Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

(If you said to yourself  “good” I can’t really blame you.)

Today was a perfectly normal day. I woke up and Ledcat had gone to work early. I fed the dogs, fed the cats, fed me and made coffee. I read the paper online. Well, sort of read because the Post-Gazette website is just infuriating these days. It is earlier to read Facebook and find the relevant stories linked on my friends’ feeds. But I read and I looked at the daily prompts and I remained uninspired.

Interesting things happened today: Scotland approved marriage equality and the Mayor of New York City refuses to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade because it discriminates. I got a reasonably soon appointment with a new medical provider. The elder cats ate their mini-meals with minimal fuss. There’s a snow storm coming and I like snow.

But the day is tainted by this ominous sense of doom. From Dylan Farrow’s letter to the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. From the egregious treatment of John Rush, the mentally ill man with a criminal history who stabbed Rocco the K9 officer to death to the unrelenting blind-eye of Pittsburgh media to all things LGBT when it comes to Olympic coverage. It is just so much and the general commentary on Facebook, Twitter, etc around these issues is laced with this looming desperation and economic uncertainty. And racism. And classist diatribes about poor people.

Then I spent a total of an hour on the phone today trying to simply schedule Physical Therapy appointments. Oh boy, was that a mess. Apparently the guy who treats your hand doesn’t talk with the woman who treats your legs and no one talks to my insurance company and the only person who is remotely helpful is the appointment scheduler who simply can’t make it all work. It seems I’ll have to drive to Oakland 5 times a week for several weeks to get therapies on different days and pay for a lot of parking and so forth. Wow, that’s so awesome. BUT my doctor has to figure it out and so far all I’m getting is “Are you sure you need this?” Well, no, because I am not a doctor. That’s why we spend an extra $1000 per year in federal income taxes to have health insurance as an unmarried domestic partnership household.

OMG. It is just too much. I’m so crabby and annoyed and irate about all of the things.

You know what? I don’t feel like the #nextpgh has caught up to me yet. And maybe I’m greedy and impatient and a royal pain in the ass because I want to emerge from a 1990’s equality to the 21st century, but I am frustrated. And sad. I posted a question about a recent political forum. Not a single ally – not a single one – has acknowledged me, much less offered to help. They’ve TOLD me how to interpret things and what it all means, but none of them will help get the actual answer to my actual question. I am not supposed to press on questions they deem irrelevant and in doing so, I destroyed any shred of credibility or support I had among Pittsburgh’s progressive elites. I am not a good team player. I do not know how to say the right things to get the allies to listen to me or to help me get access to information. I have been repeatedly told what to do and how to feel and that I need to “just calm down”  – this from other women. Women who express anger and sorrow often about other issues. So why I am different from them?

It is bad enough when the white gay upper class men try to control me with their nice words and somewhat inebriated charm. It is bad enough when I am steered to a meeting location to avoid making my own elected official uncomfortable (she was in the original location for the meeting – I saw her leaving when my meeting was over – yeah that felt great, but heck I know my place now.) But when a queer woman of color and several white straight female allies refuse to help me get answers and tell me to STFU in polite terms, it hits home.

I seem to have two choices.

I can blog nicely about marriage equality and perhaps HB300 and be a good gay. Or I can be authentic.

The third choice is to simply find something else completely to do. I toyed with the idea of turning this into a lifestyle blog. But then I realized that really feeds into the good gay category. So I’m going to just stop for now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write about soap operas. Or maybe I’ll share an amusing anecdote from middle school. Or maybe I’ll do more book reviews and giveaways.

But as I apparently need to “calm down” to be taken seriously, I just don’t think this works for me any longer.

Thank God this came into my inbox today because I definitely need a mental break. Ha, pun.