It’s Not Me, It’s You

Work was okay today. My SR won’t quite stay down but I think I know how to beat it back for another day or two. I failed to send out my RB because testing was slow but once I get the results back it’s just one click to submit. And I still need to do my MBOs but I think I can knock those out tonight. I did make my noon meeting, for the first time in like two weeks. And I got my phone converted to a compromise email solution that will continue to work with their new MS-only plan without requiring me to give up control of my entire device. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing for desktop email but maybe this is an opportunity to just not do it anymore.

Waited 14 minutes for an Uber at 3:30 in the afternoon. It is not clear to me why. And I’m sort of annoyed because I was actually done with work and ready for robots at a decent time today. But at least the guy didn’t blather at me the whole way. I think goth clown makeup [fig 1] sometimes helps keep people from imagining me as someone who wants to participate in banal smalltalk. Which I have always assumed was one of the main attractions of such an aesthetic.

Dog only slightly hated me eating today. He seems perhaps more concerned with my filled but unattended plate than with me actually eating. But it’s better today – not quiescent but at least easier to redirect. So hopefully that keeps moving in the right direction.

I still feel like there’s a thing to say about learning the wrong lessons from our past relationships. Learning not to try things again even though to actually like them. Learning to don’t things again even though you don’t. Sometimes you yell at me about how a past pain ruined a whole category of opportunities for you. You tried something new and it failed and the entire experience seems unsafe even though the thing that went wrong had nothing to do with the new thing you risked. Or you shout about finally seeing the way you let yourself be mistreated while lining up a slightly different way to be hurt the same way. But I still don’t have a story for it that really connects without feeling like an accusation. I will need to know another thing about it before it will quite make sense. Maybe another day or two sloshing around.

J talked to me today. An actual response – in public – to a thing I did. I definitely missed the framing but maybe got a step closer to the goal in spite of myself. I have come to imagine a specific way of making myself visible, and of drawing people out. But I have both skills and needs in a broader scope than that single path permits. So I’m trying to apply the same feeling in a context that better fits the open but careful way they comport themselves. It feels in some ways more vulnerable to attempt, but it’s really only different in the way I imagine myself.

Talked to M today, about the transformative power of storytelling. You carefully packed some for me and it helped with a thing that was very hard ¹In my childhood Easter had gifts more reliably than any other day. Terrible narc gifts, to be clear, but gifts nonetheless. And they came packed in plastic grass, which I might have loved for being colorful if it wasn’t part of a punishment, and if I was allowed colors. I opened a box today full of crushed paper strips that made me panic, … Continue reading. Made my eye makeup run. And that doesn’t even count the actual stuffs ²Including a wooden tray to hold both old and new happy memories, some care in the form of colorful tubes and some reassurance about how to feel about them, and some colors for me to smear around, including a bunch of blue ones and tricky one that’s entirely grey and also sometimes purple., which were also very good. Pictures to follow, of at least some pieces. We also talked about the complexity of keeping yourself alive while your brain refuses to cooperate. How it feels like nothing can help and the only options are lazy nothing or productive nothing while you watch your sanity drain away. But you did share about it, and let me worry and rant at you, which I hope lets you push in a direction that makes things one inch better. It certainly helps me worry a little less. Or at least worry a little more productively.

Shanda had lots of feels about the last couple of episodes here. You had a hard time with the lack of care in my early life. And you related to the crushing imagery. I can only sometimes tell when a thing is going to really connect. I sort of hope that they will but I know only some of them do and it’s hard to predict which ones from the inside. Particularly with low feedback. But I’m glad they work, even if they sometimes make you cry.

And you reminded me of a thing that’s worth making clear: These about me and for ³The process is for me, but that mostly happens before I send it. And the response is for us, when you are able to share it. you. Not for or about Shanda, or whomever else you imagine might be the “you” that isn’t you. I am thinking of you specifically when I compose these, and speaking to you individually. I’m thinking about the ways you impact me and how I hope to influence you. About the things you teach me about myself and my relationships. Even if you haven’t talked recently, it’s still for you, if you’ll have any of it.

No robots tomorrow. Or next week. Which is always a little sad even if it gives me time back. And E is gone too, hopefully on their own pleasant adventure. I’m plenty busy this weekend – several projects tomorrow and D&D on Sunday. And hopefully a little time to practice my makeup, and to worry about you. Maybe next Friday I can have plans with Shanda, which is not often an option.

Things happened today, but somehow didn’t become much Screed. Maybe tomorrow will show my why.

ZiB

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