Disruption

I remember just looking at the title “Girl Interrupted” and thinking, that’s me. I didn’t even know what it meant, but somehow in my growth mentally and spiritually I was disrupted and interrupted.

my personal growth at 5, then 7, then 8, and 11 years old were disrupted until it stopped. now it seems i have continued that pattern alone and unto my self. i didn’t write yesterday, for example, because I reprioritized my addictions over my goal. a goal of which i was one day into.

the funny thing is i don’t know why i lie to myself or why i believe my lies. part of me thinks this is pretty funny. the other part of me does not.

while i think flexibility in thinking and decision making is important, quiet adherence to a goal path for a purpose will result in achieving whatever that goal is. so, how important is that goal? i’d say health is about as important and personal as it can get. now i’m not going to beat myself up about it, but i wanted to acknowledge it and be accountable.

moving on.

one of the things that have been on my mind is homelessness. probably because the town i live in has a big homeless problem right now. some people think it’s okay for the homeless to camp all over the place, others think the homeless encampments should be illegal. people are building tiny houses for the homeless. maybe the church thinks the homeless are the next population to colonize. there are halfway houses and homeless shelters.

i was so curious about this when i was a teenager, i went to live in a homeless shelter in Knoxville, Tennessee just to see what it would be like and how a person could lift themselves out of homelessness.

First, I was accepted. there would be meals, chores, and a clean bed.

great! i thought.

chores. they gave me a toothbrush and a bucket and ushered me and several others into the community bathroom and showers which was white tile and grout floor to ceiling. we were assigned sections.

now my mother was japanese and my father was a marine. i knew how to clean shit.

nope, do it again, she said. nope, you’re not done. nope, it’s not clean.

they wanted something like a part time job of cleaning out of all of us while they stood over us, arms folded in their chests. it would not be finished until they said it was finished even if it was clean. eight hours of this.

power.

give power to those who want to abuse it and they will. but why?

i went out later that day to find a job. i found one right away at the subway down the plaza from the homeless shelter.

the nice indian lady was very happy to have what she perceived to be a ‘white girl’ working for her. my english of course was perfect, i knew math. she had me on register and making sandwiches.

at the end of the second or third day, she asked me about where i was living or something, maybe my phone number. i explained to her the address was the homeless shelter. she became angry. i felt this was a strange reaction. i didn’t lie to her — but i should have.

abruptly i was on bathroom duty and to clean under the mats. all the really gross stuff. equally abruptly she fired me and kicked me out the door. she did not pay me.

so how was i to get ahead if the abusive situation at the homeless shelter kept me cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and the job i was hired to wouldn’t pay me much less keep me on?

i thought of the family i saw move in to the shelter while i was there: mom, dad, three little kids. somehow their lives were disrupted.

how would they get ahead?

now i’m not gonna lie — mental health is definitely an issue. strangely enough before i was in Tennessee homeless, i was in high school in my town and i was a volunteer for PADS. PADS stands for Public Action to Deliver Shelter. it is an emergency shelter program for the homeless and it was in some church, but was not affiliated. we served dinner and lay out sleeping pads or cots for everyone. there was a woman there. she would just smoke quietly by herself. never spoke a word to me although i’d sit there with her. if you tried to take the ashtray away, she might have some kind of fit i was warned. she had longish white/ grey hair and I wondered about her story. she wasn’t dirty. she got herself to the PADS by 7pm and was out at 7am — as were the rules. how did she have that cognizance yet was homeless and mentally infirm?

maybe she just gave up. maybe she too was interrupted. who could blame her. now i knew: people suck, the world can really suck. well, not the world, but society: the people’s world.

despite the blanket story and the homeless story, i still ended up volunteering all over the place throughout the years and remain philanthropic at heart to this day. yet now also i realize i have a quiet moment in time to be self reflective and get myself in better alignment with my higher, more intelligent self. i’m grateful. and after all these years, i still wish i could change society for the better: in other words, the ideal situations would be the girl gives back the blanket, the indian lady doesn’t freak out on me because of that one little word “homeless”. there’s more of course. in my ideal world, people don’t litter or abuse their children or skip out on child support payments or get power hungry (when really they are super low on the totem pole anyway).

com·pas·sion /kəmˈpaSHən/ noun

sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.

hmmmm. does the dalai lama have ‘sympathetic pity’ for all life? seems condescending.

sym·pa·thy /ˈsimpəTHē/ noun

1. feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. “they had great sympathy for the flood victims”

2. understanding between people; common feeling. “the special sympathy between the two boys was obvious to all”

feeling sorrow.

pit·y /ˈpidē/

noun: the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others. a cause for regret or disappointment.

verb: feel sorrow for the misfortunes of.

maybe i think it seems condescending because i don’t want anyone to feel sorrow because of me. yet, i think it is very important for people to have compassion. to not only have it but to demonstrate it. this, to me, is the most important.

but people don’t always. funny, isn’t it? so the question, my question, is: How do we teach compassion on a global scale? compassionate people cannot be in every home guiding every parent or brother or uncle. religion is not the answer because these big ones are brutal. all this old testament stuff. i’m including christianity, islam and judaism in this, but might as well include hinduism as well because of the cast system which makes really no sense and is maybe why the indian lady at the subway freaked out on me — i don’t know.

also, isn’t it funny how christianity, islam and judaism are considered Western religion when they all originated in the middle east? and isn’t it funny how they’re all part of the same story, but violently fight with each other and have been for millennia? just cut it out guys, really. it’s like fighting over imaginary stories, but if you add a “from the gods” in there then suddenly it’s okay yet “the gods” are imaginary too. so there are those who deeply believe, and those who know it’s imaginary and are manipulating those who believe. i think where people fall in pecking order also matters, but maybe not.

i would say this religion thing is the cause of it all — but the thing is, it’s full of people and each person or bunch of people could simply decide: No More Fighting. No More Abuse. No More Littering and Polluting. etc

and then, at the end of it all, i realize i am only in control of this one person and that is me. is frustration the cause of my giving up, my abuse of my self? or is it simply pattern related and i need to break the pattern? both maybe.