Minimum Safe Distance

It’s hard to write today. Sometimes that’s because I haven’t done things, but that’s not really true here – I looked at an apartment and walked all around the neighborhood and made logistical preparations for next week and talked to Shanda and called Mother and started work on S’s letter (which I also couldn’t write). I still have plans for some more later. But my brain does not seem to be arranged for sharing today.

Household stress is still high – not that there’s any reason it would have changed – and I’m sure that’s part of my difficulty. But it’s not stress keeping me silent, at least not directly. I’m not avoiding my feels, at least not with distraction or defocus.

…And then I left for a phone call with Shanda…

I’m feeling detached because of the household and because I talked to Mother today. In order to protect myself from both of those I’m putting space between me and reality; between me and my feelings. It’s perhaps a sane coping strategy for today but it’s not how I want to live for very long. It prevents me from feeling close even to myself, let alone other people. It keeps me from even having my feels. It’s the same thing that has almost killed me in the past, and ruined bits of my life for a long time.

Talking to Mother was hard. The idea that I’m going to do it more than once does not make me happy. But I do want her to have less money; every moment she doesn’t is more harm to the world. Right now I can imagine good things to do with money, so I should take some directly. The prostitution part is disheartening but not too much different than any other job — I fake feelings all the time at work for the sake of money. I even do it on behalf of others. The bit where it slots into my abuse is harder to handle though. And doing it while living in a household where hiding in your room is the safest option, where jabs and bullying are de rigueur, where old people’s anxiety dictates all choices, where managing other people’s feelings is always the first priority, is not a great place for me to undertake this.

I’m doing mostly okay not getting more stressed. I’m shedding it almost as fast as it’s coming in. But even just trying to keep up takes so much of my day it’s hard to get anything else done. Poof levels are already quite high and it’s easy to let my deeper anxieties creep in — for example, to feel like M even noticing me is a hassle for you, and that any plans I make or interactions we have are an unwelcome imposition on your life. Or that I’m not allowed to have support because needing things is not only an invitation for future pain but an injustice against anyone who knows of my need.

But I only have to make it another day or so. On Monday we’ll finally be able to focus on putting our lives together instead of just waiting for the storm surge to recede. I wish there was a way to concisely communicate this dynamic in the appeal — if we could make the Vice President feel as terrible as we do about this I’m sure he’d be begging to make it stop.

I have had a chance to get through my feelings. It’s still hard to share though; to toggle between protecting myself (and wishing I could protect M more) and trying to be a real human. But I think the right call is to let it slide for one more day — if I knew any better plan I would had done it already.

So that’s all I’m doing today. Keeping close enough to the surface to share with Shanda and letting the rest go until it’s safe to be myself again.

ZiB