I'm Tired Of Not Caring

Since COVID and the extreme swings that happened not just in our backyards, but in our own homes, I stopped caring. I had to in order to survive the dinner table. I'm done. It's time to care again.

I stopped collecting stories because I’d be ridiculed for believing them. I’d be attacked for speaking about them. I love a good debate, but when the person I’m “debating” refuses to see what’s being presented, it becomes an attack. “I don’t understand how you could…” give a shit about someone else? Feel empathy for that woman who has a similar background as you? Talk about something that isn’t affecting you?

I listened to this Substack post this morning: Can American politics be unbroken, and it helped to reawaken something I hadn’t realized had be quashed. I think one of the reasons I’m struggling to write is because I’m in this zombie mindset that what I feel doesn’t matter. I know that’s not what this post was about. It was about how normal both sides could be if we were able to look at the two people at the top without such polarized emotions, how we could be rational, and what it would mean if we can’t be.

It got me to thinking about other things, though, which is what typically happens. In order to “create peace” in my home, I’ve become silent. People will have a view. I smile and nod. Occasionally, I’ll say something, but I typically just smile and nod. It’s because we have the “Red Barn” affect that is brutally effective and frustrating.

What’s the Red Barn?

We used to share custody of my husband’s kids. We’d drive down to Denver or Kansas, pick the kids up, and drive all the way back to Montana. The drives were typically great. We had a lot of fun. It was the four of us in a car for many, many miles, talking, singing, playing the Railroad game, which is a spelling game. It was great.

One time, however, the youngest proclaimed there were only red barns. I pointed out blue barns, white barns, green barns, and brown barns, and she refused to see them as barns. They weren’t barns unless they were red. We did this for hundreds of miles and we laughed and laughed and it was a fun joke. To this day, I don’t know if she realizes barns are still barns if they’re blue.

It became a joke, though, afterward. When someone, typically her or her father, were being obstinately stubborn, we’d go, “Okay, Red Barn,” and move on.

Red Barn is now a verb, a noun, and an adjective and has become an active part of our family vernacular.

This stubbornness is one of the reasons I’ve grown silent. Why should I waste energy I’m struggling to maintain if I know that proof will not sway your view? If I can stand you in front of a blue barn and say not all barns are red and you resolutely refuse to acknowledge that, then what’s the point of discussion?

Discussion is bringing two views to the same issue so both people can see it better. That’s what I love. That’s why I’ve written in the past. I collected stories people weren’t listening to, points of view no one saw, and shared them. The best I could. I’m not a great writer. I’m not the best. But I don’t need to be. I didn’t need to be. I just had to share views no one was seeing.

But if seeing and experiences doesn’t matter, then what’s the point?

Collecting Again

I’m going to start collecting stories again because this matters. And… I realized that one of the reasons I’m struggling to gather energy gardening and reading and crocheting and spending time with family and all the other things is because I was gathering a lot of energy from people’s stories. Collecting people energized me. And when I cut that off in order to keep the peace in my home, I cut off that source of energy.

*sigh* Well, I’m going to have to find another way of keeping the peace because this zombie-walking life sucks. I hate it. I’ll still smile and nod at dinner or right before bed, but I need to hear people again. I need to see them and feel them. I need to collect them inside my soul again.

Stories of the Week

Here are a list of stories I’ve been collecting this week. I’m sure they’re flavor my writing somehow.

F.J. Wylde might tackle some of these. She’s the women’s fiction name I want to write under and I have an Alaskan series planned that I’m getting terrified and excited about. You’d think that Alaska would be a bit backwards, but we’re surprisingly not in a lot of ways. I mean, we still have our share of conservative people who don’t think the government should help us, but they don’t hate women or think their rights should be limited. They just think the government shouldn’t have a say in anyone’s body. Okay. I see that point, but… my experience shows that isn’t enough.

I digress. These are the stories that are building a little energy inside my tank. I welcome discussion, but it needs to be fair. If Red Barns flare, I’m putting a cabosh to it.

Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality

There are a lot of articles here to unpack. They’re all thought provoking on several levels.

Maternal Morbidity Cost Billions

The thing that got me the most with this one was this: The reasons include striking declines in the health of women giving birth and inequities in access to insurance and maternity care. And that’s something I’m seeing here, too. My niece has severe issues with her cycle and she can’t get any help for it. My daughter thinks she does, but all signs point to her being “normal,” so I’m downplaying it, but is that just feeding the machine? What’s “normal”? No one knows because modern medicine doesn’t care. When will my daughters have rights in their own doctor’s offices? When will their voice matter in their own bodies?

I know my voice will never matter. It never did and never will, but what about my daughters? What about theirs, if they reproduce, which… all four of my daughters have said they’re unlikely to have children.

I feel like my life taught all of my girls something very hard, something they all took to heart and has shaped their lives forever. And maybe that’s something I need to address. But that article got me to thinking of a lot of things.

Now, I need to figure out what I’m writing after work. I feel like it might be Gunn Gardens, but I think I’m drifting back into Wastelands as my dreams reawaken from the torment of slumber I put them through.