Absence of Malice

I wrote a couple of The Screeds yesterday that made Shanda cry and shout. It’s harder to tell how you react, since it doesn’t happen in front of me and direct responses are rare. I don’t mean to distress you, when I write, but I do imagine that I am trying to provoke emotions so we can share them. So you can see how you affect me and how I respond to the world.

Work finally settled out this week. I’ve still got an SR I’m trying to punt before I call it a week, but everything else is finally clear. Lots of releases processes this week, and a couple of them with lots of institutional urgency and high error rates. But it’s all done now, and I’m down to like 4 messages in my inbox. It’s a good way to end the week, and even better for my time off next week. I’m back on the queue next week but also only working 3 days.

Tuesday and Wednesday off next week, with Shanda matching. And we’re going to try to get through all the household stuff we’ve been missing on Sunday, so we can actually use the days off instead of just catching up from the lack of weekends and tight schedules we’ve had in the past month. Assuming all is well on Tuesday I’m hoping that’s a day for some MDMA and feels and video games. And Wednesday I’m thinking lunch downtown followed by whatever we find in the area that fits our mood and the weather. It’s well past time for a day off and I’m glad that (so far at least) the world is cooperating.

I looked at glasses on Wednesday. I was expecting to get a direct replacement for my broken pair, and then maybe a 2nd pair, but they don’t make frames I had anymore. Which put me back to fighting for a compromise between my wide noggin and my asymmetric eyes. It’s sometimes tough for me to find glasses that put my left and right eyebrows on the same side of the frames, and often hard to find any that are wide enough to not pinch my head. I didn’t pick any out yet, but I took a bunch of pictures so I can review with Shanda. Eventually, when we can find a few minutes together. I’ll probably consult you too, once I’ve got a short list. And I’d take suggestions for unique frames, if you have any.

I also had contacts fitted, for the first time in more than a decade. In some of the 1900s I wore shitty 1900s contacts, in part because Mother didn’t like my face with glasses ¹She also didn’t like it without glasses. Which was a bad choice because I didn’t live a life that reliably let me clean them. But had benefits like being hard to lose and safe(ish) to fall asleep in and immune to winter fogging and usable in the water. In any case the new ones are much nicer, if a bit difficult to remove. I don’t have particular plans to wear them but I am glad to have the option again.

Went to robots today. Watched them play with the vacuum shirt cannon, which was cool. I have followed along with the design but had seen it go. Talked to E for about the plywood cover cover band you started. And about man-mobile artillery. Talked with Stochastic for a minute too, about life in the east.

I was able to talk to V for the first time in a while, about the challenges of being a human, of desire and regret and jealousy. And about the hope and safety of feeling like you have peers, even if they aren’t close. I was glad we had a few minutes to ourselves.

J was around too and indulged me momentarily. I tried to share with them about the way its tough to be labeled “unreliable” or to be cut out of things just because your life doesn’t let you always live by the primacy of the calendar, but I’m not sure it landed. I’ve spent a lot of time arranging my life to deal with the fact that I have a lot of 2/7 days where getting out of bed is a challenge and wanting to work might be impossible. It’s not just hard to live at times, but it’s hard to deal with the way people react. With societal pressure to feel like you have to apologize for your noncompliance, or the way even sympathetic people can fail to accommodate yoir dynamic needs. But still, good to see them.

I had a spirited debate with BNR, about a thing they were fully engaged in. Unfortunately I didn’t pay enough attention to the space between their words and their feelings, and left them feeling hurt. It’s easy for me to be energized when it feels like someone has agreed to let me save them, like I want to save missionaries when they show up at my door. But I misread his engagement; the importance of the debate came from a place of fear and pain, and I could have seen that if I was less excited to be in the debate. They did share a little information later, which let me reframe the interaction into another emotional context. Let me see their feelings and why the real motivation for their engagement – among other things it related to the enormous fear we instill about college ²Here’s a thing you should remember about college, for when you’re feeling anxious: most people don’t go at all, half of people who go don’t graduate, and there are many paths to a degree. I got recruited on scholarship for undergrad, and also kicked out for being bad as school. Later I got several Masters degrees. It’s often possible to … Continue reading. I hope that second interaction let me offer actual help instead of just loud participation.

Probably I should do better with actual missionaries also, instead of just indulging anyone who volunteers to debate religion l. Their consent and expressed intent doesn’t mean I don’t need to be careful with them, even if my goal is to free them. It’s fun to turn off my fear of being a monster for a while, and to get attention and engagement about a topic I feel passionate about. But it’s unkind to assume that the mere existence of this state means that they’re prepared to play. Particular against me.

Talked with S on the way home, about home wiring and about anxiety (not theirs, but in someone they know). It was a weird set of things but it felt like real humanity for the first time in a while. Actual sharing and interest in my opinion. Possibly prepared topics but if so good for them for putting in effort.

And Shanda is with B through tomorrow afternoon so I’m going to go back again tomorrow. It’s slightly too early in the day for me to be quite happy with that plan, but I’m gonna do it anyway.

I had a reaction today, while I was out with Dog. When my anxiety is high – like it was while tonight’s Green Crack was in effect – my default reaction to managing Dog goes from paying attention to what he wants to being afraid of what he’ll do. But of course it has nothing to do with him, because I’m not afraid of him. I’m afriad that the person I’m managing has suddenly engaged in an interaction I can’t control. That I’m puppeting Mother around for some needful purpose, but suddenly I noticed she has a baby in her jaws and I’m not sure if she’s going to eat it. And I bet I have that reaction when I’m socially startled in any situation where I feel like I have to be in charge but don’t have enough control to make it work. I’m sure it happened a million times when I was 9 and was taking care of The Kids. And I remember it happening when I would try to navigate Mother though some school thing she was afraid of but I needed her to do.

There are upsides to Mother’s anxiety and disinterest about things like school. There were sort of only two processes she could follow – one where she spent a week getting worked up to do something she decided to fear and hate. She’d tell us – herself – that the thing was super important and hard to get right and had the highest of stakes, and then she’d sort of power through on intense concentration autopilot. Or she would refuse to pay attention and abuse anyone who tried to make her. The former was hard to handle but the later was a useful tool. If the school called and whined about me there was a very strong chance that she’d abuse the caller until they gave up. Or she’d leave the unplayed message on the tape ³Why do even fairly new voicemail systems still pretend to be a tape recorder? I know phone companies live in the 1800s but even there the interface is silly. answering machine we had, and tell me to deal with it. I mean, she still punished me about it because she needed fresh reasons to punish me every day, but it did prevent the school from escalating to home. Which is good because I would have burned down the school if they managed to reinforce Mother’s power instead of offering a reprieve.

Got lots of things cleaned up today at home. Had great sex. Matched my suspenders and shirt to my lips. Ate three meals ⁴I need help eating meals. That’s a thing I’ve need asked to be ashamed of, but it’s true whether I feel bad about it or not. I know that “know” that I need help, and I’m not complaining – some of you have been a great help. But I need to let myself inhabit some of my disabilities instead of just being disappointed with myself every … Continue reading. Got my insurance claim filed. Poked at some domain names. Bought some doughnuts and puffy pastry treats. Didn’t do any work before noon. Got to chat with a bunch of people, several of whom I haven’t been able to talk to for a while. I even managed to turn the BNR thing around and not hate myself too much afterward. So a pretty good day, and hopefully the first of several.

Still not sure about health reporting or monitoring. I’m working on a plan to make it easier.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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