Dream Journal 3/31/16

[Since I’ve been so busy being glued to the couch with my sick, clingy toddler lately, I haven’t had any time to type out the dreams from my dream journal. I finally have a few minutes today, so here is dream 3 of 3.]

Kyle, Liam, and I were driving to Canopy Lake Park in Maine, and we were lost. I was telling Kyle to ask for directions, because the GPS on his phone was acting up, but we ended up finding our exit and following a bunch of signs to get to the park. The parking lot was completely empty, and I asked Kyle if they were even open, but he assured me that they were.

There was no one stationed at the gate, so we just walked right in, and headed for the first ride we saw, which was a teacup ride. There were no people in the park, but we didn’t seem to notice or care. Kyle kept complaining about how sunny it was. The gate to the teacup ride was locked, and Liam started to cry. We decided that we would spend some time at the large wave pool instead, but when we got there, there was no water in the pool. We found a large hose, and put it in the pool, and filled it up ourselves, even though we couldn’t get the waves to work. The water was crystal clear, and it looked like a tropical beach, with the bottom of the pool covered in white sand.

A woman showed up at the pool and waved at us enthusiastically. She was the only other person in the park besides us. She took off all of her clothes and jumped into the pool completely naked. Just then, a group of 6 or 7 little kids, which I assumed were with her, came running out of the locker room, and jumped into the pool after her. There were now several beach balls being thrown around, and we kept getting splashed, so we got out of the pool. Kyle was angry, and was cussing up a storm, complaining about the woman. We did a lap around the park, but there were still only a few other people there, and none of them were employees.

After walking for a long time, we came across a large archway, with a “Zoo” sign, and Liam starting jumping up and down and cheering. We walked down the path to the zoo, which descended into a thick, green rain forest. There were brightly colored birds, terrifyingly large bugs, and pterodactyls everywhere. I had a large camera around my neck, and was taking pictures of everything that we passed.

There was another group up ahead of us with several children, and they were all screaming about something that was going to get them…

And then I woke up.

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Never Feed the Fucking Trolls

WARNING: Strong language.

Hello, friends. I have a general rule for myself when it comes to dealing with internet trolls: DO NOT interact with them. Don’t. Just don’t do it. Lately, I have been having a hard time abiding by this rule. With the current state of politics and the presidential race, as well as the women’s rights movement (International Women’s Day was just a few days ago), various LGBT rights movements, and other pro-equality movements going on, our nation has become a nation divided in the ugliest of ways. I am very upfront with my political and moral views, and most of you know than I am an Agnostic Atheist, who believes in equality for everyone. I am not only an LGBT ally, but also a Pansexual woman, and member of the community. I am also a feminist, and a Liberal. I don’t really care if you dislike me for those reasons, because your close-mindedness does not effect me, and I don’t want you in my life if you choose to judge me based on those facts. For just these reasons alone, I have been judged very critically by complete strangers who know absolutely nothing about me, and who throw wild generalizations at me, and that isn’t fair.

I have been called everything from a libtard, feminazi, fag lover, and so much more… all because I believe in basic, human rights and equality for everyone, which apparently, is an awful thing. Who knew?

For the last several days, I have been engaged in a handful of online comment wars, spanning across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Sometimes, I am guilty of being a bit of an instigator, but more often than not, I simply voiced my appreciation on a topic. I am not a troll. I do not scour the web in search of things that I wholly disagree with with every fiber of my being, just to jump into the comment section and spew ignorance and hatred on the subject. I also rarely skim through comments in search of someone who supports said topic, just to call them names and trash their opinions. I don’t make a habit of fucking attacking people on a personal level just because I disagree with something they say on the internet.

Apparently, I am a minority when it comes to this sort of behavior, because people online are fucking assholes. Shocking, I know!

Recently, an LGBT/equality page that I follow on Facebook posted the following picture:

This graphic was posted on International Women’s Day, and while it did received a ton of praise from the LGBT community and its allies, it also received a lot of backlash from a lot of people who knew very little on the subject, and really had nothing of value to input other than “Fuck Caitlyn Jenner!” or “Until you’ve had a child you’re not REALLY a woman.”, both of which have nothing to do with what was said. The latter isn’t even a correct statement.

I posted the following two comments beneath the photo:

Both comments received more positive feedback than negative, but there were a few people that had apparently just had a bad day, and wanted to tear everyone on this page apart for no reason. There were even a few commenters that were clearly fake accounts, created for the sole purpose of trying to hurt other people who disagreed with their views. Others had nothing of value to say other than calling me ridiculous names, or paraphrasing the Bible in all caps, WHICH AS WE ALL KNOW MAKES YOU SOUND SO MUCH MORE INTELLIGENT.

Why? WHY? What could you possibly get out of doing something like that? You are about as unlikely to change my way of thinking as I am to change yours, and that’s why I don’t waste my fucking time.

On a day that was for celebrating ALL women, there were feminists who wanted nothing more than to point out how they felt that trans women weren’t women, and gave them no support at all. There were civil rights activists, and #BlackLivesMatter activists, talking about how trans people, as well as the LGBT community in general, did not deserve rights, let alone to be recognized in a holiday. This lead me into several, one-sided, heated “debates” (I can’t even really call them that, because only one side had anything logical to contribute) across all of my social media platforms, that I let get to me. I couldn’t stop.

I let these trolling, immature, ignorant, terrible people get to me. I broke my own rule. And boy, did it get me fired up.

How can people actually think like that? It is 2016! How can you still have so much hate in your heart that you think it is okay to hurt people like that? I’m not even a member of the trans community, but as a woman who has struggled with her sexual identity for many years, I can certainly tell you how hard it is to KNOW that you one thing, but have everyone around you tell you that you aren’t, for a whole list of bullshit reasons. What if you were black, and people told you that you weren’t black enough, because of your eye or hair color? Telling you that you weren’t what you KNEW you were, what you were meant to be, because you didn’t look like it on the outside? That would hurt. You would be stuck feeling like you don’t belong on either side of the tracks, and it would tear you apart.

No one deserves to feel that way.

There are people who use sources like the Bible to back up their behavior, thinking that they are doing their god’s work in tearing down and hurting these people, because they disagree with how they live their lives, and that is WRONG. But even more wrong are the people who have absolutely no reason to hate these people, and choose to anyway.

Hatred is a choice.
Sexuality, gender dysphoria, and race are not.

If you want equality for women, or African Americans, or Latinos, but not for your brothers and sisters in the LGBT community, then you want privilege. Not equality. Those are not the same thing.

PSA: Just because something is not YOUR problem, does not mean it is not an important problem for others.

I’m so done. Back to my happy place.

Jan

[Just now, as I finish writing this, I am reading the comments beneath Ingrid Nilsen’s latest video on public bathrooms and gender identity, and it is honestly making me want to scream and rip my hair out. I fucking hate people.]

Dream Journal 1/22/16

Present day.

I was walking around Walmart with Liam, when Kyle came running through the front doors. He came up to me, angry, and told me that his mother and step-father had just had a baby. I was stunned, as they are 49 and… 50 something, respectively, and we didn’t know that she was pregnant.

He wasn’t upset that they had a baby in secret, however… he was upset at the name. They named the baby, who was a boy, Stevenson Robertson Rutledge. And he was furious about the name(s). I tried to tell him that it wasn’t that bad, and that he could go by a nickname if he wanted, but he was too angry to listen. He kept saying that he would get bullied.

And then I woke up to a crying baby at 2:30 in the morning.

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Present day.

Kyle and I had bought a new truck, but it wasn’t new. It looked quite futuristic, and was shiny and cool looking, but it was apparently 30 years old, and riddled with problems. Just a few days after we bought it, it stopped working entirely, and we went back to the dealership to talk to the owner.

The owner was a 90-year old woman, who was dressed in a matronly, blue dress, and pearls around her neck. The outside of the shop looked like a large dealership, with a massive garage attached, but the inside looked like an old, Victorian home, and was decorated with dusty, antique furniture. Every surface in the waiting area was covered with doilies.

We were waiting by the doors, avoiding sitting on any of the musty furniture, and watching the elderly woman talk shop with another customer, who seemed quite unsatisfied. The woman’s language was quite… explicit, and her demeanor certainly did not match her conservative, maternal appearance.

They were arguing loudly, swearing at each other…

And then I woke up.