I’m trying hard to keep the right perspective – on my job, on leaving M, on picking up the parts of my life I’ve let hang for the past few months, on keeping up the parts I’ve added. On the way that incremental improvement doesn’t care what order changes come in and the way skipping pieces that might help can still be progress. But mostly on how I’m a real human with actual friends that – while sometimes quiet – do care about me. Even when my schedule and environment and anxiety tell me that once I leave for the train1Sometimes I can be excited about using only public transportation to go thousands of miles. When I last…

Had my first session with a new therapist on Wednesday night. Not ideal circumstances – I only made it home to M’s a couple of hours before session, after having left Seattle at 10 AM the previous day. But it think it went pretty well. Certainly better than any other therapy session I remember. As I’ve described before I often feel misunderstood, and because of the way I was abused that makes me feel like I must be doing something wrong. In particular when there’s a mismatch between my perception of my own self-awareness and psycho-education and the one the therapist sees or believes or assumes. When I feel I…

I think I’ll get to Cleveland today – I’m decending there right now. I left my home at like 10 AM Tuesday so at 4:30 Wednesday it’s been a long haul. My bag is in Detroit though, which is less good. Maybe I can get someone to deliver it. I don’t have the energy or time to deal with it tonight. I do t desperately need it today – it basically only has my long-sleeved shirt in it – but I do need it to get the rest of my stuff home and I’m not excited about the idea of going to the Cleveland airport yet again. Got a bunch…

I didn’t make it to Detroit today; that airport is closed due to freezing rain and was before we even hit Minnesota. So I’m in Minneapolis tonight. There’s a direct flight from here to Cleveland so I should still be there tomorrow, about 16 hours after my original schedule. Still technically in time for my duties on Thursday but it keeps getting closer. I’m super glad I gave myself an extra day to travel, even if I’m super annoyed to have to use it. I should at least get to sleep in a bit though, as my next flight doesn’t leave until 1:30 PM. I have decided that If I…

Uhng. Travel is real bad for my anxiety. And I’m on the queue this week, which makes work feel extra urgent. My flight out of SEA is delayed before I even check in, enough to miss my connection to CLE. So I’m overnight somewhere to get there reliably tomorrow, and I picked Detroit because that’s the shortest flight and in the same timezone. Plus it puts me in the Seattle airport for an extra couple of hours. My anxiety gets a little better once I’m inside security, because scrutiny goes down, but it’s still hard for me to ignore the authoritarianism that plauges air travel even when it’s less intense…

I’ve started reading If I Was Your Girl (Meredith Russo) on M’s recommendation1I will read or watch basically anything you guys recommend. And then talk about it; I like to talk about media we share. I built a whole theater about it that idea, and shared all my media digital media to make it easier to do remotely.. I’m five chapters in; it seems to be about survival and fear and abandonment and isolation and the abuses rendered upon us by the hierarchies of illegitimate systems if power. Which is sort of my thing. I also like that there’s a character named B in it, because that’s what I call…

I got a new laptop at work. Took the smallest one they offer – 13″ MacBook Pro. It’s only slightly larger than my 11″ at home, but it’s so much heavier. I don’t know how anyone puts up with a machine you have to hold with both hands or set on a surface, and that you have to use plugged to a custom power adapter most of the time. I feel like you are all living in the past. My 11″ charges on USB1This 13” has USB-C power (so no custom adapter) but can’t be convinced to charge at 5V unless it’s powered off. It does *run* off of 5V…

I’ve talked a good deal about secrets and some about how the need for them limits options for expression. But I gave an example yesterday that surprised Shanda, which suggests I haven’t made the context clear. So here’s an example of how I had to keep all things secret at all times. When I was 12 – around the time Mother identified my dislike for being mistreated1She understands this as me “changing” and “not loving her”, though in a broader perspective she should link those events to me being 4 not 12 because that’s when she actually start to feel separate from me. Realistically it coincides with my ability to…

Here’s a thing I’ve heard from more than one of you: “I’m not sure if my feelings are ‘normal’”. I’ve seen it at times too; maybe more than I realize because I’m not very sensitive to it. The context is something along the lines of feeling anxious or sad or hurt and thinking maybe that feeling isn’t “right”, that maybe it’s one you aren’t allowed to have because it’s “bad”, or that it isn’t “safe”, or that isn’t “real” because you have anxiety in general, or that isn’t something you should react to because it’s not fair to other people, or won’t help you, or isn’t logical. I’ve been trying…

My anxiety is high today, as I leave Cleveland. I’m ready to be home, but sad to go for a bunch of reasons. And the travel and waiting and transitions and worry are making me downright twitchy. It’s easy for me to feel like my anxiety is about work but that’s not really true, or at least only half true. That’s just the thing with deadlines. The thing the world tells me that I must “succeed” at to deserve to live or take care of the people I love. The thing it’s easy to dump all of my other worry onto. I am slightly worried about work. There are a…