B is for Broken

Sunday I got through all my planned activities and then had a drug day. I got a bit of a late start at like 2 PM – I prefer to start before noon to make it easier to get to bed at a reasonable time – but I had already planned Monday off for recovery so my schedule was flexible. I did about 125 micrograms ¹The actual dose is a little hard to determine because I don’t own a mass spec, but I took 1.25 grams of dilute fluid, which I’d estimate around 125 micrograms of active compound. of LSD.

I feel like things went really well, at least within the scope of my expectations. I wish I had less muscle tension with acid but it’s a stimulant so it’s hard to avoid. I had lots of feels though, along with the 7.8 million thoughts that stim brain can get through over the course of a few hours. The whole point of such a trip, at least for me, is to get a different perspective on which parts I want to define as me and which parts I want to make external. And to believe my brain is capable of making such changes.

One of the things I learned is that I can’t get anyone to take me seriously when I need help. Which is sort of a complicated problem. Part of it is the way I don’t really believe that anything in my life ever qualifies me to have help, and certainly not urgent help. So when I ask for help if people tell me I shouldn’t be worried I take their word for it. Not that it helps me stop worrying, but I do try to imagine that my worry is unnecessary, and that once I understand what real humans do I might be able to stop. Another part is the way society trains us to ignore other people’s crisis, to dismiss it as unrealistic or irrelevant, which my brain is more than happy to believe.

And of course there’s the way Shanda tells me that so many things are too hard to think about right now. I ask for help and it scares you, and so instead of thinking about it for 8 seconds you tell me that it’s too hard to think about right now. That maybe you’ll be able to think about helping me in a day or two. That my problem is so overwhelming that just triage is too much to ask. And so I try to wait, for the time when you’ll be able to handle thinking about me. I am very patient. But it’s hard to be told your life is do bad that even thinking about it is a burden.

I know that’s not really what you mean. What ou really mean is “I have feels about this and want to avoid them”. You’re not actually telling me my life is too hard for you, just that you won’t give me any attention. Which is better than being afraid of me, but still really hard to take. You respond like you’re having an emergency and I believe you – I believe that you can’t spare a second to think about me for the next several days. I believe that if I don’t wait I’m being unfair to you. I believe that you intend to pay me some attention when your crisis subsides.

But none of that works when the thing that makes you feel like you’re in crisis is the fact that I’m asking you for attention. It doesn’t really matter how much attention I need, or how hard it would be to pay to me, because you feel compelled to stop thinking about me before you’ve figured that out. The idea of thinking about me and the thing I’m worried about is so terrifying that you don’t even want to hear it, let alone help with it. And until you can hear it I’m stuck alone with it.

But we did get to talk about it, even though it’s one of the topics your brain wants to push away. I’m not really sure we identified a strategy for making it better, but I at least think you saw my problem. And I saw how the same thing happens to me in other relationships. Where I read your unavailability as evidence that I have overburdened you – where you tell me that you need more space before you can think about me. But where just waiting is really unlikely to get me what I need, because next time I bring up the topic you’ll still think it’s too soon. You’ll still need more space and I’ll still believe that it’s unfair for me to ask.

I also spent some time thinking about how I feel ashamed about both needing or providing care. Particularly care in the realm of parenting-type care, which I never got enough of. It’s a tricky corner of my mind because it overlaps rational but wrong beliefs with avoidance and anxiety and shame. I have discounted all the self-care things I have done, both recently and when I was young, as selfish demands that couldn’t be met by others. As thing I needed as a non-human but that I should never bother anyone else with. I have discounted similar care I provided for others as selfish mimicry, because only Mother could do parenting and if I tried I was likely to hurt someone. I was taught that if I felt good about providing care it meant that I was hurting them, because my good feelings came at their cost. In particular that if there was a young person involved my positive feels were evidence of my malfeasance, proof that I was choosing someone weak to prey upon.

At night, after the stim brain ticked back down and empathy climbed back up, I thought about the way I want to promote belonging in my life. How I’m going to sell it to others and what it might look like for myself. I can see you trying to build security under the framework of individualism, but I’m pretty sure you can’t really feel safe until you know how to be less alone. Me either. So I worked on ways to talk about that, even as I struggle to understand it myself. On Monday I had a couple of good ideas, once I figured out what you were hearing from me. I really appreciate your feedback to help me understand you. I still need to convince you that dependence is a sort of strength you can control and can use to get the things you want and need. I know that’s not your experience thus far. It’s not mine either. But I have hope that we can find a path there.

On Monday I talked to DerbyK in real time about sorts of related topics. About how you were actually taught how to be sick, in a way that wasn’t merely about compliance. In a way that didn’t involve using up a limited supply of attention or care. And about writing prompts and progress and monogamy. About the pain of knowing that you can’t protect people and can at best hope to help them recover when they have been hurt. To help them learn to protect themselves without becoming isolated. And you talked about sharing your stories from childhood so that I can find a version to imagine in my life.

Had real time comms with M on Sunday, for the first time since I left Cleveland. I was afriad it would make you real nervous but it went great. I got to talk about a bunch of things that would have taken forever in other contexts. And I got to hear your actual feels, and prompt you for details about things I didn’t understand. I like the idea that we could do it again. It gave me several kinds of safety and a bunch of smiles.

Monday went well too, I got to sleep in and work on art and generally not be busy. Went to the gym in the afternoon and saw E. I was still largely in my head, chewing on the new feels, but you let me rant about Good Omens and it’s authors. And reminded me that I want to watch Chernobyl. Had good exercise and sauna and came home to meatball sandwiches.

B was here when I got home, finally cleaning up their paint stuff from my garage. I expected them just for an hour or so but it took a lot longer, and was mostly alone with Shanda. That gave me some time to make phone calls and work on my care packages, which was good even if it wasn’t what I had planned. But it didn’t end as well as it started.

B broke up with Shanda. Which is tough, as any break up is. They have been around in our lives for a while now and it will be an adjustment. Right now things are pretty sad and a little overwhelming. Made it hard for either of us to get much work done Tuesday. I sort of blew off my whole day and Shanda only did email and whatnot. Presumably things will be okay eventually but there’s a lot of grief between here and there. I’m sorry you have to deal with this. I know it hurts. It okay that you feel bad, and that it’s hard to do things. It’s okay that you have mixed feels, that you’re sad and angry and confused. That you want to fix it even though you know that’s unwise. I’ll be here to help deal with it, and to keep you from getting stuck.

Talked with V about their own bad days. About his easy it is to feel like you’ve step off the edge. About how disorienting it is for genuine progress to create conditions that feel bad in a new way. I think you’re still doing pretty well though, and I have confidence that you’ll find more and more good days over time. I’m looking forward to chatting with you tomorrow.

Got two care packages done today, including one with a bunch of wrapped presents. Missed an important meeting at work but otherwise was pretty happy with what I accomplished in terms of productivity. Tried hard to take care of Shanda and keep up with all the bits of life that have important deadlines. I need to spend a day doing my BZ project this week, to keep that moving, but I think that’s a job for Thursday. I’ve got to get in for a rescheduled meeting tomorrow but that should only take 40 minutes and will give me an excuse to go to the post office. I should also see if there’s a no talking place to get my hair cut downtown, now that my office is there. Therapy tomorrow; I’m not sure what I’m doing there but probably shame about care and the way I imagine my good feels hurt other people. I’ll see if I can cook up something more specific.

Here’s another thing I leaned. You have a junk stack, or pile, or folder, or table, or drawer. It’s full of things you haven’t had your feels about yet. Sometimes that’s just because you haven’t thought about the thing in the pile. Sometimes it’s a thing you have thought about but still need to process your feels about. But in any case it’s a pile full of avoidance. – things you’re not going to have feels about until “later”. You justify the avoidance by imagining that the pile will force you to deal with the items eventually. And some of you do okay getting things back out of this pile. But some of you leave things there for months or years. Half-opened mail, things you need to put away, or throw away. Mostly things that are technically easy to deal with, but that you have trouble getting done.

So pull something out of this pile and tell me the story about it. Tell me about how this mail is still there because you’re worried about what it contains, or what it represents. Tell me about the unmatched sock you can’t throw out, just in case the other one turns up. Tell me about the knick knack you don’t use or the gift you don’t want or the coupon you will definitely need as soon as you convince yourself to do . You don’t have to do any of those things, just tell me the sorry about your feels. I bet it will make your pile get smaller, and it might make you feel better too.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.