Unpopular Opinion Time

I’m going to do something I don’t normally, and give this a preface.  Why?  Because I don’t want my head bit off, and I know that’s what can happen if someone with a strong opinion reads this.  I’m probably going to anyway.  But the preface:

My opinion on contraception is that…I don’t have one.  If you want to use it, that’s fine.  If you don’t, that’s also fine.  I have no need of an opinion on this matter, and don’t foresee one for a good long time.  The issue of contraception is something that should be decided between partners, not in Congress.

That being said, I’m getting fed up with the hullabaloo around the contraception issue.  No, a bunch of old, white men should not have the final say in women’s health.  No, women going to get abortions¹ should have to have wands stuck in their privates, just because.  Yes, women who want contraception should have access to it.

Note my last statement, especially the bit about women who want it.  The picture that has been painted of the Catholic Church during this whole thing is unflattering: it’s a huge, mammoth beast who gives no craps about women and their health.  It’s unreasonable and demanding and misogynistic.  It wants what it wants, and it’s not going to take no for an answer.

Okay, again with the backing up.  Yes, the Church wants what it wants, but d’you know what it wants?  It wants its rights as laid out by the First Amendment.  It wants freedom to practice it’s religion peacefully, without other people horning in and telling it what it can and can’t do in relation to faith.

You know something that’s bothered me about this whole shebang?  You people protesting the Church’s protest have lost sight of something important.  You know how what they don’t want to do is to have to provide insurance covering contraception for employees of Catholic organizations?  You know how it makes sense that most people employed by Catholic organizations would be Catholic themselves?  Can you see what I’m getting at?

Chances are, the women whose rights you are defending² would not use the contraception in the first place.  Because of their beliefs.  Because they are Catholic women, making their own choice to follow their beliefs and not use contraception.  Would you want to take a wad of bills and flush it down the toilet?  Because that is basically what you are asking these companies to do.

Maybe you’re one of those who have been vocal about this, and you’re feeling attacked.  I’m sorry; that was not my intent.  Maybe you never thought about it this way, and need time for contemplation.  Take all the time you need.  Maybe you’re unswayed, and still think that Catholic organizations should provide the insurance.  Okay, you do that.  I just feel like, good as your intentions may be, the women who this would actually affect should be taken into consideration.

*shrugs* Just a thought.

¹I’m not getting into this.  I have an opinion, and well-thought-out arguments to defend myself with.  What I don’t have is the energy or patience to deal with the foot-stamping, whining, and childish “No, you’re wrong and I’m right and LALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING” that inevitably, in my experience, comes of this.

²Yes, I see that you’re defending them.  I thank you for the thought, and I’m sure they do, too.

In Which I Get Personal And Interpret a Song in a Way it Probably Wasn't Intended to Be

There is a song called “Jar of Hearts”, sung by Christina Perri.  It’s about a girl running from the hopeful return of someone she has been in an abusive relationship with before.  Looking at it, it would appear that the relationship was with a boy who has a history of abusing and abandoning people, and maybe that’s what the writer intended.  Maybe it is the story of a girl staying away from a boy, who has hurt her before, when he tries to come back.  But maybe it’s something more.

I heard this song on a bad day.  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, and it wasn’t the first time this idea occurred to me.  But this time, it was a source of strength against temptation.

No, I can’t take one more step towards you

‘Cause all that’s waiting is regret.

Don’t you know I’m not you ghost anymore?

You lost the love I loved the most.

In this, the first verse, there is a declaration of independence.  “I’m not going to accept you this time,” it says.  “I don’t love you anymore, I don’t need you anymore.  I’m walking away.  The only thing choosing you would give me is regret, and I don’t want that.”

I’ve learned to live half alive

And now you want me one more time.

This small couplet is accusatory.  “By the time you left,” it says, “I was half dead. And you’re thinking about coming back?”  The implied anger and indignation of this couplet can be easily felt.

And who do you think you are

Running ‘round leaving scars

Collecting your jar of hearts

And tearing love apart?

You’re gonna catch a cold

From the ice inside your soul

So don’t come back for me.

Who do you think you are?

The same indignation from the previous couplet is echoed in the refrain.  “Who are you to do all this?” it demands.  “Who are you to hurt so many people?”  It continues, “If you keep going like this, you’re going to end up cold and dead, and if you have me in your clutches then, I’m going to go down with you.  But I don’t want to, so keep away.”

I hear you’re asking all around

If I am anywhere to be found

But I have grown too strong

To ever fall back in your arms

The second verse again declares independence.  “I don’t need you,” it says again.  “You may be looking for me, you may be tempting me back to you, and yes, it would be easy to come back, but I’m strong now.  I won’t take the easy way out, especially because I know what it will do to me in the long run.”

The couplet and the refrain are repeated.

And it took so long just to feel all right

Remember how to put back the light in my eyes

I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed

‘Cause you broke all your promises

And you’re back

You don’t get to get me back.

The bridge is perhaps my favorite part of the song.  It admits weakness, the struggle to regain control, and expresses the wish that it had never happened.  “You promised me things,” it says.  “You promised me relief and hope and happiness, and you didn’t give me any of that.  You made me hurt.  You can apologize and smile and look pretty all you want, but I’m standing firm, and you are not getting me back.  I refuse to surrender to you again.”

As the refrain repeats twice more, I wonder at the hearts that have been collected.  In my interpretation of the song, what is doing the hurting and collecting is not someone who moves from person to person, snagging their hearts on the way past, but a self-destructive tendency.  So do these hearts represent everyone who has participated in this tendency?

I rather think not.  The song can be sung by everyone who has hurt themselves intentionally, but the hearts do not refer to the others who have done so.  The hearts represent all the people who are touched by one person’s self-destructive acts.  So many things are hurt by this action; trusts are broken, relationships are damaged, people are wracked by guilt, wondering what they could have done to stop this.

So many of us do this, thinking that we are only hurting ourselves, that this is okay, because at least we’re not taking it out on other people, and besides, we’re not really worth as much anyway, are we?  I tend to think that maybe, the people who think like that would stop when they realize how much else they’re hurting.  I know I did.

As I lay here, under my warm, toasty covers, at quarter after three in the morning, typing despite the fact that I know I need to get up in two and a half hours, I look back at what I wrote and realize that, no matter what this song is really talking about, no matter how you interpret it, it has a message it’s shouting loud and clear, and that message is, “I don’t need you anymore.”

“I don’t need you anymore.”  It’s a thought I myself often express, in the usual arrogant, pigheaded manner of teenagers everywhere.  Of course I don’t need older, wiser people.  I know everything, and I know it way better than they do!  A lot of the time, that arrogance and pigheadedness is undeserved, unwarranted, and I do need these older, smarter, wiser people.  But sometimes, it’s not.  Sometimes, I really don’t need what these people and things are giving me.  I don’t need my aunt’s opinion on being “weird” and what will come of that.  I don’t need my mother’s lectures on tolerating other people’s stupidity.  I don’t need my father’s angry glares every time I make the slightest mistake.

I don’t need the silver flash of a knife and the scarlet drip of blood to make me feel okay.  Not anymore.  I am stronger than the pull of this, I have walked away from it once, and I can damn well stay away.  I’d like to think that I never needed it, but now I know I don’t.  So you can bloody well stop tempting me, because really, who do you think you are?