You just ruined the day you were trying to bless
Milledgeville finally gets to me.
It’s been sharply cold in rural Georgia and violently bright, my least favorite combination. If I’m going to freeze, at least stay easy on my eyes, but the sun ignores my plea. I’ve been Body Horror-level anemic for the past few days, the most dramatic of which was Tuesday, and so it inevitably follows that I had to teach on Tuesday, fine. I tend to feel more energized post-work than pre-work, which is all down to my students’ insightfulness, curiosity, eloquence, humor, and respect. My students are also the reason why I haven’t lost my mind. My neighbors’ yard sign announces, "Jesus is My Savior, Trump is My President,” and still, I’m grateful for the life I’ve currently got. Typically.
Then comes a day like Tuesday, when I feel heroic for having showered, dressed, and prepared for my hour-and-15-minute class session. I feel heroic because my uterus is trying to slay me from the inside and yet, I managed. I feel heroic even though I don’t have half the grading done that I’d promised them. My Body Horror struggles had gotten so severe that day that I wasn’t even down on myself for not getting my work done from a week ago: the point is, I have a whole-ass class for them today, and that was a remarkable achievement.
Did I look my strongest and most graceful as I trekked up the hills where the sidewalk cracks are so deep that I will fall facedown onto the cement if I loose my footing for half a second? I probably didn’t. Did I look my most vibrant? Probably not. But I shouldn’t have to. I was dressed professionally and in a downcoated/gloved manner that prevented hypothermia and I knew what I was going to do in the classroom and that should be enough.
But it wasn’t, not for the luminous blond chick who thought I needed a pick-me-up as she shouted out her car window, “God loves you! Have a great day!” Had she chosen to Christian-catcall me in a manner that allowed me the agency to respond, I would have asked her if she invades the mental space of everyone she passes or if she picks out physically disabled people in particular. Alternatively, had I the wherewithal to realize I shouldn’t put her on the defensive, I’d ask, “What made you choose to say that to me as opposed to anyone else?”
I didn’t grow up Christian. Ian didn’t grow up Christian. A large swath of the world didn’t grow up Christian. But people in Milledgeville don’t know that. Having lived in a total of 16 towns/cities in every region of the country, I have never met a population so convinced that no other belief system exists. In reluctant fairness, not many local voices shake their assumptions: everyone in my MFA program grew up emphatically conservative-Christian, the Department Chair writes nonfiction essays about Catholic guilt, my supervisor is Mormon. A specific relationship to and history with and staggering amount of Jesus is what defines “normal” ‘round these parts, and in a life that’s been shaped by outsiderness of some sort everywhere (too New Mexico for New Orleans, too New Orleans for anywhere else, too loud for California and the Pacific Northwest but waaaaaay too hippie for Boston), I have never felt so weighed down by other people’s norms. Even when two years in Wheaton, Illinois had me taking high school English with Missionary kids, I didn’t feel this level of alienation. Missionary kids are hyperaware that most of the world isn’t Christian. They couldn’t have a Mission if they weren’t.
Ian is the only person in my immediate vicinity who can sympathize with any of this because, as I said, he didn’t grow up Christian either. So we can commiserate about assumed norms, we can talk about ways to deal. “I wonder how she would’ve responded if you’d talked about Buddha having compassion for all beings,” he offered. Of course I’d had no way to respond, because she shouted out of a moving car. I spat out, “BYE!” but could tell by her grin — lit from within by the light of the Lord — that she didn’t read my tone. Or maybe she didn’t fucking care.
Ian and I used to attend Buddhist temple services regularly, but once we moved out to the middle of Christian nowhere, that became harder to do. We did manage to make a New Year’s Eve service in 2023, but that was in Atlanta, which meant we got home around 4 in the morning. We couldn’t comfortably make a practice of that, though it turned out to be a moot point last year when we both fell violently ill as the year was turning. That most recent service we’d experienced, though, was a memorable one for reasons I haven’t even attempted to write down outside of the therapeutic work that’s not for audiences. Maybe I can transform my stifled-by-the-Christians rage into writing about that. Eventually.
For now, I’ll be doing a lot of growling. I’m basically this mink:
