their own.

And the message they are getting from this, in part, is that what is happening is justified; that when an adult tells them something is ordained by God, or is for the children's own good, or any of that garbage, then the children will believe that to be true. Because they have no evidence that says anything different.