Probably Didn't Count On That

I was just thinking about expectations. We all have them. I considered some of the expectations of my own life. Sometimes things don't meet expectations though. This is when I thought about what my parents might have expected. The church I used to attend gives people a lot of expectations. You see, because if you don't meet their expectations, you don't get to have your family in eternity. And if you personally don't meet their expectations, you don't get to go either.

Did my parents raise good kids? Yes. Well, eventually. Maybe they moved around a bit in the morality of their youth, but they are good people. Still, in a religion where the family is paramount, two of their kids don't have their own families, at least in the 1950's definition. My brother never married. My sister is a lesbian and is married to her partner. Me? Well, I married. No kids for awhile, at least until we adopted. So we have an african-american son and two hispanic children. We do have a naturally occurring child between us too. But in the past few years we had a "faith-crisis" or what may be properly called a "truth-crisis" and we left the religion that we grew up with.

So, did my parents get their expectations? Maybe not. I can't speak for them. However, we are a different bunch. Are we still good kids? Yes. Darn good kids if I may be so bold. My parents have a wonderful family. Do they consider us good kids? I don't know. I know by the standards of my former religion, I'm a miserable apostate, not to be trusted. My sister is partly responsible for the downfall of society, and my brother is, at best, available to the lower parts of heaven because he never married.

The damage in this is because my religion has taught each of us that we are "less than", my parents and absolutely my former church considers us "less than". I have felt that way for most of my adult life. No more. We are flawed people, but we are also somewhere high in the Awesome Scale.

For a bit more of this and how it affects people and our happiness, I offer this video from Thinker of Thoughts and Stuff.

Someone says...

Someone says "I am depressed" and our first instinct is to regale the goodness of their life, how 'not sad' it is.

A woman whispers "I am afraid of him" and we throw our bodies into recounting the times in which he looked so gentle, so smooth, no hard edges at all.

A person braves their own identity--tells this frugal world they have no gender, no box to check, and the world spits back dispute. "Impossible," we say, "your experience of yourself is not enough to convince us you exist."

A football player kneels quietly during a song and the crowd goes wild. Three fists are raised during the same song and the crowd bursts into flames. A father is shot with two silent hands in the air and the crowd turns into stone.

I don't need to watch the video. Fuck the debate. Hundreds of thousands of Americans tell us "I am afraid and I feel unsafe because of the color of my skin" and we have the audacity to debate it. "But was he a good man? How many priors did he have? How many children? And with how many different women? Tell us *how* scared. Is it daily? Can you sleep? Are you shaking? Can you go to work? Good. Go to work and be grateful! We've come so far! It's just one bad apple."

Does it sounds too cliche to say the orchard was built on mass graves? That we refuse to see the roots from up here? What metaphor will make this more palatable? Someone tells us their truth and we turn the record over, replace the needle. Repeat the refrain:

Personal accounts by people of color of daily encounters with racism (from subtle micro-aggressions to state-sanctioned violence) are not enough to convince white America that this problem still exists. And that, I am afraid, is proof that humanity is a choice. #blacklivesmatter #terrencecrutcher

P.S. If you're white (like me) and you're tired of these hashtags, imagine being tired of a body count. What a privilege it is to be annoyed by a pound sign and a name. If you think now is the time for a compassionate and righteous "all lives matter" retort, your attempt to unify humanity does the opposite.

EDIT: I want to add two things. First, I wrote this directly after listening to Danez Smith recite excerpts from "summer, somewhere." Go. Read. Listen. (www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/58645)

Second, I want to address something Najah Amatullah Hylton rightfully pointed out when sharing this status: this is "a white person say[ing] it nicely." I am a poet. I am white person who is good with words. I can make ugly things sound pretty. Wrap them up with a shiny ribbon. I am not brave for this articulation. At most, I am risking a few arguments on Facebook with strangers, not my life. Let's examine what package we chose to receive the truth in.

~Sierra DeMulder