Thanks For Giving

View from the hotel we stayed at this past weekend.

As with everything in these last few weeks, it feels weird and uncomfortable to be moving through the motions knowing the suffering happening in Gaza and Israel. So today on Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays, writing about what I’m grateful for feels trite and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It also feels strangely necessary to acknowledge the things that have kept me going and continue to give me hope in this utterly hopeless time. This post is not at all meant to diminish or lessen the very real and devastating reality of all the other atrocities currently being committed in Gaza, Sudan, and Congo, but for me it’s a way to deal with my feelings of sadness and despair, my disappointment in international leaders for continuing to allow war to be a way to “resolve” “disagreements.”

This was Hard to Write: Gaza and Israel

I have never felt more nervous to write about anything in my life. It’s hard to navigate and express these feelings, because they can feel clumsy, foolish, and incomplete, especially on social media. But I’ve never felt more compelled to fight through those feelings because being silent is not an option in a time where we’re witnessing the ethnic cleansing of a group of people on a very public stage with impunity. I’m hoping without the limitations of social media, my thoughts here can be more complete and hopefully make sense.

I want to preface what I’m about to write with the fact that I am still reading and understanding the intricacies of the history of the region and that I am always open to evolving and learning more. I don’t mean to offend or alienate anyone with what I’m about to write, and if you’re feeling like maybe now is not the time to read this, please take some time for yourself. I’m also fully aware that I’m quite privileged to be able to write this and from where I’m writing this.

Too Online

A phrase that I’ve seen in the last several years that has become not only a perfect descriptor for people who take things too seriously on the internet, but also a warning of being comfortably immersed in a world of perception is “too online.” A combination of never truly facing the pandemic, its aftermath, and the ongoing effects, along with this ever evolving internet culture that confuses witty banter online with genuine connection and has led to parasocial relationships where someone feels entitled to share their opinions and be downright inappropriate with someone they follow online. I have seen this on many occasions involving celebrities and non-celebrities alike, the former being a little different as there is an elements of privacy you unfortunately lose being that recognizable. I want to emphasize here that it is bananas that this society at large, yes you entire world, has created a normalcy with celebrities’ personal lives being objectified and criticized mercilessly. People can share whatever they like about themselves, but it becomes a problem when it’s shared without consent. Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about today, but I still find it incredibly uncomfortable that I know some stranger’s favorite color and bra size…sigh… So this brings me to the few events that have happened that I want to share.

To Do: Release the Stress, Release the Time

I am feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with confusion, doubt, anger, frustration, panic, restlessness. All the emotions just seem to be toiling away while the world lurches downward in this endlessly chaotic doom spiral.

Boundary =/= Control

I have said it many times before, I truly believe everyone should go to therapy, but in the past few years with the undeniable influx in people wanting to cope with the anxiety and depression this pandemic has produced or exacerbated, the amount of clinical jargon being thrown around has reached a critical mass. People are starting to weaponize therapy as a means of control or explaining away shitty behavior. Of course, I’m referring to the recently leaked texts of one Jonah Hill, a celebrity who once played a teenager obsessed with drawing elaborate, beautiful pics of male genitalia. I’m sorry, I literally cannot see him without replaying that scene from Super Bad. I digress…

I won’t add all the texts here, but here’s a link where you can read them. It’s appalling how he used therapy buzzwords to justify controlling his then gf and the situation. However, what really FLOORED me was the repulsive response in the aftermath of those texts being shared.