Today Shanna announced that it is sometimes appropriate to wear all black. That is a milestone sorta moment.
I’m thinking about the overlap of the movie The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio and failure. What does failure mean?
We are all small pieces in the stories of one another’s lives. I spend a lot of time thinking about the past. It seems to me that other people believe the past should be over and done. In thinking about the past I understand the present. Through perspective I get why I’m doing what I am doing. Why I will do what I will do.
Connect, connect, that’s what we all want. Whether it is through selling something or through buying big old big-ukkkie yuck well. Or something. What the fuck was that? I don’t even know.
White men help white men. White women help… I don’t fucking know.
Sometimes I feel like a race traitor. I don’t type that very often. But I think it. Often.
Especially when I watch movies like like “The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio” and watch how white men are supported without ever knowing the price of bearing them. No one ever says life is easy. This is true.
I think about the past because it helps me figure out why I want to do what I want to do. I want to forget. I want to stop thinking about pain. I want to stop hurting. I don’t know how. I’m told, by asshole men, that the path forward is just to forget. To stop thinking about the things that have happened to me. The things that shaped who and what I am. I am not a dumb grazing animal standing under a tree. I am a complex being.
I am not important.
Don’t get me wrong.
I’m just not stupid. To be fair I’m sure there are asshole women with the same opinion. They just feel less need to track down my Twitter feed to tell me how stupid I am.
“That’s not enough”
“It never is”
“How is Dad going to fill the freezer when he can’t even buy the milk?”
“I have no idea honey but at least he has a goal.” (From the above referenced movie.)
I feel sad. I feel disconnected. I feel like my bills are not the point of life. I pay my bills. Oh fucking well.
I feel happy. I feel connected. I feel like I am unusually well connected with friends. All along the way we toss out some of the most interesting, most enlightened people.
I think a lot about bravery. Why do we try the things we try? Do we have to see someone else do it first? Just try. Just try. What the fuck does autocorrect do anyway?
Violence, meanness, write it down. There is just a hole lot of mean in the world. This is literally just what is pouring out my head as my fingers hurt. Can’t type enough. My problems are many and varied and are never that I’m not happy enough. And all of the problems fall through the hole in the whole world.
End.
End.
End.
The end.
You have very interesting thoughts. I am glad you write them down.
I find that white women who are well off and from relatively non abusive families support other white women who display the same class markers. UNLESS there’s a man around, and then they fall on themselves to support the man, while throwing other women, and themselves under the bus.
I understand there’s some valid reasons for them doing that (cos if white men have the money and the power and the ability to ruin your life for funsies, then kissing up to them might be the best strategy available to you.) It’s part of why I work so much on being able to sustain myself financially and why I want to help other women become financially well off enough that they don’t need to default to kissing up to some white man.
But, my strategy won’t work for everyone. Motherhood is valuable work. Parenting is valuable. And if those aren’t paid at all, then how do women who choose to make that their work manage to get financial independence? People who think bigger than me try to address this by cutting away at capitalism or by fighting for a universal basic income.
I wish I had a larger set of better answers, because the watching women throw women under the bus thing makes my heart ache.
And I like Shanna’s statement – all black can be an awesome and fun look.
I just saw that movie the other day. Some of the stuff there….takes a while to process. I loved the part where she didn’t have to sign for the house, because it just wasn’t necessary ._.
So many things in this movie to absorb. I feel strangely bad for Woody Harrelson’s character. He is so out of his depth.