My People

People are categorized.  Right or wrong, for whatever reasons, this happens.  I think this is probably an evolutionary response, an inborn part of humans being herd animals.  The spread of covid made terms like "herd immunity" become part of mainstream conversation, and the reaction of others to this term sometimes surprised me.  Some people really don't like hearing humans referred to as "animals."  But we are.  We are an interconnected part of all living beings on this planet, and we share characteristics with other species who have developed as herd animals.  Humans survive because there are other humans around them.  A newborn placed somewhere alone, and left there, will not survive, unless another living being shows up to help them.  Belonging is fundamental to survival for all herd animals. 

I have struggled to figure out what group I fit with, where I belonged, for most of my life.  Whenever I was at Orthopedic Hospital in Los Angeles, or Shriners' hospital in Portland,  or any children's hospital anywhere, I felt a bit of a connection to the other children undergoing medical procedures.  But that connection was often broken by something I had no control over.  Because I had been traumatized by the death of my kitten, Barney, I had learned to never react or vocalize when adults were doing something that was painful or scary.  Blood draws, swallowing gross tasting medications, seeing a cast saw coming at me, having my hip stretched or bent in painful ways, insertions of IV lines, I never reacted outwardly to any of these things.  Whenever another child in the children's ward was reacting badly to something painful or scary, the nurse would point at me and say, "Why can't you be brave, like Judy?"  The way that made the other children feel immediately excluded me from the rest of those children.  I was no longer part of that group.  And it had nothing to do with me being "brave."  I was terrified of doing anything wrong.  No stoic, heroic strength involved at all.  Just terror.

As I got older, there were two groups I discovered I could identify with a little bit:  Vietnam veterans, and those who had once been child soldiers.  When I would hear people from these groups talk, I understood a lot of the emotional pain they spoke of, how awful it was to have been following orders that they would never have chosen to take part in on their own, and to often be blamed for all of it.  But I had not been to Vietnam, and I was never "conscripted" into any military.  So I was not really part of those groups.

Over the past decade or so, it has finally been dawning on me that I do belong to a group, a subset of humans who share a lot of similar fears and pain, who live lives based on very similar trauma, which usually occurred while we were children, and directly affects each of our lives.  Trauma that creates behaviors so misunderstood by everyone else around us, and by each of us who are members.  We are part of every race, religion, class, region, gender, every other category humans divide themselves into, everywhere on this planet.  

In trying to open Marc Maron's eyes to the pain behind those broken girls he has been drawing in, re-exploiting, and joking about onstage for decades, I tried to bring out the ways my group has been mistreated, and how this is somewhat similar to the way other groups have experienced the "othering" humans are so good at doing.  Just this morning, in Mr. Maron's intro to his latest podcast, he describes the horrendous way antisemitism creates people capable of doing inhumane things to those they label as "others."  The pain Mr. Maron feels, the fear our current political climate creates for certain humans, is very apparent in his words.  It is awful, the things people do to each other, because they feel righteous in defining other humans as part of a group that can be dehumanized and mistreated.

Mr. Maron was not capable of understanding anything I wrote, trying to make him realize how wrong it is to target and further harm the group I belong to, a group he has been harming publicly for decades.  He doesn't ever have to understand or stop, either.  Sexualized children are a group that can be targeted, misused, and left in worse condition, and most of humanity won't see this as wrong.  The members of my group not only carry horrible pain, we carry all of the blame for what that pain has done to each of us.