Lifeway

I hadn’t thought of this in a while, but with the recent news that Lifeway Christian Resources is closing its physical stores, I had a memory I wanted to share.  In 1999, I had just moved back to Nashville after spending a few years in Kentucky, and I was looking for a decent job.  A family member worked for LCR, and she forwarded me one of their applications.  I never finished filling it out.  After reading their policies, it just felt creepy.  I still considered myself Christian at the time, and hadn’t yet realized I was trans, but their policies still felt discriminatory and only borderline legal.

I had to go through some old CDs to find this, but I'd saved this bit of text from the application.  Note that the very top of the application claimed "We are an equal employment opportunity employer."  The definition of "equal opportunity employer" (according to Merriam Webster) is "an employer who agrees not to discriminate against any employee or job applicant because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, physical or mental disability, or age."

The first few pages of the application asked the normal questions you would expect to see on an application.  Then there was a section titled "Personal Information", which asked your religious denomination, and where you attend church.  Finally, there was a section titled "Lifestyle Considerations" that had the following paragraphs:

Because of the unique and special nature of LifeWay Christian Resources, employees are expected to manifest conduct and actions which project an image consistent with the expressed purpose and mission of Lifeway. Southern Baptist churches have voluntarily given LifeWay a place of influence based upon the values of trust and respect.  It is, therefore; imperative employees favorably represent LifeWay.

Conduct which brings embarrassment to LifeWay or impedes its credibility with constituents is unacceptable.  Conduct or other actions inconsistent with that normally expected of Southern Baptist denominational employees is unacceptable.  Similarly, conduct or other actions perceived as inconsistent are unacceptable.  Examples of such conduct are involvement with alcohol, illegal drugs, pre-marital or extra-marital sex, cohabitation apart from the marriage relationship, homosexuality, and outside interests and pursuits which would normally be considered incompatible with LifeWay's mission.

LifeWay Christian Resources has not only the right, but also the responsibility to do everything possible to ensure the stated purpose and mission of LifeWay continues in its highest tradition and is not harmed or impeded by unacceptable behavior on the part of its employees.

Consistent with this purpose, LifeWay's policy is to ensure all applicant and employee behavior meets LifeWay's standards of acceptable conduct.  As a part of this policy, and individual's current and past conduct is reviewed.  Therefore, please respond accordingly to the inquiry below.  A yes answer does not automatically disqualify you from further consideration for employment, as each individual's circumstances are reviewed.

Do you have, or have you had, any lifestyle, conduct, or activity which would project an image which could embarrass LifeWay or impede its credibility with its constituents as referred to above?  (yes) (no) If yes,please explain:

I don’t know if these are still their policies today.  If they are, I wonder if they’re still so open about it.

Jack of all Trades, Master of None

I think my biggest problem is a lack of focus.  It’s been this way all my life.  I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.  (I still don’t.)  My brother had a laser-guided focus – he wanted to be an artist from a very early age, and never strayed anywhere else.  Sure, he had other hobbies, but none of them were potential careers.  Meanwhile, I kept going back and forth between wanting to draw comic books, write novels, and program video games.  I think I had a natural talent for some of those things, but I just couldn’t concentrate on any one hobby long enough to become competent.

I created several video games for the Commodore 64.  Nothing particularly complicated, mostly Defender-style shooters.  I didn’t actually know a programming language, I used a program called “Garry Kitchen’s Gamemaker”.  Additionally, I bought every game I could find that allowed you to design your own levels.  Excitebike.  Wrecking Crew.  Lode Runner.  More recently, Super Mario Maker.  I loved level design.  But I never got so into it that I learned how to make games from scratch.  Learning a computer language would have taken a level of dedication I didn’t possess.  I still sometimes think about learning to program, but I just can’t make myself start.  I’m afraid of investing money into classes I might not finish.

I drew comic books.  On notebook paper, just for my friends to read.  I started around third grade, and kept going until I was in my mid-20s.  My art did improve during that time – how could it not improve at least a little – but I never took the time to get really good at drawing.  I still sometimes get the urge to start a webcomic, but something shiny always distracts me before I go too far in that direction.

I wrote short stories.  This was mostly later, after high school.  Whenever I created a character for D&D, I would write a short story about them.  I wrote a full novel about some space bounty hunters, and several short stories with the same characters.  I still go back to them now and then, trying to fix some flaws and remove the worst clichés.  I don’t care about whether my stories make any money, it would be nice just to have something out there, perhaps on the Kindle store.  But I’m afraid I don’t have the attention span to complete them.

I’ve always been attracted to hybrid hobbies, ones that combine two or more skills without demanding you be an expert in any of them.  Drawing comic books took both writing and drawing skills – but less writing than a novelist and less artistic skill than a painter.  For a few years I made virtual paper dolls for a program called KISS (“Kisekae Set System”), which required small amounts of art and programming.  I even wrote short stories to go along with some of my KISS dolls.  I spent over a year designing a persistent world module for NeverWinter Nights – which took small amounts of computer scripting, writing dialogue, and general creative worldbuilding.

I have random weird skills without the secondary skills required to make the primary skills monetizable.  For example, I’m very good at proofreading (as long as I didn’t write it).  When I read books, spelling errors just jump out at me as if they were written in bold type.  Unfortunately, I don’t read fast enough to proofread for a living, and the invention of the spellchecker probably cut down on the number of professional proofreaders out there anyway.

Successful people have passion, usually for something very specific.  I don’t have specific passions.  I don’t latch onto specific hobbies.  I get caught up in odd minor aspects of hobbies that never result in me finishing a project.  I’m certain I fit in somewhere in the world.  I’m certain there’s a job or hobby out there that would fit me like a glove.  Everyone wants to be a rock star or a famous actor, but nobody dreams about being a key grip or lighting director.  I’m pretty sure I’m designed to have one of those technical jobs that nobody ever talks about, but the fact that nobody ever talks about it is the reason I haven’t heard of it.  Something in the entertainment industry, that requires minor knowledge of two or three fields without needing expertise in any of them.  Nothing that would put me on camera, nothing that would make me a household name, and I’m fine with that.

I know there’s a job out there that I could be passionate about, I just don’t know how to find it.

The Best A Man Can Get

So I kept hearing about the uproar over Gillette’s new “anti-man propaganda” commercial.  I had to wonder, what did they do?  Did they say all men are rapists?  Toxic masculinity is a tricky issue; not everybody understands what it is, or why it’s just as bad for men as it is for women.  I wasn’t sure a razor company could really do the subject justice, and it might come off as if they are complaining about all men.  Ready to cringe, I watched the video:

…that’s it?  Really?  This is what is causing men everywhere to throw tantrums like cranky two-year olds?  The commercial basically says, “Don’t be a bully, please treat women with respect, and always be the best person you can be.”  It doesn’t say, “You, yes you specifically, are a bully who sexually harasses women.”  Nor does it say, “Only men can be bullies, women are perfect.” 

Apparently in this day and age, the phrase “Don’t be a jerk” is considered part of the Liberal Agenda.  When America elected a bully for president in 2016, I was disappointed but at least there were explanations – a lot of people didn't vote, gerrymandering gives disproportionate power to certain voters, underhanded voter purges kept some people from voting, etc…  basically, the outcome of the election doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual attitude of the average American.

But this does.  As I write this, the YouTube video has a million dislikes, and only about half as many likes.  I browsed the comments, and couldn’t find a single post that sided with Gillette.  This is what bothers me most.  This isn’t die-hard Republicans saying, “I hate Trump but I like his tax proposals better than what the Democrats are offering, so I’ll vote for him and try to ignore his childishness.”  This is people actually saying, “Bullying is fine.  Sexually harassment is fine.  Toxic masculinity is fine.”  I can not put into words how disappointed I am in the people who hate the commercial.

Let me ask you this:  When you watch the Gillette commercial, do you feel personally called out?  If so, why?  Are you a bully/rapist?  If not, then the commercial isn’t really talking about you.  If you still feel called out on some level… maybe you need to explore why you feel that way.  Do you subconsciously feel like maybe you are a bully, and don’t like the commercial for pulling at that particular string?  If so, use this as an opportunity to explore those feelings.  Introspection is good.

Some of the complainers simply said variations of, “A razor company shouldn’t be spouting political opinions.”  And that’s fair, except:

1. “Don’t be a bully or rapist” shouldn’t be a political opinion.  It should be the default.

2. I seriously doubt these people would be complaining if Gillette’s “political opinion” was something they agreed with, or at least something they felt neutral about.  If Gillette’s ad said, “Here at Gillette, we like mustard more than ketchup,” people would probably just say, “huh, that’s a weird ad” and get on with their lives.

The Gillette ad is not attacking masculinity, it is attacking Toxic Masculinity.  This is defined as "the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia and wanton violence" (Terry Kupers).  Maybe the commercial doesn't make it clear that it's only attacking one type of masculinity, but it gives plenty of examples of activities that are clearly wrong.  It's not like it's saying, "have a penis, go to jail."

I just don't know what to think any more.  The country has become so polarized the last few years, and while we like to think of it as Republicans/Conservatives vs Democrats/Liberals, more and more it looks like the divide is between bullies and people who actually care about their fellow humans.

Cheers and Tears

Do you ever lie awake at night berating yourself for things you said more than thirty years ago?  Sometimes it helps to purge those inner demons by writing it all out. 

In sixth and seventh grade, I was kind of a jerk.  I don’t think I was a horrible person, but I was extremely full of myself, and I always thought I was the smartest person in the room. 

Let’s look at the TV show “Cheers”.  If you watch the first episode, it looks like it’s going to be the story of Diane Chambers.  She’s framed as the “Only Sane Person” in an environment full of kooks, kind of like Dick Loudon in Newhart.  When she got a job at the bar, it was like Dian Fossey doing research by living among the apes.  At least, that was my interpretation at the time.  It didn’t take the writers long to realize that the audience was identifying more with the lowbrow characters than with the intellectual Diane, who many viewers found annoying.  The focus shifted appropriately, and Diane’s intellectualism was treated more like a character flaw than an advantage.

But not for me.  I continued to identify with Diane, because that’s how I saw the world.  I was the only smart person in a school full of idiots, the only nice person in a school full of jerks, the only refined person in a school full of lowlifes.  I would use words like “au contraire” because I thought it made me sound smart, when I actually just came across as pompous.  I still remember the first time one of my classmates called me “conceited”, and while I took offense at the time, he was definitely right. 

Pop psychology often suggests boosting your child’s ego.  “You should constantly tell your children how smart they are, to build their confidence and make them more self-assured.”  It sounds like good advice, but the problem is, the kids who need it don’t get it and vice versa.  It seems like behind every raging egomaniac, there’s a parent who won’t stop gushing about how smart their child is.  My own parents ran hot and cold on me.  I can remember specific instances of them bolstering my ego (and sometimes even seeing through it as empty praise), but they (well, my mom) also tore me down a lot too.  It’s a wonder I’m as well-adjusted -Cufflinks! Nostrils! –as I am.

I don’t know at what point I grew out of my conceitedness (not that it’s completely gone of course), but I imagine the stresses over the next few years changed me a lot.  Not just the migraines and related problems, but I actually started to fail at things for the first time in my life, and it was a huge blow to my ego.  Today… well, I’m not good at self-awareness, so I’m not sure how other people see me.  Nor do I think I want to know.  But internally, my self-confidence is shot.  If I say anything egotistical, it’s either a joke or an act of self-preservation, because in my head I’m worthless.

I’ve never been accused of being the sharpest tool in the shed, but I have been accused of being a tool, so at least that’s progress.

Right Now

So this is what’s been going on in my life lately:

A few weeks ago, my wife had to get surgery again.  This is her third operation in three years.  In 2015 she had to go to the emergency room for diverticulitis (blog here).  Last year she had to get part of her thyroid removed.  This month’s surgery was for a hernia that developed as a result of the 2015 operation.

Money is extremely tight.  I am almost done paying off the medical bills from the 2015 and 2017 operations, but right now I’m getting bombarded with bills from this year’s procedure.  I’ve had to call a ton of different offices to arrange monthly payments for different balances.  Plus, of course, my wife can’t work right now.  She took a full month off work (without pay), so we’re out her income for that time period.  I make enough money to pay all the bills, but that’s about it.  We rely on her income to pay for groceries, gas, and other sundries.  So we’re going to be living on Ramen noodles for a few months.

I’ve got the bill schedule worked out, for the most part.  We’ll be doing slightly better by the end of November, and things will continue to improve each month.  By March I should have all the medical bills paid off, maybe sooner.  It’s mostly just getting through the next month that’s going to hurt.

When she had the emergency three years ago, we started a GoFundMe to help with the bills.  I’m not going to do that this time.  I’m still embarrassed about doing it last time.  But we are in just as bad shape as we were then.  I laugh it off on Facebook, but things are bad.

Finances aside, it’s been a difficult month.  She’s in terrible pain, but she’s improving.  At least this time she doesn’t have a huge open wound we have to take care of.  I’m having to do more around the house, which is fine except for the cat boxes.  My problem is two-fold:  I am allergic to the dust, and I am easily grossed out.  Sure, fine, call me a wimp, I deserve it.  But I’ve never been able to get used to that aspect of cat ownership.  I try, I really do.  But when scooping cat litter, I find it very hard not to throw up.  Combine that with my allergies, and I’m just a sniffling nauseated mess for hours afterward.

And then of course there’s the car.  One of our cars is having engine problems.  It looks like it might be an easy fix, but I simply don’t have the time, money, or energy to think about it right now.  I don’t care if it’s a $15 part I can install myself (and it might be).  I just can’t deal with it until life normalizes a bit.  I still start it twice a week so the battery doesn’t die, but that’s all I can commit to right now.  The good news is that our other car works just fine, and my wife can’t drive right now anyway, so there’s no vehicle conflicts.  Not that there would be, since she works at home.

And of course, I’ve got a few health issues of my own, that I keep having to put on the back burner.  If we can just have two years in a row where my wife doesn't need surgery, maybe I'll have the money to look into my own problems.  God I hate our capitalist medical system.

One of our cats had a stroke earlier this year.  She’s okay now, but she’s on a special diet and medication.  Yet another expense.  Also, we’ve had to separate her from the rest of the cats, so she has her own room now.  This house is small enough as it is, but one bedroom has been designated for a single cat.  I’ve had to put some of my hobbies on hold for a while because of it, due to the space limitations.  I love that cat, but it’s asking a lot.

It’s not just money, it’s sanity.  Some RPGs have “sanity points” that can be lost or gained, and going over a certain threshold can have major repercussions for your character.  When talking about depression, people often use the spoon analogy – that you wake up with a certain number of spoons, and doing certain activities costs a certain number of spoons.  When you’re out of spoons, you simply don’t have the energy to deal with anything else that day.

Changing the cat litter costs me a lot of sanity points/spoons.  I could probably get a few back if I could find some time to relax with my hobbies, but those aren’t doable right now.  The time I do spend relaxing right now is ruined by anxiety – How long am I going to get to sit here?  Do I even have time to load up a video game or get my paints out?

And then there’s everything going on in the world today.  Politics are hitting home in a way that they never have before.  I don't really want to rant about politics right now, but the government is worse than it's ever been in my lifetime.  Look, it's no secret that I'm a liberal democrat, but I used to be able to tolerate the Republican party.  For me, politics has always been about voting for the lesser of two evils.  Sometimes your party doesn't win, but life goes on.  But this administration is making mistakes too big to ignore.

Donald Trump isn't a Republican.  He's just an asshole.  And too many Republicans like him just for not being a Democrat.  If you voted for Trump, I forgive you.  But the best thing you can do right now is admit you were fooled.  If you still support Trump after all the racist, misogynist, transphobic, classist crap he's done, then I know it's for one of three reasons:

1. You're completely avoiding the news, or you're in such incredible denial that you think Fox News is the only credible source of current events.

2. You'll vote for anyone with an "R" next to their name.  Fine, be that way, but I never want to hear the phrase "yellow dog democrat" again.  EVER.

3. You are such a self-centered bigot that you don't care who gets hurt as long as they aren't a white male like yourself.

Dear Republicans:  You can still be a good Republican and hate Donald Trump.  I promise you, you can.  He is making your party look bad.  I truly believe that he's going to go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever, but the Republican party doesn't have to go down with him.

Nixon is often said to be "the most popular president nobody voted for."  But you won't be able to deny you voted for Trump like you did with Nixon, not when we can just scroll down your Facebook feed and find all your pro-Trump memes.  If you care at all about what your grandchildren think of you, withdraw your support now.

These next elections could literally decide the fate of the world.  I’ve already voted in this one.  If you haven't voted yet, please consider voting Democrat.  I don't care if you're Republican - remember, Trump isn't.  Trump is just Trumpican.  I've heard several former Republicans say variations of the following lately: "I didn't leave the Republican party, the Republican party left me."

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but if Republicans really want the Republican party to survive, they need to vote Democrat in the next few elections.   If the Republicans start losing by a landslide over the next few years, maybe they'll get the message.  Maybe instead of being so openly bigoted, they'll go back to just being what they used to be.  But they need a wake-up call first.  They need to know that Republican voters won't take it.

I promise you, the world isn't going to end if the Democrats get in power again.  Let the Republicans earn it back, by transforming their party back into something less extreme.

But that's all wishful thinking on my part. I don't know if people have changed, or if they're just less shy about their true colors now.  I see all the pro-Trump posts on Facebook, and it absolutely amazes me the things people aren't afraid to say.  If Trump were impeached tomorrow, it still wouldn't make a difference to me, because now I see the world differently.  

I am severely depressed.  This is not the world I want to live in.  These are not the people I want to think of as fellow Americans.  When did we go from "Great American Melting Pot" to "Caucasians are the master race?"  Why is it okay to appoint a rapist to the Supreme Court, but transgender people aren't even allowed to use the bathroom?  Why is bigotry considered acceptable behavior now? 

Despite all the crap going on, overall I'm pretty lucky.  We have decent medical insurance, with an annual out-of-pocket maximum that keeps us from going bankrupt.  Best case scenario, we’re currently even.  Maybe we can find the money for actual groceries, or maybe we have to eat nothing but canned beans and Ramen until Christmas.  But I’ve got the bills covered, and we will survive.

But here’s the thing:  Absolutely nothing else can go wrong until March.  I’ve used up all my backup money, called in all my favors, redeemed all my freebies.  If our primary car has suddenly develops an engine problem, we’re sunk.  If our refrigerator dies, we’re sunk.  If another one of our cats has a vet emergency, we’re sunk.  Sure, some of these emergencies could be financed, but I won’t have the money to make the monthly payments.  We are going to have to be very lucky to make it to March.

Back and Forth Hatred

Some people see the world like it’s all sports teams.  You don’t have to have a real reason for hating another group, it’s enough to know that you’re on different sides.  That kind of thing flies when you’re in high school, but not enough people drop it when they become adults.  I mean, this is hatred here, not friendly rivalry.  People are actually getting hurt, but some people only care about the ones on their own side.  Everything is Hatfields and McCoys.  So many feuds go back so far that no one cares who threw the first punch. 

We are constantly at war with various middle eastern countries.  Sometimes their citizens only know what their government tells them.  All they know about America is that we keep sending airplanes to bomb their schools.  No matter what our intentions, there is no reason in the world they should think of America as the good guys.  Their kids grow up, they hate America, they fight back.  We still call them the bad guys, even though we’re the ones who killed their parents.  It is a war fought out of ignorance.  I’m not even saying we should stop – we have to defend ourselves, right?  But we do need to step back and examine they psychology of it sometimes.  Figure out if there are any other possible solutions besides sending in more bombers.  Find ways to win over the populace, so they overthrow their own evil government, or arrest their own terrorists.

The fact is, there are bad people on both sides of every issue.  You shouldn’t judge an entire group for that.  But also, in every fight there are people who are second/third/fourth/etc generation fighters, people who don’t remember when the first punch was thrown, and only know that the other side has always been mean to them.

A white child might not know that his father started a feud by burning a cross on their neighbor's lawn.  He just knows that the black kids next door won’t play with him, so he gets the wrong impression and grows up to be a second-generation racist.  But are we really going to blame the neighbors for being afraid of letting the kids play together?

A friend once told me he didn't like gay people.  One of his reasons was that once saw some GLBT people at a protest, and they were acting angry.  He said the protestors were so hateful, and shouting so many mean things, that he was convinced they were a hate group.  I wasn’t there, but my feeling is that if they were so hateful, it’s probably because they’ve been stomped on by society.  When all you see is the response, without seeing the what caused it, you get the impression that the defenders are the aggressors.

I follow Gail Simone on Twitter.  She's one of the best comic book writers in the business, and also an outspoken feminist.  A lot of sexist male readers dislike her.  Gail is happy to humor them, and often openly debates them on Twitter.  She uses logic and class, and her arguments are sound.

But if people are rude to her, she has no problem calling them out on it.  If you act like an asshole, she will say so, in so many words.  If she is weary from debating all day and wants to focus on positive posts, she will mute the jerks for the night, so as not to distract from the new topics.  Remember, this is not her job.  She uses Twitter for fun, and she has no obligation to engage jerks at all.

Meanwhile, the jerks will post on their own Twitter pages examples of Gail calling them an asshole, or muting them, without any of the context that led up to it.  They call her unprofessional, even though she just spent an entire day debating with idiots in the most professional way possible.  Because she won't consent to be insulted by idiots 24/7, she gets branded the rude one.

I see the same thing in every debate out there.  There are enough hateful people on both sides of every debate, that either side can cherry pick their opponents' responses and pick out rude ones.  Conservatives are literally killing people with their policies, but they have no problem finding examples of bad Liberals and saying, "Look how evil our opponents are!"  Because no side is perfect.

To me, Republicans are obviously in the wrong lately.  They are doing everything possible to make sure only rich white males have the most freedom.  From my point of view, it is the party of hatred.  And yet, it's my Republican friends who keep posting memes that say, "Why is everybody so mean, can't we all get along?"  I could easily post a long ranty thread about how it's a sign of privilege to wonder why people won't stop fighting, but for now I'll just say this: Republicans don't have to fight because they already won.  To those who are in power, any challenge to that power looks like hatred.  Even if that "hatred" is just underprivileged people fighting for their rights.

I’m not going to tone police you.  I’m not going to say, “You should only protest this way.”  All I’m saying is that when you act as hateful as the people you’re protesting against, it doesn’t change minds.  It just gives the other side more ammo.  That is an unfortunate fact, but it doesn't mean you should stop fighting.

More importantly, just because you see an example of a stupid/evil/rude person in a group, it doesn't mean that side is wrong.

Migraines, Gym Class, and the Butterfly Effect

When I was a child, I suffered from migraine headaches.  Here's the story, as far as anyone else knows:

When I was about thirteen or fourteen years old, I started getting migraine headaches all the time.  I'd had them on and off for years, but this time they just wouldn't go away.  I missed a lot of school because of it.  My parents took me to all kinds of doctors and did all sorts of tests.  For the latter half of seventh grade I was given permission to take a study hall instead of PE class.  My headaches got a bit better over summer vacation.

In eighth grade, I changed schools.  This was a much more academically-focused school, and my migraines gradually returned.  After a few months, I had to transfer schools again.  Once at this third school, my chronic migraines faded away for good.  I still get them occasionally, but months apart and only for a few hours at a time.

We always concluded that the chronic migraines were brought on by stress.  A lot was going on around that time.  My grandmother died.  PE class was brutal that year.  My dad got in a car wreck.  My parents started arguing a lot, and eventually divorced.  That second school had a big workload.  When I finally found the school that was right for me, life was less stressful, and some of the other problems were gone by then as well.

But the truth is, I faked it.

Not intentionally, and not in a nefarious way.  I really did get a lot of headaches, but in retrospect I believe the real culprit was clinical depression.  It wasn't a term I'd ever heard at the time, but migraines were something I understood, something I could latch on to.

Every time I used migraines as an excuse to avoid something, I really, seriously could not have brought myself to do that something.  It would have been physically impossible to do what needed to be done - and I did try - so I would tell them it was migraines to get them off my back.  If I stayed home from school, I didn't sit there playing Nintendo all day.  I was fully committed to the excuse.  I stayed in bed, even if nobody else was home to check up on me.

It all started with gym class.

I’ve always hated phys ed.  I do see the benefit of having P.E. in schools – it helps you develop healthy exercise habits, you learn teamwork and communication skills,  and so on.  But I’ve rarely seen a gym class that was done right.  For starters, they always assume that everyone knows how to play every sport.  Those teamwork skills I mentioned?  Nah, most games ended up with the nerds being assigned positions where they could stay out of the way and do the least damage, while the jocks carried the team.  Healthy exercise habits?  Nope, they never taught us calisthenics or yoga or other exercise techniques I might use later in life.  They usually just had us play various sports.   

Most of my worst memories in high school involved gym class.  Several times I let the team down because I didn’t understand the rules, or I simply couldn’t throw the ball far enough to complete a play.  I was bullied a little, though not physically, thank goodness.  Still, every bully-related memory I have happened in gym.  To me, gym class is nothing but a big pile of psychological scars.  

 

Most gym classes were also sexist.  The girls got to sit in the bleachers and treat it as study hall, while the boys played basketball.  God, I envied them.  Occasionally I was in a gym class where the girls did exercises like jumping jacks, but I don’t think I ever saw girls required play an actual sport in high school gym class.  My high school did have cheerleaders and a girls’ basketball team, but that was done separately from the standard gym class I’m talking about. 

 

Honestly, if schools can’t do gym class correctly, I wish they would do away with them.  In my experience, the entire class is set up just to torture non-athletic students.  I suppose the actual athletes might see it as their only respite in the day, and for some students it’s the only class they don’t dread.  But for me, gym class has always reminded me of prison somehow.  I think gym class could be fixed with a little effort.  But gym class as I experienced it should be banned.  At best it’s a waste of time, at worst it scars you for life.

 

Anyway, seventh grade gym was particularly bad.  The coach was like a drill instructor.  Every day, he would have us line up, and walk down the line punching each of us in the stomach.  Not hard enough to hurt – I’m not saying this guy belongs in prison or anything – but just hard enough to see if we’d been toughening up our muscles.  If your stomach gave way or it knocked the wind out of you, he had you do some push-ups.  Even though it wasn’t painful, it was still humiliating, and I’m amazed that it was legal.  (I’m pretty sure the girls were spared this treatment as well.)  It made me afraid of going to gym class every day.  I seriously DREADED it. 

 

The incident that tipped off my migraines was pretty innocuous.  Had it not come after months and months of embarrassing gym incidents, this one would hardly have registered.  I had missed a couple of days because of a cold, during which time they had started on volleyball.  I like volleyball, and I was actually kind of looking forward to it.  After all my disastrous attempts at basketball, I was hoping volleyball would be more my speed.  Unfortunately, the rest of the class got to spend a few days learning the basics while I was out sick, so I was just thrown right in with no instruction. 

 

It didn’t turn out to be much better than basketball.  Volleyball mostly involved standing in place and hoping the ball was never hit in my direction.  My depth perception has never been great, but pre-LASIK it was horrendous.  I would swing my arms too early, or too late, or swing at balls that were nowhere near my zone.  But serving was the worst.  I tried to get the gist of it by watching other people, but when it was my turn, I hit it too hard and sent it across the gym.  I couldn’t take it.  I could feel my face getting hot, and tears wouldn’t be far behind.  My sinuses were still stuffy from being sick, and the result was that I started to choke on my own phlegm.  The other students saw my face turning purple, and in the end I got sent to the school nurse.

 

They gave me a note letting me out of gym class for a few days.  But I was so stressed out by then, I started getting migraines.  These headaches were so bad I could barely see.  With a little finagling, my parents managed to arrange it so I didn’t have to go back to gym for the rest of the year, and I went to a study hall instead.  I was a little less stressed out after that. 

After my grandmother died, my Mom came to me and said, “I spoke with the rest of the family.  We’ve decided that the reason you’ve been having headaches is because all this time when she was sick, she wasn’t in much pain.  We think that you were bearing all the pain for her.  And we thank you.  But now that she’s gone, you don’t have to have these headaches any longer.”  It was a beautiful sentiment, and I wish it had been true.

I changed schools.  My brother graduated that year, so we weren’t as tied to that school, and I was happy never to have to see that PE teacher again.  The new school was more academically-focused.  It was okay at first, but I very quickly got bogged down.  It was a bit like skipping three grades, and I wasn’t up to the challenge.  Now, understand that the previous school was not a bad school, academically speaking.  But with all the other stresses going on in my life, it was not the best time to challenge myself. 

It's a pity.  I really liked some of the classes.  They had a PE class I actually looked forward to, one that actually taught us rules and techniques for the sports we were playing.  It also had a wonderful art class.  I didn’t make a lot of friends there, though.  I was too busy trying to keep up with the classes.  I felt like Bart Simpson in that one early episode where he fakes being gifted.  I started dreading several of the normal classes the same way I’d dreaded PE at the previous school.

Soon I found myself with headaches again.  I saw the school nurse more than some of the teachers.  They called my parents a lot.  Apparently I was spending a lot of the classes with my head down on my desk.  My parents tried everything.  We went to all sorts of doctors, had all kinds of tests done.  I remember having a CT scan, wearing a rubber guard to keep me from grinding my teeth at night, going to a chiropractor, seeing a psychiatrist, and so on.  I missed a lot of school.

I also felt guilty about all the money they were spending on tests.  I remember when we got the results back from the CT scan, telling Dad, “I’m sorry it cost so much and didn’t show anything.”  But he’d been afraid I might have a brain tumor or something, and he replied, “Best money I ever spent.”  Still, I felt like their lives might be better if I wasn't around to be such a burden.

One night I tried to kill myself.  It wasn't a method that would have actually worked, but give me a break, I was a kid.  Basically I tried taking lots of pills.  I went into every medicine cabinet in the house, opened every bottle, and took about half the pills from each.  I didn't want to actually empty any bottles, because if I wasn't successful I didn't want anyone noticing I'd taken them.  But all in all, I probably took about 40 random pills.

My first thought the next morning was, "Damn.  I'm alive."  But I didn't have to go to school.   My parents told me I'd been sleepwalking all night, and they were taking me to the doctor.  The doctor gave me a drug test, which came back negative, so my half-assed suicide attempt stayed a secret.  I never told them.  

One later morning I had a really hard time getting moving.  I really couldn’t miss any more days.  My parents were like, “If you’re going to be sick anyway, be sick there.”  But I couldn’t make myself go.  I just couldn’t.  The school was like this giant block of black dread and I couldn’t in my wildest dreams envision myself willingly walking into it that morning.

In the back of the car, I was like a caged animal looking for ways to escape.  At every red light I considered hopping out of the car and just running.  I was already thinking about just hiding in the bushes instead of going inside once they dropped me off.  But I realized that wasn’t a long term plan, and missing one more day wasn’t going to make me survive the school year.  This had gone far enough.  I told my Dad, “Okay, I hate this school.”

He was immediately understanding.  We talked about it a lot about the pressure while he drove me home.  He considered taking me straight to the local public school, but then he remembered that an old friend of mine went to a different private school.  At this third and final school, things were a lot better all around.  The first school had been sports focused, so of course I didn’t fit in.  The second school was college focused, and I might have made it there if I’d started earlier.  The third school put more emphasis on religion.  It was a good fit for me, at least at the time.  In retrospect, the school had some deep flaws, and if I had kids today, I definitely wouldn’t send them there.  It’s the same school that was in the news a couple of years ago for rejecting a potential student for having gay parents.

But that was the end of the headaches.  My Dad asked me a few years later, “Did we ever figure out what was causing those headaches you used to have?”  I said it was probably just stress, and that was that.

I still feel very guilty about all the money they spent on various doctors, when it was really "just depression".  It probably caused some of the debt they had to dig out of later, and the stress I caused them may have even been a factor in their eventual divorce.

It's one of the most defining events of my childhood, and it's yet one more thing I think would have turned out differently if I'd been born female.  Yeah, I know, "I make everything about gender dysphoria.  Of course I'm going to retcon my headaches to be about it."  But a lot of trans people report similar periods of depression in their teens.

In my case, everything started with gym class, at a school that was overly focused on sports.  Without all that initial pressure to be better at masculine things, I think I would have ended up graduating at that school.

I often think about what my life would be like in that alternate timeline.  If I'd graduated that first school, I would have had an entirely different circle of friends.  I never would have met the guy who introduced me to my wife, so I wouldn't even be friends with her now.  I can almost guarantee I would have gone to a different college, which would have changed a lot of things.  As a girl, I would have had a different set of peer pressures I haven't even considered.  I might still have had migraines and/or depression because of stresses I will never know. 

There's so many possibilities there.  Would I still be a geek?  Would I still be attracted to women?  Would I still have eventually become an atheist?  My mother was so into keeping us up with fashion, I really think she would have loved to have a girl.  It would have changed a lot about my family dynamic, so I might have a completely different personality. 

One question that really haunts me is, "Would I still be transgender?"  What if "female" isn't actually a core aspect of my personality, but "non gender conforming" is?  What if "girl me" was just as stubborn about fitting in with others of my sex?  What if she gradually came to the realization that her birth sex just wasn't for her?  Is there an alternate universe where I'm an FTM?

Believe it or not, these are the things that keep me up at night.