Allergic to Normalcy
After almost twenty one years of living on this planet, I’ve finally come to the realization that I am allergic to any sort of normal life. The End. Period. But, for the sake of comprehension, let me back up a minute. See, the reason why I feel the need to say this now is a complicated mixture of things, starting with the fact that in the past week, I have skipped two Spanish classes, one expository writing class, and have left early from my philosophy class twice. The reason for my skipping class is also a complicated concoction of reasons. These reasons include the fact that I’m either allergic to half the foods that I enjoy most, i.e. anything with refined sugar, flour, or gluten, or I have diabetes which would suck even worse. The reasons for my absences also include the fact that every now and then I wake up and I just don’t give a shit, which is a direct result of opening my eyes every morning to my mother’s guitar sitting in the corner of my room, but no matter how hard I look, I never find the mother that’s supposed to go along with it. Also, when it rains, I could really give a shit, because adding to my lack of normalcy is the fact that my moods are controlled at least 75% by the weather. Mix in a severe food allergy of some sort with a depression induced “I don’t give a shit” attitude and you’ve got a lot of missed classes. But hey, the missed classes are just tiny pieces of why I feel like I am allergic to any sort of normal life.
Let’s go back to the food allergy thing for a minute. My entire life I have been addicted to junk food. I love it. Sugar and fat are the yin and yang of my world. But lately, I haven’t been feeling too great after eating junk food. Regardless, I always crave more, so I always eat more, despite the fact that I’ve gained, oh, about fifteen pounds this winter. Anyway, like I said, I haven’t been feeling too peachy after eating these sugary, crappy foods. I get headaches all the time. I’m always tired, no matter how much sleep I get. I feel dizzy and weak a lot o f the time. And I am never, ever in a good mood anymore. Then two weeks ago, my digestive system starts completely malfunctioning. So I go to the doctor. She tells me to drink a lot of water. My insurance company paid god knows how much for some broad to tell me to drink a lot of water. Now, hydration may be part of the problem, it’s true, but the main problem is that about 90% of the time I feel like at any moment one of those creatures from Alien is going to burst through my stomach. No, I’m sorry doc, but lack of hydration is simply not the answer. I want a second opinion from someone who’s not a moron.
So I tell all this information to my fiancé and he says, comfortingly, “maybe its diabetes”. Awesome. I have a family history of diabetes so that’s very plausible, except for the fact that I haven’t been losing any weight. A week later I still don’t know anything aside from the fact that I still feel like crap, so I go to the doctor again. Then she tells me to go get blood tests and hands me a pamphlet about the importance of fiber in my daily diet. I shred the pamphlet and I plan to I go get blood tests. I have to fast for twelve hours so that some nurse in a bad mood can strangle my arm in a tourniquet and drain more blood from my body than I personally believe I have to give. And all this for a woman who went to eight years of medical school to be able to figure out whether I have a food allergy, diabetes, or just a really large parasite living in my stomach. Brilliant. Its been weeks since all this craziness began, and I still don’t know shit. All I know is that I have had to cut out anything from my diet that doesn’t grow on a tree or on a bird’s chest. And after 20 years of eating nothing but sugar, the withdrawal is not treating me well. It’s getting to the point where I’d just about stab someone for a piece of chocolate.
If this doesn’t make me sound abnormal enough, let’s rewind to Monday. I wake up, get dressed, drive to school, get to Literature, and we begin our discussion on Oedipus. I can tell by the overwhelming silence of the classroom that I am one of the only people in the room who reads Greek tragedies not simply for class, but in my spare time. I mean, really, what better way is there to unwind after class than kicking back and reading Medea? Anyway, there were are in class, I raise my hand to answer a question, positive that I have the perfect answer, and I get the response “Mmmmm, kind oofff, but not really”. “Kind of but not really.” “My God”, I think to myself. “It’s happening…I’m actually getting dumber”. This may sound like an overreaction, but let me tell you something. I am not that smart and I am not a good student. I’ve always wanted to be, but have never had the patience for the conveyer belt monotony of it all. But my mother went to Cornell, her brother went to Cornell. Two of my cousins went to other Ivy League schools, and my other cousin who is literally a genius graduated high school at sixteen, moved to France, then moved to New Zealand, then went on to NYU with whom she is currently studying abroad in Ghana. However, she will no longer be attending NYU in the fall because she wants more of a “life challenge”. What, because NYU isn’t challenge enough on its own? I mean Jesus Christ. Basically what I’m trying to say here is…I’m not the brightest bulb in the box. I’m the black sheep of the family, and nobody really expects anything from me. But English…now there’s something I get. The English category is pretty much the only thing I’m good at and the only thing I really care about academically. But having my favorite professor telling me “Kind of but not really”, well, he may as well draw a big red capitalized “FAIL” on my forehead and shove me in the corner of the room with a giant cone on my head.
So, I can’t even comprehend the English language now. Great. There’s only one thing to do in this situation: cry. That’s right, I started crying in the middle of a discussion about a man who accidentally kills his father and makes babies with his mom. Nobody really notices, of course. I’ve gotten good at hiding my emotions over the years. But still, there I sit, my eyes welling up in the middle of Lit class. Well, it didn’t matter anyway, because after that class I was out of there. I had yet another a doctor’s appointment to go to on the other side of the island, so it’s not like I would be returning to class for another chance at a random sob-fest. But see there it is again. My sheer weirdness. My inability to exist on the same plane as everyone else around me. Who does that? Who starts crying in the middle of class because she missed one question? Me, just me. Because I was born in the form of nature’s practical joke.
I really think sometimes I was created when Mother Nature was drunk or something. And speaking of drunk, I can’t help but interrupt this essay to wonder if my food allergy or diabetes or black plague or whatever it is I have effect my ability to get drunk? That would suck because on the rare occasions when I do act like a normal twenty something and decide to get a little crazy with one Bud Light, it’s pretty much the only time I feel like maybe I am normal. Maybe I have the ability to be just like everybody else. Then I sober up and have a horrible hangover, and I don’t drink again for a month because I realize that one night of acting like a twenty year old, care free, idiot is not worth the migraine and/ or nausea.
But seriously, what is my mental damage? I mean, all these thoughts and feelings and all this self doubt. The constant whirring of the wheels in my head. The places my mind goes when I should be in class. None of this can be normal. I am allergic to normal. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be normal. I wonder because I do things such as the aforementioned and things like accusing my fiancé of cheating on me, even though that is nearly physically impossible because he spends every moment he is not at school or at work with me. He is completely devoted to me. He is 100% wonderful, but no matter what, I find a way to make him look like an asshole. Why? Because that’s my job. I’m pretty sure that I was put on this planet to annoy and weird people out. I do things like complaining about my weight one minute and then grabbing a doughnut the next. I always talk about how much I want to be a great student, but then I never do my homework. I talk about how adult and responsible I want to be, but, I don’t even have a job right now. I wake up late everyday. I speed even though I got a speeding ticket in August. I need sleep, but then I stay up on the computer till 4 a.m. I smoke pot when I want to be on a diet. When I want to make friends I clam up. When it’s a beautiful day, I lock myself inside to read a book. When it’s rainy I complain that I want to be outside. When I tell my father I want to be closer to him I don’t talk to him for weeks at a time. And I want to finally improve my life and change things for the better…I just turn around and screw things up again. I give up. I get lazy. I can’t. I won’t. I just don’t give a shit.
I am a living contradiction and I hate it. It would seem with all the medications and therapy and self-help books, that there must be some way to stop this never-ending circle. But I don’t know if there is. The philosopher Sartre had a theory that everything that happens in your life and even in other people’s lives is free-will. It’s all choice, and all things, good or bad, are things that you must take responsibility for. Well, I don’t know if Sartre is correct, but if he is, in his world I would be screwed. But, on the other hand, philosopher John Hospers had a theory that everything you do in your life, every decision you make, everything you do, everything you don’t, and everything you are capable of and everything you aren’t is all determined by luck. There is little free will. Some people are lucky, and some are not. Some kids are raised in a perfect household, they go to a good school, they were blessed with an active personality with a “never give up” attitude. Some kids…aren’t. Some kids’ mothers die. Some kids fuck up in school because they’re depressed and don’t have the willpower or energy to deal with life. Some kids are lazy. And some kids are just too tired to not give up. So, I could theorize my life and personality the John Hospers way. None of these quirks or fuck ups are entirely my fault. It’s all just luck. It’s just how I am and there’s nothing I can do about it. But if I live with that kind of attitude, then what? Do I settle with all the things I hate about myself and that’s it? Do I never strive for better? Am I doomed for the rest of my life to be an abnormal, introverted, mess of life just because some fucked up things happened to me? I really don’t want it to be that way. I want to be better, and I want my life to be happy and filled with good things. But, if I choose to live that way that means I’m responsible for all the bad things in my life too. And I’m just not sure I’m ready to handle that.

The Soul Purpose

The Soul Purpose

Though J. K. Rowling may not be the great philosopher that Plato once was, she is a woman wise beyond her world. Her illustration of the soul based on her description of horcruxes is comparable with that of Plato’s own view. Though Rowling seems to write as more of a dualist, and Plato as much more a spiritualist, some similar points are made by both about the soul. In both Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, horcruxes play a very important role in the description of soul and mortality. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Tom Riddle coerces Professor Slughorn into sharing information about the workings of Horcruxes. Professor Slughorn explains that existence in the form of a split soul, or horcruxes, would be a very evil and undesirable existence. “Few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable.” (497) Lord Voldemort, however, would clearly not prefer death. His main goal is power and therefore sees nothing wrong with abusing his soul in the name of attaining that power.

In Plato’s view, that abuse of the soul is highly detrimental. “If the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity!” (Phaeto). For one to find purity and truth, the flow of life and death cannot be interrupted. The act of prolonging life is looked upon as pointless, and fear of death is deemed ridiculous. Fear of death, is, of course, Voldemort’s entire motivation behind creating his horcruxes. He feels the opposite of how J. K. Rowling and Plato view the soul; his soul has little worth, but as long as he is physically present he believes he has the most important type of power.

Voldemort believes what neither Rowling nor Plato does; that his evil separation of the soul with has no consequence. It does, of course, take a toll on him physically and otherwise. In The Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore explains that so many separations of the soul may be the cause for the change in his physical appearance. “Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he has undergone seemed to me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call ‘usual evil’” (502). Although Voldemort regarded his physical presence on Earth with more importance than the well-being of his soul, the books back up Plato’s theory, that the main importance lies within the soul, and that the body is a mere vessel. “When the soul and the body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve” (Phaeto).

Voldemort’s ideas of separating soul from body greatly contradict Plato’s views on separation of soul and body. Where Voldemort seeks to literally separate his soul into many, many parts, in order to keep just a small, miserable portion of his physical self in existence, Plato views the separation of soul and body as a very wonderful, nondestructive thing. “And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure” (Phaeto).

In The Deathly Hallows, when Harry is “killed” by Voldemort and is at King’s Cross station, a whimpering, weak, repulsive animal, which seems to represent Voldemort’s soul, lies near Harry. Although Harry would like to help, Dumbledore tells him “You cannot help” (707). This image shows that Rowling’s view is that, through evil, even the soul can be destroyed, which is the complete opposite of Plato’s view that while the body can be destroyed, the soul cannot. “The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the body is in the very likeness of the human, and changeable” (Phaeto). Though Rowling paints the portrait that human life and the soul are tied together, for Voldemort would have ceased to exist had he not split his soul into many parts, Plato insists that the soul is entirely free and separate of body, and that all life came from souls that existed before, and which will exist again after departing from the body. “We arrive at the interference that the living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living; and if this is true, then the souls of the dead must be in some place out of which they come again” (Phaeto).

Rowling and Plato do share a similarity as far as good and evil goes, however. Though Voldemort’s soul does not seem to outlast his life, the “death” of his soul at King’s Cross seems to be a very slow and painful one, in return for the abuse of it. “And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does appear to be awful” (Phaeto). Though Voldemort, along with his soul do die, and it is at last the end for him, which is contrary to Plato’s belief of the immortal soul, neither he or his soul escape his life without some form of punishment for his evil. “If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls” (Phaeto). Voldemort’s soul does wither, but that in no way means he has been relieved of the evil he caused throughout his life.

The soul is a complex idea that deserves much exploring. Both Plato and Rowling do this in their own ways. No one may ever be certain of what the soul is or how long it lasts. No one may ever agree exactly on their ideas of what the soul is and what its existence entails, but ideas do often cross and collide and create new, shared ideas, giving the soul new meaning and all the more reason to be explored.

My Religion

I know next to nothing about religion. I don't even have a religion. I wasn't even really given a religion at birth. I'm not an atheist or anything, it's just that religion has never played much of a role in my life, and yet it seems to be what has shaped my life. I was born to my mother, Marilyn Ross, and my father Ed Poteet. They were hippies and I think that's excellent. Our house was simple but beautiful, always filled with flowers and music. I remember being young, spinning aimlessly around my living room as children of that age sometimes do, and being surrounded by the smell of lilacs and the sound of Bob Dylan, or the scent of roses and the vibrations of Beethoven, or the simple air of baby's breath and the sweet softness of the Beatles, or Judy Collins, of show-tunes, or Sinatra. That was what I knew from the time I was born up until about middle school when the education system started subliminally weaving religion into my life. I knew music and nature and simplicity and happiness. Religion was of no real import.Of course, that's not to say that my family and I didn't celebrate our share of holidays. In fact, that's basically the only thing I got out of religion as a kid; celebration. We celebrated Christmas, Hanukkah, Halloween, Passover, Easter, Yom Kippur; you name it, we celebrated it, but only in the Hallmark card, paper Mache decorations, over-sized plastic reindeer on our front lawn kind of way. Religious values not included. Christmas was about Santa and presents, Hanukkah was about dreidel, a menorah, and more presents, Easter was about a man in a giant bunny suit and a basket full of Peeps, and all the other holidays were pretty much about getting dressed up, eating a lot, or both. Sometimes we watched the Ten Commandments, or sang a traditional song around the menorah. I vaguely knew the biblical Christmas story, and was somehow or another eventually introduced to the improbable story of Adam and Eve, but aside from that, the bible, prayer, and god were all tucked away in very remote parts of my mind and existence. You see, my mother was raised Jewish, but as a kid she always wanted a Christmas tree, and even attempted to decorate her house with candy canes, which didn't fly too well with her mother, who in light of World War II, was so attached to Judaism, that she was even offended by the image of angels. Now my father was raised Christian. When I say Christian, try to imagine the perfect 1950s image of a blond haired, blue-eyed, fair skinned little boy, dressed in a sailor suit, who never so much as folded his napkin the wrong way at supper time. That was my father. He was the gentile of gentiles but as soon as the effects of the 60s kicked in, he just kind of forgot about the existence of religion altogether. So here's this feminist hippy Jew who's burning her bra at Cornell, and this meandering ex-christian hippy who's just kind of hitch-hiking through life and trying make some money for himself and eventually they find each other, marry, and decide to procreate. My mom being who she was, refused to give up her last name just because it was in some ancient rule book that a lady should do so, and my parents as a couple, being what they were, saw no reason why their children could not share both of their last names. Hence my not so complicated last name that no one can figure out simply because it's interrupted by a hyphen. So they could share last names, but what about religion? Well it seemed to work out perfectly that neither one of my parents really believed in their birth-given faiths, so they just decided: To hell with it! No religion! The kids can choose for themselves. But no one wants to give up an excuse to have a party, so they kept the holidays but ditched the prayers, worship, and all that other un-fun stuff. While my friends were at church on Sunday morning, I was eating a nice big pancake breakfast with my family, and listening to the radio. While my friends were stuck in religion class, I was playing with my Barbies or getting beat up by my brother. My friends had their communions, I was oblivious to the fact that such a thing even existed. My friends had confirmations, I had no idea what that was, nor did I care. My cousins had bar mitzvahs and bah mitzvahs and my brother and I didn't. We never went to church or synagogue, or temple or anything like that. The only times my family and I ever stepped foot inside a “House of God”, as others called them, were for weddings, funerals, and other family get-togethers that required them. I was glad for this, being that these "Houses of God" scared the shit out of me. They were always so big and intimidating, and the stained glass windows always obstructed the warmth of the natural sunlight. They were always so quiet and dark, and as far as churches went, I could not for the life of me understand the thought process behind hanging up giant images of the miserable looking man with the beard, who I later found out was bloody, lifeless, and nailed to that cross. All in all, these places scared me, so I avoided them as often as possible, which isn't that difficult when you don't have a religion. When the topic of religion did happen to come up, and people wanted to know what religion I was, I or my parents would tell people I was "half and half", meaning half-jewish, half-christian, but in reality, I wasn't. I just celebrated the holidays as if they were big birthday parties for everyone. Everyone was celebrating and celebrated. Everyone got food, everyone got a gift, and nobody treated it religiously or formally at all. To be quite honest, my lack of knowledge of god, prayer, religion, and the bible, was always something that I sort of prided myself on. I was not only free of religion classes and having other people's beliefs thrust upon me, but I also had the sense that this made me different from most people in a way that I was very fond of. It was my most treasured pride and joy that no god, no prayer, no book could define me. My lack of religion, and especially my ignorance of the bible, was something not many other people could attain. I am not the sort to define ignorance as a good thing, but from what I had observed, religion did nothing but tear people apart, and the bible did nothing but stop people from forming ideas of their own. Religion was the cause of ignorance, not the lack of it. I had experienced that ignorance first-hand when I came home from Disney World one year at the age of eight to find my house covered with the words "Fuck Jews" and "Go Home Jews" and tainted with swastikas and other symbols of hate. So up until I got a bit older, I considered my "ignorance" to be my greatest knowledge. After my mother died however, I was embittered and began to question everything. When I wanted to speak to her, I had no prayers to recite, and no church or temple in which to pray. I had no rules, no restrictions, no commandments; I had nothing to follow. Seeing my very convincing lost lamb impression, my Christian friend, Sarah, herded me to her youth group. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Everyone closed their eyes, and lifted their arms to the sky and praised Jesus! According to my mother's religion, Jesus was just some dude who spun the dreidel along with all the other jews, so why were they all praising him? Aside from that question, I had many others like, Why is it a sin for teens to have sex if they're safe about it? Why am I going to go to hell if I decide to have a lazy day? What is so poisonous about loving someone of the same sex? Why did all these people have the exact same opinions on these topics? Why did they all appear to be in some sort of a trance? Why did this place seem more like a cult than a church? and Where was the nearest door? Needless to say, I never went back to youth group, and I never became a christian.
After my questionable experience at youth group, I looked into my jewish roots to see if they provided me with any comfort, but upon discovering I would have had to give up many things, such as Hawaiian pizza, in order to remain kosher and devout, no comfort was found. I found that sacrifice was a key ingredient in most, if not all, religions. It didn't make sense to me. Why should I give up the things I enjoy in order to enrich my life or to be blessed or to be saved? It seemed completely counterintuitive. After looking into the more unorthodox religions, such as wicca, but finding these religions seemed either a bit too out there, or a bit too contrived, I gave up and declared myself an atheist. That lasted about a week, when I realized that not only was I was failing math and found myself praying to whatever it was out there to help me pass, but that atheism was quite the paradoxical entity being that this un-religion was a religion based on the fact that it provided a belief system to be followed, which is a simple one mainly stating that there is no god, still, it’s a belief system. I felt a totally lost, and felt that maybe my parents should have given me something to put my faith in when life got rough, as it often does. So I turned back for a brief period of time to Christianity. I didn't go to church or anything, but I planned to...eventually, and I discovered some christian rock bands that weren’t totally abysmal. I kind of dug some of Switchfoot's music and admired them for an unyielding faith that I could never even imagine attaining. Yet, I just could not convince myself to agree with this religion one hundred percent, and I simply wouldn't negotiate my morals for the sake of being able to plop myself in the midst of one particular sect. Aside from that, I often found that my childhood observations had been correct; religion often tore people apart. My friend Sarah and I were no longer friends, and even though it was seldom talked about, we both knew the underlying cause was our religious differences. So again, I ditched religion and chalked it up to my idea that there was something out there that I couldn't explain, some force or something, and though that something was probably just the forces of nature or the Universe or whatever you want to call it and not a sentient being, there was something; and to me, that's all there probably ever will be. Twenty years later it's still just nature and music and happiness. The simplicity is lost most of the time, because that's just how life is, but the happiness is still there. I remain proud of my lack of knowledge of prayer, god, formal religion, and the bible, and rather choose to celebrate the religion of life. However, as an English major, I am finding myself more and more frequently to be missing out on many of the points of great works of literature or poetry. So consider this; do I read the bible and destroy what I pride myself on, or do I remain ignorant to what, in the mind of an English professor, is just one of the many great works of literature? To be honest, it probably doesn't matter either way because a book is just a book, religion is what you make it, and mine is made out of life, love, nature, and happiness. Every day is a holy day, therefore everyday should be celebrated.