Dogs & Demands

On Monday I snuggled with Dog in bed. He frequently wants to lay with his spine pressed against me at night. That is a little hard for my touch issues but he’s a dog so the way I imagine that being within arm’s length of me is physically revolting feels less important. And there’s a blanket between us that offers him some protection from my body, which probably bumps the effective range to 2 or 3 feet, which some people can stand. It still sometimes is more than I can handle to have him so close but many nights it’s fine.

But Monday morning he came to lay at the top of the bed – after Shanda got up – and curled up directly against my chest. I put an arm over him for my balance and was able to relax enough to be sleepy again. Not quite relaxed enough to actually sleep, but enough to be restful. And he didn’t seem to hate me or feel trapped or want to escape or be disgusted by me much at all¹My brain assumes this is because I’ve manipulated, threatened, punished and otherwise tricked him into tolerating whatever I do to him. That I’ve somehow made him be compliant against his true will. That I’m doing the same thing to all of you.. Nor did I feel like the interaction was demanding a lot from me, like I usually do when touching lasts for more than a minute. It’s not the same as a person, and it was still nervous, but it was nice to feel like I’m good enough for Dog to be near me.

A computer physically broke and made enough noise wake me up at 6:44 AM. Bad 4TB disk. Got the spare swapped in with only a medium amount of work, dealing with all the bits that make my ancient disk host such a terror (including a sharp edge that caught my wrist). That machine needs to be replaced real bad but it’s always on the list for next year when no one moves in or out of my primary residence or maybe when some rich person I know dies. All is well enough for now – and I’ve got a 10TB spare coming – but someday I’ve got to spin up an actual new machine. Hopefully before that noisy failure is the CPU exploding.

Being up early did let me²And let me catch M live for a moment, which is always nice. Time zones suck. catch news that my morning meeting was canceled, which was an okay trade. After things were back online I got to catch an extra hour of sleep, and only had to call on to the moon meeting. I did okay getting real-time parts of the day job done. I did less well working on bug testing and a research SR. Got some human interactions done too. In balance probably an okay amount of work but I’m having trouble feeling like it’s enough.

This weird week hasn’t helped. I’m restless, being inside, activities canceled, trash piling up, not even walking Dog normally the past couple days. Plus Shanda is in physical pain despite taking time for herself, Dog is still sick, Shanda has a pretrial conference this week, and it has not yet been a day since Sister left. It’s only Tuesday but I need a weekend right quick. And I need to pass Go and collect $200 on my way there. But not this weekend, some other one where I’m not busy and that takes place in a week when I got normal socialization on other days.

M made a cool thing last night. With colors and a wall. It’s the sort of thing I’d share if we were a sharing bunch instead of the anonymous kind. Instead I’ll just tell you about how it made me feel good to see and to know that it had been worked on. To share about both with you as it happened and seperately with others once it was done. That it will be around in your life in coming days.

One of the things that makes the city hard for me, not to mention so many social situations, is the way I can feel everyone’s emotions leaking at me. The desperate cries for help that flood the public space, the office, the elevator. The ones in my living room and on my phone I invite into my life, but the ones that come at me from everywhere else are things I sometimes need sunglasses to hide from. And it sometimes makes me feel helplessly invisible, when I so carefully lay out my need, screaming and still unheard, drown out by the silent cacophony of daily interactions. Why am only I affected by this noise, and why can’t I speak over it? Sometimes I appreciate the sensitivity – it’s how I can hear your need for reassurance in the subtlety of a salutation or even the absense of an acknowledgment – but other times it’s overwhelming. And it always makes it hard for me to find a way to be noticed without overwhelming others.

That conflict I feel between being unseen and being too much can make it hard to write. Here and in other contexts. Can make me afraid to try or practice new ways to communicate, or to repeat old ones for that matter. Even on good days I often spend some time worrying that this sentence will be the last one you ever read. That I will inadvertently reveal to you some manner of harm I’m causing and that you will never even tell me what it was before closing the message and evicting me permanently from your perception. That no relationship I’ve ever had is strong enough to withatand even one interaction where things aren’t ideal, and that such an interaction is inevitable over time, brought closer each time I risk all my social safety by pressing send. You know, the way normal human relationships work that is in no way an obsessive though pattern about my abandonment issues.

When I let that leak – when my message is lost under my screaming terror of abandonment – try to remember that my expectations are really, really low. I can only sometimes convince myself to expect that you will read my message, let alone react to it, and certainly not find it worthy of response. It’s always something for you to take or leave on your own schedule. That I would talk about now or later or never as suits you. That is never a demand for action or response on your part, other than the sort that is useful to you.

Pete’s still a dick but hard to remove from my life enitely while Ben is still alive. I think I’ve got the interruptions back to a tolerable level. DerbyK has new excitement in her life and talks about it in terms that sound like control and intent, which makes me happy. We haven’t been able to talk much recently but we should. Dave cropped up the other day with a question about one of those computer service I haven’t fixed in years, just like the hardware. Just like Dave for that matter.

Dog got stuck under the bed, freaked out about it around 2 AM, then after help getting out he wandered into the hall and took a big wet shit on the rug. The second time in day when I was up in the wee hours dealing with a household emergency. Maybe there will be another meeting canceled to help even things out. Or maybe it’s a portend for the rest of the week.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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