This morning I’m not pondering the spirits, nor my problems with wyrms, nor even breakfast for which I think my hips are grateful. I woke up at something like 4 in the morning feeling battered from a conversation I’d had with someone. It was the kind of conversation that always leaves me feeling like human connection is a luxury I’ll never be able to afford, and I wake up in the night asking myself why in the fuck am I bothering. I realized there in the dark with a kitten trying to put its head in my mouth for pets that it all came down to the use of one word: ma’am.

A lot of people have opinions over the use of this particular word. Many would prefer it if you didn’t call them by it, even if it’s meant with the best of intentions. It ages them, is the complaint by some. They’re not used to it because they’re not from the American South, is the complaint by others. It’s used to create a social divide and avoid connection is my complaint–especially when said in a conversation where one party member wishes to create a sense of rule and order, and usually that rule and order tips in their favor. If things aren’t tipping in their favor, they’re deferring with respect to the person the rules are tipping towards.

If I had a granddaughter, and she were trying to grab a toy from another child there’s a high chance I’d be saying, “No, ma’am. No ma’am. You give that back!” With respect, the child is being given a social clue about authority and their little ma’am diaper butt needs to listen.

If I were military personnel faced with a female superior, I’d salute and probably say, “Yes, ma’am!” Rank would be acknowledged, and the word would stand as a divide between us. You can’t get overly familiar when you’re in different social classes. What would the neighbors think.

When pulled over by officers, you’re taught to use ma’am and sir very very respectfully because they have power over you. Power that’s increasingly abused in this day and age.

Yaaaahhh… it goes a wee bit past “Can I help you cross the street, ma’am?” although that also hurts when you throw the honorific at someone who doesn’t want to be classified as having to use a cane just yet. The fact is honorifics like that word are social signals, and context matters a lot. Last night, I was quite often put in my place using the word “ma’am”. The more the guy on the phone said it, the more I kicked against it because I wasn’t a four year old trying to grab a toy away from another child. I was a grown woman defending her right to certain defensive thought processes she had to adopt over the past two years to survive.

The person in question dislikes how I process cultural information and often assumes I’m trying to make all cultures fit under some weird blanket definition. I can give you an example off the top of my head because I’d noticed a parallel yesterday morning. I was watching a short documentary about one of the Siberian peoples, and I noticed they had totem carvings similar to the ones created by native people in Alaska. Now, that there is a *possible* cultural overlap due to contact of some time is a given. But I wasn’t worried about Alaska. The parallel *I* saw was that the houses in the documentary looked extremely Norse in structure, and the poles were set in the way many historians think the Norse god poles would have been done. I thought, “It’s like the Norse godpoles.”

I didn’t think to myself, “It’s just like the Norse godpoles.” I noted superficial similarity, and I stopped a moment to ponder the Migration Period and how one man named Thor had tracked Norse culture back to that region in theory. I didn’t assume that just because godpoles are still thriving in that part of the world the Nordic ways live on. (If anything I’d assume the Nordic ways had a distant grandparent that brought their ways into the fold.) The result is that after having made a mental comparison and processed the imagery, I’m sitting here picturing the godpole I saw in reasonable detail. I even can trace the shadows on the grooves… While also knowing what I’m picturing isn’t a “godpole”; the documentary didn’t say what that totemic figurine was called. It might not even have been for a spirit of any kind. I wasn’t told.

Say what you mean and ma’am what you say. If I were to blurt out “oh, that’s like the Norse godpoles!” I’d immediately get slapped down verbally before I could finish my thought. I actually chewed my lip as I was being accused of blanketing cultures and making assumptions last night, and I thought to myself, “I guess this is going to be just like with everyone else. I’m not allowed to have an opinion, nor can I engage in any way.”

But the times I’ve not asked questions and let the information flow, I’ve also been fussed at – not just by last night’s speaker but by other people. “Why don’t you ask questions?” people demand. “Because I’m trying to process the data first, but when I try I’m told I’m doing it wrong. I can’t ask questions when I don’t have any data in my kiddie pool to ask from,” I have tried to reply. Usually the reply is silenced. I should ask questions. I should be curious.

But I am being curious, every time I pick up a piece of the world puzzle and think to myself, “This context reminds me of context from over there.” My mind is touching that data, and it’s folding the information like origami. Then it will be unfolded but not forgotten, because I was able to chew the flavor. This thing I do is a form of cognitive pattern recognition. It allows me to see a bigger picture. And yes, it’s a survival mechanism.

If I’d been able to do it when I was hijacked, a lot would have gone very differently. Aside from being caught in a goblin’s web, gaslit into confusion and thus robbed of survival discernment I’d have noticed the negative patterns around me. I’d have been able to push back. I already used to notice patterns before that. Ever since I got my life back, the personality quirk is on hyper-drive. I’m shadow punching the information to make sure another goblin isn’t hiding, and I know it. This “ma’am-ing” of my natural cognitive process is exactly what those predators relied on.

“Trust the gods, they’re harsh. Be more reverent!” “Your spirit is resting!” “Trust the process!” “Stay out of the astral!” Let me translate that: “No, ma’am!” when it came to my sovereign place against or with the spirits. The lines were there, drawn by people around me. They just weren’t as polite about it.

The thing about being ma’am-ed that hurt was a divide was being created. It said to me: “We will never be friendly. We will never connect. I will always depend on my role over you as a framework for our interactions, and you little miss need to go back to sucking your thumb and being quiet. There is an invisible separation that depends more on a struggle for power than allowing a natural flow to take place.” And this, dear readers, was what woke me at 4 in the morning and had me staring at the back of my eyeballs. I realized I’d just been isolated away from another connection, and that it was best I let it go. It’s a very lonely place to be when those sorts of thoughts wake you in the dark.

There is another very important thing about the word ma’am, and its counterpart sir, that makes them both bad words in my book. Bad words, I said, because they were placed into my life as a replacement and it destroyed the last remaining Algonquian word my family consciously used.

Her name was Debra: a friend from school, so White her pink flushed pink and her hair was platinum blonde. Southern, crass, and had been thrown out by her stepmother so I took her home to live with us. We were friends for years.

Back in those days if my mother yelled for me, I’d answer back, “Huh!” This word is pronounced only slightly how it’s spelled. It’s not “hoah” like in the army. It’s “huoh” through the nose, and we only used it when answering our parents.

One day after a couple of years of hearing I and my older brother respond to our parents in this manner, Debra snapped at me about rudeness and disrespect. I should say sir and ma’am, I was told by my White friend. My father stood nearby, listening. My mother said nothing. And the entire family never used Huh again.

Years later I learned our use of huh wasn’t just sir and ma’am, it was a high mark of respect. It was an incredibly respectful response to my parents. But my friend, who didn’t stay friends with me much longer after that and is far too mundane to want to connect with these days, killed it by imposing her cultural values. By assuming we were Western. I really hate the term colonization because of how it’s misused in history, but this is definitely one case where I’d use the term. The word ma’am is the tombstone to a word that was already dying out.

Where I grew up was unique in its culture. Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, was literally the birthplace of the American shrimping industry. My family had been shrimpers for generations there. My father was the last because I, the girl, was the only one interested in working alongside him and he wouldn’t have it. The businesses that are ruining the island with their overpopulation and development brought in the kind of palm trees you’d see in California, but our palm trees were short and squat. They were the natural habitat for an endangered breed of bat. Our culture involved fishing nets, hand games using cadences, the river, and pirates. We were very proud of our pirates.

But yet I and my brothers were the only ones using the word. We weren’t raised in town. We didn’t go to town. The first time I went to a Taco Bell was when I was 18, on a date. I didn’t know what the inside of Pizza Hut looked like. Literally my childhood is filled with days in the forest, running around, or harvesting berries with my mother. Helping Dad with the nets. Standing on a boat deck with the briny river spray on my cheeks, watching the sea gulls. Happy days that no amount of nice lawns and shopping malls could ever replace. Days I grieve for.

Although I was raised alongside Western children and can understand some of the things the West does, that doesn’t mean I approach everything from a Western point of view. Don’t get me wrong: some things are definitely Western in my outlook and behavior. But. It doesn’t mean I was raised using sir, ma’am, or a variety of other things. Whiteness, or even multicultural as I am, doesn’t mean you’re tucking napkins under your nose. There are a thousand different cultures in the White spectrum just the same as anywhere else. There have been way too many times I’ve had to have things explained to me by a white friend. It’s an ongoing joke with us, actually. I’ll literally ask them, “What do you white people do?” As Many Cats pointed half-jokingly out to me today, “Yeah, you’ve only been in a Cracker Barrel one whole time as a child and I had to explain horseradish to you.”

When someone uses “ma’am” from polite compliance, they are assuming I come from a world where that concept even exists. I think this situation is simply a culture clash one half of all parties involved doesn’t realize exists. I honestly think a lot of people came before me that really were trying to put everything into blanket terms, and somehow, I’m getting lumped into that category much in the same way my spiritual hijacking gets lumped into the spiritual crisis category by the undiscerning. I also think the other half of the conversation has been hurt by some of the people they’ve encountered and this slap down I am often hit with is their personal knee-jerk. It’s just the kick is usually being accused of assuming things while things are being assumed about me, and that rather sucks.

Now. After I’ve said all that, there are some acknowledgments in order. The person in question spent over three hours on the phone with me. They didn’t mean to be dismissive, and they weren’t trying to be dismissive in the way it came across. They’re a great person, and I enjoy our conversations for the most part. As I lay there in the dark this morning, I reminded myself that some of my feelings were probably triggers coming awake and nothing more. The buttons had been hit, after all.

But the honesty of that moment remains. I’d bared my soul because in any given moment, I’m a hair’s breadth away from walking away from shamanism or anything “powerful” just to protect my sanity and heart. There are things still happening and wounds that still need healing. These things aren’t their responsibility, mind you. They’re my trauma and my pain to deal with, and as I have always had to do alone I will approach each at face value. Except one, which isn’t trauma so much as a lingering literal monster. That bastard I could do without so much, I’ve been considering turning to Christianity.

At the end of the conversation, I’d signed off with, “Stop calling me, ma’am.” The reply? “I will keep doing it.” Very well then, I thought to myself. I’d already been reminded of a take away from many conversations in my life: learn to shut up. Go “yeah” and make glottal stops a lot. (Uh-huh.) Let them talk… and remember, if you don’t remember what they told you it’s not your failing, because your kinesthetic nature is being repressed and it’s taking your ability to remember and learn with it. That approach makes things harder for me, but easier for them even if this also means I will eventually hear, “I thought you wanted to learn.” The only response is to meekly say, “I’m sorry,” and allow the disconnect to happen.

Which I think is the point to my early morning rant. The term ma’am is an honorific that holds a lot of ammo within. As with all honorifics, that ammo is also a wall. It’s a marker that puts everyone into their place. It can put you into the place of an extremely elderly woman that needs help crossing the street: a member of society to be honored but also treated as fragile. You can become a figure of authority, someone to salute to. Or you can be demoted to “silly female” and “junior member that needs to know their place”. It isn’t the word, you see. It’s context, the context of “this is where things are divided, and by that divide a disconnect remains.”

Now. The problem I face is I’m not very good at keeping quiet. I try. Do I put post-it notes all over my house that read “let them talk so they can hear themselves”? Oh, wait. I could staple my lips shut. Or lobotomize my brain to stop it from thinking. After all, being silent is just what’s expected of my gender whether or not this situation is that kind of matter. No one’s going to notice nor care. I know this. I also had noticed the problem get worse when I turned 45, but that’s a topic for a whole different day.

The truth is, the best solution is to fall silent. Gender aside, they feel the need to lecture and have me quietly listen as if we were in a Chinese classroom or university study hall. I’d listen better if I didn’t feel the need to defend myself so often. But why am I defending myself? Oh, yeah. Because I desire connection, and being accused of things alienates. Being “put in my place” also. That.

Maybe the connection isn’t worth it. I don’t have a lot of people in my life because, like my conversational partner, I can be a bit strong. I stopped trying to connect to younger generations because it’s exhausting to be told your lived experiences never happened or that cultural experience sharing as a teaching is making everything all about you. It’s boring the amounts of narcissistic spoiled brats that use stubbing a toe as foundation for claiming severe emotional trauma while at the very same time telling me I never had it so bad. I’m exhausted by “Orange Man Bad” and “Democrat is Devil”. I think I’d rather wash the dishes in silence.

At the very beginning of our journey, my talk partner had told me “Just don’t engage.” To cut off connections, seal myself up. They were talking about supernatural events that didn’t and don’t allow complete disengagement. But. In this case, I realize… I can do that here. I can just not engage.

Not to be mean. But because “ma’am” stood as a neon sign and wall on where I was expected to stand last night. It wasn’t to hurt me. They put that there to protect themselves. To push over that wall or unplug that sign would be to disrespect them. Sure, I don’t appreciate being called “ma’am” in the same way a LOT of Southern women dislike it.¹ It’s rude and diminishing. But, for me it’s just a word. For my talking partner, it’s clearly something more and I should allow them their disconnect if it helps them to feel safe.

I wish I’d been able to get them to at least say to me, “I know a guy,” about the problem I’d opened up to them about. They didn’t offer, and they probably don’t know a guy. It’s wrong to expect more. I’ll be grateful for the time they gave me.

As for choosing to be silent. I’m not sure I can hold the line there. But. The price for my compliance is a retreat into my own territory. I’m not “being silent and not heard” the way some expect. I’m “falling silent because I’m not there”.

Because, I was reminded this morning as I lay in the dark, the biggest reason why people put up these walls against me is because my reality is too large and too close. I used to fight against it, to try to force connections because I was so lonely. That only made things worse. Like it or not, I’m just one of those people whose connections are rare if at all.

It makes for a scary future. But ya gotta wonder if being ma’amed to death isn’t worse.

1. Not to be confused with the polite respectful “ma’am” you get from gentlemen at the store who are your age or your own children. I didn’t grow up using ma’am, though. Not my culture. But I’ve observed it. ↩︎