Part Four-The White Tiger

To read Part Three- The Mask, click here.

She’s pretty. (Which evidently you shouldn’t call a tiger.) She’s also ferocious. She’s a survivor.

Here’s a few facts I found about white tigers:
1 in 1000 Bengal tigers born in the wild are born white. White tigers survive to adulthood and reproduce in the wild, it’s just extremely rare. This is probably due to the rarity of their color and their inability to blend in to their environment. They are usually bigger than their orange counterparts, and the recessive gene for color that makes them white is directly related to the gene for size. Most Bengal tigers (with the exception of mothers and their cubs) spend their adult lives alone, because it is easier to hunt prey alone than in a group.

When you take off your mask… correction: When I took off my mask, it was hard. I instantly became a white tiger. I could no longer blend in. Not only did I realize that I didn’t fit in, but everyone else started noticing too! That would have been fine if I had been surrounded by people that I trusted, who would have known that I’m rare, but still beautiful, but I was surrounded by piranhas and I could no longer hide from them. They were waiting for their opportunity to pounce; to eat me alive. I had to realize that either I curl up and die now, or I stand up and I fight for who I am. It wasn’t an easy choice, but to me, it was the ONLY choice. Today, I stand tall.

People expect you to fit in. When you go against societal norms like that, people don’t really know what to do with you! You end up alone, fending for yourself in a dangerous world. Tigers are strong, though. They do not see fear. They do not see what they cannot accomplish. They just see a meal for the taking. They see an opportunity to move forward… and decide to pounce instead of being pounced upon.

They have to fight a thousand times harder than their orange brothers to stay alive. They stand out. They were literally, BORN to stand out. LOL… That’s cool to me. I was born to stand out too. It sucks sometimes, but I’m bigger and stronger for it. I will always be me, and no one can take that away from me. It’s hard to be you.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche,

Stay tuned for Part Five- Breaking Free.

Part Three-The Mask

To read Part Two, click here.

Meet Belle. She’s the girl wearing a Mardi Gras mask on my back. She’s me… and she’s you.

You see, we all wear masks. Some of us wear lots of different masks. There has always been pressure to ‘fit in’ to our corners of society since we were nine years old getting picked for kickball. The situations change, but our ways of reacting to them doesn’t.

We put on a mask.

We hide what we really think and who we really are so that we can ‘fit in’ without so many questions. Sometimes we hide who we are so deep in our ourselves that we don’t even realize we are hiding. We adapt to those around us. Sometimes that means drinking, smoking, partying like a rock star, and sometimes it means adopting a religion that you think you *should* believe in, because someone told you to. Either way, you are lying to yourself and those around you. Sometimes the effects are immediate. Sometimes they take a while to soak in. Either way, lying never ends well.

I’ve worn MANY masks in my time. In high school alone I reinvented my self a dozen times (didn’t we all? In order to attain the always dreamt of status, Cool Kid). I was a good little church girl. I was a bad little church girl. I was a dancer. I was a party hound. In college I was a raging lesbian and a wannabe vegetarian. I was a straight and narrow young Airman not long after that. I was rock star in California, partying like it was 1999 (except it was 2004). I was a good girlfriend to a man I hated. I was a dirty little secret. This last one was conservative Baptist. That was an interesting hat to wear. I was so deep that I *actually* voted for McCain for President. At the time, I thought he could save us from the heathens and the gays (see the mask from college? yeah, I know.) Just to be clear… I’m NOT a cool kid. I’m NOT a raging lesbian. I’m NOT a rock star (but I’m damn close). I’m NOT a dirty little secret. I’m NOT a conservative Baptist.

I’m Rachel, and that’s the only mask I’m going to wear for a while.

Why do we put ourselves in these situations? (and I don’t care WHO you are, the mask might have been different, but you’ve put it on, too) It isn’t just ‘peer pressure’. It’s some deep need we all have for communion with each other. Maybe it was an unhealthy relationship. Maybe it was friends that really didn’t have your best interests in mind. Maybe it was a job that wasn’t fulfilling. Maybe it was a church that you fundamentally disagreed with. Maybe it was an entire way of life that just ‘didn’t sit’ with you. You have to take it off. You have to let it go. It’s hard, but you have to do it. Stop lying. Stop making crappy friends. Live for you. Love you.

We all have these labels that define us. We are so hell-bent on living up to the label, that we forget about ourselves.

Anyway, no offense, but this tattoo isn’t about you. It’s about me. I’m at a point in my life where I’m sick of lying to make people feel better. I’m sick of lying to others and I’m sick of lying to myself. I’m tired of wearing masks. I’m tired of living in a pity party. It doesn’t make me fit in. It makes me feel like even MORE of an outsider than I already am. No matter how I try to assimilate, I’ll still be me and I still won’t quite fit in with you. I’m tired of pretending. This is me. I’m not always nice. I hate dealing with people. I have LOTS of flaws. I can be a real dick. Believe me. I love a lot of things in theory, but in practice the target narrows and list shrinks dramatically. I love my life and where I’m heading. This is me. It isn’t perfect… but it IS authentic.

I’m taking off my mask.

To read Part Four, click here.

Part Two- Getting Me To Today

To read Part One-Celtic Cross, click here.

After getting my cross, I went through quite a bit of turmoil in my life. I lost my position as a linguist, moved to a town I hated, to do a job I hated even more than the town, to work with people that I didn’t get along with at all! Life was sucky there for a while, I’m not going to lie! If you’ve ever seen the movie Saved, think back to that moment when the mother and daughter were talking and the mom says, “I just keep telling myself that when Jesus closes a door, he opens a window.” and the daughter replies, “Yeah, so we have something to jump out of.” THAT was my life. It was my quote for YEARS! I tried churches, bars, new friends, lovers, and anything else I could get my hands on to try to better my situation, but none of it seemed to work. I had to find a light at the end of the tunnel.

Contrary to what some of my co-workers tried to tell me, and contrary to their appeals to get me to quit, I got promoted! No one expected it, least of all me. I decided to reenlist in the United States Air Force. I call that decision my ‘Coyote Ugly of a Lifetime’, but I did it and there was no turning back. I changed jobs and moved to Colorado. I knew from the second that I signed on the dotted line that active duty military was NOT for me. When I got my chance to get out, I took it without looking back.

I jumped head first in to a church that was a fundamentalist Baptist church. It was a bigger version of what I grew up in and swore never to get involved in again. Sometimes I think when we are going off the cliff in one direction, the only way to find a middle ground is to head off the cliff in the other direction for a little while. That’s what I did with this church (and my politics) for a VERY short while. Thank God. Looking back, conservative Christian fundamentalism never really made sense. I was raised by a mother who believes in equal rights, that slavery was a bad idea, war wasn’t so great, and people should spend more time loving and less time hating. She believes that instead of pointing out how others are doing it wrong, we should just focus on how we should be doing it right. (Wait, isn’t that Biblical?) If you have ever been in a fundamentalist Baptist church, you’ll understand why now, looking back, those periods of my life are almost unbelievable to me!

The more I read the Bible, and remembered who I really was, I slowly started taking off the “Baptist Mask” and putting back on Rachel. I felt the only way for me to truly understand the love of Christ and to truly live Biblically was far far away from those people. Unfortunately, they were all I knew. I felt isolated. Alone. No one understood who I was or why I was ’suddenly’ changing my mind…again. There were very few churches in my town that shared my theology/philosophy.

It was hard, but I kept truckin’. One day, during one of my mom’s and my ‘talks’, she told me how happy she was with me. I’m not sure why, but at that moment, I realized that I wasn’t bound by Texas, California, Arkansas, Baptists, Darwinians, Republicans, Democrats or anything in between.

I am free. I know who I am, and I am PROUD of who I am. I know that I’m ‘outside the sphere of normal’ as it was so eloquently put to me. I am comfortable in my skin, and that is a beautiful feeling!

I decided that I needed a way to express what I had been through. I needed to have a way to tell people and remind myself of the constant cycles we, as people go through, and that it’s OKAY to go through them, as long as we are constantly striving to push forward. I decided I would work with what I had. I would make my cross the centerpiece, because it was truly the first time I was forced to look in the mirror, confront myself and make changes to myself or embrace parts of myself that I had hid so shamefully before. So, I decided to get some more ink..

For Part Three-The Mask, click here.

Part One- Celtic Cross

Different people throughout history have always had different ways of telling their story. Michelangelo told his through paintings and sculptures. Walt Whitman used poetry. Mark Twain used novels. Shakespeare used plays and sonnets. Ellen Degeneres even used interpretive dance! My ’story’ is best told through artwork. Not my artwork, but the amazing artwork of my tattoo artist. You see, I’ve always had trouble truly expressing myself. I assume people don’t like to read anything I have to write. Anything I draw looks like the equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick film, with splashes of Andy Worhol. My singing and musical ability also leave much to be desired, but I have an imagination. I have trouble bringing that imagination to life, though. Luckily, about six months ago, I met someone that used my very bad descriptions, lots of “something that would signify…” and made artwork that seemed to come straight out of my imagination and onto… well, my back. …but the story starts long before I met Jud.

In 2004, I was living in Monterey, California. I was 21 years old and little unsure where I was headed. I didn’t (and still don’t) know what I wanted to be, where I wanted to go or who I was. I decided to do something that would forever change my life. I got a tattoo. Anyone that knows me knows, I’m a big researcher, not a big risk taker, and my mind changes more than the weather in central Texas! I’m Irish, with a Scottish name, some Native American, British, German and who knows what else thrown in to the mix, but mostly, (and you can tell just by looking at me) I’m Irish. I did some research, and found exactly what I needed. The Celtic Cross. When I say “Celtic Cross” most people assume I’m talking about the Christian cross with Celtic knots throughout it and maybe a circle around the intersection. If that’s what you are thinking of, today is your lucky day! You are about to be acquainted with the TRUE Celtic Cross.

In Ireland, prior to Saint Patrick’s gallant entry in 432, the Celtic religion flourished. Saint Patrick, according to legend, in order to make the Pagan worshipers (Celts) in the area understand the importance of Christ, combined the Sun Cross, that they already understood, with the Christian Cross, by elongating the bottom. This is the Celtic Christian Cross you see at cemeteries and throughout Ireland. This is NOT the tattoo I have on my back. I took the original Sun Cross, not to diminish the importance of Christ and the Cross (I’m Christian, but we’ll get to that later), but to accent the importance of my journey at the time. You see, the Sun Cross shows a connection between otherwise polarized forces (sun, earth, water, air). It also is representative of the wheel and the compass. To me (and probably only to me, but that’s okay), the Celtic Sun Cross signifies that I don’t always have to know exactly where I’m going, but I’ll still be guided there okay. I always know where I am. I always know where I’ve been. Knowing that, and keeping faith, will always keep me on the right track for where I’m going. It’s okay that I have NO clue what’s going on in my own life, because really, who does? We are all connected, whether we want to believe it or not. For me, that faith comes from Christ and Christ alone. I’m not a preacher, and believe me, I’m TOTALLY okay with that! I just know what I believe. This cross on my back reminds me of who I am, and where I am, every day.

For Part Two, click here.

My Life- Summed up in One Day

Yesterday.

I wake up about 10am and do a bunch of errands for my mom. Once I’m done, and running sufficiently late, I get in the car to head to 7th Street Tattoos and realize I don’t have my debit card, so I have to first go to JA Fair (wrong direction) and pick up my card so he can continue working on my back piece (we’re at the mid-lower middle back… right on the bra line). I’m now running half an hour late, but that’s okay because I’m going to be sitting in a chair for two and a half hours in pain anyway. Half way through I take off my bra, to make it easier for both of us, assuming I could put it back on later. When I’m finished and ready to leave, I realize I CANNOT wear a bra. It would just be too painful. I’m wearing a normal TShirt and no bra, and it’s a little chilly outside. UNCOMFORTABLE! I’m not exactly one of those little girls that can get away with not wearing a bra, so to say I was self-conscious was a huge understatement! Classy!

Mom calls and wants to get food… wow, I’m WAY hungrier than I thought! Food sounds great, but I’m bra-less so let’s go somewhere fast. She reminds me no one in Little Rock knows me, and Juanita’s is mighty good food. Good Mexican food can pretty much convince me to do anything, so I’m game. We get there to realize they don’t open for another thirty minutes, so we walk a block down the street to Community Bakery. We walk in, order coffee and frittatas (because egg, cheese, grease and bacon are good for a diet) and go to our chairs. I notice the man that works there opening up the cake display from the front… to rearrange cakes, maybe? Anyway, they call my name to let me know my Vanilla Latte is ready. I go get it, and since all of my concern is on NOT spilling this extremely hot liquid all over me, and NOT letting everyone see The Pointer Sisters, I fail to see that the man hasn’t closed the glass case, which is now at eye level.

So, I’m bra-less, standing in the middle of the bakery, with spilled coffee and water all around me, and an eye that is swelling by the seconds. I should have cried. I should have yelled at the guy for leaving the door open (he wasn’t around, and who seriously gets boiling hot coffee and starts checking out the room for safety hazards?) I should have left and not stayed to eat. I should have demanded a free dessert. I should have been angry, embarrassed, upset, annoyed. Did I do any of this? Did I feel any of that? No. I laughed. My mom almost cried, but I laughed. It was a perfect Rachel day. What can I say? It’s just how I roll.

The PARG- Puppies and Rainbows Gene

Why do men (and some women) just assume that since I am a woman, I wear makeup and sometimes I’ll let you catch me in a dress or cry in a movie, that I automatically have what I refer to as “PARG” (Puppies and Rainbows Gene)? You know who I’m talking about- Those girls who automatically see their life as a chick flick. They fall for guys that don’t even notice them, have a need to talk incessantly about *fill in ridiculous subject here* and constantly fill their lives with the emotional and mental equivalent of…well… puppies and rainbows! They have dreams of puppies, babies, big houses and white picket fences. They go from boyfriend to boyfriend to boyfriend to fiancée to husband. They can’t seem to wait one more day for their white knight to come riding in and whisk them off in to the sunset. Yeah, I’m not that girl.

First of all, let me just say, outside of a ridiculously short list of movies, the only ones that really tear me up usually involve the death of animals, because I’m pretty ambivalent toward people. I get offended when I tell someone that and he/she tries to ‘prove me wrong’. I think I know me better than you do.

I just think it’s fairly misogynistic to think that just because I pee sitting down, I inherently wait around all day for my future husband to show his face. Just because that Y chromosome didn’t want to come out and play when I was conceived, I am supposed to be trapped in a never-ending spiral of thinking about when I’m going to get married and how many children I want and where I want to raise them. I’m sorry, but I’m just not that girl.

I don’t have some deep-seated fear of men or commitment. I never had a weird uncle touch me in my *special* place that screwed me up regarding relationships later on in life. I had a wonderful female role model, and if anything, TOO MANY wonderful male role models. I tried when I was younger to blame my lack of interest in ‘matters of the heart’ on my parents’ divorce, but the truth is, because of their divorce, I had a BETTER view of men. If they had stayed together, I would have been REALLY screwed up!! The only conclusion I’ve come up with is that the PARG skipped me. I’m just not interested. That isn’t to say I won’t settle down one day, but I don’t have some inner ‘need’ to be with one person for the rest of my life. I don’t have some inner ‘need’ to make ten babies (or even one). I don’t have this unexplainable ‘passion’ toward any one person in particular and I don’t sugar coat my words to feed others’ egos. I’m brutally honest and sometimes that means calling the baby ugly.

I’m not hiding an ‘inner girly girl’ deep within my walls. This is just me. I feel like sometimes people like to pretend they know me. They spout out all these things about relationships and being hurt in the past and reaching deep down and seeing the ‘real’ me. I try insanely hard to not be offended by these words and ones like them. This is the ‘real’ me. If you are waiting for the Cinderella version of me that resembles a maiden in distress, you might want to move on to a woman that the PARG didn’t skip.

I’m not sitting around waiting for someone to ’save me from myself’ because I, honestly, don’t think I need that kind of saving.

Beautiful Love

People say it’s black, people say it’s white
But love sees no color in this life
People say too young, people say too old
But love sees no boundaries or lines

Open up your heart, open up your mind
To this beautiful love

I don’t care if your rich, I don’t care if your poor
I just care about you and who you are
I just want to be with you
I just want to be near you
I just want to be in your arms

As I sing my song, as I hear the words
The more you are in my mind
As I see your face, as I hear your voice
I realize this much be love

You call out my name, angels start to sing
Heaven is in my soul
You kiss me sweetly, and I fall so deeply
In love with you

You’ve opened up my heart, you’ve opened up my mind
To Your beautiful love.

Sorry… I just found this in an old notebook… it was written almost exactly 10 years ago!

The more I see, the less I know…

but I know… one thing… that I love you.

putting Michael Franti on pause for a moment…

OK- So, politically I tend to bounce around between crazy conservative and outspoken hippie. I think it confuses people. I get emails at work about how Obama is the anti-Christ and I get emails at home about the ridiculous California is for their huge denial of civil rights. No, I don’t think Obama is the anti-Christ. I, being a red-blooded patriotic American, support our president and think he is doing a better job than half the bozos speaking out against him. I don’t agree with every single thing he says, but I don’t agree with everything my mother says, and she’s my best friend and has the closest views to me compared to anyone on Earth. I do, however, have the balls to say I don’t DISAGREE with everything that he says just because he’s Democrat, liberal, Black, a man… whatever.

Sometimes I just want to tell everyone to ‘calm the eff down’.

Maybe I’m just an idealist, but I don’t understand. If you are pro-life, you shouldn’t have an abortion. If you are against gay marriage, you probably shouldn’t marry someone the same sex as you. If you want to put Christ in school, put your kid in a Christian school. If you want schools to do a better job teaching your kid, read to them and teach them at home as well. I went to the same ‘cruddy’ school as everyone else, but I walked in to Kindergarten able to read, write and do simple arithmetic… because my mom wanted me to succeed and never saw the school system as her babysitter.

Speaking of things I don’t understand, when did politics become so intertwined with the church, anyway? I thought the whole reason churches became 501c3 organizations was to keep them OUT of the political realm, while relieving a tax burden for them as well.

All this fighting over taxes, health care reform, energy bills, civil rights, etc, etc, etc… reminds me of this book I read occasionally. (Maybe you’ve heard of it?) Here’s an excerpt:

³⁶“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” ³⁷Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Check it out. Matthew 22. I didn’t make it up.

Read that last line again. “All the Law and Prophets HANG on these two commandments.”

Holy cow. What a thought! It doesn’t matter how we feel about Leviticus 18, speaking in tongues, taxation, global warming or anything else. We are called to LOVE. Everything else HANGS on that. LOVE God. LOVE each other. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in the “No” party or the “Neo-Socialist” party.

It matters whether everything we do is covered in LOVE.

That’s all I got for today. Peace.

And to think, this all started with a hip-hop song. You gotta love ADHD.

Micheal Franti is officially UN-paused.

~gubeltrut

Man in the Moon

I wrote this a while back…

The man in the moon sings a sad song tonight
I need to take a ride- drive through the night
He caught me crying and I tried to hide
He gave me light and still I cried

The man in the moon is singing my song
Do you know all the words and can you sing along?

Circling eternally around the sky
I understand his might and his strength tonight
Forever in a hopeless journey to see
What’s left in me, Can you see?

The man in the moon is singing my song
Do you know all the words and can you sing along?

Life is hard but I still agree
That when you smile so sweet, my heart forgets to beat
Do you know the song that I sing for you?
Yes, I know the words, but I sing out of tune.

The man in the moon is singing my song
Do you know all the words and can you sing along?
The man in the moon… The man in the moon

Hello world!

So, I’m new this whole ‘blogging’ phenomenon, but I guess I’ll give it a try. I really need to start cleansing my soul with words, if that makes any sense. I’m sure starting out, this will be a hodgepodge of thoughts, journals, poetry, songs, etc., but I’m hoping eventually it will organize itself to parallel my thoughts, views and state of mind in the tumultuous world (and maybe even your own in a way?)

Enjoy.

-gubeltrut