Travel

[Ivy O'Brien]

I'm going home.  And when I say home, I mean the horrific place where I grew up and was ridiculed for most of my life. Where I learned that people in institutions are just as judgmental as people in high school.  Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is famous for having said (among other things): "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."  Whatever Vonnegut meant by this, I read it as the stark similarities between being bullied in high school, and being bullied in psychiatrists' offices, medical doctors' offices, governmental insitutional offices.  Maybe the words were different, but the controls were the same, and it all started -- it all started -- very close to where I'll be spending the next ten days.

"Well, if you feel that strongly about it, why go?"  *sigh* Because when I was there, I also became very aware that, unlike the institutions of my peers, I had friends.  Friends who became a family.  Friends who became a religion and a safe haven.  One of my friends is getting married.  She was my High Priestess, and she initiated me into Wicca.  Well, there were two other women who were involved in the ceremony, but she was the first person I could take seriously on the whole "religion" front.  We lived together for a while, her and I and three other witches, in a house on a street called Salem.

So, without being too specific, that's why I'm going home.  Plus I haven't seen the first woman I fell in love with for more than eight years, so she gets a visit too.  But that's not the point, I think.  I think the point for me is that it's difficult for me to return there, because no matter how loved I am by the people I'm intentionally visiting, I still feel hated by everyone -- especially those who never left.  There is an intersection between people who judge and bully in high school and people who judge and bully to ensure the "security" of the nation.

Flying is difficult for me, not because I'm scared of crashing, but because I'm particularly perturbed by the way everyone seems to need to invade your privacy.  Everyone in an airport is trained to look at you with suspicious eyes, and wonder if you're a terrorist -- or just a freak.

Like, John Green.  Sent back from a trip to Canada for "insufficient funds" (which is a ridiculous reason, frankly, to deny a single-family vehicle entry into a country).  He's going to be on the watchlist for the rest of his life?  It's unjust, and another excuse to humiliate, and it smacks of high school.  It really does.  I have problems with my papers, let's just say that, so as to make traveling in Canada difficult for me.  And, not to be racist, because I certainly believe that it should be much easier for immigrants to fly in a free country, but this is the kind of thing that -- given the social atmosphere of repressed aristocracy and racism underlying our entire culture -- shouldn't happen to a 12th generation Irish-Canadian born in Canada.  It just shouldn't happen.  But it does.  Flying terrifies me.  And if it weren't for my high priestess, I certainly wouldn't be doing it.

Anyway, this is a strange and kind of vague rant, and it skirts a topic I'm really uncomfortable talking about.  But I feel like I needed to write something.  So, here it is.

DFTBA.

Josie, I will see you on Friday.