The Blue Pill Made Me Gag

Most understand the reference to choosing the red or the blue pill these days. Take the blue and you stay in the make believe world where truth doesn’t matter. Take the red and understand that what you’ve been taught to believe isn’t real. You see truth even when it’s painful.

When I first watched The Matrix, this was what resonated with me the most because it feels like most of the world prefers the blue and I never understood that. Not even as a child. I asked questions. Lots of them. Some that got my face slapped pretty hard by an aunt or two who didn’t even believe the red pill existed. Thing is, I understood they really did know about the red pill, but they were scared. So they used their anger and their hands to keep me and those like me from making them question. We’re seeing that happening out in the world right now. Change doesn’t come easy and people are getting ugly and hurtful as they fight to stay in their seas of blue.

Problem is, those seas of blue come with crashing waves of ego that drown anyone who is perceived as different.

(Enough with the metaphor! LOL.)

So lately, I’ve had a hard time coming up with blog topics and part of the reason is I don’t want to rant online and that’s all I’ve felt like doing. The discriminatory laws popping up in different states make me ill and enrage me. I will never understand how anyone can think they’re better than someone else because of religious beliefs, sexuality or gender identity—and trust me, I grew up around people who actually said aloud they felt they had the right to shoot homosexuals. I heard things that scared the crap out of me and confused me as a child but even then, I knew it was wrong. That they were wrong.  My parents were nothing like that, thank goodness, and to this day, fully support me. I admire them something fierce because they both grew up in that world and yet they raised their children to think for themselves.

Nothing is black and white in nature and human beings are most definitely a part of nature. We come in so many different, interesting versions. So, to put yourself above someone else—to believe you should have rights when they don’t—is so beyond wrong, I couldn’t then and still can’t understand how more don’t see it. Nobody has the right to decide what is right for someone else. If it’s against your religion, don’t do it yourself.

It’s just that simple.

And there have been a lot of other arguments going on online that ripped me up as well. I haven’t been able to work on new projects, felt unwelcome once again, and it wasn’t until I finally decided to start taking bigger social media breaks, that I began to feel my creativity coming back. I’m writing something I truly love and working hard to try and do it the right way even though I knew going in I’d have some pretty negative feedback. From some who have bigoted views and some who feel I have no right as a woman to write these stories. Thing is, I love them and have for a long, long time. I could go into the many reasons, but this blog is already kind of convoluted and long. But what I can do is use very real experiences, things that tore me up as a kid, things that tore up people I loved, things that shaped my strong beliefs in equal rights. I’m still asking questions and listening to the answers, and here is one very important thing I hope all writers learn to accept.

Someone will always feel a writer got something wrong because one person’s experiences aren’t the same as another’s.

So, I will give readers a bit of a warning. There are things in Snow’s background that are rough and these all came from very real things I witnessed, experienced or heard. Being a highly sensitive kid who asked logical questions in a world where everyone is being force-fed the blue pill wasn’t easy. (You knew I had to use it. Just one more time. 😉 )

Now, I fully admit that I could never truly understand what someone like Snow would have been made to feel, but I took those real experiences that hurt me and people I loved and worked hard to make them his. To understand what made him feel the way he does about the world and himself. I shared those experiences with Jocelynn who jumped right into the fire with me. We do that–jump into the fire with each other.

Then…the two of us gave Snow what most people need. Friends, family and a lover who wants him for exactly who he is. Prickly, hurt edges and all. We love him and hope our readers do too. And since we’re pretty sure most of our readers snatched that red pill long ago…

(Okay, okay, I’ll stop. <G> )

So…