Everything We Thought We Knew About Them Is Wrong

The Buddy and I watched “How to Train Your Dragon,” for the first time this past weekend. I know, I know…this movie is 4 years old, and there’s already a sequel, but I wasn’t a parent in 2010 and it’s only been about 6 months since The Bud has had the capacity to sit through a feature film, and…why am I trying to defend myself to you? The point is we both LOVED it. The Bud has asked to watch the “Twain Dragon show” every day since and I finally agreed last night. I even sat down to watch with him again, which I don’t typically do after I’ve already seen one of his shows. That’s how much I liked it.

The premise is this: On the island of Berk, Vikings live under constant threat of dragon raids. They’ve spent generations learning dragon ways so they could resist and defeat them, and there’s no higher mark of honor than to have killed a dragon in the public square. Hiccup, resident klutz and the most un-Viking of Vikings, is also the unfortunate son of Stoik, the village hero and head honcho. They don’t understand each other and rarely see eye-to-eye on anything, except that they both wish Hiccup could be a brawny dragon-killer, like every other male (and several females) in town. Hiccup gets an opportunity to win the villagers’ and his father’s respect by accidentally killing a rare dragon during a night raid. This gives him enough street cred for his father to agree to let him go to dragon-killing school, while unbeknownst to the entire village, Hiccup hasn’t killed the dragon. Instead he takes the opportunity to study the wounded creature, who he names Toothless, gaining his trust and discovering that dragon and human have more in common than he’d been taught to believe. An unlikely friendship is formed. (I should write for IMDB, seriously…)

One night, after school is over, Hiccup goes to the library to review a…dragon killing handbook, for lack of a better description. In it is outlined everything the Vikings have managed to learn about dragons—the different types, their anatomy and physiology, their strengths and weaknesses, their motivations, etc. By now, Hiccup and Toothless are friends and have learned a lot about each other and you can see how his personal relationship with this specific dragon makes reading this book an eye-opening and uncomfortable experience for him. While reading a general description of dragons, he comes across the phrase, “A dragon will always go for the kill.” That sentence was the basis for the Viking School’s “kill, or be killed” mantra. Hiccup has a flashback to his new friend; to the moment when Toothless lay vulnerable in the woods—bound, injured, and unable to defend himself against whatever Hiccup chose to do to him. Hiccup’s empathy for the defenseless creature won’t let him kill him. Instead, he cuts him free. While Hiccup is freeing him, Toothless’ face registers surprise and cunning, seeing his opportunity to kill the idiot human cutting the ropes that tie him. Once free, he lashes out at Hiccup, pinning him to a rock. Their eyes meet, and they finally see each other. They both realize that neither human nor dragon instinct is to kill, but simply to defend against attack. In the other’s eyes, they see no harm, so they can safely put down their defenses and walk away. Back in the school library, Hiccup says, “We’re wrong. Everything we thought we knew about them is wrong.”

I won’t tell you how it all works out, just in case you haven’t seen it and want to, but Hiccup’s revelation in the library really resonated with me, especially in light of what’s been happening in my city this week. I live in St. Louis, and right now, we’re in the national spot light for events that have unfolded over the last 6 days.

On August 9, in the village of Ferguson, Michael Brown, an 18 year old African American male, was shot multiple times by a police officer during an altercation and died on the scene. In the aftermath of the incident, protesters were incited to riot, setting fire to businesses, destroying property, and looting. It’s all we hear about on the radio, it’s all we see on the news and in print media, and it’s pretty much all anybody is talking about around the water cooler.

Reports of how it all happened are conflicting—some say Brown was walking in the middle of the street with a friend, when a twitchy cop insulted him and demanded that he get the f@** on the sidewalk, and grabbed him by the throat. Brown objected to the offense, the cop shot him once, and Brown ran away. The officer gave chase and though Brown stopped and put his hands up, the officer opened fire, shooting him multiple times. Others say Brown was up to no good and was belligerent with the cop when he tried to detain him. He tried to push the officer back into his vehicle and was shot once. He then ran away. When the officer gave chase, Brown reached for the officer’s weapon (clearly intent on harm), and was killed in the struggle over the side arm. The officer acted in self-defense, or the gun was passively discharged in the scuffle—an accidental death from an unfortunate series of bad choices on the part of Brown.

No one disputes that Brown was unarmed. No one disputes that after the shooting, his body was left in the middle of the street for hours, while local law enforcement secured the scene and attempted to control the crowd that gathered. No one disputes the racial tensions in the area, or the bad blood between local law enforcement and the city’s poorer, black contingent. No one disputes that this story is a familiar one, with the majority of Blacks, if not directly affected, “knowing a guy who knows a guy,” who had the very same thing happen to them. No one disputes that most of the damage done over these last 6 days in Ferguson (hell, over the last 300 years in our country) has been done to innocent people. It'll be a while before the real story comes out, and even then, it may never be the whole truth, but where we are now is what counts. On both sides of the fence, basic human dignity has been violated, and people are done.

Since Saturday, I’ve seen things that break my heart. A mother grieving the tragic loss of her son, because a mother's love doesn't ask whether or not a child deserved what he had coming to him. The Quik Trip at Ground Zero burning to the ground, the owners guilty of nothing more than running a business where something tragic happened. Looters slipping through broken windows with items they did not buy, stolen from people who did nothing to deserve the violation. Tear gas being fired into crowds of protestors whose intentions were not to incite riots or to impede traffic, but to speak loudly enough, finally, finally to be heard. Every day, I’ve read posts on social media from friends, family, and concerned citizens, full of sadness, confusion, and fear for our future. Crowds of peaceful protestors and people praying that the madness would stop, questions be answered, and justice served. People keep asking, “What went wrong?” Whose fault is it? What insidious system is to blame and how can we shut it down so this doesn’t happen again?

I say, none of that matters. All that matters is that people are involved. We must start seeing each other as more the same than we are different; each person at his core a divine creation, worthy of dignity, respect and a voice. With our strained racial history, that won’t happen until we're willing to undo everything we thought we knew about the others that we fear. It won’t change until we can look into our enemies’ eyes and see ourselves—that we’re more alike than we are different—to consider that everything you thought you knew about them might be wrong.

For that to happen, we must break through the barriers of fear, distrust, anger, and the bad decisions that are fueled by those feelings, and appeal to each other’s humanity. When a person’s God-given dignity is violated, don’t say, “Why are you mad at me? It wasn’t my fault.” Don’t say, “Well, you/he obviously deserved it and here’s why.” Don’t say, “You’re expressing your feelings about it the wrong way.”

Just say, I’m so very sorry. Tell me how that makes you feel. What can I do to help?

Let’s see what happens when we do that, can we?

*******

I’ve started to see some encouraging reports from Ferguson of people reaching out to each other and successfully bridging the gaps between them and it makes my heart glad. I, for one, can use some more of that type of news! If you have an anecdote, a news article link, etc to share that shows the people of St. Louis putting their best sides forward, please leave it in the comments below. I need some hopeful late-night reading.

To All the Lost Girls

I've been avoiding this post for a while, but it keeps welling up inside me, so I finally had to do something about it. It's a story of hope, but in order to get to it, I have to tell some of my personal ick, and while I may only have five readers, that's five more people than had heard this story as of yesterday, which makes me a bit itchy, if I'm honest. So, to prove that I'm not scared of you guys (lies!), welcome to my personal 12-Steps.

My name is Leida, and I'm a Lost Girl. You won't find the definition of Lost Girl in the Urban Dictionary or in Encyclopedia Britannica (unless Beyonce puts it in a song, in which case, it'll be common vernacular real quick). There's probably some proper DSMV category definition for people who fit the bill, but those of us who share the name don't need any of that. We know who we are, psychological reference book or no.

We're the ones who along the journey learned that the way to fill the holes that hurt us so badly was to compromise our boundaries. We've had at least one internal monologue that sounds like this: "I'm willing to compromise my boundaries in order to ...[]" fill in the blank. To be loved, to feel good, to avoid pain, to be seen or heard...and I'm sure you could each add to the list. We decided that we'd rather let a person or circumstance walk all over what we know to be best for us, in order not to feel badly anymore, even just for a moment. Then we chase the pain-free moments, stringing them together in a chain of bad decisions that chip away at our dignity, our personhood and our divine creation.

Lest you be reading this feeling like I'm killing you softly, describing your personal pain, please know you're not alone. Not by a long shot. My personal monologue has been for a long time that I'm willing to be treated any way, by any man, in order not to be abandoned. I'm the Lost Girl who always, always stays too long at the party. Let me explain.

My Lost Girl persona goes back a long way. I carry the last name of a man who didn't show up to the hospital on the day I was born, or for anything else in my life. Our interactions have been few, brief and perfunctory. He wouldn't recognize me if he ran into me on a street corner (this happened). On a conscious level, his abandonment didn't affect me--I had a wonderful stepfather who raised me--but even still, it left a mark--I developed a fear that I wasn't worth showing up for and that there was nothing I could do about it. From there, I learned by watching a string of men pass through my mother's life and the lives of her closest female friends, that men don't stay, no matter what you say or do. I also learned from the women's behavior that there were no lengths that a woman shouldn't be willing to go to get a man to stay--no matter how insignificant or ineffectual said man was, or how little he did to improve the landscape of their lives.

To my credit, it took a long time for this to become part of my personal story--I fought it. I remember the impotent anger I felt as a child, as I watched my mother accept the poor treatment of others--mostly men--in her life. I watched her return over and over to relationships and scenarios that diminished her, all because she believed having a man in her life, any man, made her somebody, and I hated it. Seeing this, I made a childish choice to avoid love, to avoid needing anyone, to avoid pain. Unfortunately, all that did was make me really unpracticed at relationships when the inevitable time came when my adult needs overrode my immature resolve. I dipped into the love/dating water a few times and failed. In my confusion, I fell into patterns I didn't even know I'd developed to cope. I unleashed my latent Lost Girl. Each time I didn't succeed at a relationship, I became more discouraged, taking each hit as a new abandonment. Since the guys weren't around to blame (not that they deserved to be--it's okay to decide not to love someone or commit to them), I turned my blame in on myself. My problem was obviously that I was too rigid, too closed off to what it really took to be loved by someone else. So, I gave a little, compromising the boundaries I'd set up to protect myself more each time (even the healthy ones), until the voice that chanted softly, do anything to avoid being abandoned, wasn't so quiet anymore. Instead of white noise, it became the soundtrack of my life. I was the best friend, filling in the spaces that a girlfriend wasn't currently filling in the object of my affection’s life with pseudo dates, covert make-outs, pillow talks, etc, until she did show up, leaving me relegated to the background, where, let’s face it, I’d always been anyway. Then I was a serial re-dater, returning to relationships that I hoped would get better, if we just gave it One. More. Try. What’s the definition of insanity? Yeah…

I lost count of the times I let myself be used, betrayed and lied to, all the while hoping that if I just held on a little longer, the Other Person would realize what a treasure I was and choose to do right by me. It never once occurred to me to do right by myself. Until one day, it did.

I woke up one day at rock bottom to see that I’d given up all my power. I’d been eating myself up with rage and feelings of betrayal against the forces that were conspiring to make me hate myself—forces I’d personally fostered. Anyone who's ever hurt me has only ever done it once without my permission. I’m the one who attacked her boundaries in order to control what I felt was out of my control. I let the shaming little voice in my head convince me that my bad decisions defined me and each time I believed that, the little voice won. I understand now that this is SO not true.

The distinction matters to me. As a Christian, I know that Jesus didn't wait until I quit my sinful ways to die for me, so that makes me pretty special, even when I continually mess up. The unconditionally loving mother in me knows that even when my son is the orneriest of the ornery, I still believe, hope and expect the best from him. I celebrate with him every time he succeeds and I grieve with him each of his failures, because he's worth showing up for, no matter how messy he is. I know that I still have principles, no matter how much I violate them, and that gives me hope to try again another day.

I am no longer willing to stay too long at the party, not when I’m not having a good time. It’s beneath me; beneath who I was created to be. And that shaming little voice in my head, trying to write my story? It's just plain annoying.

I guess that makes me a Recovering Lost Girl. See ya at the next meeting.

Hope Is a B!@#*

I watched The Shawshank Redemption for the first time a couple months ago. No…I wasn't born under a rock. I’d tried to watch it a couple of times over the years, but never got very far. I couldn't handle how unfair it was. No matter that Morgan Freeman is a cinematic god or where IMDB ranked it on its Best Movies of All Time list, I couldn’t get through it. This time, my boyfriend (who loves it) razzed me enough that I submitted to sit through the whole movie with him. I cried the whole time. It was all still there—the blunt portrayal of prison brutality, the misuses of power, the miscarriages of justice, the sadness—and I’ve finally figured out what bothered me most. It was the unrelenting thread of Hope, against all reason.


I hate to be a downer, but I’ve been angry at Hope for a long time. She makes it worse and sometimes, I wish she’d go away.

I've seen loved ones disappointed to be living lives off course of where they hoped they'd be. I've seen a friend start a new career with ideals, talent and work ethic enough to change the world, bogged down by office politics, adult mean girls, overwork and the tension of work/life balance. I’ve watched a dear friend watch as those she loved married and started families of their own, while this secret wish of hers hasn’t been granted. I've watched a sister wait months for a call about adopting a newborn. I saw her joy in finally being chosen by a birth mom. I participated as she loved her sweet baby as if she came from her own body and I watched her struggle to survive the pain and disillusion of each day after the child was returned to her birth family, while everybody else in the world went on with their lives. I've listened to a friend try to make sense of the roller coaster that is her new marriage. I’ve listened as a beautiful friend described her hopes for a child that she hasn’t been able to conceive, apologizing for the tears and the naked longing in her voice. To them all, there is nothing to be said, except, “I wish you had what you long for. You deserve it more than anyone I’ve ever known.” I understand longing; I’ve lived most of my life aching with it. Often, I don't sleep for it. I blame Hope for the sleepless nights. Maybe if we didn’t want IT, whatever IT is, so damned badly, we could get some sleep. We could be happy and content where we are, instead of grieving what’s lost, what’s revealed as impossible/impractical/insurmountable or what’s simply out of reach.

As a Christian, I know there are answers to comfort me. I can recite them if prompted and mostly believe what I say, but I'm being as honest as I know how to be when I say this stuff is way harder in practice than in theory. In the real world, marriages end in divorce. Children die before their parents. Mean people win. People cheat, lie and steal from others. People I love let me down and hurt me in ways that leave slow-healing wounds. My mistakes get bigger, and the consequences cast a broader wake. The pain of disappointed hopes sends us to therapy, to the bottom of pill bottles, to affairs, or to religion. But against all odds, Hope hangs on.

When the world says, “Give up;” Hope whispers, “try it one more time.”

Hope had been playing the same broken record in my heart for years and now I have to hear it from Hollywood, too? That’s why I couldn’t stand the movie! But this time, it got through. The message didn’t change; I did. In watching others struggle and looking inward at my own journey of Hope, I am finally developing the depth to see that the redemption part of the story is only possible if you don’t give up Hope that it’s possible. Even since I started writing this post, I’ve grown. Choosing not to give up hope on your heart’s deepest desire might be the bravest thing any of us can do in this life. While theirs are not my stories to tell, I can attest to the beauty that can come from continuing to reach for what Hope tells you is possible. Andy Dufresne’s words are certainly true, when he writes:

Remember…hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Hang in there, friends.