Reclaiming Pathetic

Earlier today, I was in the kitchen.

There is nothing unusual about this, to be sure: I am often in the kitchen. But sometimes insight can unfold from the mundane, and this was one of those times.

Okay, that's all vague: let me give you a fuller image of how a simple, boring morning opened itself to significant and affirming insights related to a very old, deep wound.

Perhaps it is a wound some of you have had to tend to, as well.

The fear that maybe, deep down where only I know where to look... that maybe I'm just... pathetic.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind a bit.

So, there I was, standing in the kitchen on a late morning during late winter. I had just gotten the first good night of sleep I've had in weeks, and I was feeling simultaneously relaxed and energized.

It is possible the caffeine-and-cannabis combo I may have allegedly partaken in was contributing to the way it felt good to just lean into the moment.

The task I was involved in was heating up some milk for a batch of homemade yogurt, so I was gently stirring the milk while watching the thermometer gradually creep its way up to the desired 185°F.

I had a playlist going, and a longtime favorite came on: "On & On" by Erykah Badu. My stirring of the milk made its way up my arm, through my shoulder, and within seconds I was dancing, smiling, and just for that snippet of time... completely content.

I leaned in, and followed the thread of my memories down to other times when I have happily swayed along to that particular song. I was already a teenager when it came out, so I've had the entirety of the song's 28-year existence (!!) to build a collection of contented memories that are specifically connected to this one song.

(I have these little collections for many songs, as I am sure many of you do, too.)

(I further suspect that much of the tricky sticking power of some of each person's problematic faves actually has very little to do with the media itself, and instead is due to the emotional value of the media serving as a mnemonic access point to a subset of one's memories that are uniquely aligned precisely because of their connection to that media.)

Okay, enough parentheticals. Back to this morning.

This particular thread of "On & On" memories led me to an image of me at 22 years old, similarly vibing in the kitchen, cooking while stoned and listening to Erykah Badu.

(If you don't have a whole little collection of memories of yourself cooking and dancing, listening to Erykah Badu while gently buzzed... may I gently suggest that it's never too late to start building one? Gather ye rosebuds, and whatnot.)

I decided to kind of... lean into the memory and build a conscious connection between me at 22 (literally half my lifetime ago) and me today, still finding soothing in the simple pleasures of making food, listening to music, feeling my body, and reveling in a good coffee/canna combo buzz.

At first, it felt incredibly affirming. I became very acutely aware of how I have aged into someone I am delighted to be. I noted with the deepest of gratitude how I haven't lost my idealism, my fire, or my eccentricity. How, in fact, I have become honed, sharpened, and even more lovingly and fiercely committed to the values connected to collective liberation that I was already so fiercely committed to back then.

To be honest, I am rather enamored with what I am discovering about myself as a being who is approaching their cronehood.

But in the midst of all of this affirmation, there arose another voice, too.

This voice was an echo of younger me, lobbing their insecurities at present-day me, giving voice to the aforementioned fear that I think can creep in on many of us—

Ugh. You're so pathetic.

Those words are ones that had been directed at me at different times through my life when I let my emotions, vulnerability, and/or neurospicyness show through.

Sometimes in the voices of others, but eventually in my own voice within the contours of my own mind.

They have operated to try to convince me that I shouldn't let myself be too weird. Too seen. Too known.

They are among the words that have hardened into the masks I have created throughout my life to appease the expectations of neuroconformity and cissexism.

But here, in this moment...

In this morning's tender, unmasked kitchen boogieing...

After years of work towards taking off the masks of neuroconformity (while still wearing a good N95 or KN95 mask, though!)...

And the truly amazing privilege of having a home and life that offer multiple places where it is safe and supported for me to lean into my weirdness, rather than away from it...

Here, in that moment, I was able to lean into that accusation of past me that I am nothing more than pathetic with curiosity, rather than pain or defensiveness.

In that moment, I just let myself feel the tenderness of that fear of younger me, and even sent some energy-like-a-hug to past me. Because—beneath the accusation of being pathetic—is the tender vulnerability of wondering if I am truly lovable.

Of course, the fear of whether or not we are lovable is something all humans must navigate, each to their own degree.

However, I truly believe that trans and gender-blessed people navigate that fear with a particular poignancy. I know that, speaking for myself, I spent decades of my life believing that I had to pick between being my authentic, gender-expansive self or being loved.

And, while it is true that 22-year-old me was out as queer, I certainly was still hiding my gender-expansive gender blessings under the disguises offered by femininity.

I still suspected that for to be out and visible as gender blessed was to preclude being loved by another person.

I don't think many cis people could possibly fully imagine the courage it takes to be a trans person facing down the choice of being loved or being authentic...

and choosing one's truth, knowing it might cost you so very, very much.

The younger, frightened voice of past me accusing me of being pathetic arose from the weight of internalized cissexism and neuroconformity that I no longer carry with me, and therefore no longer need to guard myself against in the same way.

A little later, after the yogurt-in-process was decanted into jars and set into a warm place to ferment, after the playlist had moved on to other songs with their whole other collections of memories attached, I looked up the etymology of the word pathetic.

Those who know me best know that this is not an unusual thing for me to do when a word captures my attention. I love looking into the clues that are hidden in a word's history, and have many words with histories that I am particularly fond of.

Humility.

Decision.

Lunatic.

Weird.

And now, pathetic.

I did have a hunch that there was more to the word pathetic than we ascribe to it in common usage, but I honestly wasn't prepared for just what I would find in regard to the word's earliest recorded uses, which (according to etymology.com), are:

1590s, "affecting the emotions or affections, moving, stirring" (now obsolete in this broad sense), from French pathétique "moving, stirring, affecting" (16c.), from Late Latin patheticus, from Greek pathetikos "subject to feeling, sensitive, capable of emotion," from pathetos "liable to suffer," verbal adjective of pathein "to suffer"

(Emphasis added).

Well, shit.

It's so obvious, now that I see it. Of course the literal definition of pathetic is the opposite of apathetic. I know about how the prefix a- works.

It just certainly say a lot about the history of the English-speaking world that to call someone capable of emotion has become transformed into an insult. What a damning statement about the white supremacist overculture that a word that simply means being sensitive to feelings is unilaterally deemed a shameful thing to be.

And that isn't even to mention the tenderly poignant acknowledgement that to be subject to feeling, sensitive, [and] capable of emotion is just a step away from opening oneself to suffering.

For that, it can be sure, is still true: when we become willing to not only see what is happening in the world, but to be sensitive to feeling it, too, we do in fact open ourselves to bearing witness to and experiencing the suffering that faces all sentient beings.

What I have learned, then, is that younger me is right: I am pathetic.

I am, in fact, open to feeling the breadth and depth of what I learn about this world and the innumerable sentient beings upon (and within and above) it.

I do embrace the fact that this will open me to heartbreak.

I have long since reconciled myself to the fact that, when I have to choose between truth and comforting illusions, I am the sort of person who chooses truth, to the best of my ability in every moment.

That, in fact, is one of the gifts that being unapologetically gender-blessed and neuroexpansive has given me.

So here I am to now say once again—this time proudly, and with both a smile on my face and tender tears forming in my eyes—that the rumors are true:

I am, indeed, pathetic.

And if you are, too: may you and your open, tender hearts join me.

May we together create a kinder world.

A world where we collectively work toward collective liberation.

Where hearts can be softer and our awareness of our connections firmer.

A world that is—dare I say it—simply pathetic.