I just put up a long diatribe about Six Flags Great Adventure on my other blog and thought that y’all might be amused by it.  Here’s a little to “wet your whistle”:

On Thursday, Wes, Jessie, and I went to Six Flags Great Adventure.  It had been years since Wes and I had been there.  The previous time was about 9 years ago when Wes managed to steal me away from my boyfriend at the time by wowing me with his Whack-a-Mole prowess (that’s another hilarious story for another day).  I had remembered that Six Flags is kind of awful for various reasons. The only reasons I really remembered were things like “lousy food”.  But I thought it would be fun to go because I do, in fact, like roller coasters and Six Flags is certainly the place to go for roller coasters.  I am partial to the wooden ones and Nitro myself.

After spending the day at Six Flags I can say that if someone wanted proof of Satan’s existence, Six Flags Great Adventure is it.

I remember seeing the movie “Bedazzled” for the first time (the one from the 60’s starring Dudley Moore).  I thought that the depiction of Satan was the most realistic.  The concept was that Satan just ran around annoying people and slowly driving them mad by doing things like committing random acts of mischief and fulfilling gross misinterpretations of people’s wishes.  It was perfect.  He wasn’t evil really…just an asshole.  This is Six Flags in a nutshell.

My sense of community has never been strong.  It’s just not the way I was raised.  Growing up, I liked just off of South Street in Philadelphia.  It’s a business district with a lot of bars.  Sure, I lived on a little side street and seemingly other people lived there too, but it wasn’t particularly common to socialize with the people who lived there.  We didn’t have a typical neighborhood experience.  Maybe it’s because we lived in a tourist area…maybe it’s a symptom of living in a big city, but we just didn’t have a desire to particularly know our neighbors.  It wouldn’t be until I was in my teens that we even knew the names of people living near us (before that we only knew the names of their dogs…).  My family was very social with each other (my parents were my best friends and I rarely liked spending time with my peers more than spending time with them).  We were loners.  We didn’t have close family friends.  My parents were part of the New Age movement when I was very young and they had a couple friends from that, but as their attachment to EST faded, so did the friendships.  We weren’t religious in any other way so there was no expectation of a church/synagogue community either.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately.  It is seemingly something that many atheists think about because many people were not raised in an atheist environment and came to it over time.  Before becoming atheists, many of them went to church and I have often heard that this community is the thing that is most missed about leaving religion.

I understand this logically.  It is calming to be amongst like-minded thinkers.  Institutions make easy places to meet people.  It was hard to remember how to make friends when I wasn’t in any kind of school anymore.  You make friends at the places you have to go.  I imagine church is like this for kids.  Your parents make you go.  Everyone is there for the same thing.  You make friends with people in the same situation.

But I have never been comfortable in “communities”.  When I was in school, I had friends and such (I was quite social, actually) but I never particularly felt like I belonged anywhere.  This has not particularly changed now.

I have spoken about my general feeling of being an “other” lately.  Now that my home is filled to capacity with people who I love, 4 cats, a dog, and considerably more Star Trek merchandise than I ever expected to have, I feel a general sense that this is my community…but really, this is my family and I see that nothing has changed since I was a kid.  The people with whom I share my home are the people I feel most “normal” around and it is easy to get comfortable with that and not want to seek out more people in the world when there are so many people who will disappoint.

There are frequent atheist meetups and polyamory meetups and I have had a very difficult time being remotely interested in attending either one.  Granted I’ve had very limited experience with either one, but my experiences up to this point have not particularly inspiring.

I have been to two local atheist meetups (the same one).  The first time I was subjected to the social awkwardness of having the audacity to be female and show up at one of these things.  I was a new person at a pretty small meetup and most people couldn’t even bring themselves to make eye contact with me, let alone introduce themselves or say “Hi”.  I was ignored until I decided to be assertive.  Before that I had to listen to one dude’s tales of hitting on chicks at the bar.  The second time I went, I talked to people more, but there was a lot of Christian bashing…which I find counter productive when you’re out in a public space that is pleasant enough to host you…especially when the jokes aren’t even funny.  I think about going back here and again, but my motivation is mostly to be a female presence, an ambassador of sorts, and sometimes it just doesn’t feel worth it to expend the energy to be that person.

I’ve only been to a couple of polyamory meetups (other than a BBQ with several friends where everyone was polyamorous so we didn’t have to explain it or particularly talk about it) and my feeling about them is similar in that I feel the need to be some kind of ambassador.  Often the people that come to them are new to it and are looking for information.  We talk about jealousy and time management and rules.  I get worn out quickly because, well, I blog about this stuff too.  There have been days where it feels like it’s all I talk about.  I want to be approachable about it.  I want people to ask questions and all that, but I also just want to live my life.  Sometimes I want to just give people a copy of The Ethical Slut and a business card with Polyskeptic.com on it and tell them to do their research.  Also, I rarely feel like I belong at these things because not only is “the way I do polyamory” or the “way I communicate and have relationships friend or otherwise” seemingly difficult for many to grasp, but I also don’t see anything spiritual or cosmic about it in the least.  I am not a member of the New Age.  I am just challenging social convention because this is the way I want to live my life.

But why does all this make me so angry?  Why is my instinct to just pull away and give up on being out in the world?  Why is telling people about life and being a person others can reach out to so terrifying?  Why does thinking about it bring me to tears sometimes?  My answer to all of this has always been that other people aren’t worth it and that being more alone is easier and better.

Well, here’s the thing: I can cite all kinds of reasons why I feel uncomfortable in communities that define themselves by a Granfalloon, but ultimately the underlying issue is my insecurity and my anxiety.  I still feel the need to be two different people: The Great Ambassador (who is perfect, always happy and rational, and is a pristine example of the “movement”) and, well, me (who is pretty good but far from perfect, unhappy often, full of anxiety that is difficult to control).  I don’t go to meetups if I feel incapable of people The Great Ambassador.  I don’t want people to meet me any other way because I fear that seeing all the cracks will make people question my choices.  I’m afraid that if I’m not at my best strangers will think poorly of me.  It’s all the same as it ever was.  Granted, I have met a few people who have given me some moments of regret for going to a meetup and have made me want to give up on meeting new people, but I also had to remember that the last time I was feeling like this was right around when we met Shaun and Ginny and that turned out pretty fucking good.

I have been crazy for weeks, and only after a brief reprieve of a few weeks here and there.  I struggle with anxiety and low level depression daily.  In the last several weeks each day has been a struggle to keep it together.  I can do it.  I can control myself.  Circumstance certainly can be stressful and there has been a lot going on (what with people moving in, me going through the entire house in an effort to get it organized, and trying to change the slob part of me for good).  I have been trying to pay attention to my diet (I have been caffeine-free for a month!) and my water intake and sleep to try and keep myself in the best condition possible.  But, well, I finally have given into the fact that I need professional help.

So, I made an appointment to go see a therapist and probably a psychiatrist after that because  I am starting to think that this is more chemical than circumstantial. I need someone outside to help me figure out what’s going on.  I have made wonderful changes and am miles ahead of where I was years ago, but I am expending a ridiculous amount of energy to remain stable and I’m tired.  I get enough sleep but I’m tired all the time and I think it might be because I’m trying too hard to be OK on my own.  I have been scared of therapy because, while I don’t judge other people badly at all for doing the same, I have convinced myself that I am strong enough to do this alone and that giving in to this is failure.  And maybe I can do this on my own, but is it worth it if I’m just crazed all the time trying to be strong?  I have to ask for help and I have to do it without shame.  It’s time to reach out.  I have been afraid of potential medication because I’m afraid of losing the parts of me that I like, but I have to remind myself that if this is the path required that this medication will be like anything else.  You have to find the one that works for you and trust that the people that love you will be patient and help you through the searching process.  I did it for birth control.  I can do it for this.

Since I can’t apparently stay quiet in the blogosphere about everything going on with me, I will likely be chronicling this process here, because like polyamory and atheism, mental illness is a real thing in the world that needs multiple voices and I realize that at this point I really don’t care who knows about it.  I wrote an email to someone close to me last year asking them to seek out therapy and I was responded to with scorn and the declaration that they would never ever go to therapy or try antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication.  Well, that’s fine, I guess, but I am not special in seeking out help like this and I am not better than anyone for having avoided the option for this long.  And sure, I might be weak sometimes but that’s why we ask for help.  Why do I ask for help lifting a 200 lb weight but expect myself to be some kind of emotional juggernaut?  I’m tired of being tired.

Yesterday I had to leave a supermarket because I had a minor meltdown about money AND the general idiocy of people in markets on a Sunday.  There was a point where I almost picked up a cantaloupe and threw it.  There was another point where I nearly started screaming at people in an aisle.  I can control myself, but it’s time to figure out how to really get a handle on this.  And then maybe I can get excited about being out in the world again, about being public in real non-internet places.

I’m feeling all fired-up after reading several articles on the dumbass “legitimate rape” quote, and then I read this ridiculousness: somebody wants atheists to pray, every day for 40 days (of course it’s 40 days) for God to reveal himself (their pronoun), recording their experiences and submitting them for inclusion in an academic paper.

First let me get through my rage that this is being considered an “experiment” and might be made the basis of an “academic paper.” P.Z. pretty much spelled it out: there’s no methodology here. The participant pool is entirely self-selecting with no (stated) filtering criteria; there is no discussion of what is being measured; guidelines for participants are so vague as to be meaningless; and no discussion is made of the researcher’s personal bias and how that might affect results (a particularly important piece to include in qualitative research, which this would be if it were research at all. Which it’s not.) It’s appalling from a purely academic standpoint.

Then there’s the personal hit. And excuse me, because this gets personal. Motherfucker, do you not think that people have tried this? Let me tell you about my three months (your 40 days plus another 50 or so) of asking God — begging God — to reveal his existence to me. It started shortly before Christmas, and I realized that the faith-bearing part of my brain, the part that believed in God whether it made sense to me or not, was gone. And I was devastated. I felt like I’d been left by the one person I had always counted on to be there for me. Because that was what happened. If God existed, he had withdrawn, for his own mysterious reasons, my previously unshaken belief that he was there, was real, would one day meet me face to face. For a long time that’s what I thought had happened, and I earnestly tried to submit to his will; to play the role which he had evidently asked me to play, as a non-believer who desperately wanted to believe. But I also prayed, often with tears, that if it was all a mistake, that if something had gone wrong and I had gone astray somehow, that he would lead me back. That he would give me back my faith. I prayed for three months; I let go of all reservations and expectations about what this God-being might be like or how he might manifest. After three months I felt I couldn’t keep up the pretense of being a Christian any more, so I told my friends and family what I was going through, but at the same time I kept searching. Kept praying. Kept hoping, because if there was one thing I didn’t want, it was to live in a world with no divine force in it.

And eventually my longing was enough to enable me to create a new imagined reality. I never got back the strong, tangible sense of God’s presence that had been with me for the first 25 years of my life. But I started interpreting everything I could as evidence that God was speaking to me, and I came up with complicated rationalizations for how the fact that I knew it was myself, and my own interpretations, was yet another way God spoke to me. I couldn’t recreate those mental contortions if I tried. If you want to believe something badly enough, you will find yourself a way to let yourself believe it. And always, always, I was praying — for revelation, for insight, for guidance.

So don’t fucking say that what atheists need to do is earnestly pray for God’s revelation. Not to me. It’s ignorant and insulting.

And don’t set people up for the kind of self-delusion that I engaged in: don’t tell them to look out for a sign, no matter what it is, and it could be anything, that God is responding. You know what will happen if you do that? The people who want to believe will find a sign. Because that is one of the number-one things human brains are best at: reading signal in noise. It’s a trait I love about us — sometime I’ll write about my experiences with tarot cards and why I find them valuable even though I don’t believe in any supernatural influence — but you can never let go of the awareness that the signal comes from ourselves, not from outside. Otherwise, you can so easily be exploited and manipulated, which is especially traumatizing when you’re the one doing the exploiting and manipulating.

The whole thing makes me sick and angry. I’m going to take a shower.

This morning I got in the car, plugged my phone into the speakers and blasted Mama Cass singing “Make Your Own Kind of Music”.  Mama Cass is one of my female vocal role models.  Granted, she’s nowhere near Grace Slick, Janis or Heart, but she’s there.  I heard “Make Your Own Kind of Music” for the first time on “Lost” when Desmond was introduced.

Shut up about spoilers.  I’m not even going to talk about how that show ended.  Bullshit.  Listen, if you must watch it, watch the first couple of seasons and then stop.  OK?  I warned you.

Anyway, I love “Make Your Own Kind of Music” because it has that classic late 60’s pop sound that I love and it has a message I can get behind as your friendly neighborhood weirdo.

Make your own kind of music.
Sing your own special song.
Make your own kind of music,
Even if nobody else sings along.

My dad always thought that my theme song should be Linda Ronstadt’s “Different Drum”.  It has its moments, but “Make Your Own Kind of Music” applies to every part of my life thus far.  Plus, it’s really fun to belt out in the car.

So, picture the scene of this morning if you will: I get in the car, I crank the volume up to 30 and as the opening piano and guitar comes in, I sway.  Yes, I sway and put a stupid look on my face…like this stupid look:

Then I start singing at the top of my lungs (while paying careful attention to vocal support, of course.  I don’t need Peter throwing things at my when I show up for overdubbing on Wednesday and say, “Oh, sorry…I can’t sing…Mama Cass.”).  I would assume anyone looking in the car would have assumed I was taking my final ascent into Muppetdom.  Perhaps they are right.

The other day, a coworker changed the picture he had on his desktop to this photo of him in Jamaica.  He was smashed in between two huge drag queens.  He asked everyone if they found it offensive.  I walked over and said, “Eh, that just looks like what my life outside of the lab looks like.”  Everyone laughed and probably believed that there was some truth to it, but I always wonder how much truth they think there is.  I wander around at work with everyone thinking that I’m “original” and a little bit strange, but they never really know how strange.

When I talk about Shaun, Ginny, or Jessie, I call them simply my friends.  This, of course, is not a false statement but by cutting it off there I am lying by omission.  I can’t seem to bring myself to be open about it, mainly because I don’t really think it’s any of their business, and possibly because I don’t want to have to talk about it everyday.  There are times when I have come very close to telling people everything because I think it’s a stupid burden to carry.  But this is my job, not my family, not anything except where I contribute intelligence and skill in exchange for money and benefits.  It is enough that they know that I have a husband.  That they can understand and we don’t have to talk about it.

I suppose it might be silly to say on a blog devoted to subjects such as polyamory and atheism, but I get burned out on these topics often.  I don’t talk about atheism much because I am rather uneducated about it.  I know that I do not believe in gods or any kind of spirituality.  This is the rational conclusion we must reach with the evidence at hand. I don’t really have a lot to say about it other than that most of the time.  I talk a lot about polyamory because my relationships are pretty much the biggest thing in my life.  Because I am living this way and building up experience points, I feel like I can speak intelligently about the subject.  I like to present myself as a person living this way successfully and happily.  I want to be inspiring and informative.

But it is still my life and I find that explaining why this works for us for the umpteenth time begins to take its toll.  Sure, it’s easier when people are being accepting.  For instance, the five of us were at a wedding the other day where after a while we mentioned the fact that we were polyamorous to the strangers we were sitting with and one of them said, “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious!”  It was refreshing to not have to explain what it is.  He didn’t even follow it up with any qualifiers like “Well, that’s cool if it works for you…but I could never do it” or anything.  So yes, that’s easier.  It’s harder when you find yourself still having to explain yourself to loved ones or to strangers and dealing with all the confusion and sometimes venom it causes.  It is not fun to be the cultural liason for lifestyle all the time.  It is exhausting and there’s only so many ways I can explain why jealousy sucks and how you shouldn’t think it’s a requisite of a committed relationship or any of the other things that people don’t want to understand because it might say something is imperfect in their views of relationships.  Being adversarial is hard for me.  It takes a lot of energy and resilience.  I run out periodically.  It takes such a toll on me that I have been waiting forever to write this particular post because how much can I wax poetic about poly before someone throws something at my face?  But whatever.  This is my life.  It is amazing.  Hate it if you want to, but it is amazing nonetheless.

Shaun and Ginny moved their office desks and computers to the house this past weekend and both of them consider home to be wherever their computers are…so my home is their home.  This is something I have hoped would happen for a while and I am still in a general state of shock about it.  Yesterday morning, Wes and I went to a diner and got home around 9:30am to find Shaun and Ginny both up and clicking away at their computers.  I was surprised by it, and then realized that it was one of the best things I’ve gotten to see in my own house recently.  It has been an interesting and sometimes tumultuous year.  The fact that this is happening will seem like a dream for quite a while I think, but it’s a good dream that stays with me throughout the day.

The main concern people have expressed to Wes and me is “Is the house big enough for 5 adults???”  Well, seemingly the answer is yes, especially if I gut the place for clutter.  I have been driving myself batty for the last several weeks going through things and getting rid of everything except what I really want, which as it turns out is not nearly as much as I thought it was.  The house is transforming into something rather impressive.  Shaun inspires me to do these things, to be neater, to take care of the house more responsibly (mainly because if I don’t, he will first and I can’t let him take all the credit now can I?).  Also, I’d like him to stick around for a while so I don’t want to push him out with piles of useless crap.  I’ve been working ridiculously hard on these things and there’s more to do, and though it is stressful and exhausting for me, it is worth every amount of effort to make the house so much more comfortable for everyone.

My house has gotten bigger.  I didn’t really think it was possible, but it is completely filled with amazing people almost all of the time.  As I have mentioned often when I speak of having Jessie as part of our home, there have been moments of profound perfection in our house since she arrived.  I thought of all the years before that I have been doing it so wrong.  I used to want everyone to go away.  I used to be terrified to share my space and not know when people were leaving because when there were people around I couldn’t be myself.  But now I am the same person alone as I am with people, but even stranger, I am better with these people around.  And now I feel like I actually have it all because I have all the people around me who make me so much better than I am on my own.  And yes, I am still insecure and flawed and all those nasty things that I fight constantly, and I wonder what I did to deserve all of this…

And then I tell myself to shut the hell up and enjoy it, dagnabbit.

Soon, the epic house cleaning/organizing will be over and we will just have to maintain it and fall into a sublime sense of comfort and normalcy in an existence that many would deem bizarre and undesirable.  I suppose it might be bizarre, but it doesn’t seem that way when I’m at home.  It feels like this is exactly how my life should be and how lucky am I to be living exactly the life that I should be living.  I suppose it seems undesirable to some, but I couldn’t ask for anything more than this.  Despite the fact that none of us has decided to procreate as of yet, we have ourselves a delightful family, a family of our choosing and I hope that this is the beginning of a life time of awesomeness and calm.

I sat down with Wes this morning for a cup of decaf and then finished up some dishes before I left for work.  Shaun came downstairs and I nearly passed out to see him out of bed before 8am but there he was.  I kissed them both goodbye, grabbed my grown-up sippy cup full of water and went out to the car to drive to work and listen to some Mama Cass and think about how wonderful it is to be weird.

Then, when the song was over…I put on some Journey.  Whatever, shut up.  Everyone secretly likes at least one Journey song.

It’s true!

Editorial Note: This post was written by Wes Fenza, long before the falling out of our previous quint household and the subsequent illumination of his abusive behavior, sexual assault of several women, and removal from the Polyamory Leadership Network and banning from at least one conference. I have left Wes’ posts  here because I don’t believe it’s meaningful to simply remove them. You cannot remove the truth by hiding it; Wes and I used to collaborate, and his thoughts will remain here, with this notice attached.

—–

A couple of days ago, JT Eberhard wrote a post about the five best atheists. His nominations:

1. PZ Myers
2. Greta Christina
3. Hemant Mehta
4. Dave Silverman
5. Matt Dillahunty

All good choices, but he left out one of my favorite bloggers and activists:

JT Eberhard

Unapologetic, brave, honest, and compassionate, JT Eberhard is everything that we could hope for from the next generation of activists. If you meet him at an event, he’s one of the warmest, most sincere people you’ll ever meet. And if you can’t find him, just send him a tweet at @jteberhard and he’ll let you know where to meet up. Aside from his hobby of eviscerating theist arguments, JT donates spends countless hours of his time to working for the Secular Student Alliance, fighting for the rights of students to grow up in an environment that doesn’t make them feel ostracized for being atheists. Call him a role model. Call him humanity’s best chance in a zombie apocalypse. Call him a friend. Just don’t call him a hero.