Admiting Our Sins

This is a new page to be honest with ourselves and eachother. The reason for it is I want to make a page where we can admit to ourselves our capacity for things we don't like. Admiting this, and going out of our denial allows us to look at our behavior and deal with it. Admiting it doesn't make it okay but it allows us to stop denying things and help ourselves and eachother make us better people and possibly help the world in general to be a better place.

A few topics to get us started:

• Capacity for violence

• Capacity for homo/hetero/biphobia

• Capacity for sizism

• Capacity for ageism

• Capacity for racism

• Capacity for lookism

• Capacity for sexism

• Capacity for hatred and fear of others based on our own insecurities

Write away. Thank you for your honesty.

Section one: Honesty

Okay. Most of these things, surprisingly, I don't feel badly about. Because they are not in my life, not in my thoughts, even though I see evidence of them everywhere. It's for a reason that I don't have bad feelings towards them, but I can't really explain it...it has to do with my outlook on the whole universe, which is difficult to explain :) Out of all of these, though, the one that affects me the most emotionally is ageism. It messes me up and screws with my head more than most things. I don't hate people who discriminate because of age, because it's just based on an idea of the world that is in their head, and that doesn't make them a bad person, but I certainly feel a lot of hostility towards the concept. It is mostly because I am 18, but I look and feel very young. And youth is great, the good qualities of it: exuberance, truthfulness, newness, being in-the-moment. I don't mind those things at all. But I still sometimes have a lot more than I'd like of the not very fun childlike qualities, like overwhelming fear that you can't hide or cover up, when you're uncomfortable. Feeling vulnerable and scared and insecure, and withdrawing into myself because of it. It's only around certain people, but when I get around them, my perception of myself immediately changes to seeing myself as a vulnerable, naive, innocent little kid. It makes me want to cry. -courtney

Okay, this is not one of the subjects. But. I was a compulsive liar as a child, up until about age fifteen. I'd make up not only just fantasy stories about people I knew, and not just "dog ate my homework" excuses to keep me out of trouble I mean I really lied just about every other sentance. To everybody; strangers and family alike. Why? I guess because I liked the control I had over people's world. If I said something, people instictively believed me! I'd constantly test the limmits, too. If I knew one thing was true, I said the opposite. Or when I was feeling something strongly (PMS, euphoria) and I wanted people to empathize with me, I'd tell them something almost ludicrously dramatic (my cousin got AIDS from her boyfriend, my dad just got promoted to vice president of an enormous firm in San Francisco). And I got so I could read belief or disbelief in people's eyes. Actually that's a pretty good skill to have. Another thing was, while I was saying these things it became true to me for that moment. And after I had finnished the conversation, I would have a hard time telling the difference between actual reality and the reality I had created for myself and this other person. Then I'd have to remember which reality I'd created for which person and when, and all the story variations, and how to blend them together in a believable way if/when my conversation partners ever met. I got into deep shit a couple times. But I never seemed to learn my lesson, I guess... until NBTSC '97 (my first session). It was the first time in my life when I didn't feel the need to lie. It wasn't even an effort to go without: I honestly didn't feel like I had to make life more interesting or test anybody's limits or anything! And ever since then, I've become more... moral? Nah. It just doesn't do anything for me anymore. Though sometimes I have to try to stick to my new "simpler" lifestyle. And occasionally I exagerate the facts. And once in a while I'll really fuck up, but then I'll generally come clean to the person I told the story to. Even though it kills me to let them in on my "dirty little secret". There now I'm done, and wow! That really had nothing to do with the subjects listed above. But... I did admit one of my sins. Now I'm going to try very hard not to press the delete key and let this stay on the page and not chicken out... -Samantha

• I love and admire you, Samantha.Hannah

Section two: Discussion