Fun fact – I’m ashamed to want food. Not just to eat it, or to ask for it, or to prepare it, or to obtain it, or to posses it (all things I have various forms of aversion to), but ashamed to be hungry and want food. It’s proof that I didn’t manage my day correctly, because a good human wouldn’t be in this state. If other people are hungry it’s evidence of my lack of care for them, and if other people aren’t hungry it’s evidence of my inhuman need. Being hungry is the first step of my body betraying me into actions I cannot control, and good people…

I’ve been reading more N. K. Jemisin, from her Hundred Thousand Kingdoms series. This one doesn’t yell in the 2nd person (which I still really love) but does use blindness as – and the occasional bit of truesight – to demand attention to specific details. To reveal the thought process that brings us insight. It’s another series about oppression, like the Fifth Season was, but it takes a different tact. It explores hierarchy and the way it hurts even the powerful. It looks at colonialism in the same framework, as another part of the same hierarchy. The Fifth Season told us about the institutions of oppression and the amount of…

Down day today. Which was much needed. It’s not enough time to get through the whole backlog from recent weeks but it’s a start. Got the laundry back down to normal levels and hung my shirts for the first time in years [fig 1]. Got caught up on dishes and changed the sheets and switched out dog toys. Washed blankets and swept the garage and took Dog out twice. Finished Game of Thrones (HBO). It was mostly fine, though that bit where Tyrion looks at the camera and tells us about the power of storytelling is hard to take. We’re supposed to feel hopeful about Arya but her plan is…

I talked about storytelling in therapy, to make sure I’m on the right track with the methodology. About the idea of imagining a past that wasn’t so shitty, to teach my brain about how life could work even though mine did not. A life where there was enough safety to make the bad parts tolerable. Which they confirmed is more or less the plan. When I ask questions like that my therapist always wants to tell me that imagining things is okay, that I’m not “faking” memories, that it works. It’s clearly a thing they’re concerned about — are worried that I’m concerned about — but I can’t seem to…

I need to be better at accepting recognition 1Also reassurance, but that’s another trick entirely. Right now my brain tells me that all recognition is at best sarcastic, if not much worse. That the message communicated by it – to me and anyone else who hears – is one of my inadequacy. Even if the thing I did was good I could always have done it sooner or more quietly or cheaper or with less prompting. I could have done it in a way that no one would of noticed or been able to recognize me. The fact that I did it in this way – in a way that…

I am having a lot of trouble organizing my clothes. I missed that day of class – the one where you had clothes or a place to store them other than your body. I know most young people have access to drawers – even the foster care checklist requires young people to have their own storage area suitable for clothes – but I missed it nonetheless. When I was young I stored my clothes folded and stacked on the floor near my bed. Which was fine because I didn’t have many. I got a dresser when I was like 10 but didn’t have much to go in it. When Mother…

There was no D&D today – C is out of town and Shanda had to help B in the middle of the afternoon – but our GM came over anyway. They recently got a job, which is good, and gives them something to talk about. Along with an inch of sympathy for the plight of the working human. And they came today with a cell phone in a giant pouch strapped to their forearm. It looks like a god dammed wrist brace. But they’re real afraid of cell phones and this makes it feel better for them (or at least that’s what they’d say). I made the. consider Eastshade 1in…

The day job was slightly terrifying today for a minute, when 6 new SRs came in, including several with 13 subcompoents. But I got to dispatch 5 of them and the remaining one is basically done already. So things are okay. The bug one is still happening but I got through all the requests about it so it’s getting better. Got through the release stuff for this week and I’m off the queue next week. Still holding some SRs but I should be able to burn them down in a couple of days next week. I learned long ago how to make myself do a thing, even when it seems…

I took Shanda and Dog to the park in a car on Wednesday, so you could get out of the house for a while even with her bad ankle. And to let you play outside with Dog. Turns out we are not super prepared to leave the house with Dog and dog-related supplies, at least not outside the context of worn equipment. I’ll have to fix that, to make future trips easier for everyone. But I think it went well, and that it helped you feel cared for while you’re injured. Here’s another therapy fact I learned – there are two categories of care I didn’t get when I was…

Did LI about early childhood in therapy. Which was tough for a lot of reasons. LI is often a lot of work in trying to generate and stick with a terrible feeling so that you can have it while you learn to tell a different story about it. Which I need for being an infant, because my current story is incompatible with being a happy human. Before we even started my therapist was trying to explain the process and talked about imagining myself as a “sweet baby” or various other terms intended to reflect the fact that essentially no condition or behavior of infants is unacceptable. But my brain doesn’t…