Existence is Morally Neutral

I've got this big idea bouncing around in my head and I'm not sure how I want to flesh it out on the page. I'm certainly not the first or the most brilliant person to have this idea, but I want to weave it into the complicated fabric of my own life and I don't even quite know where to begin.

Once upon a time, I was a pretty damn talented essayist. I say, "was," because it's been over a decade since I wrote an actual essay. I still think I'm a talented writer, but writing an essay, pulling the threads of an idea together with wit and grace and convincing prose is a skill honed through practice and I feel rusty. 

Also, can I tell you a secret about why I love blogging? I don't edit! I don't. I word vomit and then I publish. I don't proof or edit or rewrite. I don't think about the smallest typo or the biggest flaws in logic. Blogging is a release valve on my brain, where I can take the thing that's rattling around in my overactive mind and let it out and put it somewhere else, somewhere else where it lives on its own, but now quieter and smaller and less overwhelming. Blogging is an activity, not an end. It's about the action, not the result. 

Do I love that someone reads it and hopefully finds connection or sees themself in my thoughts or even, miraculously, understands me a bit better? Absofuckinglutely! That's satisfying. But I ultimately don't do it for you, dear reader, I do it for me. And yet, knowing there will be a reader keeps me more honest, keeps me coming back to share when it's easier not to. So, yes, I have this idea that deserves an essay, deserves a thoughtful editing process, deserves multiple rewrites, but I'm not going to give it such. We are here in this medium and I must stay true to that. I don't make the rules. Alas.

I have this idea and it has to do with morality and worth and how everything in my life has taught me to believe that I must prove my worth and that any shortcoming or mistake or lack of ability is a moral failing. 

Yesterday, I accidentally locked my husband and I out of our house. I'm pretty sure it was me. All signs point to yes. Obviously it was a mistake. Shit happens yes? Humans make mistakes. And yet, once we'd rectified the situation and regained access to our home, I found myself doing the thing I work hardest in therapy not to do: beating myself up. 

Logically, I didn't think that locking us out of the house was grounds for divorce, but deep in my mind, bubbling up fast, was this idea that I was a fuckup and didn't deserve my husband, didn't deserve my home, didn't deserve ANYTHING in fact. ACTUALLY, my mind said, as it spun out of control, I can't even keep a job and I can't contribute to our household and what good am I at all to anyone? 

Never mind that I lost my job because we're in a global pandemic and my industry doesn't even exist right now. And never mind that one's productivity or earnings doesn't equal inherent human value and never mind that all people lock themselves out of their homes from time to time and that all people fuck things up occasionally. Never mind all that, because I was feeling worthless and that's a feeling that goes way back. 

In my last post, I talked about how I can't separate my traumas from each other and we need to revisit that now, because I think this feeling of worthlessness and the need to earn my place in my life isn't just due to one trauma, but the cumulative effects of all of them. I have always felt this need, always suspected that despite the words of my assigned family, that I was to earn my spot, to show I was good enough to be there, and always feeling like I was coming up short. 

But why? Was it because of that first trauma, that first abandonment before I even had a name? Was it my adoptive mother loudly mourning the loss of the child who'd died the year I was born, the constant reminder that I was his replacement? Was it being raised by a narcissist, making my entire existence about living up to her exacting specifications and never ever being allowed to feel or think on my own or even do things she didn't want me to do? Was it because my punishment and reward system was arbitrary and based on her whims, and, as I got older, she began to threaten to send me back to the state whenever I displeased her? Was it because, when she became disabled, she lamented her own sudden perceived worthlessness, teaching me that lesson by example? Was it her hating her own fat body, teaching me that fat is deplorable, making me fear my own fat body when it finally arrived as I aged? Was it when, as a young adult, I'd fallen on some hard luck and she refused to help me, despite her guilting me for years out of my own money, as if I was just paying her back for the years she deigned to be my mother? Was it because, when I finally broke free of her and tasted the first air I'd ever breathed in my whole life, I still somehow felt like an orphan again? 

And just when you think all my trauma is maternal, there are more questions. Was it the countless times I was made to feel less like a valid person by family, friends, strangers, just because I was adopted? Was it my schoolmates asking me if I had horns or ate babies because of my family's religion? Was it my church teaching me that I was a sinner because of my sexual identity? Was it the wildly inappropriate lessons on worth and integrity young women received in that cult? Was it every time a part of my body was mocked or ridiculed or objectified? Was it the assaults, the abuse, the gaslighting, the loneliness? Was it because my dad has never once asked me how I am outside of if I'm working or not, making the whole of his care for me amount to whether I'm earning money? Was it every time I was made to feel like a failure by a boss when I needed to call out sick, as if illness is something within my control? Was it because I, like everyone, was raised in a capitalistic society that only ever puts a premium on our ability to contribute to society and how the word disability is literally defined around production? 

I could go on and on, but it all amounts to a million traumas that have taught me to devalue myself, that all those cuts were deserved and made me lesser, while also ostensibly being inherently lesser right from the start. Existence itself becomes a failing, because how can we ever be perfect enough to live here, where so much is demanded of us? 

As I've been analyzing my own internalized ableism this year, and my own relationship to my mother's disability and mental illness and thus my own relationship to my body and my mental illness,  I see that it's not just one thing that conspires to make us feel worthless, but a million traumas that collectively tell us that without proving ourselves worthy, then we're failures, and that any and everything wrong with me (us) is a moral failing. I've lost so many years to cataloging all my so-called faults, fearing that they'll cost me my very right to be here, that I hadn't considered what that means. 

It means that it's not just physical or mental ability or disability and it's not just trying to live up to an ever shifting paradigm; it's that the sum total of traumas have taught so many of us that our very existence is amoral. 

And how are we supposed to live like that? 

When every source of input tells us we're undeserving, how can we possibly survive? 

I thought for years that I was a perfectionist, but, in truth, I was just singing for my supper. I don't need perfection; I was fearing failure. And what an aha! moment that is!

So just as I drop you off my cliff of life-long CPTSD and depression, let me offer a tiny crumb of emergency ration: rebellion. 

Despite it all, I've always been a rebel. Maybe it's because I've felt different from the start, independent from birth. Maybe it's from the countless times I was the outsider and had to adapt and survive and push along. Maybe it's some inherent genetic thing that I don't know how to name. But I've always had the soul of a rebel and, even when it's so damn hard to push off the weight of it all, I stubbornly dig in my heels and tuck my head down and say, NOPE. 

There are so many odds stacked against someone like me. 1 in 4 adoptees attempt suicide. I am that statistic and I survived. Bisexuals are more likely than other queer identities to be in the closet, to have mental illnesses, to attempt suicide. I battle all of those and trudge on. I survived child abuse and a cult and assault and abuse. I live daily with CPTSD, anxiety, and depression, yet I keep pushing. That little rebellious streak has kept me alive and kept me trying, has kept me clawing for a sense of worth that I've always known is in there, despite all input to the contrary. 

As I let myself be, just be, without constant the feedback loop, I'm seeing that worth isn't about what I do or what I contribute or some veneer of perfection; it's innate. 

It's our behavior and it's not our accomplishments or talents and it's not our ability to contribute. It's not a lack of faults or being in the right bodies. We're humans and therefore have a human right to be and feel worthy and deserving and enough! So many of us are taught that our very existence is a moral failing. Our bodies, our identities, and even our brains are offensive to society, to the system that keeps the powerful in power. 

Therefore, our very existence is an act of resistance. 

And that really appeals to my rebellious soul. If who I am offends, then good. I hope it does. My existence isn't moral or amoral or immoral; it's morally neutral. Society has said otherwise, so that leaves me no choice but to rebel. I'll defy them by being kind to myself, by daring to even love myself, by loving all the parts they deem so aberrant or wrong. So much has been taken from me, that I'm glad to steal it back. I'm happy to throw a wrench in the machine just by refusing to go away. I'll keep on living, as hard as it is, and they can die mad about it.