I require something more tangible than a grudge.

I have an uncanny talent for remembering miraculously far back into my own life with incredible clarity. My earliest memory is of the yellow lining inside my crib. Another is of my second birthday party, where I wore a light blue dress for the approximate length of one photo….before I tore it off and spent the rest of the event naked. 

Man, I knew how to party back then.

One of my favorite, and probably most shameful, memories is from Kindergarten. Let me preface this story by saying I was a real Goody Two Shoes. I followed the rules, I shared, I never picked fights, I always came in from recess on time, I talked about Jesus a lot. Like, a lot.

BUT.

There was this girl named Brittany in my class and she represented my very first encounter with a bully. Like some kind of villain from a Lemony Snicket novel, she wore the same shade of pink every single day. Even in Kindergarten, she already had a really good grasp on her Regina George persona. 

As a good kid, I wasn’t really familiar with enemies or bullies. Because up until this point, I’d never had any. All I really understood was that this Brittany was making my day to day life miserable. She made fun of my hair. She kicked mud on my shoes. She would pretend the snack I brought to class smelled bad. I did not know this word at the time, but I’d have described her as a fucking douchenozzle.

Now, my parents were big proponents of the “kill them with kindness” method, and I took that very much to heart. So whenever Brittany reminded me that I had a boy’s name or that she thought my Show & Tell was stupid, I’d laugh and let her cut in front of me in line for the swings.

That had the ultimate effect of just making her MEANER.

Plus, at some point, I think Brittany understood she wasn’t getting to me (she was, but on the outside your girl was cool as a cucumber), and that just fueled her fucking fire. So one day, she went for the jugular. And if you know me, then you know the jugular is my family.

“I saw your mom drop you off at school today,” she said.

“My mom drops me off every day,” I agreed.

“Well, your mom is ugly. And I bet your dad is too.”

Those words just hung in the air between us and I remember feeling really sick. All the color must’ve drained from my face because this poisonous smile slowly spread across her face like a puddle of oil.

No one had EVER said anything mean about my parents before. It felt foreign. It felt wrong. And I knew instinctively that it was unfair territory. I mean, it was one thing to say something mean about me - I could defend myself if I wanted to - but my mom? My dad? They weren’t even THERE. How were they supposed to stand up for themselves?

The thing about this memory is that after Brittany verbally attacked my parents, there’s a momentary blankness. I don’t know how I managed to get next to Brittany, I don’t know at what point I grabbed the front of her dress - but the memory picks up with my tiny hands on her pink collar, flinging her into the mud under the monkey bars. And then, I held her down. 

I held her down until her ruffled pink dress was drenched in playground sludge. And while Brittany screamed and cried and drew our class and teacher to one side of the playground, I slipped back into our classroom, went to Brittany’s personal cubby, located her Show & Tell piece - an iridescent Dance Magic Barbie dress - and shoved it down the neck of my sweater.

AND THEN I WAS SENT HOME FROM SCHOOL FOR BULLYING BRITTANY. 

It was a cruel twist of fate. My mom had to leave work to collect me from the main office, where I was being held. Through tears, I told my mom what had transpired. I told her how Brittany had been torturing me all year. I told her that I’d finally broken when she had said my parents were ugly. And through big, ugly, messy tears I confessed all about the mud and the stolen Barbie dress because I “wanted to hurt Brittany like she hurt me.”

And I waited for the hammer of justice to fall. 

The hammer of justice ended up being my mom buying me ice cream at Rite-Aid.

So, I guess the moral of this story is something along the lines of don’t fuck with my family or don’t be a bully….???? I don’t know. I don’t care. Mostly I just wanted to say, hey Brittany, if you’re out there, your Barbie dress still looks great.

After I’d had my gallbladder removed, some dude offered up the completely unsolicited and bonkers advice that I could heal myself with prayer. He volunteered that if I repented of my sinful ways - the results of which were my gallstones and the subsequent failure of my gallbladder - that I could regenerate my lost organ and become whole again. He said that God’s benevolent love would not only return to me my missing gallbladder, but would remedy the loss of the appendix that exploded when I was 18 and the cancer I was probably going to get from all the premarital sex I was reveling in. He then, without asking, put his hands on my stomach and proceeded to appeal to the Lord to cure me of my ailments, provided I lived a good life from that point forward and stopped leading others into the arms of the devil by my dark example.

I was reminded of this very real moment this morning, because I realized that this is exactly how it feels to talk to Republicans about healthcare.

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P.S. My gallbladder did not grow back.

One of the best days of my life was the day I told my dad I was atheist.

For background - I’ve always had very open, loving, and socially liberal parents, but I was raised under a conservative, Baptist banner. We attended church every Sunday. In 1997, my father moved all of us to South Dakota because he felt that God had called him to attend seminary. I went to Bible camp every summer from the ages of 10 through 17. When I was 15, a friend asked me to baptize her; and I did. On my first day of 1st Grade, I sat with my dad on the floor of my living room - both of us kneeling, our hands folded in prayer across the cushions of the loveseat - and accepted Jesus into my heart. This is to say, my unraveling from Christianity didn’t happen easily or without careful and educated consideration. It was a slow awakening - it took years of travel, attending other religious services, making friends outside my church group and listening to their thoughts, views, and stories, then allowing those views to challenge my own.

I asked a lot of questions, and at some point, I could no longer justify the answers I was getting.

One day after a particularly long debate with a friend about heaven, I thought, “Maybe this is it, and we have to be good, nice people here because this is our only shot.” And it was the first time, in a long time, that I felt some semblance of comfort. It all suddenly made sense, and I knew right then that I was atheist.

But it would be about 9 years before I ever said those words out loud.

Which brings me back to my best day.

I had stopped to fill up my car at a gas station. I only wanted to put $20 in the tank because it was all I had in the bank until Friday - so, I was obsessively staring at the pump. As I watched the gauge tick upward, a woman walked up to me and asked if she could talk with me about her religion. Usually I’m very open to discussing faith, but at this particular moment, I wasn’t really paying attention to her, I was watching the meter. Without thinking, I quickly rattled off, “No thank you, I’m atheist.” It was the first time I’d ever said it outside of my head. Anywhere. To anyone. I was so stunned, I forgot what I was doing until I heard the audible “pop” of the pump’s automatic shut-off. I’d filled up with $26.80 worth of gas. Fuck.

Even though I was probably overdrawn, I felt indescribably light. I’d said something true and honest, and the world around me just continued and no one died and that woman at the gas pump didn’t scream at me or try to claw my eyes out, she simply smiled and walked away. Everything was justfine.

I had to capitalize on this feeling. So, I called my dad.

When he answered, the first thing I blurted into the phone was, “Daddy, I’m an atheist.” There was a silence, and then, “Yeah, I kinda figured.”

“You KNEW?”

“Sure.”

“Are you mad?”

“No.”

“Really? Really? You accept that?”

Then my dad said something that I wish every single human could hear from the person they love the most: “No. I don’t accept that. Acceptance is my most basic requirement as a parent. It’s the easiest thing I could do as your dad. It requires nothing more from me than….adequacy. Acceptance is tolerating something, even when you don’t like it. You’re atheist? Okay. Whatever. You’re a wonderful person. You’re a wonderful daughter. I love you, and every day you give me a reason to love you more. I’m so proud of you. Of your bravery and your honesty. Accept you? No. I don’t accept you - I ADORE you.“

Hearing that from my dad, even when deep down I probably knew that would be his answer, was such a satisfying relief.

That feeling is something I don’t want to take for granted.

What I’m trying to say is, if in this current social and political climate, you feel like there’s something about you that is different or weird or not “normal” and you think if you say it out loud the world is going to end, please know…

I don’t accept you - I ADORE you.