You Know I Want You...
Yet again, it's been far too long since I've written. There's a reason that happens that I haven't really spoken about. Writing is the catharsis that I need to express a part of who I am that I'm still learning to bring up in real life. Putting these things on the internet gives me a (perhaps false) sense of separation that lets me be vulnerable with something that rarely sees the light of day otherwise.
So if I'm not writing once in a while, I'm drowning.
In trauma. Medical, Sexual, Developmental.
And there's a part of me that things I deserve that keeps me from reaching out. And I get to a point where the crushing weight of what I'm trying to overcome to get to zero or baseline relative to everyone else becomes too much to bear and I have outbursts. And then I end up here.
I've been thinking a lot about the music I listen to and why I listen to it. And tonight, a string of songs had a similar theme, but theater kid that I am, I landed on "Rewrite the Stars" from The Greatest Showman. And while I joke about being a nerd, the narrative between Anne Wheeler and Phillip Carlyle is apt for a struggle I've been fighting for some time, both personally and on a larger social scale.
I'm doing something radical. I'm facing my cognitive dissonance. I'm looking at who I was and the Phillip Carlyle's I love, and what I have in common with Anne Wheeler that made me refuse their love.
Anne is a freak.
I'm a freak.
... don't get me wrong, I like myself. I'm doing better at that everyday. Being a true weirdo, to me, is the ultimate way to laugh at a bizarre and ridiculous world filled with absurd expectation.
But I know, to a lot of the world, I'm a freak.
And it's not just about you're seen when you're a freak to society. It's about the way that that creeps into the everyday life you've designed if you love a Phillip Carlyle. Phillip Carlyle, and specifically loving a Phillip Carlyle, is representative of a kind of repression that hurts constantly on a low level.
I'm Desi, I'm disabled, I'm queer - both in gender and sexuality (as an intersex womyn), I'm a survivor of a wide variety of traumas, including childhood sadistic sexual abuse, domestic violence, rape, the effects of parental mental illness, religious trauma, and tons and tons and tons of medical trauma - I'm bold and proud of each of those things that affect my thoughts, my experiences, and my life everyday.
No part of owning those identities is something I "over-identify" with or choose to identify with. Each of those things takes every experience that I have - everything that I do - and makes it unique to that group of identities. I wouldn't be able to untangle all the ways in which disability makes it harder for me to navigate the world relative to an able bodied person, I couldn't give every example of the way trauma affects my thoughts. I certainly can't even begin to quantify how living in chronic, intractable, increasing pain has changed my personality and I definitely can't give every example of feeling like I'm less than or coming up short because I'm not white, I'm not "normal," I'm not Indian enough, I don't speak Hindi... its a minefield.
The character of Anne had a similar web of marginalized experiences. She is represented by a black woman, a part of a group of circus freaks, coming from a low class in her society, and certainly part of a bigger picture at the time that, similarly, I wouldn't be able to unravel so I could convey.
In the movie, looking from a life of privilege, Phillip probably thinks that things are different after he betrays the "respectable" business position and joins Barnum. He can't possibly understand the ways in which he still holds a great deal more power than Anne. He doesn't see that they live in a world that will never see them as the same, nor how hard that would be to overcome. The naivete isn't a moral failing so much as it just... naivete. A character like Phillip, like many of the white, cis people I confront with their privilege, would probably take a criticism as a great offense because it would likely affront his character.
Someone like Anne has lived long enough in her own intersection of marginalizations that she's taken some chances on people without them. She has to decide how much faith she has in Carlyle and decide if she's willing to take the risk and trust that he won't abandon her at the first indication of speculation and doubt from outside forces. In the movie, there's a scene where she gives him a chance and joins him for an event.
When his parents express criticism and his fear keeps him from sticking up for her, she turns and leaves. Every woman of color has had this moment with a white man at some point or another.
Perhaps you're thinking, "Sarita, that's one moment, it's not unreasonable to have a moment of pain and reservation before acting. It's not even unreasonable that he wouldn't stick up for her that time," and the reason I know you might be thinking that is because I've been having this argument at every instance of concern or complaint since I was old enough to have a crush. And that's exactly it - when your automatic response is to defend the impulse or choice to not defend and protect the most vulnerable person, but yourself, you're telling on yourself. And women of color notice. If you ever want to love a woman of color, you're best off training yourself to lean in to your discomfort and telling her that that's what you're trying to do. And that's just an issue of race and class. It can get much more complicated.
If you're having a dialogue like "Rewrite the Stars" with a woman of color, an nb person with a disability, a survivor, an intersex or trans person that you want to commit to you, a person with significantly more privilege than that person, you need to listen to and believe what they're saying and validate their concerns. If all you agree on is that you have meaningful chemistry or that you love each other, you might be missing the point. There are times and circumstances where love is not enough.
Take a moment to read the lyrics and notice every time Phillip responded to Anne by denying the reality of what she was saying.
The second stanza is especially telling of his attitude. She expressed her concern that committing to each other alone will not change the circumstances that make it difficult for him to express love and validation for her when she mosts needs it, when she's most vulnerable. And how did he respond? He asks her, "What if we rewrite the stars? Say you were made to be mine? Nothing could keep us apart," which shows his fundamental misunderstanding of her concerns and frankly, a note of selfishness that usually explodes into something much bigger later in a relationship. Rewriting the Stars, for these two, would involve changing the pressures and circumstances that the world would put on a relationship. That's not something they can do.
For someone like Anne, it's so hard to say no when a white man argues with you. Historically, I've been trained to submit to white men. The more privilege that a person has, the more I grapple with internalized -isms when they push the boundaries I set down. The world has told me over and over again that my disability or my race or my other experiences shouldn't be an issue, that I should be blind to those things and not acknowledge and work through the things or expect other people to put in the effort to work on those things. And! That's to say nothing of the chemistry they share. Everyone has had a crush, everyone has been through that time in life where the people they dated were maybe not that compatible but it was easy and fun and had a pull that they couldn't convey with words.
The burden of all of this is on Anne's shoulders alone. Phillip is taking no responsibility, he's denying that it's a problem at all, or oversimplifying to say that it could be changed by their commitment. Anne says, "When we go outside, you're gonna wake up and see it was hopeless after all." She knows the impossibility of working things out with someone who either refuses or lacks the capacity to see the challenges they'll face.
I'm not even going to go into much detail about the ways in which this applies to me, because it's honestly an almost perfect parallel (even though I'm totally a theater/vocal nerd and of COURSE I would use a Greatest Showman song to explain this).
Just let it suffice to say this - in order to be a member of the mormon church, to hang out with white people, cis people, able bodied people, etc... in order to be a "good patient" (not a concept that should exist, people shouldn't have to behave a certain way to get healthcare as needed), to be a friendly woman of color that doesn't give harsh truths that make people feel white guilt or challenge their supposed "apolitical" takes, to be someone who doesn't 'burden' or 'inconvenience' people with my disability... I have censored most or all of who I am.
You have known a very limited sliver of who I am. And it's killing me. I'm seriously unwell and getting worse from a lack of authenticity, and I'm making a lot of changes. Primarily, I'm done with the internalized bullshit I'm putting myself through unnecessarily. That is not just a decision, but a process, and I'm going to be more transparent. I'm starting a mission with very planned and intentional moves that are designed to highlight the absurdity of society, be vulnerable to show how these marginalized identities are actually windows to truth that privileged people have hidden from them, and most of all - to give a safe place for everyone to feel deeply and connect over real, actual, uncontrived common ground.
If there's one take away that you have from this, I hope it's that you should listen to black women. They carry the weight of the world on their backs and if you feel like their words are harsh, it's probably a combination of bias and reactivity. And you can become a better person if you learn to listen.
Love and Admiration,
Sarita
So if I'm not writing once in a while, I'm drowning.
In trauma. Medical, Sexual, Developmental.
And there's a part of me that things I deserve that keeps me from reaching out. And I get to a point where the crushing weight of what I'm trying to overcome to get to zero or baseline relative to everyone else becomes too much to bear and I have outbursts. And then I end up here.
I've been thinking a lot about the music I listen to and why I listen to it. And tonight, a string of songs had a similar theme, but theater kid that I am, I landed on "Rewrite the Stars" from The Greatest Showman. And while I joke about being a nerd, the narrative between Anne Wheeler and Phillip Carlyle is apt for a struggle I've been fighting for some time, both personally and on a larger social scale.
I'm doing something radical. I'm facing my cognitive dissonance. I'm looking at who I was and the Phillip Carlyle's I love, and what I have in common with Anne Wheeler that made me refuse their love.
Anne is a freak.
I'm a freak.
... don't get me wrong, I like myself. I'm doing better at that everyday. Being a true weirdo, to me, is the ultimate way to laugh at a bizarre and ridiculous world filled with absurd expectation.
But I know, to a lot of the world, I'm a freak.
And it's not just about you're seen when you're a freak to society. It's about the way that that creeps into the everyday life you've designed if you love a Phillip Carlyle. Phillip Carlyle, and specifically loving a Phillip Carlyle, is representative of a kind of repression that hurts constantly on a low level.
I'm Desi, I'm disabled, I'm queer - both in gender and sexuality (as an intersex womyn), I'm a survivor of a wide variety of traumas, including childhood sadistic sexual abuse, domestic violence, rape, the effects of parental mental illness, religious trauma, and tons and tons and tons of medical trauma - I'm bold and proud of each of those things that affect my thoughts, my experiences, and my life everyday.
No part of owning those identities is something I "over-identify" with or choose to identify with. Each of those things takes every experience that I have - everything that I do - and makes it unique to that group of identities. I wouldn't be able to untangle all the ways in which disability makes it harder for me to navigate the world relative to an able bodied person, I couldn't give every example of the way trauma affects my thoughts. I certainly can't even begin to quantify how living in chronic, intractable, increasing pain has changed my personality and I definitely can't give every example of feeling like I'm less than or coming up short because I'm not white, I'm not "normal," I'm not Indian enough, I don't speak Hindi... its a minefield.
The character of Anne had a similar web of marginalized experiences. She is represented by a black woman, a part of a group of circus freaks, coming from a low class in her society, and certainly part of a bigger picture at the time that, similarly, I wouldn't be able to unravel so I could convey.
In the movie, looking from a life of privilege, Phillip probably thinks that things are different after he betrays the "respectable" business position and joins Barnum. He can't possibly understand the ways in which he still holds a great deal more power than Anne. He doesn't see that they live in a world that will never see them as the same, nor how hard that would be to overcome. The naivete isn't a moral failing so much as it just... naivete. A character like Phillip, like many of the white, cis people I confront with their privilege, would probably take a criticism as a great offense because it would likely affront his character.
Someone like Anne has lived long enough in her own intersection of marginalizations that she's taken some chances on people without them. She has to decide how much faith she has in Carlyle and decide if she's willing to take the risk and trust that he won't abandon her at the first indication of speculation and doubt from outside forces. In the movie, there's a scene where she gives him a chance and joins him for an event.
When his parents express criticism and his fear keeps him from sticking up for her, she turns and leaves. Every woman of color has had this moment with a white man at some point or another.
Perhaps you're thinking, "Sarita, that's one moment, it's not unreasonable to have a moment of pain and reservation before acting. It's not even unreasonable that he wouldn't stick up for her that time," and the reason I know you might be thinking that is because I've been having this argument at every instance of concern or complaint since I was old enough to have a crush. And that's exactly it - when your automatic response is to defend the impulse or choice to not defend and protect the most vulnerable person, but yourself, you're telling on yourself. And women of color notice. If you ever want to love a woman of color, you're best off training yourself to lean in to your discomfort and telling her that that's what you're trying to do. And that's just an issue of race and class. It can get much more complicated.
If you're having a dialogue like "Rewrite the Stars" with a woman of color, an nb person with a disability, a survivor, an intersex or trans person that you want to commit to you, a person with significantly more privilege than that person, you need to listen to and believe what they're saying and validate their concerns. If all you agree on is that you have meaningful chemistry or that you love each other, you might be missing the point. There are times and circumstances where love is not enough.
Take a moment to read the lyrics and notice every time Phillip responded to Anne by denying the reality of what she was saying.
You know I want you
It's not a secret I try to hide
I know you want me
So don't keep saying our hands are tied
You claim it's not in the cards
Fate is pulling you miles away
And out of reach from me
But you're here in my heart
So who can stop me if I decide
That you're my destiny?
It's not a secret I try to hide
I know you want me
So don't keep saying our hands are tied
You claim it's not in the cards
Fate is pulling you miles away
And out of reach from me
But you're here in my heart
So who can stop me if I decide
That you're my destiny?
What if we rewrite the stars?
Say you were made to be mine
Nothing could keep us apart
You'd be the one I was meant to find
It's up to you, and it's up to me
No one can say what we get to be
So why don't we rewrite the stars?
Maybe the world could be ours
Tonight
Say you were made to be mine
Nothing could keep us apart
You'd be the one I was meant to find
It's up to you, and it's up to me
No one can say what we get to be
So why don't we rewrite the stars?
Maybe the world could be ours
Tonight
You think it's easy
You think I don't want to run to you
But there are mountains
And there are doors that we can't walk through
I know you're wondering why
Because we're able to be
Just you and me
Within these walls
But when we go outside
You're going to wake up and see that it was hopeless after all
You think I don't want to run to you
But there are mountains
And there are doors that we can't walk through
I know you're wondering why
Because we're able to be
Just you and me
Within these walls
But when we go outside
You're going to wake up and see that it was hopeless after all
The second stanza is especially telling of his attitude. She expressed her concern that committing to each other alone will not change the circumstances that make it difficult for him to express love and validation for her when she mosts needs it, when she's most vulnerable. And how did he respond? He asks her, "What if we rewrite the stars? Say you were made to be mine? Nothing could keep us apart," which shows his fundamental misunderstanding of her concerns and frankly, a note of selfishness that usually explodes into something much bigger later in a relationship. Rewriting the Stars, for these two, would involve changing the pressures and circumstances that the world would put on a relationship. That's not something they can do.
For someone like Anne, it's so hard to say no when a white man argues with you. Historically, I've been trained to submit to white men. The more privilege that a person has, the more I grapple with internalized -isms when they push the boundaries I set down. The world has told me over and over again that my disability or my race or my other experiences shouldn't be an issue, that I should be blind to those things and not acknowledge and work through the things or expect other people to put in the effort to work on those things. And! That's to say nothing of the chemistry they share. Everyone has had a crush, everyone has been through that time in life where the people they dated were maybe not that compatible but it was easy and fun and had a pull that they couldn't convey with words.
The burden of all of this is on Anne's shoulders alone. Phillip is taking no responsibility, he's denying that it's a problem at all, or oversimplifying to say that it could be changed by their commitment. Anne says, "When we go outside, you're gonna wake up and see it was hopeless after all." She knows the impossibility of working things out with someone who either refuses or lacks the capacity to see the challenges they'll face.
I'm not even going to go into much detail about the ways in which this applies to me, because it's honestly an almost perfect parallel (even though I'm totally a theater/vocal nerd and of COURSE I would use a Greatest Showman song to explain this).
Just let it suffice to say this - in order to be a member of the mormon church, to hang out with white people, cis people, able bodied people, etc... in order to be a "good patient" (not a concept that should exist, people shouldn't have to behave a certain way to get healthcare as needed), to be a friendly woman of color that doesn't give harsh truths that make people feel white guilt or challenge their supposed "apolitical" takes, to be someone who doesn't 'burden' or 'inconvenience' people with my disability... I have censored most or all of who I am.
You have known a very limited sliver of who I am. And it's killing me. I'm seriously unwell and getting worse from a lack of authenticity, and I'm making a lot of changes. Primarily, I'm done with the internalized bullshit I'm putting myself through unnecessarily. That is not just a decision, but a process, and I'm going to be more transparent. I'm starting a mission with very planned and intentional moves that are designed to highlight the absurdity of society, be vulnerable to show how these marginalized identities are actually windows to truth that privileged people have hidden from them, and most of all - to give a safe place for everyone to feel deeply and connect over real, actual, uncontrived common ground.
If there's one take away that you have from this, I hope it's that you should listen to black women. They carry the weight of the world on their backs and if you feel like their words are harsh, it's probably a combination of bias and reactivity. And you can become a better person if you learn to listen.
Love and Admiration,
Sarita
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