I have often felt that I belonged to the Blue Ridge Mountains. These mountains and the isolation they provide from much of the modern world are my most significant identifier, the land I come from, not my skin, not my ethnicity, not the nation in its entirety. I’m not ashamed to be an American, but I have no clue what it’s like to be from anywhere else in the nation. I’m patriotic enough. I’m just not so insecure about myself that I need to shove my identity down everyone’s throat and proclaim constant undying loyalty to a government that doesn’t give a damn about any of their citizens.

I was born in Roanoke City, Virginia. It’s a small city situated in a lush valley, surrounded by the mountains. It’s gorgeous here. I was raised in the neighboring county of Bedford. I grew up on a mountain top, roaming around the forest. I found projectile points, saw wild animals and went foraging and gardening regularly. I made friends with every little creature from deer to opossums to toads. I always preferred the company of creatures to humans, weirdly enough. I was a very lonely, empathetic child. I had a very isolated childhood with limited contact to anyone outside of my tight family circle. I’ve been reflecting a lot on my life lately. I’m currently in a very stagnant phase. Also, being in a near catatonic depression really is awful, so I may as well try to write myself out of it.

My relationship of nearly 5 years became stale for me and my ex boyfriend, so we both agreed to leave each other about a year ago. I was never grossly mistreated by my most recent ex. My biggest issue was when said he would like to get to know my family better, then promptly avoided them for our entire relationship because he just couldn’t get over his sense of superiority. He was raised in a rich gated community to very wealthy parents and relocated enough throughout his childhood that he couldn’t really relate to my sense of place. He was raised emotionally stable, whereas I was just geographically stable. He came from a very upper class background and looking back on it now, I believe he loved me. I know he did, but we came from different worlds, class-wise. It was never going to work.

He had been born with all of the support and privilege that I had dreamed of since I was a child. He mocked rural people and blamed them for his lack of success in the area when his business failed, calling them uneducated yokels and regularly making fun of their accents. I come from a long line of rural people, but I tolerated his disdain because I had a lot of self hate because of the stereotypes surrounding where I come from and the kinds of abusive behaviors many of my family members subjected me to. Anyone can go through abuse or be abusive, regardless of their class background. I deeply resented some of my relatives for being proud stereotypes of the worst things people associate with the Appalachians. Prejudiced, anti-intellectual and belligerent. If someone calls you a liberal in Southwest Virginia, rest assured, they usually do not like you very much. That was well before being a liberal in the classical sense was bunched together with people who deny biological facts, so there is a long held class grudge in this region by many people. I was raised to do chores and labor and I was taught the value of a strong work ethic.

My paternal grandparents are from Pocahontas, Virginia, right next to the West Virginia border. The region is a stronghold of coal-mining. Both my paternal and maternal side have some West Virginia lineage and family ties still there. Several of my relatives have lost themselves to drugs, alcohol and murder. I don’t say this to stereotype my own folks, this is simply the truth for some of my relatives. Most of the people here are not violent, drugged and belligerent. I just had the worst exposure and know I come from some really rough mountain people. Many of us would appreciate more variety every now and then, in many ways. It can get boring and lonely around here, depending on how isolated you are, but technologically this is much less common than it was even in my millennial childhood. Growing up, the moment I questioned anything from religion, to race relations, to family trauma or stood up for myself, verbal attacks would commence. I grew accustomed to a lot of hostile screeching and name calling towards primarily myself and my mother. As long as I did the chores and satiated their neuroticism or submitted to the verbal abuse and did everything the way everyone else wanted, things would go well enough after every attack. I was the scapegoat daughter and the oldest sibling. I was to be made an example of. My emotions and needs were secondary to all others.

Standing up for myself as a grown woman and no longer tolerating verbal abuse at the hands of my father led to my first experience with physical assault. I will never forget what my father did to me just because he couldn’t win an argument. He was a brute. I put my arms up in self defense as he grabbed me by the back of the neck and tossed me down so hard face first onto the floor that I received a black eye, bruised lips, as well as most of my face, severe carpet burn on half my face, a concussion and a bloody nose. He then threatened to steal my car so that I couldn’t leave. I ran out of the house frantically, with no shoes on and a dead cell phone with no way to contact the local police. Humiliated, I drove to my workplace with all of the evidence on my face because I had no friends to turn to, only strangers at work. I ended up borrowing a co-workers phone to call the police and then waited a few hours for a cop to meet me, so that he could take pictures of my damaged, bloody face as evidence.

My father then blamed me. He lied because he didn’t want to be arrested. He said I had assaulted him and put my hands up in a fist to fight him. Nonsense. He had no scratches, no bruises. He was arrested and I was pressured not to press charges against my own father out of fear that my family would lose custody of my cousin, the son of my wayward uncle, and out of fear that my father would lose his job and not be able to provide for the family. I still look back in disgust at the way my father hugged me later that night as he proclaimed in his thick accent “Just so you know, we was both in the wrong”. He couldn’t even take responsibility without giving me partial blame for his lack of self control. I resented my mother for taking his side. She settled for a man child with no emotional intelligence whatsoever and I still struggle with resentment towards them both. I internalized a lot of prejudice towards myself, due to the things said and done to me by my own people. Sometimes, I hear my fathers voice and I appreciate the uniqueness in his accent, other times I’m angry because I remember the primal domination and screams that came from a place of trauma and pain. There is a strong culture of familial abuse in this region.

No amount of money or distance could ever heal this wound. I lived with my ex for a year and a half before we moved out and left each other and it was fantastic to be away from my father who I saw as the ultimate betrayer. My ex knew about the assault, so I hardly blame him for not wanting to be around my father as an individual, but his uppity class based prejudice really bothered me. I wish I had told my ex that. His parents coddled him, almost beyond repair. I have to live every day of my life knowing that my own father, who was supposed to be my protector, hated me for not submitting. He was a deeply depressed and aggressive man that wasn’t ready for the life of a settled down family man. He cheated on my mother several times, but we went on family vacations and he provided for us financially and I guess he thought that was all he had to do. He was abused by his own enabling mother for all of his life.

My paternal grandmother was verbally abusive and manipulative with my mother for years. Growing up, I was regaled by my father, with stories of generational abuse, as if it were a haunted story around a campfire. I realize now, that he really didn’t have exposure to much else. His own father had completely abandoned him and his step-father raised him as his own as well as his two brothers. My fathers mother would enable him with pornographic magazines and weed when he was very young because she wanted to be a “cool mom”. She would send my father nude images of models for him to look at in the early days of his marriage just so he would compare my mothers body to a stranger and kill her spirit.

My paternal relatives would regularly ostracize my mother and make fun of her for being so thin and would slander her as often as possible. She was beautiful and had the looks of a tall, blonde model without even trying. She was never vain and she belittled her looks and intelligence on a regular basis because her confidence was so low. My mother was a housewife, who worked to instill morals in her children and pushed us to graduate high school because she knew the struggles of coming from a family that didn’t value an education.

She never graduated the 9th grade. None of her 3 siblings graduated high school. My grandmother simply didn’t teach them that it mattered. My mother was 19 when I was born. My father was 22. She was naive, but very emotionally mature in a lot of ways. She had been working multiple jobs to provide for her family after she dropped out. Her wealthy father who was in his 60’s, had passed away of lung cancer when she was 12 years old. My Nana, her mother, tried to marry her off to a grown man in his 40’s when she was 14. This was in the 80’s. Thankfully that never commenced. I wish I could have met my grandfather and at least heard his voice once, but I’ll never know. I don’t think my mother remembers his voice either.

My mother knew a life of Southern class and privilege until her father passed away and almost overnight she began to live a life of the worst poverty and judgment. She dropped out of high school because she was severely bullied for wearing hand-me-down clothes, was malnourished and was one of the few White girls in a predominantly Black high school. She was physically attacked for being a White girl and decided enough was enough and dropped out to work. She is 50 now and still hasn’t received a GED, although she’s very smart and has a lot more common sense and integrity than most people I run into. And she accepts everyone.

Her brother, my uncle, became heavily involved in alcohol and hard core drugs after their fathers death. He partied while my mother worked and my grandma prostituted herself off to men, dragging my mother and uncle from trailer park to trailer park for several years until my parents finally met and married. My mother escaped a life of misery, to arrive in a new Hell of spousal abuse, but she loved my brother and I dearly, so she tried to help her husband come to terms with his trauma. She practically raised him as well because he was never taught how to function as an adult. I remember wanting to slit my wrists as a very young child because I just couldn’t stand to hear them argue on an almost regular basis.

I was very observant and always wanted to piece together human behavior. I was a reader at a young age and many of my teachers gave up on me when it came to other subjects. I read every Harry Potter book at a young age, to increase my vocabulary. I read history books and learned a bit of German, all so I could feel smarter than where I came from. I would argue with my dad whenever he judged other people. That was one of his favorite things to do, hate people who aren’t White. He would call me names and repeat slurs whenever I would kindly ask him to stop, then he would laugh incessantly. He was raised to be a bigot and he always will be to a degree. I’ve just had to accept that we are different.

It always felt like my family was living in another century, just with some modern conveniences. The Southern Baptist church my family went to throughout my childhood, had a lingering sense of Antebellum segregation. Many members of my family still frown at interracial relationships, whereas I have always accepted those individuals that accepted me. I’ve never exclusively dated one race or another. I just let it all happen naturally. I was often very naive, but I have been loved by quite a few that accepted me as I accepted them and that was enough, friends and lovers alike. I was led to believe that shooting for my dreams would never be profitable or logical.

My brother who experienced very little abuse at all, was the socialite child and I was the nerdy black sheep of the family. My ambitions were to go to university and become an archaeologist or a historian. After the assault in my mid 20’s, my father offered to pay for my schooling, but only if I went to school for something he thought would be a desirable career, so I hardly received any funding from them when I finally found what I thought was an entry level certification program. It turned out to be more like a hybrid between undergrad and grad school, according to my ex, at least. I didn’t have a clue what that meant. I just aced every class with the highest GPA possible. I would have been happy with average grades, but earned a 4.0 and received my Public History and Historic Preservation Certification.

I took electives in archaeological studies and learned the basics well enough. I genuinely thought it would be much harder than it was. It was taxing, but not so complicated that I couldn’t catch on. There was one weird incident where one of my community college classmates advocated for a ban on White people for her museum class project, a traveling African American history museum. Her reasoning was that because of Jim Crow era segregation, it was okay for her to segregate Whites away from “safe spaces” for at least several months, because in her eyes we deserve it for a change. This woman was a single mom, so lo and behold, her kids may end up being quite racist. Who knows?

I had been aware of racial tension since high school. Me being White was never an issue in my younger years, but a few times, once when I was harassed by a fellow high school student, that wouldn’t stop sending me texts about how he wanted to fetish me sexually because he had a preference for White girls. I don’t know who gave him my number, but I avoided him after that. I will not repeat the words said to me. I had a few incidents like that in a workplace where I was looked at like an item due to men that had sexual fetishes and bragged about their preferences for White women, but I largely got along with most people as long as they treated me well and had a good sense of humor.

I actually had to report a man for verbally harassing me and sexualizing me in the break room, in front of his male coworkers who did nothing. He wouldn’t stop talking about his preferences for light skinned girls and I specifically asked him to stop talking to me in that way. He called me fresh meat and said he loved it and liked em’ spicy. Every “no” I stated, was a huge turn on to the predators, no matter their color. I rejected a White guy and he joined in with the Black guys to make my life Hell. One of them said and I am not paraphrasing, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I were to kidnap a woman, hog tie them down on a bed, light a cigarette and blow the smoke in their face as they struggled and then, I would laugh in their face.” They regularly made fun of my body and degraded me, but I couldn’t find a better job and I’m scared that I will end up in an environment like that again.

I recall a Black coworker of mine getting upset with me because I thanked her for sweeping the floor because I hadn’t had a chance to get to it yet. She aggressively told me that she would never do it again and that’s the last time I would ever see her helping me out because her people had done enough labor for people like me, as if she wasn’t getting paid. She talked to me like I was a small child that she needed to discipline. My manager, another Black woman, would follow me around inspecting every bit of work I did which was rarely done wrong, commenting on my body and the clothes I wore, even though I was in the same uniform as everyone else. She would scream at me like I was trash, but would let every Black coworker I had get away with not following protocol. Other Black coworkers bluntly warned me that she really just didn’t like young White women.

I witnessed another Black woman loudly scream and threaten to kick our manager’s “White ass” if he ever confronted her and asked her to do her job again. Everyone laughed. I remember her saying “How dare that White man tell me to do my job!” as she watched me do all of the work she should have been helping me with. I am aware of the stereotypes facing Black women and know this isn’t everyone, but these individuals made it obvious that they thought I was scum that they had a righteous duty to walk all over because of what I am and where I come from. You had to kiss a lot of ass to be accepted in that forsaken place and I refused.

Most of my coworkers were not like that and told me which individuals to avoid. Some of them were proud gang members, of all races, recruited off the street to work food service at this establishment that I won’t name. Many of them were stabbed in the back by women in their childhood as some had told me, even though I didn’t ask or care. I kind of became everyone’s reluctant therapist. I was distracted by that reality with what at the time was a happy relationship with my most recent ex, too. So, I really suppressed a lot of that. I let the creeps of all kinds know I was not interested. And of course, because I didn’t sleep with any of the players at work, I was labeled a slut and a racist.

By the time I left that job, I wasn’t afraid to snap back with an insidious attitude towards anyone that insinuated I wasn’t doing hard work and I stood up for people that were bullied in that workplace. The nicest people I met there were predominantly Mexicans, two Muslims from Africa and one lady from Bangladesh. They were treated like shit by the White and Black employees and so they just sat in silence with me at lunch and took walks with me on break and I appreciated their acceptance of me.

Becoming a student at an archaeological field school at a very prominent plantation in Virginia completely made it all worse. I recognize that there are disadvantages to people of many backgrounds and they deserve an equal chance at success and happiness. There’s a lot of progress still to be made. The truth deserves to be told and sometimes being a bit radical can be necessary. I see why my fellow students were upset over terrible moments in American history that haven’t been given enough attention for centuries. During field school, most of the students, certainly not all, didn’t want to be near me from day one, but I gave them the benefit of doubt. Firstly, I was there to learn archaeology, not identity politics. Secondly, I was nearly 30 and not fresh out of high school or college like most of them were and not looking to be best friends with everyone. I just wanted to learn and hopefully meet a few nice people along the way.

Looking back on it now, I see that some were defensive because some were used to being cornered and I empathize with that more than they would like to know. However, demands were made of me that were unreasonable. Nearly everything I said was misinterpreted. I was shouted down and undermined on multiple occasions. I tried to bond with a peer at a mandated anti-racism meeting because she mentioned how out of place she sometimes feels being from a rural background and Black. I was then screamed at from across the room by another Black peer for even daring to relate to a Black woman, even though it was obviously over the rural aspect. She proudly told me “You’re not Black.” I have a mirror. I know I’m White and I don’t think anyone should care. I don’t need a reminder whenever I try to make a friend. I don’t like fake people either and don’t need to claim a heritage that isn’t mine.

I was made to feel that I cannot relate to anyone else’s life, joy or pain unless I shared their darker skin tone. That I should only listen submissively Black people and Native Americans, but never speak to them in any way they wouldn’t like, as if I’m supposed to intrinsically know how everyone feels all the time, as if everyone were a coddled token of moral superiority. I was told by a radical student that White women were bred to be subservient by White men and that’s why we are weak emotionally and benefit from the subjugation of others, that White women’s tears are a direct threat to brown men everywhere and that we should take a step down for the benefit of other people. I was told that it’s not what I say that offended them, but how I say things, in other words my slight country drawl and the fact that I had confidence.

I had an anti-racism “facilitator”, at that same meeting, say that she wouldn’t dare travel further west than Charlottesville, implying that anywhere further west in the state of Virginia is filled with dangerous mountain people like me. Weirdly enough, Roanoke City was about 50/50 split along racial lines for a long time and you could meet a racist of every shade. It’s a city valued for its diversity of all types, today. I have more of an appreciation for my birth city as the years go by, but it has all of the same issues as any major city, even though it’s so small. She would have been safer in Roanoke than Charlottesville, when the Unite the Right nonsense went down, but that was lost on her.

Yet, many of the students were very entitled and privileged. I had never experienced so much entitlement in one place in such a short amount of time. They wanted me to give them free rides, spare clothes and do their dishes. Quite a few of my fellow students did not seem to believe that people like me have any culture worth acknowledging. No dances, no music, no food-ways, no literature, no multicultural integration, nothing. Just racism. That’s all I was to some, a product of slavers, rapists and colonizers. Yet, many of us have been Blue-Collar for centuries, working alongside others, although not always peacefully. I remember that facilitator asking the students if anyone there ever had to lift over 50 pounds at a job? Did anyone there have to do any real labor? She was implying that employees being asked about their physical abilities to do labor was inherently discriminatory. Myself and the only White man who was accepted into the field school raised our hands.

They were looking at White people as a monolith and I realize now that they were radicalized to hate and promote their own perceived superiority as a counter to discrimination, which will only inhibit real social progress that they claim to want so badly. How is that combating racism? I wonder if too much damage has been done by people wanting to monopolize off of their confusion, resentment and legitimate historical grievances. I was only there to learn archaeology, not save people that saw themselves as eternal victims. I totally see what the White savior trope is now and it disgusts me because these types will sacrifice their own at the altar of performative caring. Hell, some of them thought they were Black saviors and that White people were just intrinsically stupid and needed their help to better understand our own sorry ways. It was a cult. Anyone pale was a worse sinner than anyone else and must repent or be banished like a witch from a Puritan stronghold.

I now wonder if this is truly my calling, when I see students denying facts no matter their color or political stance, shouting down anyone that doesn’t agree with them, manipulating narratives whilst disregarding information deemed inconvenient to their sensibilities and avoiding asking questions while they stab genuine allies in the back, creating more enemies. There wasn’t much civil discourse. I was not given equal support by staff members and I very much disagreed with their admitted method of intentionally making White people uncomfortable to make up for things we cannot control. The head of the excavation told me I deserved the discrimination because no discrimination I face could ever be as bad as what they had been through even in today’s modern world.

The students were genuinely being indoctrinated to disregard the U.S. Constitution in its entirety because it was exclusionary in the beginning to many. They learned nothing of Frederick Douglass and his quarrels with the abolitionists who viewed the constitution as pro-slavery in direct conflict with the abolitionists who viewed it as ambiguous and open to amending. Whether you agree or disagree, it’s a conversation that should have been had at the birthplace of the document. Students left that place feeling hostile towards constitutional values, disregarding the fact that it’s been amended for their sake and that many people have died and fought to support what it stands for. The field school tried to indoctrinate me and I let them have it when they came to me asking for my take on how they could improve the field school for this year’s students. I was so angry that I refused to talk to the field leader over the phone or in person because he condoned blatant discrimination against my skin tone and treated me like I was too stupid to understand why. I will never forget the hate that was tolerated, no matter what excuses are given to soften the blow.

Prior to my field school, my cousin was brutally executed outside a convenience store in Southwest Virginia by a man that posted my cousin’s dying body on a Facebook live-stream, riddled with bullets. The murderer actually bragged about killing my cousin, just because he was White. The murderer then immediately pulled the race card, exclaiming that it was because he was Black that the police were arresting him. People online were saying my cousin deserved it because he must have done something wrong. Maybe he said something racist? Does that give someone the right to kill him? Absolutely not.

The murderer’s girlfriend then set up a GoFundMe, using my mothers photo, claiming to raise money for our family when she was actually raising funds to get a good lawyer for the monster. I will always remember that trauma and the pain it has now caused multiple generations in my family. I miss my cousin and hope I see him again one day. I hope I can tell him how much he was loved and that his two beautiful sons look just like him and that everyone in the family thinks of him every day. I wouldn’t dare blame an entire race for the murder of my cousin or for the prejudice I’ve faced, just as I refuse to blame men for my father’s abuse. Hell, three of my second cousins are biracial, Black and White and now they have witnessed the aftermath of their uncle’s death and see what prejudice has done. I see how illogical and vengeful continuing the cycle is. It solves nothing and only causes a ricochet effect that will never bring healing.

We all have it in us to condone the same awful behaviors. We all can be vengeful. And we need understanding. But, understanding and empathy from a woman like me isn’t to be tolerated. Everything I say and do will be used against me or intentionally misinterpreted. Genuine friendship is now not to be tolerated when it’s offered by a woman like me, according to damaged and unhealed souls. I received understanding from one Latina student, who approached me, asked if I was doing okay and said she noticed that what I was going through was unacceptable. She told me that plenty of her people can be extremely racist to many folks. One of the staff members at my field school admitted they had been physically threatened by a Black student at her previous field school at a totally different plantation as vengeance for what some of her ancestors may have done. She warned me that this would get worse for me and to keep my head down and she was right.

After reading all of this, it comes as no surprise that I often get frustrated over the nonsense of today, the sociopolitical conversations surrounding class, race and politics. I’ve admittedly become very disenfranchised. I’m repeatedly assured by the mainstream that I have all of the privileges in the world. I maintain some classically liberal leanings and can make friends with nearly anyone as long as they treat me with respect. Most liberal academics just absolutely suck. They’re not truly liberal and those that are, are scared to death of the fake progressive mob, more so than they are of the White rural voter or anyone else who sees through the charade. It’s projection; they hate white supremacists, but act like them. They slander and call people Nazis, but embrace a hive mentality so brainwashed they are no better than those they hate on the far right.

They’re paid to theorize and profit off of trauma. Why would they want anyone to grow closer together across cultural divides or heal from the past? Many profit off of the division and get off on flogging themselves as if they’re providing a charity to everyone by announcing how much they hate themselves for being White. Most are only self serving and wish to look so much better than they actually are. They are oppressive and enjoy it. It’s sadism. Then, some are not trying to promote equality, some just want to get even. The virtue signaling is vomit inducing. Many people like this are evil and they know it. I have seen the pretentious expressions on their faces. They know what they’re doing.

I learned through experience that disingenuous and dangerous people are attempting to rewrite everyone’s history, not just African American or Native American history. I’ve now done field work on plantations and witnessed descendants of slaves, refusing to interact with Native American groups because they wanted their story to be the dominant narrative. Now, isn’t that equitable? I’ve been to an Irish cemetery where an archaeologist has attempted to document the burials as African, because they want a different narrative for prestige. The laborers buried at the site came here to toil away in poverty, and the archaeologist brought in Nigerian experts from Africa that told her the burials were not African, but Irish and still, the White savior “expert” wants to rewrite that history because that would make her popular. And this is only entry level exposure. I have an enormous mountain to climb if I really choose to pursue this as a career, but I can’t seem to look away. Curiosity may just end me one day.

Why would I want to work in this field if I’m going to be ostracized for searching for the truth? A lot of people simply can’t handle it, because they might be forced to look at the world and the people they idolize or hate as fully fleshed out individuals rather than just an oppressed person or an oppressor. How many of these academics actually give a shit about humanity at all? Do they care about my ancestors and their contributions? Nope. Yet, I have met good people of all backgrounds that genuinely are doing a good service to this field. People have told me that I do, in fact, belong in this field and that my voice does matter. I refuse to see everyone as solely a victim for an eternity, probably because of all I have been through. And because I did my own research rather than expecting all of the “professionals” to tell me the truth. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone wants to dominate. I don’t mind upsetting someone’s sensibilities as long as it gets me closer to the truth. I worked too hard to accomplish my dreams just to give up forever.

Indoctrinated history students and humanities majors don’t want to know that there was carnage on both sides of every conflict, from every race. In their eyes, it’s still a competition. And if I question the narrative or bring up something they may have missed, it’s somehow proof that I’m condoning sick acts towards others, when in reality, I know they’re being lied to because the professors are afraid of what the student mob will do if the truth is told from every side. They leave truths out to satiate a need to feel like a hero or a victim.

I’ll never condone evil. The quantity of people subjugated by a dominant group or a government outweighs the humanity and individuality of folks like mine, centuries back, that mysteriously had a head chopped off or came home from a hunting trip to find their whole family dead, killed by war-bands and made vows of vengeance because the full spectrum of human emotion contains terrible things that equalize us all in the worst ways. If only more of us could see just how easy it is for any one of us to do terrible things in the name of perceived progress or vigilante justice or obvious greed and jealousy. Or just evil. Most academics won’t teach that in detail because it promotes understanding over grievances and division. It makes everyone uncomfortable, as it should.

I see many people ushering in the very ideals and behaviors that lead to mass dehumanization today. And I worry that there will be more violence in this country. I have been utterly degraded and dehumanized. I have been treated like I have no soul and that I am a monster to be pushed away. I have been shown that my voice doesn’t matter and every experience I have had has only shown me more of that. I am a body to be objectified and a spirit to be annihilated. I’m only supposed to see or speak out against it when it’s dehumanization towards immigrant groups, or people of color, but not myself or my own kin. I have tried, but I don’t see how I will ever move on from any of it. I’m still trying to figure out what my purpose is in being alive.

We live in a world full of gas-lighters, that deny us the truth in so many ways. We are all in it together now and should see that more often, no matter our differences. I’m still considering going back to college, but I don’t see the value as I used to because the standards are low and the truth doesn’t matter to a decent number of students and teachers. The smarter I become, the less happy I am and the less friends I’m able to make, so why bother? I’ll always be treated like a threat, even when I’m open to being a true friend, even when I prefer being in the background. They want me to feel inferior and suicidal. They would be happy if I were to kill myself or live in poverty or get murdered. It gets them off. Some seriously want me gone in this field of work. If someone is willing to openly joke about doing heinous things to me with no shaming or repercussions by peers or management, would they actually do it if the establishment or a movement said, go ahead? I think so.

We need anthropologists and historians who are willing to document and study the unfettered truth, rather than half of the story, no matter who holds social and political influence. I see how history and empathy does in fact matter for all of us. I see how desperate people are for a narrative of convenience and I see through a lot of the bullshit. I’ll never be an expert and I don’t think I want to be. I see what we are as a nation and know that my opinions will continually evolve. We are a constitutional republic, run by a democratic mob with the cherry of imperialism on top. I see it all there and recognize the long line of egregious neglect and abuse of humanity throughout history, across continents, that led us all here to this moment. Ethnic cleanses, inter-tribal conflict, political propaganda and gross manipulations of history have been here for thousands upon thousands of years. I’m not going to ignore the reality that all that is happening now around the world is nothing new. We all get to live through history.

I drive regularly on the Blue Ridge Parkway and look out over the valley in an attempt to clear my head. I’m far too logical because I’ve lost my mind more than once. I had to fight to see any sense again. I have spent most of my life with no trustworthy friends and no well meaning allies to save me. Not all hillbillies are this sorrowful, bitter or strange. I didn’t even know what I truly was until very recently. According to my DNA test, I’m mainly Germanic, English and Scottish with a bit of Irish, Welsh, Norse and Finnish. And none of my lineage migrated here after the 18th century. I was raised in the county where some of my ancestors settled in the 1720’s. Most of us stayed in this one small area for centuries. We came to this region and have acclimated to the environment for just over 400 years and yes, some of us did terrible things, but many of us were busy avoiding everyone. And didn’t assimilate until very recently and I see the benefits of that isolation now. Some days I crave that rugged individualism and isolation because I know that’s where I’ll find myself.

I didn’t know there were cultural studies about folks like me or even biases, I just lived it, the good and the bad. I didn’t know that anthropologists throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom occasionally travel here to study us, to regain old folk tales and songs that were lost. Some were still speaking Scottish Gaelic and Irish. Some were quite pagan and a few still are. I have witnessed weird, unsettling things that I know science cannot rationalize in these mountains. I have always had a pagan way about me, even though I was raised religious. I am open to the study of Christianity now, more so than ever before, but I prefer a long walk in the woods to any church service. I love this land and I love my ancestors. I appreciate their sacrifices, even if the immature and judgmental ones around me don’t. And I appreciate all of the black sheep and survivors of society no matter who they are or where they are in the world. I had to go through every bit of Hell to get to the point where I could accurately discern a friend from a foe.

I am no longer a shrinking violet, a victim or a battered woman. I am capable of great things as we all are. I’m just not selling myself short anymore.. We seem to understand the struggle together and that’s enough for me. My intentions in writing this aren’t to say I feel sorry for myself. It’s certainly not to stoke any flames of division among different people. I believe we have more in common most days. I have met enough people whose truth and compassion have given me hope. Hardly anyone cared when I was the victim. I was blamed for every bit of abuse I ever received. I have had to take responsibility for my own mistakes and carry the burden of other’s mistakes my whole life. Sometimes, I feel like I can hardly breathe.

I just try to make the crazy make sense, but it’s too crazy out there. I don’t want to care anymore. I’m so tired of seeing the loneliness and depression in my own face and in the faces of my family. Their faces are permanently scarred with sorrow. There is no “real” connection. No one is communicating about anything that matters. I don’t associate much with anyone anymore, for obvious reasons. I’m done with the naysayers, perverts and the resentful people who wish to keep me contained in this little box because they’re afraid they may actually see me succeed. I will no longer be chained to their reality. They cannot steal my strength from me or my intuition. I choose better for myself because nothing good ever came easy for me anyway and it’s all fleeting, so I may as well really put myself out there.