Underwhelmed
A lot of you talk to me about being overwhelmed. About how it makes you freeze and stop making decisions. I feel like overwhelmed is a state that I rarely stay in for longer than the space of one slow breath. I always have a plan, immediately whenever the situation changes. It starts out as a terrible plan, generally speaking, but in the absence of a good plan it has the virtue of at least being a plan. I’m almost never worried that I can’t think of anything I could do to change the situation. I could always flee. Fight. Burn it down. Yell “stop” and hope it buys me two more seconds to think of a better plan. Step 1 is to do the needful right now. Step 2 is to figure out how to survive step 1.
Eventually the plans get better. Usually. I’m smart and resourceful and unafraid and often I can come up with at least a neutral plan in short order. Which is a great skill, and has been invaluable in my historic survival. It’s also hard to always be the person in charge, the one who keeps it together, no matter what bullshit is happening, no matter how I’m doing myself. Being overwhelmed seems like a dangerous indulgence to me, and I’m endlessly surprised that anxious people spend so much time in that state. It sounds terrifying, being helpless and hoping things work out. Almost as terrifying as not having a reliable backup, for times when you have reason to be overwhelmed.
This isn’t the same as being unable to take a breath, unable to change the plan, pushing through until everything is “done”. I did that for 20 years straight and it almost killed me. It’s an easy place to go, when making new decisions feels like too much. When it was too much 2 hours ago and you still have 6 to go, and another full day tomorrow, and the next, and the next. If you let this slip you’ll never recover, you’ll never catch up. If you don’t stay tense and distracted you won’t be able to keep up this schedule, and this is no time to consider a change. But mostly I’ve mastered that, and I can find a breath almost any time I might need one. I can help you with that too, if you can give me you attention for just a few seconds while it’s happening.
The part I could use help with is believing that someone – anyone – might be a me to help me with a situation that they too find stressful. Or that someone could pay attention to me in a way that lets them figure out what might help even if I can’t explicitly name it. Because right now those never seem true. That lifelong lack of attunement is one of the ways I feel non-human. That lifelong lack of attachment is one of the ways I feel alone.
Another one of the people I have helped though hard times died recently. Complications from long-term addiction. I don’t feel responsible – I do think I helped – but I wonder about a life that puts me here so often. I have tried to help a lot of people who are now dead. Lots of people think I make a good last resort, and I probably do: I always have a plan, and nothing overwhelms me. I wish I knew how to translate that into something people like when they’re more than 18″ from crisis.
I’m annoyed with the zero-tolerance for suicide that the medical institution in the US demands. I’m planning murder for Dog, instead of cancer spine complications, and when the time comes I’m planning murder for myself. I would never let myself slowly drown in my own fluids, or whatever else eventually kills me. I’ve tried dying and it is distinctly unpleasant. But even speculating about your eventual old-age suicide is not acceptable in many medical or legal contexts. Knowing I could choose to die when I’m suffering – that someone could choose for me if I couldn’t – would offer me great peace. But it’s not allowed, no matter the motivation or time scale, and even talking about it risks someone hurting me to try to stop it.
Shanda is not feeling well and is feeling bad about it. Flashbacks to the times she was asked to trek along even while sick as a child. Internalized minimization of the physical symptoms. And self-resentment about feeling bad. It’s rough. I hope you feel better soon, and that you can accept feeling poorly instead of punishing yourself about it.
Shanda recently discovered all the baby gays on TikTok and had approximately this [mov 1] reaction. Killing Eve, the source of that clip, is sometimes just a series of carefully filmed reaction GIFs, which I appreciate. But today we’ve been watching something new: The Great. This is a fake historical dark comedy about Katy the Greaty being mistreated by her charismatic but narcy husband and eventually plotting to kill him instead of herself. It’s full of pretty people in fancy clothes but I like it for the heist about overthrowing a narc. It’s also clearly intended to be allegorical about narcy idiots and their yes men, about their “progressive” “opposition”, and about how burning it all down is the only way free. If you’ve had a narc in power over you, this show is worth watching.
I’ve had a new idea about fashion mask. A masking machine mask. A Westworld emotions shirt mask. And at least one version of that is something I should be able to do with parts on hand, as a prototype for the more complicated version. I’ve been talking to @BPS about making clothes, since that still seems so far from me. They stopped buying clothes in 2013 and learned to sew to make their own as sort of a protest after the Dahaka factory disaster. It’s not an escape from colonial textile manufacturing but it’s at least a response, and a way to use anger to make clothes that their brain might otherwise deny them. I’m a big fan of anger as a way to get things done, and it’s often part of my short-term heists, but it’s difficult for me to apply in a sustained way without building resentment. And I don’t want to resent having clothes I like. So we’ll start with a fancy mask about global death and the emotions people won’t acknowledge and see if I can stay angry about it without melting it in my gaze.
ZiB
—
Sent from a phone.
