Yeah, it’s true

(Stars – Leanna Crawford)

Today my experience with the DMV was SO much more positive than yesterday’s experience.

 

That doesn’t mean I walked away with all of my business handled…I still don’t have my registration and license figured out…

 

…but I have now completed day 4 of trying to get my registration/license figured out, so the fact that I am not crazy frustrated is good evidence that this experience was much better.

 

Yesterday I left crying because after waiting in line for an hour while the employees in a building that didn’t look like a DMV were being unnecessarily rude to everyone in the building and then randomly just walking away from the counter to just wander the lobby while the line continued to grow…well it was finally my turn and the guy tells me my car title is not a title (umm, there’s that word title at the top, so yeah, it definitely is) and that I need an inspection (which the FAQ’s on the website makes very clear I do not). I try to explain and he just says well you’re from out of state so that might be the rules there, but it isn’t here, and I tried to explain that the website for this state says this is what I need, but he is clearly not listening to I left so incredibly angry and just about ready to start packing my things and give up on this entire venture. Which obviously would be a bad choice considering first that I would be breaking contract with ASHP which I’m sure there’d be some consequences for besides the whole lack of professionalism quitting before my position actually starts…plus the whole it isn’t like there are a lot of other job prospects out there right now issue and you should probably have a plan before you do something dumb like that…

 

Yesterday someone said I really didn’t want to go to the other DMV in this city because it was exactly what you would expect from a DMV…I heard that and knew that my instinct to go to the other one this time was right on. It being closer to “normal” felt so much safer and more comfortable to me. Despite the fact that I had to lock my bike to a light post because there weren’t any bike racks within a reasonable distance of the place and I refused to drive anywhere else for this dumb thing, the more normal appearance made the start to the encounter already off on a better foot. And the employee I worked with was so incredibly friendly. She went through what I needed…and there was something I didn’t know I needed, but she explained where I could get it and that it wasn’t very expensive and without me even asking she made sure I knew I DIDN’T need an inspection…I had half a mind to ask if she could put that in writing for a good I told you so for the idiot at the other DMV, but first, that would use way more words than I have available for a typical encounter, and second I already told myself I never ever have to go back the other DMV…

 

…and so I still don’t have a license and registration, but I feel like someone cares and I have a plan for how this is going to go tomorrow and I just have my fingers crossed for no more surprises or other issues…

 

In related news, the Honda dealership here was kind of frustrating. The first person I talked to in the service department said I had to talk to the sales department and hung up on me…so I called again and started with the sales department who told me it was the service department’s job to help me, but when I explained that the service department told me to talk to sales he told me everything he knew which was really pretty close to everything I needed to know except for he didn’t know one thing so he transferred me to the service department again and I actually got someone who was willing to fill in the blanks for me…hopefully when I show up tomorrow someone helpful is available…but I’m pretty confident now that I can do this.

 

…I don’t know why they make this so hard…

 

…this whole thing has been really hard…like Tuesday I called an office that I needed some information from for my registration and the lady I talked to said they could only do it in person. So I got in my car and drove over there since I didn’t know if they’d need to see my car or anything. There were zero legal places to park anywhere in the general vicinity of the office. I mean, technically there wasn’t a sign in the lot of the lawyers’ office across the street that it was for clients only but I know most businesses don’t want you to park there unless you are using their business so parking at a law office seemed like a bad idea…so I was super frustrated and angry because they could have told me when I called that there wasn’t anywhere to park…so I went home and I knew I needed to get it done but I was too angry to put on sunscreen or get my water bottle. I just put on my helmet and biked to the office…and of course when I got there they said they don’t do that in person, only over the phone…and I was so over it that I stood right there in the lobby of the office and called them from their office. It seems like since I was already there it would make way more sense to just talk to me directly, but they didn’t complain about me standing in the lobby talking to them through my phone so I mean it was unnecessarily stressful but I got what I needed from them…and so I had half a mind to go straight from there to the DMV but then I was like umm, you’re already burning and were thirsty before you even left and your hands are already full. This is a bad idea…and  I am glad I didn’t, because I don’t think I could have handled another frustration that day…

 

…so yeah, there have no shortage of things going wrong around here…but I’m not gonna talk your ears off complaining about All. The. Things. right now…but just one more thing…not being pelted with fathers day advertisements didn’t magically make me start getting good sleep. I did go from getting less than an hour of sleep at night to more like 3 hours…but I’m still spending a good 12 hours in bed wishing I were asleep and am now facing the reality that soon I’ll need to go back to work which means getting ready for the day no matter how tired I am and staying up long enough in the evenings to continue getting things done to keep life going…and just thinking about going back to that is exhausting and after a few weeks off while I crave being around people again I also don’t know how I managed this for so long…and with that it is time to start the cleaning up and getting ready for bed process because staying up late for no reason isn’t going to help…so yeah, if you’re a praying person, sleep and DMV crap is what I’m gonna ask for today (I guess we’ll work on my potty mouth a different day)…

Here at the edge of fall apart

(Truth I’m Standing On – Leanna Crawford)

 

So this song played like four times on the radio while I was driving on Tuesday…and the first time I heard it I tried and failed to press all the buttons in time to see if my car could help me figure out what the song was so I could find it again later so I just memorized the approximate time and the station I was on in hopes of finding it that way…and then it played again so I got a chance to actually find the name of the song.

 

…and when I played it on repeat on youtube, eventually youtube suggested some other songs by Leanna and I loved them all. There is such amazing truth in her lyrics, but I just feel like at the same time that she really gets that life can be hard sometimes. The song on the radio is still my favorite, but they all are so good!

 

…but yeah, I’ve been at the edge of fall apart for a long time. To be honest, I’ve been pretty close to the edge for the majority of the past 7 years between the abuse and its fallout, then not matching to a residency (repeatedly), and then my dad dying…but lately life has just been hard.

 

Between the end of the second week of March and the beginning of the third week, life changed. On March 13 I found out I (finally) got a residency…and within hours the excitement morphed into anxiety…which biologically I know excitement and anxiety are nearly identical so it makes a lot of sense one could lead to the other, but it took probably about 5 days before I was really near my baseline in terms of anxiety again, and that was frustrating because I wanted to be done with the OCD and anxiety forever…and that was a reminder that chances are I will continue to occasionally have lapses for the rest of my life and I hate that because I hate the complete lack of control I feel when the OCD flares. Also, on March 13 was the church talent show. It was supposed to be a potluck, but it wasn’t – just cookies and juice. I considered not going because there was a game night in the cities that evening, but I’m glad I went because church was cancelled on the 15^th and also on the 15^th it was announced that by the 18^th schools would be closing to in person classes…and not much after that businesses started closing…my world was shrinking.

 

So I went from Sunday AM – church, Monday PM – worship team and/or pool time and/or young adult bible study, Tuesday AM – donuts, Wednesday PM – youth group and/or prayer group and/or pool time, Thursday – volunteering at free clinic…AND working full-time…to ONLY working full-time…and then to working part-time…(and now to not working for a few weeks). Sure, within a week or two there started to be some virtual meetings, but like I’ve said many times before, the power of together is nearly impossible to replicate online…and within a few weeks most of the virtual stuff was cancelled too or might as well have been because I was the only one there…living alone used to be the only way I could ever consider living if there was a choice, and now with work my only social venue and not even a good one at that, I craved the social contact a roommate would provide.

 

And then I finally got to see some of my church friends again and then a week later moved across the country. Now I feel even more isolated. I see online people together and I’m not.

 

And yesterday I got like 20 emails of fathers day advertisements. Y’all it’s not even a real holiday and even if it were a real holiday I wouldn’t want all the reminders, and let’s be real, even if I did still have my dad, the stuff advertised for dad isn’t usually anything I think real people would actually buy for their dads…I just want it to stop.

 

And moving is never fun…but then I had to move into an apartment I hadn’t seen until I moved in…and okay, I know I would make a lousy salesperson because I’m too honest, but when someone asks about kids because your contract makes it sound like kids aren’t allowed on the property, just saying that yes, kids are allowed and there are a few families is not really the right answer if you are then going to tell me on move-in day that child-proofing is not allowed. I just feel like there was a lot they weren’t honest about…and then just the things you don’t know if you haven’t seen the place, like yes, there are walk-in closets on the property…it’s just the plural is that there are multiple units and each has one…and also the walk-in closet is smaller than my normal closet in my old apartment…and there is very little cabinet space in this apartment, and there isn’t an entry closet…and there were hornets nests all over and a water leak…and the doors go directly to the outside, which is nice except for one problem – the front door has space around it like a hall door usually does but an entry door to the outside shouldn’t so the creepy crawlies have free access.

 

And this one I knew before I signed or handed over any money, but by washer and dryer in unit what they actually mean is there is space to put a washer and dryer in your unit…which, weird, but okay fine, so I bought a washer and dryer from best buy. Easier said than done because the ones I liked best were on back order which left a few I didn’t love and some ridiculously expensive ones…so the earliest date I could have both delivered the same day was the 18^th. No problem, I can wait that long. And then the 18^th comes and at almost the end of my delivery window I get a call from the delivery guy that they can’t find my dryer…like seriously? It’s kind of a big thing to lose…it’s not like some phone charger that can fall behind the shelf or something…so my choices are get a washer today or get nothing so I obviously choose the washer…and I call customer service and after and they try to tell me that they can’t deliver the dryer until mid-July. Y’all, I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect it to take less than 2 months to receive a dryer that is in stock. Like I get you might be running low on delivery appointments, but you already screwed up so what makes most sense is you squeeze in an extra appointment today and bring me my dryer. Sure, utilitarianism sounds good on the surface to get the most total happiness, but as a customer I would rather you bump a series of people by one day than to bump me by another month…but finally we compromised and I get my dryer right before I go back to work…which is frustrating that I have to be home for another 8-hour delivery window, but at least I’ll be able to dry the comforter my brothers got dirty which means I can finally wash it. So that sounds like it should be the end of the story, right? Wrong…so the next day I get an email asking me to schedule my delivery appointment and I’m like isn’t that what I did yesterday?!?! Nope, they scheduled the dryer delivery, but the power cord and vent for the dryer weren’t going to be able to be delivered until later…umm, what good does a dryer do without a power cord? And also what is my installation payment doing for me if you aren’t actually going to have the necessary parts for the install? So I get back on the phone with customer service and try a customer service chat window at the same time to try to get this fixed. After an hour it is almost my turn to chat and then I get an error that the website crashed so please get in line again…I tried and it was estimating 74 minutes for my wait time – which I already knew from my previous attempt that the estimated wait time should probably be multiplied by at least two, so I gave up on that and kept going on the phone…after nearly four hours of getting transferred to higher levels of support I finally got to someone who said probably my best option was to reschedule the dryer delivery – and I was like absolutely not…and so he thought for a while and the only other option was to add a note on the dryer to please also deliver the vent and power cord if time allows…and that was the best I was going to get from them so I was like sure whatever and gave up…remember this is the girl that used to bike across town for a simple question because she hates using the phone…and so my mom tried calling the store customer service instead of the online order customer service and the manager agreed that if I came in that evening they would just give me the pieces I needed…so I did (and apparently there was a carnival being set up along the way so traffic was awful and also the best buy is on the opposite side of the city from me). And I’ll let you guess whether the manager was there and whether anyone had any idea about what I needed…if you guessed no, you were correct…but I found a guy who at least worked with me to find the parts I needed…so might I end up with extra pieces, maybe, but at least now I know when I finally do get my dryer I will have the pieces I need for it to get installed whether they decided they had time to bring them or not…if I knew buying a dryer from best buy was that much drama I would have just gone against the advice I received and bought the pretty red ones someone was selling on Craigslist…’cause like yeah, they are used, but they are pretty and I’m sure I could find someone to help me lift them and how hard can it be to read the manual to figure out how to set it up?…

 

So yeah, I’ve been struggling emotionally and the other things going on in life haven’t really helped and I’ve probably got cumulatively less than an hour of sleep in the past week which means since I haven’t had to work that I’ve been spending 12-14 hours most night trying to sleep which means the days are short and I’m not getting things done that I really should be doing…but we’re doing our best over here and praying that God has a plan, because this is definitely not a sustainable life model long term…

 

…okay, to be fair, I was also texting late into the night last night because I figured if I wasn’t sleeping anyway I might as well get some kind of connection…and I did turn off the sound, but I still could see the little notification indicator turn on…so yeah…but that was actually really good, because I do really need people and at this point even just a person via text rather than real life is still way better than nothing…and I don’t *usually* do that…

 

…and now I need to just post this so I can not be too late to church.

Still there’s a sense of deep loss in my soul…all she wants is an end to the long long night

(How Emptiness Sings – Christa Wells)

 

Sometimes it’s hard.

 

Every single day for about the last week or so I’ve seen and heard advertisements for father’s day. It’s hard and it hurts.

 

And when everything else is hard I don’t want one more hard thing. I don’t want to cry every day.

 

And today I ended up with another faith puzzle piece out of place…maybe faith is the wrong word…and TBH it didn’t really pop out today but more like materialized today after being lost and forgotten about.…IDK how to really describe it…and I don’t even know how to tell this story without talking myself in circles, but I’m gonna figure it out because I feel like even though it feels kind of shameful to admit these thoughts it will probably be better to write about it and in doing start to process it than to try to shove it into a box and pretend everything is awesome between me and God when it isn’t.

 

So around Christmas time someone told me they had a letter from my dad for me. I didn’t question where this letter came from that they had a copy but I didn’t, I was just ready for something from my dad.

 

It was a letter from the perspective of God speaking to his children. I felt tricked and angry. I think the heart was in the right place, but it didn’t feel good to me. I felt disappointed.

 

Way back a long time ago like probably high school on I think it was formspring part of my bio was that I was “loved by my eternal daddy” so clearly, the concept of God the father wasn’t new to me…

 

Well, today at in real life church the pastor was talking about God being our father…and that was obviously supposed to be a good thing but I was working really hard not to cry…but it wasn’t just missing my dad…it took me a few hours to figure it out, but now I get it…and I get why that letter at Christmas time hurt so much.

 

It feels like God is trying to replace my daddy. And I know this isn’t a good Christian thought, but I don’t want anyone including God trying to replace my daddy. You can’t just stick someone else in that hole and act like I’m not gonna notice, ‘cause just like in honey we shrunk ourselves, “guess what, I NOTICED.”

 

So yeah, I know those are thoughts I shouldn’t have, but I don’t know where to go with it. Obvi, God wants to be in every part of my life and I’m not supposed to pick and choose which parts he gets…but at the same time, it really hurts feeling like he thinks he can just take my dad’s spot. Like I know he’s supposed to be better, but I don’t want a new better daddy; I want my old one back.

 

The only out I can see is going to heaven where maybe I can have both daddies…except I don’t know if I really get that in heaven ‘cause based on the part of the Bible we read in online Saturday church it kinda sounds like in heaven family relationships from Earth are dissolved…IDK. I just know I don’t like this and I want to go to forever home. When do I get to quit?

We’re more beautiful when we come together

(Mandisa – Bleed the Same)

 

Today I feel like I have a lot of things I need to say. And I’ve kind of felt this way for a few days, but a lot of what I have to say I feel like would be taken better by “the opposition” if it were coming from someone with different colored skin…but I can’t change my skin (well, I guess I *can* but only to bright red), so I’m gonna say things anyway, because I realized that I obviously think it would be racist to say that there are things I can say as someone with light skin that someone with dark skin couldn’t say, so it is therefore just as racist to say that a dark skinned person is allowed to say things that I can’t as a light skinned person…technically our country doesn’t seem to understand that racism is when any race is discriminated against, not just certain races, but the reality I believe is that it is racism if there is race-based discrimination regardless of what race is being seen as less valued. People are people.

 

In our current political climate even outside of the Rona, people are attacking each other. I feel frustrated that (a white person) who wrote a detailed facebook post about respecting others and not taking sides then went into the comment section and…took sides and basically shushed the people whose opinions she didn’t agree with. As someone who works really hard to get my opinions heard (hashtag formerly social anxiety bordering on selective mutism) it really hurts me to see other people’s voices be silenced. I felt proud that some of these people were brave enough to stand up for themselves and further explain their opinion despite the attempt to shut them down…but I felt so sad that they had to take the defensive…and at the same time I was in awe of how well the other person was able to use her words to put someone down so eloquently…and it put me in a weird place because I have mad respect for people who can use words in ways I can’t and I know that every person deserves respect, but it still feels wrong sometimes to my innately sinful human nature to respect someone doing something negative…so basically I read the comments and felt frustrated but stayed out of it. Some people say if you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem, so I guess if those people are right then I am part of the problem…so I guess I have some things to work on…which I kinda already knew…but I mean, people also say if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all…and I felt more like attacking the shut down than standing up for the people who disagreed so it wasn’t the right time for me to spend my words trying to get involved…

 

But I think why even white people against white people fights in the political realm are so common right now is two-fold. One, some people have too much time on their hands due to covid-closures. Two, the black lives matter movement is designed to be divisive. It isn’t just my white-girl perspective saying this. I have dialogued with black people (aka people who you can’t really argue don’t think black people matter) who obviously do think that the lives of people with their heritage matter, but don’t support the black lives matters movement because of the divisive-ness. We agree that our nation would be stronger together rather than polarizing and taking sides. Even the name of the movement “black lives matter” is inherently divisive. Yes, it does not directly say other lives are not important, but it is quite clearly implied. To make things less political, consider a mother with three children, Jack, Jane, and Julie. Her husband asks do you love our children, and she responds, I love Jane. Sure, she didn’t say she *didn’t* love Jack or Julie, but she sure didn’t make it sound like she did love them – and if she wants her family to act in unity and for Jack and Julie to not act in jealousy toward Jane then she clearly could have chosen her words better. The movement also tends to prioritize being seen over being respectful. Yes, you need your movement to be seen and heard to make a difference, but you will catch more flies with honey than vinegar. More people will be willing to support your cause if doing so doesn’t associate them with disrespectful behavior. Finally, the movement tends to be anti-police. I have seen posts on facebook from both black and white people pleading please do not listen to BLM, please do not take away our police force. People of all colors recognize that the police are an important part of keeping our communities safe. The police must make difficult decisions every day and while it sure is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback for the game played on Sunday knowing with hindsight what will and will not work, like TobyMac says in This is Not a Test, there ain’t no practice runs in life. You can’t turn back time and fix things knowing what you will know later. Life doesn’t work that way. We absolutely need our police force, and we will cripple them if we attempt to micro-manage the way in which they do their jobs. Do black lives matter, yes, do police lives of all colors matter, yes, does every single other person matter, also yes. Our world would be stronger if we didn’t pick and choose who matters. Like the movement I worked with in school states, EVERYONE MATTERS. Y’all, event planning is not what I love, but advocating that everyone matters is important to me so you better believe I was all about pouring my heart into planning everyone matters week events.

 

Okay, one last thing. On an interview I was listening to this week about race I heard someone claim that the fact disseminated in the medical community that black people and white people are genetically different is false. They asserted that the reason we are more prone to different diseases is really just the way stress of racism impacts our bodies. Yeah…umm…so you’re telling me that the black people who live in Africa are also experiencing racism and that stress in white people can’t cause the same problems it supposedly does in black people? Yeah, not buying it. It doesn’t mean the black body is inferior or the white body is inferior, but like it or not, genetically there are some diseases that are more common in one race than another. White people have their own list of diseases to which they are more prone. It doesn’t mean either one of us experiences more stress in life, but simply that genetically there are differences between a white person and a black person that go beyond skin color…and to be fair, some of those diseases are more common in certain sub-groups rather than simply being more common in ALL white people or more common in ALL black people. Sorry to break your argument about why racism is a problem, but don’t blame racism for a problem that it is biologically implausible for it to be behind. Don’t throw racism around like it explains every problem in the world. Does racism exist, yes against pretty much every race, but is racism the cause of every problem or even most problems, no…but a lot of problems can be mitigated when people are in community.

He’s Painted Each One of us the Color of Love

(Git along little doggies – Little Dogs on the Prairie)

 

Today I realized that a lot of why I get so frustrated with people is because respect is a huge core value for me.

 

Let me back up a little bit. This morning I saw on facebook someone say something along the lines of real friends understand that they can be friends even if they don’t always vote for the same person…and she got torn apart in the comment section. People told her that viewpoint made her not a Christian. People told her that viewpoint made her racist and that she was discriminating against minorities. People said so many hateful things.

 

First of all, even if you do not agree with her statement, she is still a person who deserves respect. You don’t get to post hurtful comments just because someone has an opinion that isn’t the same as yours. If you don’t want to be friends with people who are not exactly like you I’m not going to say you have to, but I am going to say you still need to treat the people who are not your friends with respect.

 

I tend to agree that you can totally be friends with people whose opinions differ from your own. In fact, I have many friends whom I care much about who have very different opinions on certain issues than I hold. Our opinions on those topics may clash, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a meaningful relationship and respect that there are some things we do not agree on.

 

The idea that being friends with people whose opinions differ is incompatible with Christianity is totally ludicrous. God was about community. God was about loving your neighbor. God was about caring about the people on the fringes of society. God was about inclusion. God understood that we are stronger together and that you win people to yourself with care, concern, love, and respect; you don’t win approval by hating people. You can hate certain opinions and actions without hating the person.

 

It is also pretty bold to supposedly be anti-discrimination while actively discriminating against people who vote differently than you. It is basically saying that discrimination is only wrong when it is by people who don’t look and think like me…which is, in itself, discrimination.

 

Another example: I saw someone very obviously stealing. It wasn’t about the probably only a couple bucks of product he was taking…it was about the fact he clearly had no qualms about the disrespect of the people trying to sell products at a certain price. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit was also about the fact that the way he was doing it was causing a line to form because he was blocking the aisle…not that theft is less wrong if you don’t inconvenience other shoppers, just that is was both things that really made me frustrated.

 

I guess going back to other things since I already opened up that can of worms…

 

There are a ton of frustrated thoughts in my head…so here’s a few more…

 

Like people are saying if we had a black president things wouldn’t be happening…umm, y’all, might I remind you that during Ferguson we *had* a black president and that didn’t keep people from destroying communities…the color of the president has little to nothing to do with the poor behavior of some of the citizens.

 

People are claiming they want justice. They are lying. They do not want justice unless they want prison time. Last time I checked, it is a crime to break and enter. It is a crime to take items from a store without paying. It is a crime to steal a car. It is a crime to vandalize property. It is a crime to set buildings on fire. It is a crime to beat up other people.

 

I am angry that people somehow think that committing their own crimes and throwing tantrums is somehow going to change the fact that George died. Could his death have been prevented? It appears so, but that is in the past and destroying other people’s lives in the present is pretty counter-productive. Some people are saying that people are more important than property so rioting is okay. I think people *are* more important than property and that is why rioting is not okay. And like someone said on facebook, perspective is important. This person’s daughter claimed that rioting is a good way for people to express themselves – so he asked if she thought it was a great idea for someone to destroy her brand-new car – suddenly rioting seemed much less okay when it felt more personal. She was able to understand that, but a lot of people out there seem to still be missing it.