Emotional Fungiblity

Started season 3 of GLOW (Netflix). I really love the excuse that wrestling gives that show for stupid makeup and costumes. It’s just my speed. So is its 80s nostalgia – The Americans and Stranger Things ¹The Winona Ryder part of the 80s works for me, but the part where it asks me to remember being a child is uncomfortable and doesn’t really match my experience at the time anyway. I had terrible shorts and whatnot but because neglect not because 80s. don’t work for me, but GLOW does. It guess maybe I was already a washed-up old writer back in the day.

I realized that I have used money to indulge a lot of avoidance since moving to Seattle. Mostly Shanda’s avoidance. For a long time I did cleaning and cooking and shopping and maintenance and planning and budgeting and other such things alone so that Shanda didn’t have to think about them. I resented it, but it was better than not having them done, or having Shanda hate me about them. When I had more money many of those things became available as a service, so that she could avoid them and I could avoid resentment. But it’s a bad plan. I’d rather we could just talk about them and work out some plan where we’re in it together. Not that we can’t hire out any of those things, just that it should stop being me doing it all by myself – finding the time or stealing the money and never talking about it either way. This isn’t a complaint; these are all choices I made willingly. At times – when Shanda was real depressed or Melissa was killing us or I had too many jobs/classes/etc. it was a good plan. But we should get past it, and choose again. I’m sick of being the one person responsible for making everything go. And I don’t want to do it again in my newer relationships.

I was thinking about my individual poverty in childhood. It’s such a random mess of things. My household had good stability for things like Pete’s job and housing, and living with a rich person definitely protected me from many forms of stress. But I also didn’t have enough food or clothes and I often didn’t get to live or eat with them. The crazy nature of it all makes it easy for me to question which parts are real. To imagine that I must be making up the worst parts. Or to imagine that I’m wrong about Pete having money. But this gave me a little solice today – this what 1%ers actually believe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ADRfKCXuU&t=18m56s

I thought about hoodies too. How I can’t wear them because they prevent me from escaping physical entrapment or from wearing warmer outerwear. They remind me that my skin is in such bad shape that it sticks to soft fabric like velcro, or worse still that it’s not and I’m therefore unprepared to survive in harsh conditions. My brain will neither accept that I have been homeless nor accept that I’m not prepared to be anymore. Somehow I need to be constantly ready for a thing I could never admit to actually doing.

Cleveland went mostly really well. Travel itself was better than it has been for me, even with some logistical hassles on the way back. It really helped to have someone else to pay attention to. And I got through step 1 of everything on my anxiety list; I was worried avoidance would continue to keep all the important topics off-limits but we did get to at least mention all the bits that have been making me anxious. There’s still a long way to on some of them, and it took until Thursday to get started, but it happened and that’s much better than most weeks in recent memory.

There were hard bits too. Somehow sides were forming. I’m so confused when people put me on sides with other people and against themselves. I get how people can feel like I’m not on their side – I am never on the inside of any distinction – but I do not understand how I get assigned to an opposing team. The thing about being non-human is that you’re not on anyone’s team, not even the team of misfits and assholes. I’m pretty sensitive to the idea of sides and I try pretty hard – sometimes survival hard – not to be stuck with them. But I couldn’t seem to make that work here.

Locus and I worked up to a reasonable rapport over the week. Still fragile of course, but notable improved. We got to lightweight play on Friday and by Sunday we were actually talking and accomplishing things together. So I’m pretty stoked about that. Coordinating that on an ongoing basis is a challenge yet to be discussed, but it’s a good first step. I hope that once the dust settles we can find a plan that allows more predictable contact, but I’m worried that feels we can’t share will be a barrier to even thinking about it, let alone doing it.

L had a real hard time right at the end of the journey, which is unfortunate. Both because it pushes the week into a less positive context overall – a little trauma to wrap up the experience – and because it definitely resulted in their unjust punishment. Punishment is never useful, and here it’s just one more thing on top of a pile of shitty treatment. Too much demand for emotional regulation of others, not enough support. Too much being bounced around to satisfy disorganized, disinterested, and dismissive households, not enough space to have desires or even needs. It’s hard not to be sad about, and it sucks to feel helpless. I’m hoping there’s some improvement to be made over time, but there’s gonna be a lot of shit that’s hard even to watch let alone to live.

Good and bad, it’s useful to see how L is doing and how others react to them. Gives me perspective on being 10 and on parenting. I am ashamed to have failed before but I really don’t feel nearly as incapable as my anxiety tells me to be. It’s work, but it doesn’t feel hopeless. At least not the parts I can influence, and it’s easier to see which parts those are. It also lets me see a fear that one small mistake will eventually ruin any good thing in my life, including relationships. It doesn’t change that feeling, but maybe it will give me a new way to talk about it. Maybe it will give us a way to talk about it at all.

Got to both my meetings on Monday. Skipped both on Tuesday. But I’m still doing okay at the day job. I’m back on the queue somehow, despite staying up late to work it on my days off last week. But so far only one SR so it hasn’t been too bad. Got through my back email and whatnot today; maybe tomorrow I can work on the BZ project and get that squared away.

You talked about me being able to seperate my emotions from a situation. Which is in many cases a useful skill. It’s also my damage. I know that my emotions are never welcome and so it’s easy for me to keep them seperate – it’s what was always asked of me. But that also requires me to be seperate, because I am not allowed to be present. My feels are always for later, never to be acknowledged. It’s hard enough for people to tolerate me being around in the first place – asking them to engage with my feels in a way I can detect is too much.

I did get a response yesterday about how I shouldn’t have been responsible for my parenting failures. I know the intent is to reassure me, but it reads a lot more like denying my situation. I don’t need to be ashamed or guilty, but the thing still happened. I was responsible for parenting, whether I should have been or not, and I did fail, whether or not success was ever an option. I want you to help me grieve, not deny that it happened.

Shanda’s eye has finally been reviewed and found to be “probably not MS”. Which is good. The blind spot is still there and might be forever, but it also might go away. And there are more MRIs scheduled to ensure things are stable over time. But for now the answer is nothing to be done, and probably nothing worse than what has already happened.

My brain has 20 more think but I’m still doing the many and short plan.

ZiB

— Sent from a phone.

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