Sex Education
Talked at DerbyK about sandbars and boating and summer fun. About how it’s hard for me to imagine what a good version of the things looks like. Sometimes you’re afraid, like a normal human, when you can see the natural power of the situation. But for me it’s always about the human danger. I’ve been abandoned on sandbars in the Mississippi. I’ve had to choose between being abandoned and being dragged on a line behind a boat. Even when I worried about drowning it was about being trapped by the dam and not the river in general. And so I react to your summer fun pics like they are an attack on my safety.
Heard from M about some good things that are happening. I fear some harder ones that I can feel but have not yet seen. It’s been hard to connect but it sounds like you’ve got a plan. Last week I pushed up against one of my raw edges when I tried to you, and made me think for a moment about the shape of it. A shape that eventually exploded a bit on V, and that definitely pushed me to today’s topic.
Tried to talk to Shanda about how you did lots of child care when you were young. We did a little but you’ve got a pretty high level of repression about it. Sometimes I can tell it’s what you’re resentful about, but you talk about your past like it literally never happened. Despite your 10-year age difference and your anxious household, both if which make it very likely that you did a lot. You know it happened, you’ve just been blocking it out since you were burnt out by the concept of infant care at 14 years old. It’s probably safe now – your siblings are all adults and we’re both sterilized – but your brain still wants to keep that part seperate. Just like mine does.
Talked to V about the freedom of leaving and the value of having your face smashed and the way that exploration is safe and sensible and doesn’t require predefined roles. Triggered myself about today’s topic for the 4th time in as many days while it happened. But that was part of what got me here and out of repression, so I’m calling it a win.
I’ve been remembering child rearing. It’s a complicated experience for me, trying to remember. I did a ton of child care when I was very young, like starting at about 4, shortly after my sister was born (and of course not counting any I did for myself). And I did it for years, at least until Ben was in school, so about a decade, until I was maybe 13. Probably around the same time Mother says I “changed”. But the whole time, before and after, I was asked to pretend it wasn’t happening. I did pretend, because it helped me be invisible. Because I was taught that my version was shameful, even harmful, and tolerable only when literary no other option existed. Good enough for survival maybe, but never what anyone would want.
I didn’t stop having to do childcare even when I was older, I just was no longer in charge of my own young siblings. But I was still assigned childcare. Often in the form of supervising all the younger children at church events. There weren’t any infants or even many toddlers – Ben is the the second youngest person to survive that culty church – but I was regularly in charge of care for 6-10 younger people when I was 13.
I was also volunteered for babysitting for people I didn’t have any relationship with, just someone Mother promised my help to. It’s a weird narc thing where they try to make themselves look good by promising that someone else will do work for them. I did lots of lawn mowing too. Both activities for people I didn’t know and who didn’t pay me.
One aspect of pretending it wasn’t happening was to pretend I didn’t have any relevant practical skills. Deny that I can feed or change or entertain or comfort or even hold a child. Deny that I ever have done any of those successfully. Deny that I can help anyone. This worked better over time, as Mother bought her own lie – she stopped thinking of me as someone who could help, and so stopped offering my services. But it also led to exchanges where I had to both reassure Mother that I never did any form of child care while reassuring a child that I was in fact doing it now. Where I had to protect her feelings of inadequacy about her own child rearing while trying to help an actual toddler.
There are lots of parts of being a 13-year-old with no resources in charge of a bunch of children who much remain quiet and unseen for several hours in a small, unfamiliar room with no provisions for children. A part I just today realized was real hard is the abuse I saw. Not in my presence, but that I could see in some of them. There are lots of versions because sane people don’t go to Mother’s house repeatedly, let alone bring children.
But one that sticks out is a 4-year-old I am now positive was being sexually abused by her father, and her slightly older sister who was jealous to no longer be daddy’s favorite. Both of them terrified to be returned to his care when he was alone. Eventually he could see that I knew – that I didn’t buy the explanation he offered for her obvious behavior – and though I was in no position to help even myself he felt threatened. He accused me of his crimes in private, and in public accused me of more general mishandling of his children, before leaving the church. Mother always knew I wasn’t to be trusted. That I had changed. That I was a male and could never be safe around human children. Not that I was before, but this was proof 1But since she’s not rational or self-consistent, didn’t actually make her stop volunteering me for child care.
That scenario is part of the way I still feel like a creep. I’m still asked to feel like one on a pretty regular basis, just for paying attention to people, at least if I don’t keep my matrix of patriarchal role and topic of attention aligned. In some ways I can see its a lie designed to preserve power, to allow abuse under the guise of protection, just like that worthless father couldn’t make me believe decades ago. But still I worry that I’m doing it and can’t tell. I worry that Mother was right all along and I can’t be trusted, not even by myself. That the best thing I can do for people is leave; to fade from perception and eventually existence.
But it also lets me know a thing about survival fear. When you can’t risk a change – can’t even bother with the headspace to think about what a change might look like – your brain is playing at survival stakes. And it probably doesn’t need to be. Probably if your brain took a poll of other nearby brains the actual stakes might be somewhat lower than what your past experience taught you to expect. Or if they’re not, knowing that other people agree will make it eaiser to take action. Easier to prioritize the thing you can all see happening. And easier to get help with it. When the only thing that can change is nothing, look at my face and see whether or not it is as worried as you.
And it lets me know a thing about shame. About how you need to save your feelings, your reaction, your humanity, your sanity, your happiness for some distant future. You can’t really be yourself until sometime in the future, when no one is looking. You can’t possibly do it right now because it’s not allowed and you don’t have time and you just can’t because X has to happen first. Because Y won’t let you. Because Z doesn’t take you seriously yet. Because it’s for a future time when you’re a different person in different circumstances.
I’m not saying that having aspirations is a bad plan. Just that if you’re stuck on the idea that you can’t make the change you need, can’t figure out what that change might be, can’t work this small thing into your life right now – if for whatever reason you simply have to wait and endure and not try anything else – it’s maybe because you are ashamed to think about it. It’s maybe because your past experience taught you that this feeling means danger and so you learned to never want to have it. You learned to not think it by being ashamed of it. Just like I am ashamed to have not protected that 4-year-old (or this one) and have blocked it from my mind. It’s easy to label our inability to consider other options as an external restriction, but often it’s our own unwillingness to actually pay attention. It’s our training protecting us from a thing that is no longer a threat.
So I get it when you tell me that you can only do it alone. That you don’t want to talk about it until you figure it out. That you’ll start as soon as you want to, you just don’t want to yet. That you just have to wait on a person or an event or a feeling or the weather before you can finally stop having mixed feelings. Before you can finally think about the thing. I completely understand. But I hope that sometimes you’ll tell me anyway. Or at least tell yourself. I hope that sometimes we can be on the same side of your shame, instead of being seperated by it.
Took Dog to the vet on Saturday to get some ear drops – he’s been scratching like mad and his left ear is gross. He objects to the idea of you controlling his head, but he actually seems to like the drops and the ear canal massage once he gets over being temporarily immobilized. And I got Shanda to talk things we could do to take care of Dog while we’re away. Things other than asking B to live in our house 2Which not only seems like a bad idea for all the ex-related feels, but also because it’s a way their parents sometimes treat them. You seem pretty excited about the idea that Dog could take his own vacation and live with another dog for a few days. At least now that we’re allowed to talk about it instead if just being afraid.
Work is okay. The BZ project is going well. I’m off the queue this week, though I’ve got a couple SRs hanging on. There’s still work on the criticals but I’m no longer driving the day to day dev, which is a relief. My boss is out tomorrow so I don’t have to go in for a meeting. I’ve got a little bit of annual review and other administrative nonsense to deal with but it’s plausible this week will be fairly normal.
Which would be good, since the last few have not. Between the day job and the breakup and dog distress the household has been running sub-nominal for a while. Shanda is sad and has breakup brain and is still having medical drama, and those require a lot of time from both of us. We’re making progress on normal things again though – back at laundry and dishes and doing food planning on schedule – and it’s good to feel like we’re keeping up in real time again.
Chatted with J. About fireworks and fear. Nothing big but interactive on short notice, which is encouraging. My broken brain really likes the instant feedback. And they let me have enough space to slip in some feels around the itineraries.
Saw C on Saturday. We played through the new game he wrote, which went pretty well. The numbers are still weak (and I still haven’t helped with stats) but I liked many of the character build options. And they had a good opening story. Talked with C about adoption, and how to do it for free. About the perception of safety in location and finance.
We watched Hotel Artemis (2018), which was better than I expected. It’s a tight 90 and it takes place almost entirely inside on floor of a hotel, so it doesn’t do a lot to explain the world it lives in. But it’s self-consistent, executes a couple of decent heists, lets us feel good about most of the murders, is full of interesting people (including Sofia Boutella running the central hiest), and it’s got strong visual style. Would recommend. But not as much as Fleabag [fig 1].
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
