saying goodbye

One more post for the day (on a roll, huh?)

Recently I left a group I have been in for years. I got to the point that seeing interactions/non-interactions was a negative experience to me. Let me emphasize: to me. It's all about my perception and what I could handle. Individually, they are fantastic women. Even as a group, just wonderful. But the particular dynamics weren't something I could handle in my life at this point.

I didn't want to leave in a huff of drama, like I have seen others leave email loops. The melodramatic good-bye posts are often really a ploy to get others to beg them to stay. So I just quietly left, figuring nobody would notice/comment for awhile.

What was there to say? No matter how I say it, it would seem like an accusation. Ya'll aren't meeting my needs at this point and I would like to move on instead of trying to live in the past and recapture the golden years. But that reads wrong, since (as the old break-up line says) its not you (all), it's me. It's my lack of the social ins and outs that other women seem to have. It's my fear of asking for help while intensily longing to have very close connections. I don't expect anybody else to meet my needs as I often don't even know what my needs are.

I just wanted to leave while leaving was a strength for me. While I was doing it for the right reasons, to decrease the negative feelings I have. The only problem, is because I have seperated myself so quietly, and I already have a habit of not reaching out, I fear that I have cut myself out of their lives completely rather than just this aspect of it. And par for the course, I don't know how to fix it.

Up to Interpretation?

Read this marker and tell me if you see anything wrong with it.

On a recent visit to Harper's Ferry, my husband and I paused to read what we thought would be a heartfelt tribute to some historical moment or person. We found this to be hysterical instead. What also amused us is that when we laughed, we were looked at like we were crazy or insensitive. I suppose if your interest wandered and you only read the first part, it would seem insensitive to laugh.

But what struck us was the second part. The part that was the dedication. As we read it, the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of the Confederate Veterans were basically thanking the 'negroes' (aka- slaves and freedmen) for resisting the temptation of joining in the fight for their freedom. That this 'nonaction' showed them in such a light that they should be proud. No, they did not run off and grab at freedom with their greedy hands. Nope, instead they kept themselves aside until freedom was inevitable. They knew their station in life. They waited until the people who had a right to tell them how to live their lives were forced to acknowledge they were free. Yes, all in all, they showed all the marks of being 'good darkies' (here I substitute a word used by many of the "Old South" for the N-word, which might be more fitting historically.)

It struck us as totally ridiculous and tasteless that such a monument would be erected- or at the very least, still standing. To suggest that only by not joining the fight for freedom, one could avoid a "stain" on the record of the "best of both races" is ridicuous in a sublime way. And offensive, in my opinion. It suggests that those that did fight, run, grab at freedom with both hands...that these are the ones who did not have character, who were the stains. That living in oppression was out of faithfulness rather than of fear. I suppose at one time, in a different era, this would have been the prevailing thought. But I find the fact that this historical marker is still standing makes it a remnant of history itself. And not a stainless one at that.