I've Been Avoiding My Own Blog

I meant to come on here and blog about something nice and light, but my subconscious typed the above title without consulting with me first. I didn't even realize I'd been avoiding my own blog until I typed that out. But it's true. I've been avoiding my own blog. Why? Well, let's see.

A week ago last Monday began what I'm starting to think of as the Week from Hell. (I had Holy Week in the summer, so fair's fair I guess.) It all started with a visit to see one of my dearest friends. She lives clear out in Anthem, so we don't get to see each other much. When we do, we usually make a day of it. We spend the entire time chatting and the time flies all too quickly.

Well, while I was there, she told me about a man named Peter Singer. I do not have the heart to blog about him or his flat-out wicked "ethics" (his argument that it's okay to kill disabled babies is the worst) and I'm not even going to link to him. If you feel like getting shocked, outraged, and depressed (about this freaking Professor at Princeton University no less), feel free to Google him yourself. I was so stunned by what I learned, it was all I could think about all the way home. You know when you're so deeply affected by something that watching the world go on it's merry little way just feels wrong somehow? That's how I felt.

Then came all the research on the homosexuality curriculum taking place in Massachusetts (and elsewhere, I've since discovered, but I don't want to talk about that either).

Every single day for a week, I found a new, deeper way to be shocked. I thought blogging about it would help. I thought it would help me feel like I was doing something at least. But it didn't help. I mean really, who reads my blog anyway? Is it really going to make any kind of a difference? By Sunday night, I literally couldn't sleep. Every muscle in my body felt permanently clenched. I couldn't relax at all. No matter what else I was doing, some part of my brain was thinking about all I'd learned.

My heart especially hurt (still hurts) for all the children who, for years now, have been subjected to the curriculum in Massachusetts. These children are innocent. Innocent. They are being tainted by the very people who should be protecting them. It's wrong, and no matter what happens in my own neck of the woods, I worry about those little kids. We should all worry about what they'll do in our society when they're teens. Just how, exactly, are they going to push the envelope?

Over the entire weekend, I knew I couldn't go on stressing about it to this degree. That's just not healthy. But I also knew that I'd learned too much to go back to pretending like the problem isn't there (my preferred method of survival). I'd prayed for balance and for relief, but none came.

Finally, as I was venting about all this to poor Brian, something clicked in my brain. I felt kind of stupid, but I said it aloud anyway: "I feel like I've been traumatized." And I really did. I felt I had been attacked all week long. Not physically, but in every other way.

He said, "That's why you can't relax. You're not one to lie down and take a beating. You're one to fight back."

As soon as he said that, I literally felt half the muscles in my body just let go and relax because I knew he was right. It was a relief to understand it. (The other half of me was thinking, great, now what?)

I still haven't figured out the answer to that question. The very next day, I felt mostly normal again. I felt like I had my life back. I felt happy. I could think about other things. It's been nice.

But every time I come to my blog, or even think about it, all the emotions start to come back: horror, rage, fear, nausea, determination, stagnation. My emotions are too convoluted and mixed up to be productive. I don't think the analytical part of my brain has attacked this problem at all. I need to figure out what I'm going to do about this. Because I just can't let it sit. And yet...

For now it feels like it's all I can do to keep those posts at the top of my blog, and to put links everywhere I can think of in the hopes that some random person checking out my dutch oven apple cobbler recipe (which is fabulous, by the way) will turn into one more person aware, outraged, and prepared to fight (or at least VOTE) for what's right.

It doesn't feel like enough. But right now, I don't have the courage to do anything more.