Big Dreams
Did GeekGirlCon today. Lots of fun costumes and makeup, though the feels made it hard for Shanda to hold still and watch. Lots of earrings for sale too, and we did better with those. Some will certainly feature here eventually. Also found some interesting things to share.
It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing though. While the overall stress level was kept pretty tolerable the togetherness rating was pretty low. Which is what you’d expect because there was a pretty high level of unattached anxiety that kept getting stapled to whatever activity was next on the itinerary.
That did eventually get better, after the panels, but togetherness was still iffy. So good job us for doing it better than before. We should keep working on it so we can have more fun together. If we find a purple glove and a razor we want to be able to play, not panic.
Got a call to DerbyK tonight, at least for a minute while our schedules could overlap. You told me a story about trying changes in relationships where the stakes are lower and there aren’t as many expectations. And that’s a great plan. It’s a plan I’ve been trying to get V to consider – that it might be easier to try new things with different people. Not that you want to give up any of your old foundational relationships, but maybe you’d like to step back for a minute and figure out yourself seperately from them. Take a minute to practice being you in a space where no one knows what “old” you would usually do. So good for you, DerbyK, for practicing having preferences and boundaries and saying no. For finding a way to try those skills and explore your feelings. It will help you – has helped you – so the same, harder task in your core relationships.
I heard a sad response to my story. You expected me to have much more care. You tell me you can’t imagine letting that sort of pain happen, even by accident. But I know that pain is the default. The only way to reduce it is by taking special care to offer protection. It’s not enough to feel love and hope things are okay, you have to work to make them okay, and to provide love. Work to provide protection, not from the existence of pain, but from pain without understanding, from pain without sharing, from pain without hope. It requires ongoing intervention to make sure the people we love are getting the support and protection they need. It’s hard for me to believe that protection can be good, or that I would ever want it, but to you it’s an assumed fundamental. It’s hard for me to believe that I can ever produce help with an intervention you didn’t specifically request.
I heard you feel guilty about not wanting to be physically sick to appease the patriarchy. That’s rough. I’m sorry you’re in thst situation in the first place, and double sorry that you feel like it’s what you need to do to be a good person. You’re already a great person. You don’t need to do this too. It’s likely to make you a less good person overall if you keep it up for too long.
I smelled you be afraid of my parenting. That’s not really fair – I smelled very little on this note, and there was plenty of noise in the signal. But I anticipated smelling your fear, given your initial response to the topic. Everyone else has been afriad, for my whole life, and many people have asked me to feel bad for violating their patriarchy expectations. Some still do. At best I get a “thank you for your service”. There’s never connection about the common human topic, because my experience isn’t close enough to the accepted “universal” human narrative to count, even when I do the same things.
I went to panels today, where land rights were proposed as a rebuff to colonialism. That feels a little like fighting advertising with coupons. And where people wanted better multisexual representation in media that still gender-codes 100% of people as masc or femme. I find the idea of spectrum-based sexuality pretty dismissive – it insists that gender itself is a spectrum between masc and femme endpoints, and it seeks to mirror that same spectrum with gsy and straight endpoints. But life isn’t a line. Glitter beard does not average out to non-binary or to bisexual. I don’t mean to bitch. I appreciate people making an effort, and the panel discussed worthwhile things. But I wish their dreams were big enough to include everyone, and not just people with similar fetishes.
ZiB
—
Sent from a phone.
