The follies of Apologetics
19 April 2013
Back on April 2, 2013 I posted a new entry onto my journal and many of the online blogs I keep. I received several varied responses to it and was particularly moved by one from a sister named Rachel who shared her personal feelings about it. First let me express my heartfelt thanks and admiration for her honesty and candor. Though her responses weren't "attaboys" she cared enough to be real and for that I am grateful. Sometimes it is imperative to see yourself through the eyes of others to avoid being myopic in reflect on your personal life. Rachel I will try not to be "preachy" but only time will tell.In response to her comments I found myself apologizing to her if I had offended her and that was a sincere reaction. What transpired afterwards was a keen awareness of just how frequently I have felt a need to apologize for who and what I am. I can see clearly how often I have made concessions for other people's reactions towards me and my choices and it has left a bad tatse.
Always knew from an early age I was feminine and countless memories are resurfacing of just how often I apologized because I wasn't "a real man" not just to adults but even to my peers. In the workplace I found myself repeatedly faking masculinity and feeling second class when I would come up short of others expectations. I am a christian and I even found myself apologizing for my beliefs to avoid confrontations or hard questions. This isn't about being a trans anything, it is about trying to live with a minimal amount of conflict and strife. We spend so much time in our lives, at least I have, defending our existence, beliefs and personal choices we each have made. My life has been founded firmly on my christian beliefs and is foundational to who I am and yet upon coming out I was cornered by close christians I had known for years and I was actually apologizing to them for my choice to be who I was created to be. The irony of this is that now I am often apologizing to many of my new LGBT family for being a christian. Somehow once this insidious seed of being apologetic enters our lives it permeates every facet of our lives. Sad thing about all this is the fact that in the beginning I was just trying to be polite.
22 April 2013
Back to this journal for a moment. It struck me like a brick when I began to comprehend that even within my journal, my personal diary of sorts, I felt a need to apologize or make allowances for what I was feeling and expressing out of my own heart. This is not an attempt to put blame on anyone but rather an indictment of my own reactions. Our lives have been bombarded with restraints like political correctness, religious correctness or the most insidious of all lie that we need to perform up to the expectations of others. It seems like the longer we live the more people feel compelled to put their names on the "other list". 22 April 2013
23 April 2013
I have heard the term "victim mentality" bantered around quite frequently and usually as a derogatory statement towards someone.I have been realizing that there may actually be such a syndrome but it works to paralyze someone from committing to any action or decision which may draw the ire of others.There are many people, including several sisters I know, who have allowed themselves to become stagnant and miserable instead of being true to who they are. I was in church Sunday and due to my own insecurities, mostly imagined, chose to sit quietly in my seat rather than step out and be obedient to my heart's bidding. It is a fairly new church we had just started attending recently and all the former rejections and painful remarks from a former church haunted my spirit and I hate to admit it but I was tentative and very unsure of myself. You know, you get in a new group of people and you just have to be on your best behavior. On a similar vein I have met sisters transitioning who hadn't fully counted the cost before rushing headlong into transitioning and somewhere got the impression that because we are all sisters then everyone should carry the weight and depression resulting from their poor choices. In the last month I have had to say that I was not in a position to provide financial help or lodging. The sad part of this was that I found myself apologizing as if I had somehow let them down. We as women are typically well endowed with compassion and understanding but I am seeing how easily those good traits can be twisted into a sense of guilt or shame. Lastly, over the last week I have been going through my gardens which were left fairly unattended since Genevieve's death in 2008. They were gardens we had created together and I just didn't have any desire to relive all those memories. Well in 5 years a whole lot of ugly can happen and I have taken at least 30 bags of weeds out to be recycled. Today I was in the front of our home in the hydrangea beds cleaning out winter leaves and dead branches. What I began to see was that it was immeasurably harder cleaning and clearing the beds now instead of being faithful to deal with the weeds as they appeared. Our lives are much the same. If you start letting negative traits and attitudes to take root in your personal life and just try to ignore them at some point you are going to have a very large problem to deal with. It can be any old weed whether an attitude, a fear, or, my favorite, procrastination at some point you will hit a wall that you must dismantle before proceeding. It is easier to take down a little wooden fence than an entire wall but we each have to make our own choices. Be Blessed and be true to your heart.Charlena Marie Andrews-Hayes
