Fish Like the Animal

It was pointed out to me that I should have had help from a physician when they saw Mother’s neglect. When they saw her sending me in alone when I was under 10 even if they didn’t see the malnutrition or abuse. But societal care for young people is a crap shoot at best, even among physicians. We allow licensed professionals entrusted with the specific care of young people to be openly #ParentalRights — laws often require a degree of such behavior — even though it’s clearly harmful to patients. And even if a physician happened to care and wanted to act generally all a parent has to do to avoid interference is stop showing up.

Which is what Mother did, I’m guessing, in response to a physician telling her that I wasn’t doing well. She’s got what she calls “baby books” for each of her children, that are sort of a scrapbook of our infant lives. Stuff she collected from when we were undifferentiated enough for her to still like us. One of the things she collected is medical records. Mine included a paper-and-pen (it was the 1980s) height-weight plot on a preprinted statistical distribution. I don’t remember the specific data on it was but it’s one of the things Mother talked about a) like she had strong feelings about it and b) as evidence of how I had always been fat. I suspect it actually shows two things: that I was born big but didn’t stay there ¹I have to assume that Mother, when I was very young, mostly did feed me. Otherwise I would have died, presumably. I know from raising the kids that she was only sometimes up for it – it made her very anxious and at times she not only couldn’t do it but wouldn’t let anyone else do it for her. But infants can be very attractive as objects of … Continue reading and that she stopped taking me to the physician before I was 2.

And it’s not like the population at large is more likely to offer care; lots of people could see I needed immediate, practical help and neglected to do anything other than punish or shun me for making them uncomfortable. Let alone offer anything even vaguely like the sort of help that would let me be human. The world asks us to blame people for their need specifically to ensure people like me can’t get help, and to help a billionaire be 0.011% richer. #LateStageParentalRights #AskMeAboutPregnancyAmbivalence

@MaggieMaeFish did an analysis of Sorry to Bother You (2018) ²https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGnQLgpaupU. The video was great; their stuff often reminds me why I love film, and love poking at it until all the feelings fall out. This one helped me feel like I’m not crazy for seeing all the ways corporations demand we dehumanize each other. The way they insist that “competition” is good (so long as you stay in your lane) and “diversity” is bad (even though it means the same thing as competition, sans the hostile stance). I particularly liked that after more than a minute of voiceover @MMF popped in like this [anim 1], as if they were not amazing. I have not seen the film yet but I would already recommend it based on the analysis; it should be in Plex early next week.

I almost wore a soft ³Soft by my standards. So like regular cotton-yarn cloth. shirt directly on my skin, without a barrier to protect the shirt. I didn’t quite get there because flashbacks are a bitch, but it did let me think about the issue a bit. In middle school I had a cheap, mostly plastic poncho. It was simultaneously my worst and most important piece of clothing. As an outer layer I could wear it to school days in a row mostly without comment. And it was long-sleeved and had a pocket and a hood and could be used for protection from weather and sun hot cookware. Of course, I didn’t get to wear it as an outer layer; in order to be allowed to wear it at all it had to be a a stand-alone shirt because wearing 2 shirts in the same day generated too much laundry for Mother. The fact that it irritated my skin and was too loosely woven to keep the wind out were irrelevant. Even the poncho itself could only be laundered every few weeks in order to justify it having long sleeves ⁴Because I had to negotiate for access to warmth. This was sometimes a reasonable trade because many of those poncho-provided protections genuinely improved my life. But it was also a risk because I might ruin the poncho by having it touch my body, and then not be able to wash it for weeks. In my memory — and still in my current conception — this is because I was somehow monstrous in a way that seeped from my physical existence. I see now what I was actually afraid of: lack of access to hygiene. If I bleed or sweated or otherwise contaminated the poncho it would be worse than worthless. You cannot go around with blood on your shirt for multiple days – it upsets people ⁵who then punish you for upsetting them — and I already had to trade 3 of my shirt credits ⁶Different item slots had different cool downs and different restrictions on the number of slot-specific items allowed in inventory. My maximum number of shirts was carefully controlled to a variety of different numbers over the years. When I owned that poncho it was 7. Before the poncho it was 10 and they were all years-old t-shirts that I had … Continue reading to get that rough-plastic rag-rug with a hood so I can’t just not wear it. I was choosing among different parts of survival like exposure to the environment and skin irritation and access to hygiene, and as part of that I was asked to feel like I was too disgusting for clothes because sometimes I had untreated bleeding wounds and no where to clean my one shirt. I had costume requirements to balance against my survival needs and still people insisted to me that costume was the most important thing.

I did, after my walk tonight, actually put the shirt on for a couple of hours. It’s too new to feel like I liked it; the physical sensation is foreign and my trained reaction to even vaguely soft things is to imagine that I will ruin them permanently if they touch me. To warm things is to imagine being trapped in them even when at risk of overheating. But I’m glad I was able to try it. I imagine it could be different in the future. That I could choose armor only when I need it against the world, not to protect the world from me. I mean, it’s my social interactions that really hurt people; the way I hurt people with clothing is comparatively minor.

Watched Doctor Who (2005, BBC) S11E05 – “The Witchfinders”. I’m really liking this season. I like lots of DW episodes but the new Doctor has engaged me more strongly than most. For one thing Whittaker is dressed in what I would have loved to wear when I was a tiny white female in 1985 [fig 1], if I had been allowed clothes. Or expression. Or a haircut. But I’ve finally got the yellow suspenders and I’m working on the rest of it. I also think the writing this season has stronger. It’s got all the DW you expect but it’s much more on-target with its demand for sharing in this season; it’s both a plot point and the character Whittaker is giving us, and I love it both ways. This episode in particular shows The Doctor desperately wishing someone would just talk to her for 4 seconds so she could /help/ them instead of being the enemy, while shame and narcissism work to kill her. Watch some and talk to me about it. Talk talk talk.

Called about Medicaid today. The hotline is open on Saturdays and the wait times are much smaller — because you can’t actually do anything on Saturday because the county-specific offices are closed. All you can do is get someone to read pieces of the public website to you. So I’ll be doing that again some morning this week, since the county offices close at 4 PM EDT and hold times are hours long. I’m glad to have my time back today but annoyed at how this is always 2 more steps before there’s even an inch of progress.

I’ve been tired the past few days. Because I can’t breathe; my blood O2 is at 84% while resting. Shanda and Dog have both had relatively bad allergies, and I had some symptoms but very minor once I took something. Still, my lungs are in such bad shape from my childhood it doesn’t take much. Unfortunately I didn’t bother to test for days, and therefore didn’t do anything to adjust my life. I got mad at myself for being tired, for not wanting to walk as much as Dog does, for wanting help with physical activities. But presumably things would have been easier for me if I just checked and adjusted my life to accommodate the results. It’s really easy for me to ignore changes in my physical condition though. I’ve spent so long suppressing reactions and learning to consciously choose which ones to respond to that I now have to actively think about it — ideally while collecting some external or otherwise more objective information — and consider that I might want to respond. I moved to Seattle so that it was almost always safe to not consider the weather, but I’d still like to be able to notice when it’s bad for me. To respond to weather and 1,000 other things. I need to spend more time thinking about my physical condition so I can tell when it’s off before it’s got me half-dead. My health is bad enough even when I am taking care of myself.

Watched a little of Trust Fund (2016), while Shanda was out and I wasn’t on hold. I bought it because I wanted to see Jessica Rothe in something other than Happy Death Day because she’s great in that but the movie overall is pretty weak. This film is ambition but either real low budgeto or otherwise inconsistent in technical quality. The costumes are nothing unless it’s a plot point. There are camera moves that it clearly shoots for but fails to accomplish. But it’s well-edited, and it gives us fairly complicated characters immediately. Rothe is good in this too, but better in Groundhog Day: The Next Generation.

I’ve been trying to work myself back into watching movies alone. I used to watch all the movies, as my collection might imply. They’re often much better to do alone than series because they’re single-serving, and easier to re-watch or otherwise share if you want someone else to see it with you. And now that I sleep more than 4 hours a night I have a lot less time for just consuming all the media. But in the past few years watching movies alone feels like panic. I often have to stop 20-30 minutes in because I just can’t quite take it, even if I’m liking the movie. Today went fairly well but I did still stop by like 40 minutes, and I’m not 100% sure why. I have a little better understanding of how it evolves though, so maybe I can catch the feeling next time. My best guess for the feels that push me away are a fear of being super alone — that it reminds me of like laying in my dorm for 6 days straight alternating between not sleeping with a movie on and not sleeping with no movie on. Or something like that. Because it sure feels like I need to physically get up and do something else to avoid being hurt in some way.

I didn’t get to a lot of thinking about other people today. I did kick the Shanda hate ball one step closer to normalized relations. Most of the day was pretty good but there were also some bits where even after calm was restored the only option was to go back into avoidance. There were promises to talk several times but it was never a time when you could actually do it. It’s progress from not even mentioning it but it’s still toothpaste feelings, and you’re still not sure I’m on your side. I want to get to the point where we can work together on the hard time you’re having instead of me being a distraction from the rest of your life and a reminder of the pain. I always preach integration and I still think that’s the right plan here. But I can’t do it alone.

Got the rodent ramp drilled, thought I don’t have enough bits to get a close fit — ~1mm error either way. I mostly left them undersized and I’m hoping some brute force will make it go. I won’t be able to do a test fit for length or stability but I have moderate confidence it will work out. With some luck it will all be glued and in clamps by this time tomorrow.

My hand is doing okay under the fancy bandage [fig 2]. Only a small amount of exudate, given the surface area of the injury. It still hurts my palm when I bend my thumb but otherwise I feel mostly better from the fall. The other palm is slightly sore but in much better shape than I expected given how bruised it looked and felt the first day.

ZiB

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