Emergency Scenarios

Therapy this week didn’t get to LI. I don’t feel like I get much from free-form discussion because I already spend plenty of time on introspection and critical evaluation most days, so I typically don’t get much new insight from the experience. The prompts annoy me for the same reason. I already checked to see if my fear was realistic – it is and that’s why I feel trapped by it. I don’t need anyone to ask me to set challenges for myself – I’m already doing plenty. But it was obvious that providing more context for my therapist would be useful for them, and I didn’t get any useless self-questions until the end, so it was tolerable as a one-off. And my therapist saw and appreciated my self-awareness, which felt nice. It’s still waiting for them to catch up but I at least feel like they are interested in learning and not just continuing to apply the template.

I still don’t understand how other people feel supported by their therapist. I’m not even sure what that would look like, though it’s clearly quite common. It’s sort of the way other people talk about therapy in the general sense. You talk to me about your therapist helping you feel better, or even wanting to reach out to them before your next session for some support in the interim. I feel like my therapist is useful when doing LI, and I can imagine other modalities that would help me, but I can’t imagine how they’d support me with any short-term condition or issue. I know part of that is the way that I am I imagine that I can never count on anyone to help me in an emergency, or even in the first few days of a crisis, so I just can’t quite imagine getting real-time help. But even on longer timescales where I am more accustomed to the possibility of assistance I don’t understand how a therapist would fit into that.

Obviously there will be some situations where we all must stand on our own, at least for a while. But my history tells me that help is only available if you already know what you need and then train the people assisting you. Ideally you can predict that and make it an emergency preparedness situation ¹Please practice your household emergency plans at least once a year. Building evacuation, a meal without utility-based cooking or water, emergency heating (if applicable), comms/transportation plans, etc. And test your equipment including alarms, heaters, food and water socks, first aid supplies, fire extinguishers, comms tools, etc. because … Continue reading, but I imagine it sort of the same way even if the crisis was a surprise — that I’ll have to figure out what will make it better and recruit and train my help. This is a reliable method for a very wide variety of issues, but it’s not fast, and it doesn’t let me depend on anyone else to find a solution or to implement it without me. I imagine that eventually I can have help with many things but never that I can demand it merely because I’m having a hard time. Particularly not if other people are also having a hard time; my problems always come last.

I know that’s not a great plan. There are lots of emergency scenarios in which it’s simply not possible for me to self-rescue. I try to arrange my life so those are limited to situations where I can use formal aid systems (i.e. comms tools to summon societal rescue services) and can sustain myself until it arrives. And there are many more scenarios in which I likely should expect aid on a smaller scale, rather than working everything out for myself. But my experience tells me that’s not reliable enough. I was in charge of significant portions of the household including other people’s emotions, crisis or otherwise (but often crisis) since the early 1980s, and that’s a huge factor in the way I feel about it. But it’s not something that stopped later. For example, there are several instances in the past year where I have reached out for help and found it’s simply not available to me, at least not on relevant timescales. Not even someone to help me calm down for a few minutes so I can use my whole brain figure out how I’m going to save myself, let alone someone else to be in charge of the underlying situation and actually take care of me. It’s just me, willing my panic or injury or crisis into momentary submission and making the one next decision to try to not die. Trying to stabilize myself until I can arrange the world around me to provide the aid I require. I know other people don’t live this way but I don’t understand how they accomplish it.

I have a lot of trouble getting medical care of any kind. I was taught to hide from physicians in a number of ways. I was taught to hide everything from everyone because many facts about my life upset people. I was taught to hide because Mother didn’t want someone to use their authority for force her to think about caring for her child; the conflict between the desire for compliance with authority pressed against her inability to accept advice or instructions. And, being a prey animal, she was ashamed and afraid to admit any illness or imperfection. And of course lack of access bred its own contempt over time, because it’s easier to believe that physicians are unnecessary than to believe that Mother doesn’t love you. All of which trained me to know that physicians can’t offer anything I can’t do myself, and that it’s a waste of my time and theirs to even ask. That they’ll be disgusted by my physical existence just like everyone else and that will be a barrier to having their help even if they could offer any. And of course all my ailments are evidence of my monstrosity; normal people don’t need medical care and I should try to be normal. I demand so much attention from people and it’s why I upset them; someday I will grow up and stop needing things.

Needless to say, it’s difficult to see a physician. In theory my wife could help me with this, but you have your own avoidance. You’re not afraid of the provider, not ashamed to owning a body, but you are ashamed that any condition of your body might impact any aspect of your life. That if anyone knew you had a cold they’d be able to tell what a bad person you were. You’re convinced that you will disappoint people by being sick, yourself by “wasting” time on it, or that if you “give in” to the physical reality of your body that you’ll fail to accomplish that tasks that make people love you. Yours is not the same as mine, but it’s close enough that it’s real hard for you to help me. Almost impossible for you to notice my problems even if I don’t hide them. And you’ll always agree with me that I don’t need treatment; you couldn’t even help me use bandaids. So someone else should ²Seriously, please do if you’re in a position to. I don’t make good health decision by myself and someone should help me. Or at least tell me if they notice I’m doing something dumb. I can’t promise I’ll fix it but I could at least know it’s happening..

You imagine that yours and mine — medical care or anything else we both have sad stories about — are lightyears apart. That mine is so bad that you can only relate to it though grief. And in some ways that’s true. But but they’re also only separated by 4 arcseconds. They taste and smell alike even if they aren’t the same, and we both need to move in the same direction. I /am/ isolated out here, and my disability is so profound that I feel that distance all the time in my inability to participate in basic parts of society. But I don’t need you to be guardian, acting on my behalf. I don’t need you to swim out to me and drag me back to your own sometimes precarious position. I just need you to keep shouting to help me stay pointed in the right direction. I know in some ways that’s harder — offering me emotional support — than doing it for me. But I want to be able to do it myself, and I don’t want you to have to do it alone. We can help each other if you can stand the work of coordinating with me, and we can both push toward the version where it’s less hard.

Melissa wants to see me. She’s “thinking” about moving back to WI. Which would be the end of her, in a way, since she’s unlikely to ever attempt escape again and cannot get better while she’s there. But it would also be a step away from me, which I wouldn’t mind. I’m comfortable with the current boundaries generally speaking, but I also know that she’s still an inch from hurting me if I let myself into the wrong position. I suspect she wants to sell me on some plan about how if I can just help her with X she promises that everything else will work out any day now. That she’ll go to treatment or have a job or definitely be ready to pay me back the $6,732 she needs by Monday to just get her through the next few weeks because finally she’s ready to execute her plan. Except she won’t quite ask, she’ll just keep trying to make me offer. Or maybe she just wants someone to talk her out of it. I’m going to meet her, someplace other than my house, to see if maybe it’s the later. If it’s the former I don’t have any trouble protecting myself, other than the sad time I’ll have at lunch with her once she figures that out. But I’ll pick someplace I like and have a drink before she gets there and just not mind if she dissociates.

I think that possibly E and I might make it to the gym on Monday. The right number of seconds have elapsed to change people’s opinion about which of us is most likely to be injured while undertaking physical activity, or whatever excuse is used to justify the oppression. In the mean time I hear you have a tiny tool of terror underway, which I’m excited to see. And I hope progress on your pneumatic pouncing protrusion proceeds punctually.

There’s extra D&D on Sunday afternoon. You should come if you’re free — it’s a new game with a new GM and you don’t need anything prepped. I’m looking forward to the option of another game, but I could also stand to have some free time on Sundays; between these games and work travel it’s a whole month without any. Saturday I’ve got glueing and drilling planned, and ~2.5 hours of hold time with the State of Ohio. Shanda is out all afternoon though so maybe I can multitask the sweet, sweet 44 seconds of nylon string guitar on the hold loop against some work on chat server. Or even just on rev2 of the MMS gateway, with queued workers and maybe some sort of per-DID security token. Which I’d still appreciate some testing on — send your best media files to (208) 366-0793 so I can be sure the system handles all the different formats seen in the wild.

Didn’t get any SR work done — spent the whole day in meetings. Another interview, though today I got to do it remotely. And then post-interview discussion. And the daily meeting. And a TMA. And then out early for robots. I think we’re hiring the candidate from today; I always disagree on which of the candidates is best but I try not to get too invested in it because no one cares or even wants to talk about it. Not in any of the last dozen or so interviews I’ve done. I don’t think that I’ve got any magic foo that makes me good at the terrible process we use to hire people, but I at least would like to imagine what might make it less bad and try to adjust for it. At least if we hire this one I’ll be done with interviews for a while.

Shanda is doing better today. No longer angry that I exist. You had some trouble reading yesterday’s Screed. It gave you the feels, particularly in the opening. I hope they came out good eventually, though I can see it was overwhelming at first. I think your day out with LS helped you reset a little; it definitely made you happier and more energetic. I know I burned right though some of that asking you to confront your stalled out Melissa feels, but I think it was worth getting to someplace you like better. And I hope your time with Eed tomorrow goes equally well.

I currently have 6 bandaged wounds on my body, and only one is from yesterday’s fall. My skin is not doing great this week. Dog and Shanda both have pretty bad allergies, mine are comparatively minor but still present. And the longer days are making me fearful for summer, the time when Seattle tries to punish me with too many hours of daytime and not nearly enough rain. I think the blinds will help me with the daylight, and the chair curtain — neither were even close to done until the end of last summer. It might be time to prioritize some C-channel for the bedroom so I can make it actually dark any time of day. That feels like yet one more home improvement project I won’t get done but it’s not a ton of work if I can have something pre-felted shipped to me. And I would really like vampire-dark as an option.

There are still a number of items on the avoidance lists I’m holding for other people, but finally progress. It makes me hopeful for more but even if it’s just this it’s a big relief. The absolute standstill we were at before made me feel trapped, accumulating stress without any hope of improvement. But you’ve helped me knock at least one item off your list — several of you have — and I really appreciate it.

I should also find a minute tomorrow to poke all the people I’ve named and thought about and never actually reached out to this week. Perhaps to draft the next complaint about sexual harassment at work; the one where people will accuse me of being angry because I write something intended to make them angry. I know ahead of time I will be unfairly treated as a result but it’s still worth doing. Who is going to hold these people accountable if I don’t?

ZiB