Keep Your Dick in a Vice

Got more toys today and immediately did this [fig 1]. B said I had good opaque colors and David Bowie pallet, which seems plausible. Reactions have been better than I expected in general. Shanda was away when I did it, so she didn’t have to share a reaction right away. That helped in avoiding the thing where me asking for a reaction triggers a bad one, but it also sort of reinforces the idea that I’m too much and need to give everyone lots of space if I hope for them to deal with me. DerbyK said that you wanted my help with your makeup. I think that vastly overestimates both my technical skill and my taste, but I appreciate the idea. I do think I could be your Taliesin for some things, and that you could appreciate it in a way that wasn’t detrimental to me.

Related question. Now that I smeared grease all over my face, what do I do to make it set a little? I like the easy if use but it needs to be able to stand up to at least minor poking without going all Cat in the Hat if I’m going to make it through a day.

Got some more work done on the MMS gateway. It now sends me email when messages come in, with the body and downloaded attachments. Still needs some more safety (for example, it should fork a worker so getting stuck doesn’t break everything, and so messages can be queued if processing fails) but it’s close. I can definitely start testing. The script is listening at (208) 366-0793 and I wouldn’t mind getting sample messages there, particularly from different carriers, with different numbers and types of media attached, large text bodies, or other special features. Don’t treat it as reliable comms, and know I cannot yet reply in-band, but I’d like to see what works and what doesn’t.

Was watching @AvE¹https://youtu.be/L94oKrD4SNk and thinking about what I liked about them. The basic appeal is playing with industrial machines and taking things apart to see how they are made. They love it and and like to talk about it and they acquire interesting things to play with. That and the endless puns and sex jokes. But I also like the way they are annoyed by demands to conform, and feel oppressed by power structures of many types. They aren’t very sensitive to other people in a predictice way and so sometimes they’re meaner than I’d like. But they do think about other people quite a bit, and about why we behave the way we do. They know that survival justifies almost any action regardless of other people’s expectations. And they know that being alone is a thing that will kill you.

In therapy we chased a feeling about how my presence or even the perception of me is a burden on other people. Imagined a time this happened when I was young. Where I sat on the floor in the living room in the afternoon one day. Mother was present but not paying attention to me, and I was trying to be invisible so I wouldn’t be noticed. Being seen meant at the very least she’d show me that disgusted face she made whenever she noticed me. It might mean I would be sent away and would have to be alone in my room. And in the afternoon it might mean that I don’t get to have supper because of Pete doesn’t see me when he gets home food might not happen until after I’m in bed. But I need to move a little, to reposition my legs. And it’s going to make noise. Why can’t I sit still like a good person would? Why do I always need to do something that will upset Mother? Why didn’t I pick a place to sit where I wouldn’t need to move, or where she couldn’t tell when I did?

Then older me comes to help. To understand what is happening in a way that 5-year-old me could not and to offer safety. I share with me the existence of the rest of my life, to try to get all the pieces into the same box. The bits that happened then and now, where I still have the same feeling. The certain knowledge that I’ll never be able to control or suppress my hurtful self enough for other people to handle. That I wear away at people’s willingness and ability to put with me every time we interact, and that there is no way to rebuild that supply. That asking people to indulge me in my needs or worse still a mere desire will demonstrate how ungrateful I am and risk even the tiny supply of support I have now. Things could always be worse and I don’t even deserve what I have now so I should stop feeling bad about.

When I was young I used to hope that maybe being older would make it better somehow. Would make me better so I could pretend to be a real human more convincingly. So I would annoy people less. And I did learn lots of ways to be more invisible and more independent. I did learn to not need Mother. But of course it didn’t help. Now I know that I will never be the sort of independent that would satisfy her, and that my existence will always be pain for her. But it still feels like my duty. To only be helpful and never have needs. To always be moving away from the people in my life so that I don’t contaminate them with mine. So that I don’t start to expect things of them that I will inevitably have to do without again in the future.

The goal of this is to get my memories reconnected, and to be able to grieve the things that still make me feel this way. To imagine what was important to 5-year-old me and offer the assurance that I will get it. That I’m not wrong for wanting it. That I don’t want the life were I learn to not need it, or to not notice that it’s missing, even if that’s a thing I can teach myself to do. Or at least that’s the hope. It is helping me remember my past, and to build a framework in which my life makes sense instead of just being an unrelated series of unfortunate events.

Today I realized that one of the problems I have with clothes is my belief that I’m bad for clothes in the same sort of way that I’m bad for people. I have long understood the way I want to use clothes as armor against the world, and to keep the world safe from my dangerous and disgusting physical existence. But I see that I’m also ashamed to “ruin” clothes by wearing them. To wear a uniform for fear of ruining the team by its association with me, and that garment in particular if the uniform will go to another person. It’s got roots in my lack of access to sufficient amounts of fitting, clean²Laundry piles are a problem for me. Particularly when they become active storage areas. It reminds me of how I didn’t have a closet or drawer or shelf for my clothes. And of the weekly trauma of laundry. Mother used to insist that she exclusively do the laundry. She said it was because we would screw it up but it was closer to her wanting to … Continue reading, warm clothes, but even that is a thing I imagine being caused by the way I’m too demanding and too reckless. That if I was able to control myself I wouldn’t need new sizes, wouldn’t need such frequent laundry, wouldn’t get so dirty. I would still ruin clothes when they touched me of course, but at least I could do it to fewer items.

So I imagine that it’s not safe for people to like me – that if you had all the information you rationally would not. That you can’t see the parts of me that will hurt you because I’ve gotten good at hiding them, but that they will eventually be revealed when I slip up by having the wrong need, after which you will be instantly hurt badly enough to never want to interact with me again.

Which is tough.

M made a point to appreciate yesterday’s makeup and later sent me a picture that had a big impact. The pile of cardboard made me excited about my woodworking project, and motivated me to work on it again. It let me see your emotional state, which is always a great relief to me. And it shared with me a thing I know is precious to you. All of which helps me imagine that you don’t think I’m dangerous in the way that I fear. I still worry that you ought to be afraid of me. I am still afraid of me. But you make it easier to believe that maybe I don’t need to be.

Talked with DerbyK about the safety of relationships and the ways we control ourselves with our own (often bad) predictions. Like the way I imagine that people thinking about me is an intrusion upon them, and the work I do to manage that clearly inaccurate but still compelling prediction. The supposed cause and effect we imagine, sometimes despite obvious evidence to the contrary, and the way those maladaptive patterns can continue even as we change the pieces.

Watched the first 2 episodes of Russian Doll (Netflix). It’s high on style and is happy to live in a world defined by singular metaphor. Not unlike Mr Robot (USA Networks). It’s about no one being able to help even when you ask, and keeping pointed at survival. Lyonne is great, queerness pervades, and it wants to talk about trauma. Would recommend, if those are things for you.

Shanda took this picture of Dog for me [fig 2] and then was real excited to play with the tracking filters on my phone [figs 3-7].

Didn’t get much work done today, but did deal with my locked out account, caught up on email, and talked at my boss so he could tell me which things he was most anxious about. I really should poke my SRs before Monday but otherwise I’m okay with that. No robots this week but hopefully a real game on Sunday, the first since I’m back.

I wanted to offer this to all of you that at least sometimes have trouble with sleep: CBT for Insomnia. It’s better supported by evidence than most other sleep strategies and it’s mostly stuff you can do without training by yourself. It easy to gloss over the components and think “I’m doing enough sleep hygiene” or “I have a good enough schedule” without really thinking about it or keeping track. One of the things CBTI offers is a checklist to keep you on-target without having to think about it too much or feel bad for doing it wrong. Progressive muscle relaxation can be useful for moving between the intent to sleep and actual sleep, even if just by having a thing to concentrate on that isn’t stressful and is associated with relaxing for sleep. The other reason I like this sort of checklist approach is because it’s a way to build a little bit of self-care into your day without spending much time or effort on it – it’s something you can do even when you’re too busy and too stressed to exercise or write or cook whatever you might otherwise do. You can literally do it in bed while you’re trying to sleep. http://www.freecbti.com/

It’s cold tonight. And wet. And a little windy. It’s been overcast all day. So exactly the weather I always hope for. The humidity makes me scared lungs feel a bit more free, and can keep my skin from attacking me and my fingerprints intact. The chill reassures me that I won’t be too hot and can go much longer without being dehydrated but isn’t so cold as to be dangerous or painful. The clouds protect me from some portions of the day star’s deadly radiation, and at night it reflects the city glow at night so that I never have to work outside in the dark. The wind raises the perceived noise level so I can make sounds or move without drawing attention, and often ensures I can be dry. It’s sort of sad survival motivations but it makes me feel good.

I was looking at satellite SMS devices as a possible gift and remembered why I don’t own one. $350 in hardware plus service if you want it to work. More for both you want to actually use it. Which is disappointing because it was a good topical match and I could have written and interesting story to share a feeling with it. And because having my own would make me feel much better prepared for emergency comms. As would the 5V charging – the rechargeable battery for my UHF radio is totally busted. It won’t run for even 20 seconds once you pull it from the cradle, but says fully charged when connected. I’ve got a backup pack that takes AAs. I should maybe just get another one of those and ditch the charger. Plus Iridium works literally everywhere you can see the sky and lets you reach any phone whereas UHF only works for like 3 miles overland and requires special equipment.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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