Who Let the Dogs In?

There's a dog in my house.
Actually, it is a collection of dogs -
different breeds come and go.

All of the dogs are black.
Most of the time, they sit and stare at me.
They follow me from room to room.
They even follow me out of the house, but
I dare not comment on them to others.

I suspect they are visible only to me.

An enormous mastiff wakes me in the morning.
He is scrawled across my body
weighing me down
wearing me out
And it takes all my strength to push him off me.

The Jack Russell Terrier waits in my kitchen
Trembling with all of my worry-energy
What will happen today?
What am I forgetting?
He yips and zips and
I can't hear myself think.

I make it to work with the Lab riding shotgun
She's fairly calm
but she seems to fill all of the leftover space.
She can be very distracting
Sometimes she tells me to do things
and I have to push with both hands
Leave my steering wheel alone

Jack Russell is waiting for me in the office
joined by his friend, the schnauzer
I have to check under my desk every so often
Make sure they haven't set up camp.

They follow me all day
alternately wiring me and draining me.
I concentrate on hiding them from my students and colleagues
They make so much noise in my head
What if it leaks out?

Those two hop in the backseat to come home with me
But
mercifully
the Lab is asleep
and those two soon fall as well.
Their darkness recedes when they sleep
I can concentrate on the road.

There are no dogs waiting for me at home
I can sit and relax in peace
For a little while
I can pretend that everything is fine
That I am not hounded and dogged

The dogs love the night
They know that the day and their presence
exhaust me
They know I can't fight them
So we all sit
together
in my living room
at my desk
in my kitchen
and finally
in my bed.

Sometimes I worry that other people can hear my dogs
but then I remember
I sometimes hear others' dogs
And I would never think less of them
Dogs don't always do as you ask
But they'll stick with you to the end.

I just wish my dogs weren't so loyal.

# 003

Sometimes I wonder
Somewhere along the line
Did I make the wrong decision?

What if I had picked a different school
a different city
a different apartment
a different church
a different grad school
a different program
a different career
a different college
a different summer job
a different sport
a different extracurricular activity
a different group of friends

Does the answer lie at the end of one those trails?
Was it a single decision
a pattern of decisions
a lifetime of decisions
I guess what it really comes down to is this -

Can one decision change the course of your entire life?

What if I had applied to jobs outside of West Michigan?
moved out
moved away
moved on
It certainly worked for other people
Do I have to move away to find what they have?

Maybe I should have given teaching a better try
my life could have looked very different

Or what if I had chosen a different career entirely
A career where adults aren't outnumbered eighteen to one

Or what if
(the what-ifs will kill ya, kid)
I had made different choices in college
the dorms
the meal plan
the student life
the piles of opportunities to make friends
to meet people
All those conclusions

foregone

receding in the rearview

Perhaps it goes even further

all the way back

to the friends I made in middle school

one deviation

and my story could have been one of 

high school sweethearts

(do I even want that? probably not. 

But people don't coo over "27 and engaged to her career.")

Someone wise once told me that 

whatever decision I make will be the right decision. 

But how can I be sure? Is it ever that simple?

(I'll take "Things That Keep Me Awake at Night" for 200, Alex.)

Cogs

Cogs

(printed with permission)

--

Have you ever missed someone so much it hurt? Not just emotionally, but physically. Where there's an ache in your stomach, and you feel your chest tighten when you see other people who are with their someone. Where your heart flutters, and not in a good way, when you are struck with how much you miss yours.

What if you don't have someone? How do you miss someone you don't know and have never met? Are you truly missing the person, or simply the idea of a person?

--

I open up my chest and examine the machinery inside. Cogs and wheels with spokes, bands and levers, all spinning and whirring and churning out my existence. If you look closely, you can see that there is a gap in the line of cogs. Its absence doesn't cause my life to grind to a halt because I've rigged a couple of extra bands and loops to connect the two ends. It's not as good as having the cog in place, but once I close my chest, no one's the wiser. I look just the same as everyone else, albeit as only half of a pair.

When it's quiet, though, I hear clanking and screeching from inside. No amount of spare parts or finesse will eliminate it completely. Sure, I can ignore it from time to time, like when there's a goal to work toward or a friend to focus on. But I can't distract every minute.

Sometimes people try to help.

They say, "Well, are you looking for the cog? You won't find it if you're busy doing other things."
I want to say, "Of course I'm looking. I have to keep busy with other things or I'll go crazy thinking about that cog. I can't afford to devote all of my time to searching for the cog - I have bills to pay and a career to build and friendships to maintain. Of course I'm looking. But I have to keep the other cogs in working condition too."

They say, "You'll find that cog when you stop looking. It'll show up when you least expect it."
I want to say, "How on earth does one least expect something?! And that first sentence makes zero point zero sense. In order to find something, I have to look. And if I stop looking, how can I expect to find it? That's not finding. That's having it land in your lap. And can you honestly tell me that you didn't find your cog by looking for it? Part of you must have been looking. If you weren't, you wouldn't even have noticed that it was missing in the first place."

They say, "You don't need a cog. You're a complete person already."
I want to say, "Yes, I know I'm a complete person. I know that I don't need that cog. I've rigged the spare parts and I'm functioning. But I want that cog. I want to have that cog in my chest, making the other cogs run better. I want the screeching to stop. I know I am complete, but I want to feel complete too."

They say, "How have you not found your cog yet? You have so much going for you and any cog would be lucky to be part of your machinery."
I want to say, "NO DUH, Sherlock. I'm not the one who needs convincing. I know that I have a lot going for me. But so far, that hasn't helped me find the cog. It hasn't seemed to improve my luck in searching, and it hasn't dropped the cog in my path. Thank you for the compliment, but it doesn't make me feel better."

They say, "God's timing is perfect."
I want to say, "My head knows that. My heart has trouble understanding that. Please, just allow me to feel frustrated and upset and sad that I have to jury-rig a cog until the other one shows up. I'm not asking to be talked out of it."

--

Most people who have all their cogs forget what it was like to be missing one (if they ever were missing one). They want to convince me that I'm fine without the cog, that other people have it worse, that I need to stop missing something I don't have and be content with what I do have. That the missing cog shouldn't matter as much as it does.

But it does. It does! It does matter.

That cog is in my heart and my heart is in that cog. That's just the way I was made. I wish I could be okay without that cog; that I could feel complete without that cog. It would make this all a lot easier, that's for sure. I'm sure there's a reason I haven't got this cog in place, but I don't see that reason right now and its absence makes me sad.

It's okay if you don't know how to help or how to it better. But please...please...don't tell me that this cog isn't important. I want that cog. In a way, I do need that cog. Not to be a complete person.

But to feel like a complete person.

----

An Awful Thing for a Woman to Say

A few years ago, I was talking with a woman at church. This was an older woman, I would put her at 70s or above. She had asked me what I was doing those days, and I told her that I was in grad school to become a school counselor. She raised her eyebrows and her eyes grew wide - "But don't you want to get married? Why aren't you married yet?" (This woman was very old-school.) I replied that I'd love to get married, my circumstances were simply due to a lack of opportunity. She calmed a bit after that, but was still concerned - "But what about having kids? Your eggs are going to go bad if you don't get a move on!" I listened, patiently, and said that science had come a long way and that women were having babies well into their 30s these days with few complications. But that didn't placate this woman. Her next question was "How many kids do you want?" I was getting annoyed by this point, and decided to really shock her. "You know, I don't think I want kids." She was silent. Then:

"What an awful thing for a woman to say."

Yikes. Shocking, indeed. She was genuinely appalled by my answer. I made up something about having to get to my classroom for church school, and said goodbye before she had a chance to say anything else. Like, the things that women hear in this society (and in the church) when they say they don't want kids.

"That's pretty selfish of you, you know."
"How could you not want kids? You owe it to yourself and your family to have kids!"
"It's not really up to you, though, it's up to your husband."
"You'll have to learn sometime how to set aside your own wants and learn how to take care of someone other than yourself."
"Kids are a gift from God. Saying you don't want kids is like flipping God the finger."
"You were created to have kids. And God doesn't make mistakes."
"Being a mother is a woman's highest calling."
"Not having kids will make your life empty."
"Think about the women who can't have kids. Their choice was taken away from them. Saying you don't want kids is like slapping all of them in the face."

Thanks to statements like these, I used to feel really guilty about not wanting to have kids. I wouldn't admit to anyone that I didn't think I was cut out for being a mom. I was afraid of what people would say. I was afraid that they would make me feel really bad about it. I didn't know how to reconcile my own wishes with society's pressures. I began to feel there was something wrong with me, some key attribute of being a woman that didn't make it into my DNA. I was told I'd be letting down my parents, my future husband, my potential family, even my entire gender.

Should a woman have a child simply because the world tells her she should?

In order to work through this dissonance, my therapist suggested I make a list of reasons I don't want to have children, and then determine if I think they're valid or not. Only my opinion counted here. These are the reasons I came up with:

1. The way my daily energy level is right now, I could not give a child the attention and energy it needs and deserves. Now, things could change between now and childbirth, but what if they don't? Sometimes, I barely have the energy to make it through the day at work before I come home and lock the door and unwind by myself. I blame a fair amount of this on depression and anxiety. I wear out easily some days - physically, mentally, emotionally, socially...is a worn-out mom the one that a child deserves?

2. There is so much junk that I could pass on to a child. Depression, anxiety, terrible eyesight, crooked teeth, benign positional paroxysmal vertigo, crazy uterus, panic attacks...it would be so hard for me to live with the idea that my genes set the stage for my kid to have depression and/or anxiety. I couldn't bear to see my kid go through either of those conditions.

3. I value my alone time. And not just because I'm antisocial or haven't "grown up" yet. Introverts need alone time to process what has been going on, process their thoughts and feelings, process what's coming up, and process all the new experiences they had during the day. I need that the way a runner needs to run. If I don't get enough process time, things go downhill quickly and I become an unpleasant and upset person. I remember a few months ago a Wednesday that was packed too full. I worked from 7:30 to 3, then I had an event training from 3 to 5:30, then a friend and I went to dinner, then I went to church after that for praise team rehearsal. I was starting to feel frayed before I even walked into the building. I had been going for 12 hours straight, no alone breaks, and I wasn't done yet. I tried to keep it together, but I ended up pretty crabby and people definitely noticed. My body just couldn't handle any more talking, noise, the loud music, or putting on the "social" face. I try to avoid packing my days like that one because I don't like the person I become at the end of them. And when you throw a kid into the mix, that alone time disappears. I've heard many moms complain about how they haven't read a book in years, or how they can't even get a few minutes in the bathroom without being interrupted. I fear I would be an absent mom if I put myself in that situation. Babies and kids need a lot of attention, and at this point in my life, I couldn't give it to them.

4. I worked very hard for my career. There is no way I could ever be to be a stay-at-home mom. But it seems that women can't have it both ways. Working moms are judged on all sides for returning to work after having a kid, with the implication being that they're not devoting as much time as they should to being a mom because their job gets in the way. Oh, you need the income to support those kids? Well, I guess you have to work outside the home, can't be avoided. But we're still going to be in the corner over here judging you for having kids in the first place, when you knew you wouldn't be able to stay home with them. I don't want to be around this guilt. It's trading in one guilt ("how can you not want kids?") for another (how can you bear to have someone else raise your kids while you're at work?"). The implication here, of course, is that women can't excel at both career and motherhood simultaneously. This implication is, unsurprisingly, absent when it comes to men. Have you ever heard of a man being accused of being a bad father because he doesn't stay home with his kids? Have you ever heard anyone say that man can't (or shouldn't) have both a career and children? The double-standard is there for women all the time. No thanks.

5. I worry about what parenthood would do to my approach to counseling. I like to think that I wouldn't let that get in the way, but I also don't know what it's like. I have seen school counselors mother their students, compare their students to their own kids, and give advice based on what they would tell their own kids. I never want to do this. That would not be my best way to counsel. Would it be different for me, though, since I've already made this decision not to let my own experience as a mom affect the way I work with students? Like, if you think about it hard enough, can you prevent it?

6. I am at a higher risk for peripartum and postpartum depression than other women because I have a history of depression. Of course, there is the argument that I'll be better prepared if it rears its ugly head, since I know what symptoms to pay attention to, but I don't know. It's not like having a pill ready and then taking it when you feel depressed, and presto it's vanquished. Many psych meds, including the ones I take, are not recommended for use when pregnant. Can I afford to go off those meds for 9 months, knowing that they manage my pre-existing depression and that going off could further increase my risk?

---

To me, all of these reasons are valid. At least, they are now that I've thought about them and determined them for myself. I can't bring a kid into this world simply because I'm afraid of what someone else will think if I don't. They are certainly reasons to not have a kid now. Or, in the next 12 months, rather. What about down the road, though? Will I change my mind? What would change my mind? I've heard people say that they never wanted kids, and then they met the person they eventually married, and everything changed. Will that happen to me? Will I meet a guy, fall in love, get married, and then magically reverse my decision about kids? Maybe my hang-up is that I don't have an image of anyone with whom to raise children. I certainly couldn't do it by myself. But if that face got filled in down the road, would I change?

Here's another thing to think about - what about the kids in this world who don't have parents? If a woman who doesn't want to have her own children is such a crime against society, how much more of a crime is it for a child to be without a loving and reliable parent? I'm not saying we go after the parents of these kids (we already vilify them, and it's not helping) - I am saying we make it as easy as possible for an adult or a couple to foster and/or adopt a kid who needs a home. More than that, society needs to value foster-care and adoption far more highly than we do now. Budgets for foster-care and adoption agencies are being slashed year after year, and social workers are doing more work with fewer resources than ever before. We lament how many kids are stuck in the system until they age out, never knowing the blessing of a 'forever home.' But how many of us are opening our doors for them? I'm not trying to guilt you about not taking in a foster child. For many, it's just not feasible for one reason or another. But that doesn't mean you can't contribute to a foster kid's life. What if we hung out with them at their group home? What if we got involved with a community program that works with kids in foster care? What if we bought school supplies and shoes and winter clothing for students in foster care so that they could start (or continue) their school year just like the rest of their peers?

Right now, I can't see myself having kids. I can see myself being a foster parent. In the last year and a half, I've worked quite a bit with refugee and immigrant students. Here at Zeeland, I have had 3 over the course of this school year - 2 Spanish-speakers, and 1 French-speaker. They are all foster kids through Bethany Christian Services who have arrived in the United States speaking little or no English. My heart aches for them sometimes as I watch them get used to a new country and new culture, figure out how to fit into their host family's lives, learn a brand-new language, and do all the stuff that goes with being a high-schooler. It's incredibly overwhelming for them. High school can be overwhelming for an English-speaking student who was born here, for heaven's sake. Even as a Spanish-speaker, there's only so much I can do for them while they're here at school.

I could see myself being a foster mom for a refugee. Even without a husband. Objectively, having a foster kid is not that much different from having a biological kid. There's still the drain on alone time, there's still my career to consider, and I wouldn't magically have more energy. The difference, I suppose, is that these are kids right in front of me who need someone right now. To me, that feels different from a child who hasn't even been created yet and who I don't necessarily want to create. Does that make sense?

As for the people who have had trouble having kids, I'm sorry if this discussion has offended you or caused you to think less of me in some way. I don't know what it's like to face that reality, and maybe I never will. I can listen, appreciate your resilience, and bear witness to your struggle, though. A good friend of mine has given birth to two sons through IVF, but only after an intense struggle with infertility. I can't know how she felt then or how much that has changed now that she has kids. And I certainly don't pretend to know. But what I can tell you is that my lack of desire to have my own kids does not have to cancel out or de-legitimize your reality of struggling to conceive. Can we hold both of those ideas? In one hand, we have the people who desperately want kids and can't have them, and in the other hand, we have people who don't want kids but are probably able to have them. There has to be room for both and understanding for both. The same thing happens with the idea of marriage (to a lesser extent, though) - we have the group of people who desperately want to be married but haven't found someone, and we have the group of people who don't want to get married but have had marriage proposals. We're all just different. What works for one person's life may not work for another's life. I will fight for your right to access whatever means necessary to conceive a child. Can you appreciate my right to not have a child?

In the meantime, let's do something for all those children who already exist and need some good people to look out for them.

Unhealthy

I haven’t really told this story before.

I’ve been pretty open with my experiences with depression and anxiety, medication, and therapy, both on this blog and in real life. I speak and write in the hope that my experiences will resonate with others and encourage them to find help. I hope that this story will do the same.

---

This is the story of my most recent romantic relationship, which began in 2009 and ended in 2010. There are plenty of reasons that I haven’t had a boyfriend since then (college, grad school, internships, and work, among others), but the more I reflect on this, the more I begin to wonder whether this experience has also played a role. I haven’t even talked about this much in therapy (which is unusual for me), and since my therapist is still on maternity leave, I’ve had lots of time to think on it.

I met Nick through my summer job in 2009. Nick is not actually his name, because I want to protect his identity as I talk about our relationship. Plus, he’s married now and it wouldn’t be fair to identify him now after all these years. Anyway, it had been about 2 years since I had had a boyfriend, so I was very excited to be feeling things for Nick. You know how it is when you’re just starting out in a relationship – all flutters, and smiles, and covert flirting, especially if you are seeing each other at work. We started dating for real in mid-August, and did our best to act like nothing was going on between us. I’m told that we did a spectacularly bad job at this and everyone knew we were dating.

The first few months were really great. Nick was majoring in electrical engineering at Grand Valley, and I was doing my third (and final) semester at Grand Rapids Community College. He had a townhouse with a couple of other guys near GVSU’s main campus, and since I lived with my parents, we spent most of our time at his place. We spent time together almost every weekend, every Thursday night because we loved NBC’s primetime comedy lineup, and whatever other evenings we could manage. I never had much homework (I was at CC, after all), so I would just go over to Nick’s and keep him company while he did his homework.

September 17 was one of the highlights of our time together. Nick took me to Grand Haven, where we had first met, and we went out to dinner. We wandered around on the boardwalk in the mild evening air and as the sun was sinking toward the horizon, we made for the pier at Grand Haven State Park. We watched the sunset from the end of the pier, which was and continues to be one of my favorite places on earth. Just as the sun disappeared under the water, I turned to Nick, he turned to me, and I just knew.

It was the first kiss of our relationship, and my first kiss as a human being. It was perfect. We were basically a rom-com called Engineering Bliss.

September rolled into October, and with it, my 20^th birthday. I had never had a boyfriend during my birthday, so I was very excited. Nick picked me up at my house, bearing a dozen red carnations (because “they last way longer than roses,” he said. I loved how practical he was.) I had never gotten flowers from a guy before, and I fell for him even harder. He took me to dinner at Bentham’s, downtown, and afterward we walked along the river hand-in-hand and being all young-lovey. He took me back to his place in Allendale and presented me with birthday gifts, one of which was my favorite movie, Dirty Dancing. He knew that I absolutely loved that movie, but vowed he would never watch it with me because he “would have to turn in his man card.” I thought he was funny at the time when he said things like that.

When we weren’t together, we were on Skype Instant Messenger almost all the time. We always had an IM going while we did our homework in the evenings. I didn’t have texting at that point, and neither of us was big on talking on the phone, so IM was perfect. We talked about everything, from how our days went to big life questions. We discussed things like where we wanted to work when we graduated, what our ideal company/organization was like, where we might want to live after we got married, what places in West Michigan had good schools and safe neighborhoods, how many kids we might want, what names we liked, and how much we wanted our families to be involved in our kids’ lives. We talked about these things as if marriage was a given. I don’t know how that happened.

We were 20 and 19. We were halfway through college. Neither of us had a full-time job or any significant income. A stranger looking in would have thought we were out of our minds, planning our entire future together when we knew nothing of the world or life’s experiences. However, I was 100% convinced that Nick was The One and that getting married was only a matter of time. As a love-blinded 20-year-old, I thought I was ready any time. Several of my friends had serious boyfriends with marriage in the near future, and I was terrified of being left out. Or left behind. Nick, on the other hand, felt that we should wait to get engaged until after I studied abroad. We both knew I had to do a semester abroad for my program, and he said several times that he didn’t want to be without his fiancée for five months. I didn’t love this plan, since I wasn’t leaving for another 12 months, and then would have another 5 months on top of that in Spain. I could see his point, though, and agreed that we would have to wait. It certainly didn’t stop us from planning aspects of our wedding, though.

---

As I’ve thought all of this over, I can’t pinpoint a moment when the relationship started to go south. Looking back, it was a bunch of little things that I ignored and minimized and rationalized. One event that comes to mind is Thanksgiving that year. School-wise, I was doing fine. Classes were a breeze (except for Chemistry I), the end of CC and the transfer to Calvin were in sight, and I was just crossing off days. That Chem class was super hard, and I had to get at least an 80.0% to transfer the credit to Calvin, but everything else was just peachy. Nick was struggling with his classes. He was failing one and close to failing two others. All three classes were in his major, so he would have to take them over, and they were very specialized classes, so only one professor ever taught them.

During Thanksgiving Break, I spent my time at his house whenever I wasn’t needed for celebrations with my own family. That became a point of conflict – Nick brought me to all of his family parties and was always so excited to introduce me to people. I didn’t quite feel comfortable bringing him to events with my extended family, though. I thought this was reasonable, since we’d only been dating for 3 months at that point, conveniently forgetting that, on some days, I was ready to marry this guy. I was afraid to bring him to meet all of my family – on one side of the family, I would have been the first person to ever bring a significant other to a family function.  I knew he didn’t like to be the center of attention, and I knew that my family would be all over him. I was trying to protect him, but Nick saw it as me trying to keep our relationship a secret. He asserted that I was ashamed of him or trying to phase him out of my life. I chalked his reaction up to being stressed about his schoolwork, and didn’t worry about it much.

Things kept sliding downhill into December. Nick’s grades weren’t improving, no matter what he did, and failing at least one class was quickly becoming a very real possibility. I tried to help him in any way I could – I wasn’t much use, since I knew nothing about electrical engineering or complicated math, but I figured that, at the very least, I could be of emotional/mental support to him. It was hard to be around him at this time, partly because he was so stressed out and frustrated, and partly because I didn’t know how to make it better. I tried to help him see his situation a bit more rationally, saying, “Nick, even if you do fail this class, the world won’t end. It happens to people all the time. Nick, I’ll still love you even if you have to take a class over again.” He was silent for a moment, then turned to me with a scowl. He asked, “Andrea, have you ever failed a class before?” He knew that I hadn’t, and I had to admit that I hadn’t. He turned back to his computer and said, “Didn’t think so. You have no idea what I’m going through and you never will.” He didn’t speak to me for the rest of that afternoon.

For some insane reason, GVSU decided not to post final grades until after Christmas that year. This meant that I spent the bulk of my Christmas vacation with an anxious and grumpy Nick. Wanting to be the ever-loyal and supportive girlfriend, I spent most days at his house, even though it was tense and difficult to be around him. Nothing I did could cheer him up, and I felt terrible about that. My final grades were posted about a week after final exams, and to my enormous relief, I passed Chem I with an 80.6%. I could transfer it to Calvin and never have to take it again. Nick knew how much I had been struggling with that class, helping me with the homework whenever he could, and sending notes of encouragement when I had tests or big projects due. I thought he would be happy to hear that I could transfer the credit and not have to worry about it anymore.

He had the opposite reaction.

“How could you throw that in my face like this?! You know what I’m dealing with right now! Seeing your passing grade just reminds me that my grades won’t be passing. And now, thanks to you, I’m feeling even worse about it.”

I’m not great with confrontation. I shut down. I backtracked, I apologized over and over, and tried desperately to make things right. I began to feel really terrible about myself, telling myself that I was a terrible girlfriend and deserved to be treated that way. I know now that his treatment of me was unfair, but at the time, I believed what he said to me and I accepted how I felt afterward.

2010 started and I hoped that things would turn around. New semester, new classes, new start. I forget now how that class ended up for Nick, but I do remember hearing that more than half of his classmates failed or were close to failing, and so he felt a lot better about things. I was eager to forget about it and put it all behind us. And things went pretty well for a while – I didn’t start at Calvin until the very end of January because of Interim, which meant that I had lots of time to hang out with Nick without having homework to focus on. I spent lots of evenings and just about every weekend at his house, keeping him company while he did homework and watching The Office. We both absolutely loved that show.

Once I transferred to Calvin, a lot of my free time got sucked up with homework, projects, commitments outside of class time, and the socializing that goes along with a school like Calvin. I was still living at home, but I had a lot more to do, so I couldn’t go to Nick’s house as often as I used to. He often talked about how he was lonely in his townhouse when I wasn’t there. I asked him why he didn’t invite other friends over, or go over to their houses to do homework and stuff. He told me that he didn’t have many friends, and the friends he did have were the ‘school-only’ kind. “That’s why I want to spend so much time with you – otherwise, I’m just sitting here by myself, lonely.”

It was around this time that I started as a hired musician for a worship team at a church in Grand Rapids. I jumped at the chance to make some extra money doing something I loved, but it meant that two of my Sundays every month were spent doing that instead of attending church with Nick. I don’t think he liked this new commitment I had taken on. I would still go to his house for lunch afterward, but he kept saying that it just wasn’t the same and that he really wanted to take advantage of every minute we could spend together during the week. Minutes that were being steadily diverted to other things in my life. Shortly after this, he started picking up weekend shifts at his job, and it turned out that his Sunday shifts were opposite my worship team gigs. He would be working when I wasn’t playing, and when he wasn’t working, I would be playing guitar, and couldn’t come to church with him.

I began to feel really bad about all the things I had taken on. Again, Nick asserted that I was phasing him out of my life and spending less and less time with him. He told me he wished that I could cut down to once a month, or, better yet, that money wasn't a concern and I could cut it out completely. He told me that he hated sitting alone in church and that it was always much better when I was there sitting with him. He warned me that if I couldn’t rustle up the time to spend with him, he would break up with me and find someone who did want to spend time with him.

Pause. If we had been rational about this, there were so many potential solutions. What if he tried switching his work shifts to the same weekends I was playing? What if he came to the Grand Rapids church on the Sundays I was playing? What if he sat with his parents at his church? These should have been warning signs – why couldn’t he be happy (or at least neutral) that I had found an easy $50 every month doing something I really loved? Why wasn’t it enough that I spent Saturdays and Sundays after church at his house on weekends when he didn’t work? Why was I the one responsible for his social life and his dissatisfaction with it? Why did the burden fall solely on me to ensure that he was getting social interaction and not going crazy alone in his townhouse?

Unpause. Oh my gosh, he’s going to break up with me. I can’t let that happen! I don’t want to be dumped! I love him! There’s gotta be something I can do to make this better. He means so much to me and I can’t lose him. In short, he had taken us out of the rational and into the emotional with that threat of a breakup. He began to use the “if you really loved me, you would…” any time he was upset about something. And I fell for it – I believed him when he said that I must not love him because I wasn’t doing whatever it was at the time. I was constantly on edge about the status of our relationship.

My emotional state became directly tied to Nick’s emotional state. I was afraid to celebrate anything until I was sure that he was in a good mood. I was afraid to spend time with him, yet knew that I had to in order to make him feel better. I came away crying almost every time we chatted on IM. For those who don’t know me, this is pretty significant – I don’t cry at very much. But now I was crying daily. I didn’t know that this was not normal for a romantic relationship. I was double-thinking every single thing that came out of my mouth when I was around him, terrified that the smallest comment would send him spiraling, and that it would be my fault.

Sometime around Valentine’s Day, Nick began to say things like “this relationship is the only good thing in my life right now,” and “If you break up with me, I won’t have anything left to live for.” Breaking up with him had never even entered my mind – remember, I was terrified that he would break up with me! No matter how many times I reassured him that I was in this for the long haul, he wasn’t convinced. On days that he was really upset, he would end many sentences with “we’re done.” For example, “say that to me one more time and we’re done.” Or “if you don’t start liking eggs and bacon and sausage, we’re done.” Some of them seemed jokey, but there was a layer of seriousness underneath. Looking back, I can see how unbalanced this was – Nick constantly expressing worry that I would break up with him, but, in the next breath, threatening to break up with me over the smallest things. In the middle of it, though, I didn’t see it. My pulse ratcheted up every time the word ‘breakup’ was tossed out and with that, we fell on the emotional side of things.

During my spring break from Calvin, things fell apart. I was on IM with Nick, things were heading south quickly, and I could feel tears coming. I opened up a new chat window with my best friend at the time and started copying and pasting some of the things he had been typing to me. She said to me, “I think it’s time for you end this. This is not a healthy relationship.” She had expressed similar feelings before, when I would tell her how I was feeling about Nick. This time, though, it clicked. She was right. I did have a choice here.

I ended things with Nick that same night over Skype. I KNOW. You’re not supposed to break up with people over text or IM. But here’s the thing – I was crying so hard that talking on the phone was out of the question, I was afraid that I would lose my courage if I waited, and I was genuinely afraid to break up in person. I had no idea how he would react. He had never so much as threatened to be physically abusive before, but I was afraid that a breakup would set him off. After a few minutes, he wrote back:

“Fine.”

Then he logged off.

I haven’t successfully communicated with him since then. I sent a handful of texts, Facebook messages, and emails his way, but each went unanswered. I even tried calling him, but he sent it right to voicemail. Even a year later, I sent him an email saying that I was sorry about how I had ended things and wondering if we could go back to being friends. I did truly miss him. He had a new girlfriend by this time, and I figured that he would be more willing to speak with me now that he was in a different place emotionally.

He never responded.

---

My intention in writing this is not to paint a terrible picture of an ex-boyfriend. My intention is not to assassinate his character or carry out some sort of vengeful vendetta. I still truly believe that Nick did not say or do those things with the purpose of hurting me. I’m sure a lot of it was borne out of stress from school and the fact that we had pulled each other under so deeply and so quickly into a serious relationship. I know that I did things wrong in that relationship too. I was very sarcastic and didn’t always know when to stop. In the heat of joking and ribbing each other, I pushed buttons that I knew he was sensitive about, like the fact that he was younger than me. At the same time, though, it has taken me six years to understand that I was not responsible for all of the blame he laid on me. I’m not looking for an apology from Nick. I’ve come to terms with the non-closure of our relationship.

It is what it is.

Rather, my intention in sharing this story is to provide information and help to people who may find themselves in a similar situation. I am extremely hesitant to classify this relationship as ‘emotionally abusive.’ I go back and forth – some days I’m sure it was abusive, other days I wonder if I am overreacting. I do have a history of overreacting, after all. At the very least, this relationship was unhealthy. It was painful, it was scary, and it has changed me. For those of you who know Nick or remember him, my intention was not to smash your perception of him. This all took place six years ago, and I am sure we have both changed considerably since then. He is not a bad person; of that I am confident. I genuinely want him to be happy, and I hope that he has found that happiness and the life he has always wanted with the woman he married.

I balance all of this with the knowledge and acceptance that this was a relationship that went south and should have ended before we both ended up so hurt. Can we hold both of these things? In one hand I hold a painful experience that messed me up for a while; in the other hand I hold best wishes and forgiveness for a man I used to know.

---

If you have resonated with any part of my story, let me speak for a few moments about what I’ve learned in grad school and what exactly made this relationship unhealthy.

1.      Someone who wants you to drop certain activities or certain relationships in order to spend more time with them is not thinking of your best interests. They may be trying to control your time and, by extension, you.

2.      Someone who threatens to break up with you with the slightest provocation is not taking your relationship seriously and may be trying to manipulate you into doing what they want you to do.

3.      Someone who can’t be happy for you when good things happen in your life is demonstrating that they want full control of your emotions. They won’t show happiness for you and they will manipulate you into thinking that you don’t deserve to feel happy about that good thing.

4.      If someone gives you the silent treatment or freezes you out when they get upset, they are not resolving conflict in a healthy way. Further communication is on their terms, instead of dealing with things like adults.

5.      Someone who threatens to take their own life if you break up with them is either truly struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, or they are manipulating you into staying under their control. Either way, you both need to find help.

Compared to most unhealthy and/or abusive relationships, I got out relatively unscathed. I was physically safe, and the emotional healing was a matter of time. But other people aren’t so lucky. If you start to feel unsafe in your relationship, it’s time to talk. It’s time to reevaluate with the help of a neutral third person. It might be time to leave, and that will be really hard. But you do not deserve someone who treats you well only when they feel like it. A healthy relationship does not leave you begging for scraps of respect.

You are worth it. I promise.

Op-Ed: Who's in My Bathroom?!

Hello friends. It's me again.

Today I'd like to discuss the uproar that began with the passage of legislation in North Carolina requiring people to use only the bathroom that corresponds to their anatomy and removing the protections afforded to transgender individuals who use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender. The uproar was twofold - civil rights groups protested the 'barbaric' legislation that denied members of the transgender community the right to use the bathroom they felt most comfortable in; i.e. the bathroom that matches their gender, if not their anatomy. Then, proponents of the legislation made the claim that by allowing transgender people to choose their bathroom, that would open the door for anyone to choose their bathroom. Further, this would allow child molesters and rapists to use women's bathrooms because "they could just claim that they, too, are women and we would be powerless to stop them from assaulting us and molesting our daughters."

I would now like to explain a few things and set a few myths straight.

Repealing this legislation would NOT allow men to use women's bathrooms, or women to use men's bathrooms. That separation is still sacred. Repealing the law would reinstate the protections given to transgender people who may be reported for being in the 'wrong' bathroom. In fact, at least twelve states currently have laws prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations (bathrooms, locker rooms, etc.). None of those twelve states has had an increase in rates of sexual assault in bathrooms and locker rooms due to the passage of the non-discrimination laws. Put another way - your bathroom is still as safe as it ever was, and allowing transgender people to use their preferred bathroom has not created spikes in rates of rape or molestation in public bathrooms. (source)

May I suggest that the fear is partially misplaced? Fox News (and other right-wing media sources) are working overtime to create fear of transgender people and sex offenders masquerading as transgender. They want you to believe that a criminal lurks around every stall door and that non-discrimination laws will give them free reign over your safe bathroom. What they never report, however, is the reality: transgender individuals are one of the groups most likely to be sexually assaulted. The most recent statistics report that about 50% experience at least one sexual assault or one instance of sexual abuse in his or her lifetime. This rate is even higher for transgender people of color, transgender people with disabilities, and transgender youth (in other words, populations that are double minorities)  (source). And what is one location in which these assaults occur?

Bathrooms.

Why are we not equally concerned with the safety of transgender people in the bathroom? I understand the protective instinct toward one's children and loved ones. However, surveys consistently show that LGBTQ people experience sexual assault at much higher rates than children and straight women. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen. I am saying that we should be just as concerned for the safety of populations who are at increased risk for violence. "Bathroom legislation" forces transgender individuals to use a facility where they are not necessarily welcomed by other users. In fact, this sort of legislation may even cause increased panic, as people who appear outwardly to be men are forced to use the women's bathroom because they have a vagina. It's even more dangerous in reverse: a person who looks like a woman outwardly is, by the sole criterion of having a penis, forced to use the men's bathroom. Historically, men have not reacted well to other men dressed as women and/or acting like women. Many perpetrators use that premise as an excuse for assaulting a transgender woman - "He was dressed like a woman, he was asking for it," "He's confused and I set him straight," etc.

Now, some groups have advocated for the creation of single-stall "trans-friendly" bathrooms for transgender people to use in public places like schools, offices, sporting arenas, etc. On its face, this seems reasonable. Special bathrooms would give transgender people a bathroom to use where they can feel safe and where cisgender people (those whose anatomy matches their gender) can be assured of the continued sanctity of their men's and women's bathrooms.

Think about it a little more, though. White lawmakers in the pre-Civil Rights Era made the same argument for 'colored bathrooms' and segregated, 'separate but equal' schools. Their attitude was the same: Blacks now have their own set of facilities where they can be with people like them, and Whites will not have to fear for their own safety.

Single-stall bathrooms rob transgender individuals of their gender identity. Single-stall bathrooms say, "You don't know what your gender is, so you have to use this gender-irrelevant bathroom." Let me be clear - transgender people have a gender. They are not somewhere in between male and female while being fully neither. You're thinking of gender-fluid. A common experience for a transgender person is to feel betrayed by his or own body. A boy 'on the inside' will feel betrayed by a body that develops breasts and hips. A girl 'on the inside' will feel betrayed by a body that won't stop growing hair and a voice that sounds so different from her inner voice. For these people, the physical sex organ does not define their gender. And really, cisgender people don't form their gender identity solely by their physical parts either - factors like feelings, interests, and perceptions contribute to gender identity too. Why, then, do we force transgender people to determine their gender identity solely on the basis of their physical parts?

Let's talk about perpetrators of sexual crimes. The biggest fear in this hysteria around bathroom laws is that child molesters will be allowed access to our children. However, 86% of child sexual abuse victims know their abuser (source). In addition, 80% child sexual assaults occurs at the home of the victim, the abuser, or another familiar home setting (source). A child is far more likely to be abused by a family member, a teacher, coach, religious leader, or even another kid, than by a stranger. Again, I'm not saying that it doesn't happen. The unfortunate truth, though, is that abuse and assault happens overwhelmingly in familiar settings at the hands of someone known to the victim. It would stand to reason, then, that we should be just as concerned (or more so) with teaching our kids about boundaries, appropriate vs. inappropriate ways to show affection, and how to ask for help.

And what about our young sons who use the men's room alongside adult men? These are theoretically some of the same men who would try to access the women's bathroom by claiming to be transgender. Pedophiles target boys, too, and boys are significantly less likely to report the abuse. But why are we not just as outraged that it is legal for men who could be pedophiles to use the same bathrooms as young boys? Given that only 20% of abuse occurs in locations other than residences, with schools and religious centers being the most common in that 20%, what reason do we have to be terrified that non-discrimination policies for public bathrooms would cause child molesters to come out en masse to target little girls in the women's bathroom?

Here's a revolutionary idea - sexual abuse and assault is not the problem. It is a problem, without a doubt, but it's also a symptom of a much larger problem: a culture in which violence against women is widespread yet unacknowledged, and where victims (not the abusers) are held responsible for the assaults due to their actions, inactions, clothing choices, or lifestyles. Society puts so much emphasis on telling victims, "don't get raped," when we should be telling perpetrators "don't rape." But it never goes that way, does it? The recent bathroom hysteria is a prime example - conservative lawmakers restrict the rights of transgender people under the pretense of protecting women and girls from being assaulted. I don't hear them nearly as upset about the people who are doing the assaulting. It reminds me a bit of their argument against gun control - violence is going to happen anyway, might as well make it easier for people to protect themselves. That's fine, but why can't we also make an effort to curtail (or even stop) the violence itself, especially when the efforts at 'protection' of one group come at the expense of the protection of another group?

If you take away only one thing from this piece, let it be this - bathroom laws do far more harm than good. Everyone has the right to not be assaulted in the bathroom. Everyone also has the right to feel safe in the bathroom, including transgender individuals. Forcing everyone to use the bathroom that corresponds to their anatomy forces transgender people to use facilities with members of the opposite gender. Ironically, this is the same occurrence that many conservatives claim would happen in the absence of bathroom laws.

It simply goes to show that some people still seem to deserve more rights than others in this country.

Op-Ed: For all of the Obamacare Haters

You know what boils my blood?

Hearing all of the GOP presidential candidate frontrunners vowing to repeal Obamacare once they are in office.

To me, this is purely an "us vs. them" move. Conservatives vs. Liberals. Is it just a matter of jealousy? Is the GOP jealous that a Democrat president beat them to the implementation of a wildly successful nationwide healthcare access program? Is this why Congressional Republicans have voted over SIXTY TIMES to repeal the Affordable Care Act? Quite honestly, the jealousy angle is the only thing that makes sense to me. However, I have yet to hear a candidate propose a replacement plan for Obamacare.

I would hate to think that the alternative is true: that GOP candidates want to take health insurance away from the people who most need it, people who HAVE it now under the Affordable Care Act. They claim that they want to repeal Obamacare as an act of "liberty," a return to American "freedom," a fight against government control in our lives. But here's the thing - most of the people complaining about the infringement on their rights DON'T EVEN HAVE TO RELY ON OBAMACARE. Sure, they can paint it as 'sticking up for the little guy,' but I'm pretty sure the 'little guys' here are enjoying their access to affordable healthcare.

Perhaps a look at some common GOP-propagated myths will help us understand this insanity.

Myth #1: Obamacare is socialized medicine.
Not quite - it is a product of socialism, in the sense that everyone has access to it, but it is not funded solely by the government, the way socialized medicine is. Families and individuals with incomes in a certain range may qualify for a yearly tax credit to offset the cost of the health insurance plans available in the Marketplace. The tax credit comes from government funds, but it's the same idea as income tax refunds - and last I heard, the GOP is not against tax refunds.

Myth #2: Obamacare is a significant violation of your rights. 
The right to go uninsured and pay out of pocket for all health-related costs? Yes. The right to die from a treatable condition because you couldn't afford the treatment? Sure. Other than that, your rights are fine. You can even retain your right to not participate in universal healthcare for a small fee. But honestly, why would you want to NOT have health insurance? I don't understand how this argument is working for the GOP candidates.

Myth #3: Obamacare is Big Government's way of controlling your healthcare decisions.
Only insofar as the decision of whether to have health insurance. And again, you can pay the yearly fine to be uninsured. The pundits make it sound like Obamacare is a dictator's dream: control who can access what, control what healthcare everyone gets, control everything related to your health.
Here's how the Marketplace actually works: you create an account with basic information about yourself, your income, your pre-existing health conditions, and your household living situation. And if this sounds like Big Brother, just remember that the NSA can collect more information on you through your phone and internet usage in ten minutes than is contained in your Marketplace application. Plus, HIPAA protections are still a thing. Relax. Based on your answers, particularly the ones about your income and the number of people in your household, either your application will go to your State Department of Health to determine Medicaid/Medicare eligibility, or you will be sent on to the actual Marketplace, where you can peruse health plans available in your state. You can see who the providers are, what the plan's yearly deductible and monthly premiums cost, what the plan covers, what the plan doesn't cover, and links to more information from the provider's website. Let me say this clearly: YOU GET TO PICK THE PLAN YOU WANT HERE. You are not assigned to a plan; you get to see all the options, not just the ones the site thinks you can afford; and none of the plans is provided by the federal government. In fact, since the providers are private companies, the Marketplace is a great example of the free market at work - several companies competing to be your health insurance provider, meaning that they are each trying to offer their services at a price that is just a little bit lower than the other companies' prices! How does the GOP not want this shining beacon of capitalism preserved?
Now, if you're bounced to the Medicaid route, then yes - in a sense, your healthcare decision has been controlled by the government. But even within Medicaid, there is a choice of providers (in Michigan, at least, which is the state I live in). In fact, I think I had a choice of 5 different providers when it came to my application. If you don't choose a plan, the state will choose one for you, but that doesn't mean you have to use it. Plus, you can appeal the decision that bounced you to Medicaid, and then you pay that yearly fine to go without insurance.
For most people, their employer has more control over their health insurance than the government does. the Marketplace is designed for people who are unemployed, who don't get health benefits through their job, or who opt out of employee health benefits. It's likely that your employer offers fewer options than the Marketplace does.

Myth #4: Obamacare is destroying the economy.
The economy is a complicated monster, but here's a basic rebuttal to this "economy destruction" claim. If people have affordable healthcare, they don't have to spend as much of their income on doctor visits, prescriptions, treatments, counseling, etc. If they are saving money in this area, they can spend it in other areas, like food, housing, clothing, family life, transportation, or, best of all, entertainment and material possessions. This will cause an increase in demand, which will encourage an increase in supply, and through some voodoo magic, a revitalized economy.
Here's another approach: if people can afford to meet their healthcare needs, they will be more healthy (imagine that). If they are healthy, they can go to work regularly and enjoy a high rate of productivity. From what I've heard, a strong economy needs consistent productivity, not flash-in-the-pan ventures. If people can generally rely on a steady job, steady economy, and steady access to basic need fulfillment, their stress levels go down. When stress goes down, mental and physical health goes up. And healthy people go to work.

Myth #5: Obamacare is just another program that we don't need and can't afford.
And a corollary - Obamacare is going to cost way more than Obama says. Here's what's happened instead: almost 30 million people have obtained insurance since 2013 thanks to the Affordable Care Act. That's people who weren't insured before, not people who have switched to Obamacare offers. Put another way, 18% of adults in this country didn't have insurance in 2013. Now, that rate is down to 12.3%. Repealing the ACA will put 30 million people back where we started, possibly even more people than that, based on GOP promises to make drastic cuts. Can you honestly get behind a candidate that wants to ruin people's lives like that?
As for the overall cost of Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal subsidies (those tax credits I talked about earlier) will cost $208 billion less than projected initially. That's billion with a B. That surplus will go to cover deficits in other areas of the national budget. But, then again, Republican presidents seem to be more comfortable with budget deficits.

Myth #6: "Illegal immigrants are going to pour into this country now that they can get free healthcare."
Where to begin on this one...first of all, UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS is the appropriate term. Second, undocumented persons cannot apply for Medicaid or Marketplace plans because a social security number is required. The ACA doesn't provide free healthCARE to anyone, only free health insurance coverage. And only in very specific circumstances. Most people still have some premium costs or pay-sharing programs to contribute to. Emergency rooms are still required to provide emergency care to everyone, including undocumented immigrants, but that law was in place way before the ACA was passed.

I'm now tired of debunking myths. Let's switch to some facts, peppered with personal anecdotes and impassioned pleas for sanity.

1. The ACA made it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions. This meant that if a company found out that you had, say, depression, they could deny your application because it would cost them more to insure you than it would cost to insure someone without depression. This sort of discrimination is what caused so many people to be uninsured. It could have caused me to be uninsured. Now, people don't have to worry about that when applying.
2. The ACA allows parents to keep their kids on their insurance plan until they turn 26. Personal anecdote time: I turned 26 last October and I was not looking forward to it because I knew it would mean that I'd lose my dad's primo health insurance. That policy covered almost everything; most notably, unlimited counseling, physical therapy for vertigo, and incredibly dental services. The previous age was 22, I think, and I am so thankful that the age was raised to 26. I used more health services between ages 22 and 26 than I used in the previous twenty-two years combined. I wear glasses ($250 per pair), I take two prescriptions every day (almost $100/month for both in addition to the 15-minute psychiatrist visits 4 times per year to get the prescription) plus a number of over-the-counter supplements, I see my therapist once a week ($140/session), and I've had two episodes of disabling vertigo in the last year (I don't know what the physical therapy treatments cost). With five of us contributing to the yearly deductible, I didn't even have to make co-payments after, like, February every year. I miss that insurance so much.
3. The ACA is improving people's lives, if not completely saving them. One example - my mom is a physical therapist's assistant and her company has seen its number of clients soar because of the Medicaid expansion. And this is not just clients who want a massage, or are rehabbing a sports injury. These are people who are chronically unemployed because of chronic pain from a decades-old injury. These are people who have been injured on the job and worker's comp didn't cover their needs. These are people whose every last dime goes toward food, clothing, housing, and childcare, and who never dared dream that PT was within their reach. Can you really tell me that it is in our nation's best interest to keep "the least of these" trampled under our feet? Where is the Christian family value in that?
4. The ACA indirectly lightens the burden on community agencies that provide healthcare. This year, I'm working at a school that serves a high percentage of low-income families. We're talking Free and Reduced Lunch Program participation at 85% of students. Cherry Street Health Services provides free vision and dental check-ups every year to students who qualify for them. The dentists were at our school right before Christmas break and I made small talk with one of the dentists while I waited for a student I was working with. She told me that the number of students they've seen in schools has been declining in the last few years. I asked if this was a good thing or a bad thing, and she said that the decline was the result of increased access to Medicaid and Obamacare. This meant fewer free check-ups to provide, lowered stress levels for clinicians who were serving a population that just kept growing, and less strain on the budget for providing services to uninsured clients. So yeah...fewer student participants was a great thing.
5. The ACA represents a move forward for the United States. All this GOP talk about "restoring America's glory" and "making America great again" generally makes me roll my eyes because the ACA is a piece of legislation that caught the US up to other developed nations. Access to universal healthcare overwhelmingly raises the standard of living, longevity, emotional health, and prosperity of a nation's people. Why would the GOP not want this?! How does the GOP propose to "make America great again" if they're champing at the bit to cut off access to health insurance for 30 million of their own citizens? Does this party really represent the interests of our people?

By way of conclusion, a personal plea - please don't vote for any GOP candidate who promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The ACA has saved my life - from the extra four years on my dad's insurance to the expanded Medicaid access that I use now until I land a career job. The ACA has allowed me to attend over 150 therapy sessions for free in the last 3 years. The ACA provided me with physical therapy for vertigo, enabling me to return quickly to work and school. The ACA allowed me to put my money toward graduate school and training for a career that I absolutely love, instead of having to spend it on healthcare. Most of all, the care I've received under the ACA has kept me from giving in to depression, a condition which has tried to knock me out every day.

Please don't put anyone in office whose platform is to ruin my life and the lives of 29,999,999 other Americans.