Lighting, Posing, and Framing

I’m feeling anxious tonight, though I can’t name a reason why. Let’s see if something falls out of this.

I’m physically doing better today. Still a little tired but able to move about for short distances without dizziness. For various reasons I missed all the dog walking today but I got out of the house and walked around Ballard in the evening enough to keep me from feeling like a lump.

I got up at a normal time and felt okay, and didn’t have trouble starting my team meeting. The meeting let me yell about corporate abuses and even get a small amount of support from my team. We’ve got a whole list of “F5 Behaviors”, which are described as core values in our company culture but are in fact defined by executive management and intended to associate pro-social terms with anti-social behavior — they’re marketing slogans designed to make you feel good about working too much. “We obsess over customer needs”, like obsession is a thing we want and not “a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling”. So I did my leftist ranting and followed up with email and felt pretty good about it. I’ve been meaning to do more complaining at work and this was a good start.

Went through The Performance of Illness with Shanda. We got interrupted several times — you were very busy today — but I feel like we got to talk about it enough, and you had all the feels I hoped for. I also did useful work during the breaks, day job and a small amount of household chores and dog care, so I felt like the division of time went well for both of us. You got done with work at a normal time and had already been able to take Dog out for a walk. I was done with everything except a minor checklist by the time you were back and we had fun together for a couple of hours before I had to leave for supper.

Dog wasn’t doing great this morning – he was very whiny and eventually vomited — but he was in good spirits once his stomach was settled. Happy to settle down for some rest while we worked, and excited to play later in the day. He was particularly excited when I got home from supper — wanted immediate attention and then when I got to sitting down he was ready with his toy to jump directly into my lap before I even got settled. Which was super cute and made me happy even if it was a sort of demanding.

Chatted with M and Eggsy about practical matters. I do feel a little bad anxious not getting started on Eggsy research but that’s just about my fear that I won’t do it if I don’t get it started right away, not really about a deadline. I’m not gonna do it tomorrow either, since Medicaid is on my call list and I need to be on the phone by 10 to be sure I get through today (which is why I didn’t do it today — conflicting work meetings). I’m anxious about the Medicaid call like I always am — hours of waiting followed by the possibility of them hanging up on me and/or refusing to talk to me, and the guarantee that they’ll hate me like all DMV employees. I’m prepared for it, and have a plan to cope with it, and it’s part of my anxiety right now but I feel like it’s well-defined.

M announced the completion of a project today, which I was excited to see. The finished piece is great. I knew shadow was one of the reasons for the medium but it still sort of surprised me, even as a low-res photo. I hope you’re as happy with it as I am. And the new one with the clay; I’m glad you found something for that because I really liked the clay even when it was just an intermediate. I’m also excited for the new plan you have to organize and share such things in the future, and proud of you for starting it. I hope that goes the way you want, and that you get help with the parts where you can use help.

Ordered some organizational bits for the bathroom; I now own enough stuff that organizing drawers feels like a good idea. And I’ve been doing a lot of bandaging lately and would like those supplies to be in a more usage-oriented configuration than their current storage-oriented configuration. I organized my drawers in the past but I had so little stuff it was sufficient just to lay it all out separately, and that’s no longer working. As with closets I never really understood what people did with bathroom storage. I mean, I’m aware that other people owned different and more things than me in both cases, but I didn’t really understand why. It always felt like just an indulgence of disorganization to me, or a failure to prioritize and prune physical possessions, sometimes bordering on hoarding ¹Which is the unhelpful way that I’ve engaged with Shanda about your clothes storage traditionally. I wanted to give you as much storage as you could use and help you keep it organized, but I should have tried harder to help you with clothes hoarding instead of just hiding your clothes piles in a room I ignore. I still want you to have as many … Continue reading. I realize now it was one of the ways I normalized my abuse, by trying to imagine that literally the whole rest of the world had too much stuff instead of me having too little. Which is another one of those bits that is reinforced by a cynical, capitalistic view that’s common in the world, and it’s another thing that no one ever bothered to explain to me even when I asked. That Mother actively lied to me about when I noticed it during my childhood, not even out of malice presumably, but just because she didn’t care enough to hear what I said and correct me. She probably would have liked correcting me, if she could have been bothered to hear me.

Chatted with CookieZ a bit. They’re still at near-zero sharing even when I make broad and varied offers of myself, but that’s the way a lot of my interactions go. We engaged in light, quasi-interactive conversation, and they agreed to the idea of more cookies, which I can definitely use. I had been feeling a little stressed about the scope of my care package plans — I wasn’t letting myself be stressed by it but I was disappointed that what I had wanted to provide more than would have been good for me. So a little backup with the basic version of care packages will let me do the amount of work I want and still get out a lot of packages. Trips to the post office are the worst ²I am looking forward to a downtown office with more things in walking distance. The post office is annoying but better if I don’t have to make a separate trip. part of sending things and having someone else do that part for some of them will be great. Plus I’d love to find out what CookieZ imagines their mission of aid is, both out of curiosity and to see if it’s the sort of thing I can work into my own social support network, so I want to keep engaging them. Shanda is afraid it’s too God-oriented to be safe, but I’m well-practiced in drawing a line between pro-social and pro-religious activities so there’s little threat to me, and I like trying to saving people from their abusive sky daddies (once we mutually agree that saving is the activity we’re doing at each other). I also like the framing of using CookieZ’s good intentions and acts to do real good in their lives in a way they don’t expect. Though both Shanda and I should probably take a step back from the speculation — hers about her religious fears and mine about my anti-religious dreams — because we actually don’t have any information about CookieZ current motivations beyond very thing conversation.

Supper with Melissa was better than I expected. It could have been terrible, and it was stressful in anticipation, but it went fine. She was actually doing better — at least in instantaneous comport — than I have seen her in a long time. She’s having a particularly bad week for a number of reasons but had her shit together and was on-time and not obviously in crisis (it could be a lie but I decided not to check). She had lots of news that felt bad for her but some of it actually relieved me, and that was great. It’s been a long time since we’ve talked normally so she was very out-of-date on my life, and since I need to protect myself from her I was a little cagey. But the conversation went fine and she didn’t want to linger forever and everything turned out better than expected.

Had some trouble reconnecting with Shanda when I came home. You were still busy (or busy again) and not very talkative even when you weren’t. You weren’t quite ready to admit the day was busy so I think some of your busy stress was still masked from you. That got better just before bed though, and I don’t feel like it’s pushing my anxiety buttons.

I was also a little withdrawn when I got home; being out and walking a bit was enough to make my physically tired ³Better than yesterday, when strolling made me dizzy, but still at strolling makes me tired. And it’s stressful to talk to Melissa even when things go well. I’ve been trying to think of things we might have talked about that were harder than I let on to her (and thereby perhaps hid from myself). She has her own hard times, but I felt comfortably separate from all that, and she didn’t push me into it. She asked things about my life but nothing that isn’t public. She accidentally pushed on my physician button for just a second, but that’s already on my worry list and so I think not a change.

She made fun of my lip color and I know she’s going to speak incredulously to others about that and other topics that feel new and scandalous to her (polyamory, living with a young person, abandoning my parents, etc.), but I’ve long since learned to accept such things as evidence of her paying attention instead of a deliberate attack. Everything is an attack with her and so things that give her conversation points are in fact valuable and well appreciated, even if she does mean things about it later. It’s why she likes that I’m a freak. And it’s also why I protected myself by sharing only strictly public information (which is a broad topic for me but does still have edges). So stress, but only in anticipation, and I think nothing I’m carrying forward.

She asked about Ben which is a topic that’s anxious this week. He told me 2 days ago now that he needed help — enough help to want to live with me while his bones healed a bit. I said yes and asked if he needed help getting here. He said no, and that’s all I’ve heard. So like all the rest of my life there is the waiting while someone is in pain. It’s hard enough to wait for the interval between when I see someone having a hard time and when they imagine I might be able to help; having another period between their request for help and the time I’m allowed to provide it is not easier. But I think I’m doing okay not letting this one in particular eat at me. Ben might be lying half-dead in his home, unable to get his legs to move or his arms to support him, slowly becoming dehydrated. He’s certainly still be abused by our assigned old people. But he has asked me to not be more involved ⁴He’s right to stay away from me in the general case; he and I have only ever been good at being terrible together. For each other and everyone around us. I know that I fear hurting everyone by being around, but I can provide a lot of examples of that happening with Ben — not just unrealistic fear — and not a lot of reasons to imagine it … Continue reading and so there is only the waiting, and I should try to imagine it’s not different today than other days. Have imagined that and am mostly okay with it, now that I’ve had a day to stop expecting him.

Here are a couple of pieces that feel relevant:

1. Melissa reminds me that I only marginally have my shit together, and still have no confidence in any long-term plan to make it feel safer. I’ve had decades of The Plan and none of it actually makes me feel secure. None of it lets me feel safe enough to have an off day or week and know that I’ll be okay. And when I see Melissa it’s easy to imagine that one real bad week would put me in her position. It’s sort of irrational because while she got a bad shake it’s not like mine was easy. I white-knuckled my way though it and presumably could again if I needed to. I’m scared of falling because I know it is bad down there and I don’t want to go, but if I were already down I think I could get back up, eventually. I’m not sure if I could keep any of the social pieces I’ve tried to build, as is always my fear, but I could at least get back to a place where I try to build them.

2. You’re upset, Shanda, with thinking about Melissa. With me going to see her and talking about her and generally putting her into your mind. You don’t mean to be; I’m not accusing you malice or misjudgment. But we’re not far enough past the point where you wanted to avoid thinking about her forever to not be affected by it. And you haven’t talked at all about being affected by it. Which I’m guessing means you have “hard feels” about the situation and I suspect those are part of what I’m anxious about.

I think you did well today, Shanda, on all sorts of things. You got a bunch of old, difficult chores (like dog insurance and new shirts) done and a ton of work and 2 dog walks and all sorts of smaller things pushed along to the next step. You spent time with me and helped me deal with a few of my own things. I know you’re anxious about seeing B tomorrow, as part of the way you always worry about seeing someone you haven’t for a few days. But if you keep that from freaking you out in the morning it will go away as soon as you actually talk to them again. Just remember to do the sharing, even though you’re afraid. Being afraid doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it; you like things that scare you.

I’m still not sure exactly what I’m anxious about. I’ve got a better handle on the coping and it’s less distressing, but it’s still happening and still pretty opaque to me. It feels like near-real-time social support would help me calm down but I rarely know how to get that even during the day, let alone at 2 AM PDT. And it’s probably not true anyway; it’s hard to get enough of something that doesn’t quite work, and easy for me to feel 1000% alone just minutes after a perfectly good interaction. Perhaps tomorrow will bring revelation, or at least relief. For now let’s see if I can parlay some bedtime ritual into sleep.

ZiB

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