Author: pastpatientlywaiting

when everything’s made up and the facts don’t matter

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how continually shocked people are over the way white evangelicals have continued to stand by Donald Trump.  A 10/2018 Public Religion Research Institute poll showed that 71% of white evangelicals still approve of Trump’s presidency.  If we use a 2017 number from The Economist, the overall total # of self-identified white evangelicals is around 55 million – that is 17% of that year’s population.  This would mean that as recently as 3 months ago, around *39 million* white evangelicals think Trump is doing a good job.

But if you grew up in the evangelical church, it’s not at all shocking.  

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learning to be me

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I have never felt completely comfortable in my own body.  For as long as I can remember, I have always been too big, too tall, too broad-shouldered, too brown.  And of course, as an offshoot of that last one, I was always too loud.  As a child, I thought that I could someday change that.  When I grew up, I decided, I would be red-headed and fair-skinned like my literary idols at that time, Anne Shirley and Pippi Longstocking.  I would take up the appropriate amount of space. If I was overly loud, it would be endearing and quirky, not met with shushing or embarrassed looks.  A place where this mentality–that of being too much–was regularly enforced was in the evangelical churches and organizations I attended growing up and into college.   Continue reading →

I’m a bad blogger

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As in, I’ve had this blog space for over a year, did like two weak entries in January 2017, then did absolutely nothing again till now, March 2018. I’m so bad at blogging. I want to be one of those people who blogs with passion and has an actual readership. But I never feel eloquent enough and I have passion for like 293839 different things and so instead of just picking one thing or alternating between things…I don’t do anything.

And I feel like I haven’t done anything meaningful, writing-wise, for years. Last year I wrote a post about how stagnant I felt and now I feel embarrassed that not a whole lot has changed. On the positive side, I have a clearer view of who I am, the things I believe, and what, exactly, I want to do with my life. It’s just a matter of taking the right steps toward those goals. I wish I was moving way faster than I am, but I guess it is what it is.

Things that are currently (and pretty constantly) important to me include:

* Education (particularly Special Education, Disability rights in elementary and secondary ed, educators having proper resources and pay to effectively serve their broad base of students.)

* Being an Ex-Evangelical (or #Exvangelical). I was raised Evangelical from age 4 and eventually left all Evangelical churches & communities by age 22. I am 33 now and still coping with the PTSD (including #RaptureAnxiety) and (words I still have trouble typing out) spiritual abuse.

* Latinx representation in all forms of media. There are a lot of us, yet where are we on TV, in the movies, behind the scenes, etc.?

* Bi visibility. Whoomp, there it is.

* Dem Party politics & policy. People who lionize Bernie Sanders, this (or at least my Twitter feed) is probably not the place for you.

* Cats. Cat cartoons. Cat memes. My cats. Your cats. Anyone’s cats.

* Loads of TV shows, musicals, books, and other nerdy stuff. One time I was in a special edition of TV Guide for loving Law & Order so much. That’s definitely going in the obituary one day. “She is preceded in death by her one true love, Law & Order: The Original Series.”

Yeah, sometimes it gets real weird, real fast around here. That should probably be my motto.