and again i fail at not writing the most depressing posts ever

Happy almost-Valentine's day, readers! Also, happy Valentine's Eve and happy Galentine's day today; for tomorrow, happy Valentine's Day; and on Friday, happy Singles Awareness Day. I guess Monday is Presidents' Day too? Anyway, I hope you celebrate something this weekend.

I found this on my car today at work. Sometimes Jason leaves me windshield presents; sometimes I think I have a creepy stalker. I'm in a much better mood now than I have been for days, when I was pre-drafting this post in my head, but this really cute thing isn't a bad segue into my predetermined topic: gift-giving.

Sometimes when I'm writing a post I feel like my life is an episode of Seventh Heaven, where each episode is themed to a different life lesson and all the characters have individual encounters with the theme. It's really weird how things happen in sets; for example, this week I heard the following phrase twice from older male acquaintances: "I have a gift for you."

My first thought in both cases was, "Whoa." And quickly following that: "That's sad." Because in neither case did I really think there was anything implied in the gift; neither circumstance actually felt creepy. But I'm reminded of a post on my friend Liz's blog about the uncomfortable feeling of being objectified as an adult woman, which somehow feels far grosser and more threatening than being objectified as a college girl or even a teenager. What I got out of this post, at least, is that once you've been shamelessly ogled and drooled at by the last 9 guys you pass on the street, the 10th one can't do anything right. Even a genuinely friendly smile from him can't penetrate the 9 layers of dirt, which turns into armor when baked in the sun for even a minute.

What makes this situation even more disturbing to me is that both of these acquaintances fall into the category of writer friends -- not that writers can't be creepy, but I've found that writers in community give each other gifts all the time. And these gifts are often related to our shared passion: a poem or story; a book; a pen; a token of reminder to write every day. Yet I find it difficult to just say thank you. And the fact that I expect nothing good from my day to day interactions is a devastating fact to me.

This seems to be a common theme lately. Maybe I've just fallen into a late-winter darkness that will burn off like fog when spring comes. Already my afternoon commute is sunlit and that alone gives me hope. But then again...

If you're in the area, you probably couldn't avoid hearing about the courthouse shooting in Wilmington on Monday. Many of you nationwide probably also heard the news. In fact, I can say for certain that at least one of you has because on Monday evening, as I was sitting down to eat supper with my family, I got a phone call from someone who hasn't called in awhile. (I always try to take unexpected long-distance phone calls, for the record, friends.)

I picked up the phone and he said, "Oh good, you're alive."

"Yes, I'm alive," I said, confused.

"I was just listening to NPR and I heard that two women were shot in Wilmington so... I just wanted to check."

This is bizarre. I remember, too, when I was eleven and living in Upstate New York, and a very old friend texted me on September 11 to make sure everyone I knew was OK. It's always interesting to me what shakes the national conscience, what jogs our memory, what prompts us to get in touch.

And what puts us on the map. In 5th grade my hometown made the front page of Time for Kids with a picture of the frozen remains of First Presbyterian Church, which burned down overnight in the middle of January. It was a chilling, gorgeous photograph of a church in a town no one had heard of until it was struck by a particularly [visually] compelling tragedy. (For the life of me I can't find that photo.)

I'm getting distracted, though. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say there are shootings in Wilmington on a weekly basis; why did this one make the national news? I understand that too much happens in the world on a daily basis and the media can't report on all of it; the question has been asked before: What is newsworthy?

Chew on this: My uncle, a professor at Duke, investigates the connection between mental illness and violent crime. A week or two ago he was invited to interview with Anderson Cooper on a gun violence special; when they read up on his research they cancelled his interview. That freed him up to interview on Fox at the same time, but again when they read up on his research they cancelled.

So you might be wondering, what did his research say? Mental illness is not an accurate predictor of irrational violent crime. You can say that 7 percent of people with a serious mental illness have committed a violent crime, while only 2 percent of everybody else has done so. Or you can say that 96% of violent crimes are committed by people who are not diagnosed with a serious mental illness.

I mention this because it freaked me out to remember, so close to home, how subjective the news media is. I have even been struggling to listen to NPR lately because of all the violence. Not to mention the epic battles on my Facebook news feed on Monday about whether the courthouse shooting or the Pope's resignation was more important.

Here's what I think: WHO CARES?! We're talking about human experience here. We all look with our own eyes at everything, and everything that happens impacts someone very closely. Uncomfortably closely. We want to blame people with schizophrenia for mass shootings; we are afraid there is a deeper scandal broiling beneath Ratzinger's resignation; we are buying guns faster than ever before because "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

The problem is, nothing is either/or. I realize I think singularly in shades-of-grey (not FIFTY shades of grey, mind you -- just plain ol' shades of grey), but where I am black and white is that I cannot for the life of me understand why people forget that there are always two sides of every story. Scratch that-- there are at least two sides to every story, and I would venture more often than not there are hundreds. I'm like a little kid watching a movie that's just beyond my comprehension level: "Who's the bad guy, Daddy? Which one is the good guy?" Well, who are you? The bad guy or the good guy? Because the answer to that question will flip the answer to the first question on its head.

Not to mention, I personally get stuck on the question about who I am. I'm neither bad nor good 100% of the time; I'm sometimes one or the other to different people, or one or the other on different days to different people. I've made enemies, I've done things I'm not proud of, I've definitely been responsible for more than one person's pain (at least emotional, with some mostly accidental physical pain interspersed).

What I'm struggling to say, yet again, is that this all signifies to me a grand-scale cultural malaise. This world is full of pain. The mere knowledge of it keeps me up at night. It drives me crazy during daylight. It gives me an adrenaline kick when I'm getting ready for bed or driving to work or walking through the grocery store parking lot. I am afraid a lot of the time lately. Because I cannot predict or control the way things are or the way things will be tomorrow, and it's too easy to get sucked in to feeling vulnerable and susceptible 100% of the time.

That's where I spent a lot of my weekend and the first part of this week: somewhere lost inside that vulnerable, terrified black hole. So last night, I put on my LOVE T-shirt from RoadTrip and went to BodyCombat. It's a thin armor against the onslaught of despair being thrown at us 24/7 these days, a hollow effort to regain my sense of ownership on my block, my city, this nation. But I need constant reminders that love is something well worth fighting for. It can't be stolen or shot or blown up. It can be shaken. But it always bounces back.

I haven't bounced back yet, but I'm working on it. I'm working on it reallllly hard and hoping so hard that things keep happening to restore my faith in humanity, on any scale I can get, and to restore my sense of security in my own body and my own home.

Things, for example, like this video here: http://youtu.be/sP4NMoJcFd4