The background:



In June of 2003, I finally managed to straighten out my credit to the point that I could reasonably expect to be approved if I applied for a mortgage. I have always, always wanted a house of my own. Not a condo--a condo seems to me to be too much like an apartment with none of an apartment's advantages--and besides, I wanted a backyard and a front yard and a decent sense of distance from my nearest neighbors. I was prepared to share a property-line and a fence, but not an interior wall.



I had also decided WHERE I wanted this house to be, and it was that decision that is at the heart of the reason for this weblog. I wanted to live on the West Side of Chicago; my original plan called for finding a house somewhere in the area bounded by North Avenue on the north, Austin on the west, Western on the east, and Madison on the south. It was an extensive area, but I was fairly familiar with the eastern 3/4 of it.



In the way of humans, no one paid much attention to my plans; after all, they had their own plans, and most of them had heard my pipe-dreams before and were fairly indulgent. It was only when I found a realtor and started looking that the opposition began. Once I actually FOUND the house, all hell broke loose. Didn't I know, they asked, about that neighborhood? Its reputation? I'd be eaten alive, they told me; my possessions scattered to the winds or pawned for drugs, and my vulnerable little white body ravaged and raped and cut to ribbons by the residents of That Neighborhood. I heard this from all quarters; my mother, co-workers, assorted friends and acquaintances. Some of them claimed that They Know They're Right because... (Here insert spurious reason. "I used to be a cop, so I Know I'm Right." "I'm a black woman and I KNOW black people, so I Know I'm Right." "I'm 74 years old and I've lived a hell of a lot longer than you have and seen a hell of a lot more, so I.K.I.R." (It's just as tiresome to type it as it is to HEAR it, as I've just discovered.)



The opposition grew as I became more involved in the process. I'm approaching my closing date, and the office atmosphere, once fairly collegial, has gone to hell since a few days ago, when one of the people quoted above decided it was her "duty" to tell me how wrongheaded I'm being. I stopped listening when she raised her voice to a yell...though I'm sure everyone concerned would say I was NEVER listening. Since then I've resolved to treat my co-workers with very basic cordiality and share NOTHING about my life. My family situation, if anything, is actually WORSE than the one in the office; not only does my mother oppose where I'm living, but she also opposes the man I'm dating and the prospect of this man spending time at the house. She's requested that I keep my phone number, when I get one, unlisted--so that "the relatives", my aunts and uncles and their assorted offspring, won't know that I'm living in That Neighborhood. I somehow don't think the relatives will be spending much time poring over the White Pages or Googling me to find out where I live--but one never knows, does one?



Which is entirely the point of this weblog. One Never Knows, Does One. I would say I'm among the people in my world who understands all the implications of that statement, and perhaps the only one who's experienced it quite as forcefully. I know I'm not the only woman in the world who's lost a lover; nor even the only one who's watched that lover die, even at so young an age. I know I'm not the only one in the world who's known grief--but all the same, I don't think that's happened to anyone else in MY life. If it has, I certainly don't know about it. And that grief, that loss, that space where JP used to be--that is the same space these beliefs came from. I know I'm not the only one, but it changes you, you know? Your priorities shift after such an experience. Not all at once; not even noticeably, at first...but then one day you wake up and it's eight years later, and if you actually LOOK around you realize how different you are.



This is not a weblog about that difference, really. Nor is it a weblog about my house, or about LJ, the guy I'm dating; or the neighborhood I'm moving into; not about my family, or my friends, not my job or my past. But all those things are part of it. Mainly I'm writing this to try to explain, in case anyone actually CARES, why it's a bad idea to judge someone who isn't you. The people who are judging me are operating from an entirely different belief system than mine, and judging my actions and motivations by THEIR beliefs. And I will concede--if I believed what they believed, my actions would make no sense. But in the framework of my values, they make a great deal of sense indeed.



I'm not saying my beliefs are RIGHT....I'm just saying that they're MINE, and I've fought hard to get them and I've considered them carefully. I can't say for certain whether others have gone through this same process; some people have, I know, and others have just reflexively accepted what they're told--or rejected it, just as reflexively. It took me a long time to assure myself that I was NOT one of those, but I'm not--and that's why I'm writing this.