Imaginary Friends

One of the things I like doing with weed – a thing I imagine is pro-social – is use it to think about other people. I’ve thought quite a bit about the state of mind weed can put me for that purpose, and how to obtain it reliably. Today I figured out that a lot of it is just being less ashamed to think about you. Weed can help me believe that my attention doesn’t cause you harm. That I can like thinking about you without being a monster.

It’s pretty hard for me to believe that my attention can be pro-social. It’s why I imagine I can be useful during a crisis but not in regular life. In a crisis my attention is still harmful but the emergency justifies by intervention. But I know you shouldn’t stick with me. I should just help you get well enough to not need me. Help you figure out how to get real humans to provide care for you. My brain is so sure that the only way I can help you – protect you from me – in the long run is by leaving.

This is one of the reasons it’s easier to talk to me about terrible things. I feel terrible for wanting to empathize with you, so if you want empathy about terrible things I’m already there. It’s not the only reason of course. I also have very careful reactions to you, and I have an endless list of shit to make you feel like your thing is no further from normal or safe than mine. But definitely it’s a factor – I imagine the danger inherent in my inhumanity is a risk worth taking to keep you up and out of my realm, but not one I should take unless things are already dire.

J thanked me for arranging piercing for them. I’m really happy to do it, though I suspect we do not share an understanding of what I am providing. Maybe that I’m helping remove barriers, but we don’t agree on the source of the barriers. Regardless, it’s doing what I want and it’s encouraging that they appreciate it.

I am sometimes guilty of this [fig 1], but for sort of the opposite reason. I sometimes yell self-care because I don’t think you’ll accept community care. I would love to help you arrange a version of life where you were less individually responsible for some of your care. But it’s pretty common for people to tell me there is no care available ¹though I think it’s accurate to read some of that reluctance as “none that I’m willing to accept”. At least not the kind they need. Not the kind where you can have help with food and dishes and laundry and sleep and emotions. Not the kind you needed so often before and rarely got. I can see why you don’t believe it’s available, why you don’t think anyone would provide it, why you imagine that the cost is too high even if you could get it. But there is community care in your life. I can help you make it happen. And you don’t have to trust me, I can prove it. You just have to try once in a while when I offer.

On a related note, definitely watch @Simone make shitty art from shitty experience, and talk about how they decide to risk getting care from more people: https://youtu.be/qcCxs-YoAI8 I know no one does the assigned reading, but this is short and she’s cute and makes a creepy lamp from their tumor face.

I thought about how it can be so difficult to regulate things that feel dangerous. Things that trigger our survival fears, and our memories of all the times we had to make a survival decision. How we can build such complicated schemes for avoidance, since the thing is so bad. I regulate a lot of things in my life using shame. It controls how I eat, when I get medical care, how I think of other people, parts of when I sleep. And it’s going to suck to stop doing that. Not only will I have to feel the shame for a while, but I’ll have to add other forms of regulation just to keep steady. I’m going to have to give up the little bit of regulation I currently do have in order to feel better about it, and be better at it in the future.

I realized that I can’t really tell the difference between being tired or hungry or sick or depressed or anxious in terms of physical reaction. Which can get really complicated. For example, if I feel like shit in the morning I can’t really tell if more sleep would help, or if it would contribute to depression, or if i want to sleep to avoid a thing I’m anxious about. I can’t tell if eating would help or if to would make me more sick ²Which also hits my nonsense about how being sick means you can’t have food or water or attract any attention or move.. I regulate my food intake mostly by schedule, as opposed to by hunger, and if there’s a mismatch and I am hungry – and notice and respond, which isn’t easy for me in the first place – I lose the ability to tell if I’m also tired, even with careful examination.

Today I was up early and had a twinge of anxiety. Nothing intense, just the state my brain was in overnight and my fully scheduled week ³I have at least two daytime and one evening event scheduled every day this week. And it’s Monday, which always makes me feel busy and anxious. It’s not more than I can handle but it means I have to find time for myself, and have to give up some things I would normally do for others.. I got past that fairly quickly but continued to feel terrible. Which makes me worry that I’m going to be unable to get through all the things I imagine need to be done today. My survival brain doesn’t really care ⁴This is where weed has been dangerous for me, because it raises my baseline anxiety (often not much, but more than zero) and can reveal that I’m tired or hungry or any of the other things my brain usually ignores. So it can throw my already fragile regulation into chaos, particularly because when I’m stressed it’s very hard for me to exactly … Continue reading if that’s because I’m tired or sick or anxious it just knows that I don’t have time to deal with it.

Life is complicated (and scary, and dangerous) when it feels like the options are all or none. Like you have to accomplish everything on the calendar, all the capitalism hours you had planned, etc. and that if you don’t you risk never being able to recover. To feel like you can’t figure out why things are bad because that might stop you from doing something even more important. Because of you sit down for a second you might never get back up. And so the only options are all or nothing. Having a job and money and a schedule are the things that keep you alive. You can’t give them up when stress is high. They’re the only thing keeping you afloat. Or at least that’s the sort of thing ym survival brain yells at me when I ought to take a day off. I feel pretty worthless all the time but my brain becomes sure that other people will see through my act of utility if I ever let it slip even for a moment.

Getting back at some @BPS ⁵They also started on some enby drag, which feels very familiar. It starts here and continues for several (sometimes non-consecutive) days: https://youtu.be/Xoi1ZIBa5s0 now that Shanda is home. Not quickly, as we’re still pretty busy, but catching up. I’m glad to be less behind because it makes talking eaiser. They had some thinks about living in public and imaginary friends. I already replied with reassurance but I expect I’ll have more thinks and feels on the topic. Sometimes you feel like imaginary friends to me, as I live in public. Some of you more than others, but all of you at times. People I think about and communicate at but often only in one direction. That’s not a complaint, but it is a suggestion that you watch the video: https://youtu.be/VL-m9HBE3xE

Made a pizza this weekend. It’s been a minute. I no longer own a good powered tool for shredding cheese. It took sort of a lot of investment to make happen, but it turned out well. Shanda and I got to talk some about why we can’t cook together, even though we can both cook seperately. There are lots of parts but an interesting one is that it’s a situation where I pay immediate attention when you ask for it, and that is often upsetting for you. Obviously this is not ideal but it’s good to see it in a way that makes sense to both of us.

Talked to M again in real time. About socks and pools and the life of a bus rider. I’m proud of you for doing bussing ⁶And I’d still be proud even if you mixed and matched bussing with other options, as dictated by your wellbeing and schedule. The bus is a great tool but should never be a punishment. even though it can be a pain. I hope you can establish a way to ride that lets you use some of your commute time for yourself, and not just as a medium-stress distraction session. I got your store live, which I’m really exited about, and it gave me someplace to point your domains. And I heard more about this care package than I have any previous one, which soothes a spot I didn’t know was so sore. I gave you the hard sell on 18th century semi-private comms, which you probably didn’t need but makes me feel good to imagine.

I finally got some useful feedback from someone about my BZ project. It will require more work but it gives me a much stronger direction than I had before. One that isn’t so committed to the idea of flexibility over process. I was getting real sick of my boss’s idea that we don’t get to drive what people do with this tool. Honestly I can’t imagine anyone using it at all of we don’t drive it. So I’m happy to have what feels like a more concrete target (not to mention support from above my boss). I won’t get to work on it until Thursday probably, but I feel better about being able to it to a state people agree is “done”.

One of the things I should make time for this week is writing. It’s a challenge on days when I’m busy and unable to stay up until 5. But it’s much more useful when I do it most days.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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