The dichotomies are absolutely
either/or
right/left
light/dark
male/female
masculine/feminine
hetero/homo
white/of color
upper class/working class
middle class/homeless
young/old
able-bodied/differently abled.

No room
for all points
in between

No room
for the perfect
Kinsey 2,3,4,5

for
both/and
middle ground
dawn/dusk
transsexual
transvestite
bisexual
mixed race/culture/class
middle age
temporarily abled/hidden disability

absolutely
no room
for all points in between.

But reality is not
this or that
it is
all of this
and
all of that

and
they meet/merge/mingle
in between.

-----------------

I love that. It sums up so many of my feelings. So many dichotomies, so many categories, so many boxes. Sometimes I wish I could express what I'm thinking as well as other people do. Anyway, I've been reading a lot, and I mean a lot, about gender identity and sexual identity, and I'm really amazed at everything I've seen. All our identities (and I mean all of them) are so fluid, so dynamic. I know I'm repeating what I've already posted, but I just can't get this idea off my head. I think it's because however much I hate the dichotomies that society has created, they are embedded deep inside my bones, and I don't know if I'll ever get rid of them. Finding a label that fits you gives you a sense of community. Of culture. Of approval. After all, if something doesn't even have a name, how can it be right? natural? It feels very safe, secure, when you can label yourself. Even though I hate what labels do to people, I don't think I'll ever get rid of the secret desire I have to label myself. It's why I constantly think about categories. About identities. About belief systems. I'll never stop thinking about them until I can find a box for myself, or truly accept being alone in who I am. I'm afraid because there is no one like me. It was so much easier being a good little Mormon girl, who followed all the rules, fit all the roles placed upon me. That was an easy life. I knew exactly what I was suppose to do. I knew exactly how other people would react to me. I knew exactly what I believed. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that life. But I know it was a lie. However comfortable, however safe, it was a lie. And I refuse to live a lie. I refuse to claim some label just becuase it makes me comfortable. And no label will every truly, fully, apply. I live in the world of in between. I am all of this all of that. I am and/or/both/more.

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Sometimes I just need to write. I don't really know why, but I do. It lets me get out feelings. It forces me to realize what my feelings are. It forces me to think through all my thoughts. I've been feeling so odd lately I don't know what to think about it. Why is it that when one part of your life finally starts going so right, everything else comes crashing down beside you. School is just a miserable failure for me this semester, mainly because I've lost the motivation to keep working. It's hard to put effort into classes when I can't see any way I'll be able to be here next year. It's just too much money. And I hate putting that on the shoulder of my parents. I hate that I'm asking them for money at the one time they really can't afford it. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. I'm also starting to think I should just make a permanent break from my friends in Georgia. Everyone who I've kept in touch with just causes me to stress out. Every time I visit some huge crisis happens, that usually ends with me in tears, or worse, to sad to cry. I'm really getting sick of it. I love everyone in Georgia so much, I care about you all so much, but I just can't keep holding on to these friendships that are doomed to fail. I can't keep holding on to something I lost the day I moved away from Georgia. Then there's my emotional stability, which has just gone down the drain. I've been thinking to much, about everything. I should remember that thinking is a dangerous thing for me. It always messes with my head. With my feelings. But, with all that going on, this still is such a wonderful time for me. Because this is a time when a part of my life is going completely, absolutely right. I've never been this happy. Ah, I don't know what I'm saying. Life sucks and life is wonderful. How is it that those can both me true at the same time? How is it that I can be so numb, but feel so much, at the same time? I don't know. It's odd. It's weird.

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Do Passion and Reason conflict? There has always been an age old battle between the two. Yet I'm starting to think that the reason this battle will never be resolved is because there is no conflict in the first place. Passion and Reason are obviously very different things. And if you use them as a solution to the same problem you'd get incredibly different answers. But I'm starting to realize that the problem isn't which to use, its where the proper place of each is. Reason and Passion should never be used for the same thing. They belong in completely different categories. Passion is what guides our lives, our goals, our values. It's what tells us what we wish to live for. If I'm passionate about a cause then I'll guide my life towards that cause. Passion decides where our lives go. Reason, on the other hand, is a tool to help us reach our goals. If I'm passionate about a certain goal, I use reason to accomplish that goal. Reason is what gets us to where we want to go. Passion is the rail, reason the wheels. Both are needed to live a satisfactory life. You can be ruled entirely by reason, because then how would you decide what to do with your life? If reason is strictly followed, everyone would have the same exact goals, because there is no inherent difference between two people. It's our passions that make us different. That make us unique. It's our passions that inspire us to use Reason in a productive manner. You also can't live your life with Passion alone. Being passionate about something doesn't get that something done. Just because I care about gay rights doesn't change the status of gay rights in the US. I need by reason to help me create the change. But I need my passion to have the desire to create that change. I think we have a serious problem when we claim that the two are opposite, and fight one with the other. That's incredibly destructive to ourself. Because we are destroying one essential part of ourself with another. The significant part is that logic is something that guides you. It doesn't give you a purpose. It can't tell you what your ultimate goal should be. But it can guide you to that goal. Passion is what gives us purpose, logic is a tool to achieve that purpose. This is why I don't think they conflict with one another, logic is a means to achieve our passion.

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Life's weird at the moment. It's been a year. I miss her. I should be sadder than I am. I feel horrible living a happy life right now, being happy without her here. But I am happy. I think I'm seriously going crazy though. I had another episode. I feel like I'm constantly controlling myself, that I'm going to snap any minute now, completely losing it. I thought I got over this last semester. I think it's because it's been a year. I year since I lost part of my soul. God, how I miss her. Memories. Episodes. Love. Fear. That's my life right now. I can never stop thinking, stop feeling, even for a moment. I wish I could just turn my head off for a time. I have so many thoughts abounding in my mind I don't know what to do with them. It doesn't help that I keep reading more, getting intrigued by more things, more people, studying more. Gender, Religion, Philosophy. Michelle. Michael. Beauty, Oneness. So many words, so many thoughts. Language is too limiting. Love makes me weak. Loss rips at my heart.

Trees are so damn beautiful. Beautiful. Any concept about any part of life can be shown in a tree. I love how it branches off. You start with a trunk, and that one center splits and splits and splits and splits. Smaller and smaller branches, diverging, each taking a different path. Yet each is the same. There really is no difference. It is the diverging nature of the branches and twigs that cause the tree to reach out in all directions, to seem to embrace the world around it. A lone trunk can't do such things. A single trunk sees only that directly in front of it. Multiple viewpoints of each separate branch are necessary to see the whole picture. Each branch sees something different, but that doesn't make some right and some wrong. Everyone in the world sees something different than everyone else. Yet it is the united picture of what we all see that forms reality. We are all right, even though we are all different. Yet we are all also the same, just a different part of the same tree, all coming from the same trunk. God damn, I love trees so much. It's also interesting to see that a single trunk has multiple roots. Many things come together, merging, forming the common basis of a tree, of mankind.

Language is limiting. It's simply a human construct, that we created with it's failings and all. And as we created it, we change it over time. I've never realized that as much as I do now. There are so many thoughts in my head that I just can't express. I try so hard to put them into words and fail completely. Even when I succeed in putting a small piece of my thoughts into words, they are misinterpreted by others. The limited nature of our language is responsible for so much misunderstanding of people. If every time we opened our mouth, the people listening truly understood what we meant, there would me so much less friction, dissent, whatever you want to call it in the world. There would be less hate. With understanding, it is impossible to hate. Because there are no truly evil people in the world. If we could understand everyone around us, we'd realize that while they may do horrible things, unforgivable things, there is still goodness in them. They are simply misdirected, misinformed. But our language doesn't allow us that type of understanding. Why else would so many people turn to art, to music, to other forms of expression. There is something expressed in music that language can never capture. There is something similar in artwork. I can feel so much pain, so much despair from looking at a picture. It is able to express everything our words can not explain. It captures feeling. I don't know. I can't explain. My point exactly.

Thinking that you know the "Whole Truth" keeps you from learning anything more; hence you stagnate; hence you die. But knowing that every truth is merely a metaphor, merely a tool, leaves you free to learn and to grow, by setting aside old metaphors as you learn or evolve better ones.
-Aidan Kelly

Traditions are merely roots and roots are only one part of the whole tree.
-Morning Glory Zell

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I'm just beginning to realize how truly dangerous labelling is. To label another is the natural tendancy of a human being. We see another person and we ask, "who are you?". What is their job, what is their religion, what is their sexuality, what is their gender, what is their politics. Student, Atheist, Heterosexual, Female, Libertarian. That's me with some labels. None of them fit though.
I'm a student, I'm also a teacher. Being a student is not who I am though. It is not my entire existance. Neither will my career define me in the future. It will be something I do, not who I am.
I'm also not truly an atheist. Do I believe in God? No. Do I believe in god? No. Do I believe in science? Yes. Do I believe in the supernatural? No. Yet I'm spiritual. I believe in the soul, I believe in Nature. I believe there is something that joins all living creatures. Some call this god, some call this God, some call this Mother Nature, some call it Physics, I call it Something. Does that belief make me religious? There is no answer to that question. I cannot be categorized into a religious belief system because there is no system that I agree with 100%. I am not a system of beliefs. I have an organic set of beliefs that grows and changes over time. I'm currently calling myself a spiritual atheist, but that's just because I find it pretty funny.
Heterosexual. Technically I suppose that's what I am. I'm certainly not a lesbian. But if I had the chance would I mess around with a girl? Definately, I'll try anything once. Does that make me Bi? I don't know. I hate this type of label more than most. I love who I love. And because I don't define gender as binary, Heterosexuality and Homosexuality have no real meaning for me.
I am Female, I am not Female. I have a vagina. I have many feminine characteristics. I also have many masculine characteristics. I generally relate more to Males. I beginning to learn that is because gender is a spectrum, and completely decided by whats inside a person, not whether they have a penis or vagina. I am me, neither Male nor Female.
What are my politics? The closest thing I see to me is Libertarian. Democrats call be Republican. Republicans call me Democratic. Libertarians call me Crazy. I fit in no category. I don't judge policies based on some category or another. My politics fall under no name unless it be "Brynnlee's Politics".
Labels are used to define someone, to make them easier to deal with. It's easier to brush someone off if you call them mentally ill. Its easier to damn someone if you can call them an Atheist. Exclusion is made possible by putting someone in the category of other. But that's a well known phenomena that many people have studied. What I find even more interesting is that labelling is used to force certain ideas onto people.
Once you are put into a category you are expected to believe everything they (those mysterious people, who may or may not exist, who compose the category) believe. If I'm labelled an Atheist, I'm expected to agree with every other atheist in matters of religion, and somewhat science. Though I'd be hardpressed to find another Atheist that agrees with me. Yet the pressure from within that community is even greater than from the outside. Each community united by a common label works to assimilate its members. Works to force a common set of beliefs on them. Labelling is the opposite of tolerance. When we label, we judge. When we label, we act a certain way towards a person and they react a certain way. It's amazing how in any group, there are categories and sub-categories and sub-sub-categories. I think that shows how any label is insufficient. No two people are the same. Not even a single aspect of two people are the same. Everyone either rebels against their labels, or changes themselves to fit them. I will do neither. I simply wont accept my labels. Don't you dare assume to call me one thing or another, when you don't really know me. If you knew me, you'd know that no label out society has created is sufficient to describe who I am. And there never will be such a sufficient label. Language is too limiting, it cannot adequately describe a persons spirit. The human spirit is simply too complex. And dynamic. Having a label limits someone from growing. From changing. If you've been labeling Libertarian you are more likely to keep your Libertarian beleifs and drop other beliefs, and not change or question your Libertarian beliefs. But the wonderful thing about the human spirit is that it isn't static, it changes and grows. Every day, every moment, I learn something, experience something that changes who I am. If I don't label myself, nothing in me resists that change. Yet sometimes I love my labels so much, that I try to hold onto them as long as possible and deny the changes within myself. Sometimes I love my labels because they give me security and authority. But that security and authority is worthless, based on a false perception of who I am. At least now I've realized, no matter how useful these labels may be, they are dangerous and should generally be avoided.

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