Nameday Nomenclature

I made plans with C from D&D, to help with their robot. They’ve got to program a kit for some class they’re in. I was imagining having Friday off this weekend, or maybe going in to the office to label all my stuff for the weekend move. But we’ll give this a shot instead. C seems nice enough and robots is what I usually do on Fridays, so it will probably be fine.

Saw DerbyK feeling angry and scared and frustrated about their civil court involvement. Which is the correct response to almost any civil court case, and definitely what you’d expect here. Your adversary is using the court system to do the same sort of harassment they did before, just now with lawyers. And it sucks. I can’t promise the case will go quickly or smoothly – I can almost promise it won’t – but I do think you can largely disregard the claims being made against you. 100% of court cases are pages and pages full of lies or other bits of irrelevant claims intended to secure a better negotiating position. The system is slow and rarely just but it is well used to this sort of treatment and isn’t going to be fooled just by the existence of a claim.

Chatted with M for a minute about growing things and the specific way you want me to brag about you. Bragging about you is one of my favorite activities so I’m happy to participate. Good luck. I hope it works like you want. I want you to have all the free time you can handle ¹I know this feels like death right now, the idea of being left to your own devices for a few weeks – maybe even for a few days. But I’m pretty sure that eventually you’d like to feel okay with both lumping and productivity, so that you can have a good time doing both, and pick the one that serves you best at any given moment., to help get your brain acclimated to life in less dire circumstances. But I also want you to do all the cool things – maybe this opportunity will help you find a balance of the two.

I let myself sleep in today after feeling terrible in the morning, and tried not worry much about not working. I did still go in at 2:30 but I got nothing done other than my meeting (which was the plan). Then to the gym, early today because E is away. Both went medium well. Work was fine except I have to go back to label my stuff for the move – there were no labels or boxes for our floor today. Exercise went fine but the sauna was worse than usual. It was at 73 when I arrived, and someone shut it off while I was working out so it was only at 83 later. It was early and empty though, so I just sat in there forever and waited for it it slowly creep up to the 100s. Maybe I should bring a propone preheater along, like I use to supplement the nail at home for quick warmup.

I poked at J, to keep that from eating at me. It would be great if my whole brain could get on the same plan here. Part of it is hyped to finally figure out a next step in the thing I’ve been prodding for a long time, and proud for having the skills and insight to make it go. And another part is 100% convinced that it’s all downhill from here, and now that I’ve finally identified a plan the only safe option is for me to pull away and let someone else implement it. But I’m just plowing ahead and hoping I can drag along that fearful part until it feels better.

I’m thinking there’s any antipattern here, where knowing the answer didn’t work for me directly but maybe did if I got someone else to do it. I knew the baby needed food, and I wasn’t allowed to feed it, but maybe I could convince Mother to (if I was willing to pay the price ²“It’s time to pay the price.” Home Movies (UPN/Adult Swim, 1999).). Sometimes it didn’t work because I wasn’t capable. Sometimes because I wasn’t allowed. Sometimes because she saw what might work and then needed me to fail so she could steal my plan and succeed. Years of experience where knowing the answer didn’t work, even when other people succeeded doing the same thing I wanted to do. Internalized feels about how that’s because I’m harmful, rather than because I’m 4 or because I’m forbidden by the patriarchy, or because I’m being actively undermined.

And it would slot right into the way that my entrance into Mother’s perception always made her disgusted. I was wrong for existing, and even if I had good ideas I was wrong for trying to make them go. Or even for trying to convince someone else to do it. I was allowed most of a good idea but I had to let her play-act its discovery so it could be her superior plan and not my obviously flawed one.

I watched Shanda discover, for the 4,000th time, that I am anxious. Somehow it’s always a surprise to you, even though it’s been happening at high levels the whole time you known me. You see me as “capable”, which is perhaps true in some circumstances, but I don’t see how capability negates anxiety. I think a big part of what you see is me as an authority, despite my ongoing attempts to never serve in such a role. And you see me willing to make decisions when you aren’t, which is definitely true and also some of the times I am most alone. When things are tough and you want me to decide alone, to not only face this fearful thing without you but to have you blame me for forcing your hand, as if I prevented you from making whatever decision you actually preferred.

We did get to talk about my name day, eventually. We had to walk the whole set of fears though. Wherein you first threaten me with attention I’m not comfortable with and questions I literally cannot answer for you. When I point out that problem you jump to the next state – telling me that I shouldn’t have a birthday, because I have so many bad memories. And by now your anxious, and we haven’t even really gotten on topic yet.

Because I can’t just skip the things that trigger me. They’re pervasive in daily life because there’s at least a medium bad version of everything in my past. Socks, haircuts, physicians, driving, fast food, growing things, birthdays, spoons, pets, gifts, etc. I can’t just skip all those things. I need to deal with being triggered and find ways to form new pathways. Build things I like that live in the same space but don’t include the abuse. And practice enough that it finally becomes eaiser, once I learn how to lessen my traumatic response.

And remember that I have literally never had or even been at a birthday where things were good for me. Even if things were good for other people I was having a panic about this situation. So you can’t ask me what I’d like to do or even if I’d like to do a specific thing, because I don’t know any relevant things to do and if you gave me examples I would hate all of them, just like I hated all my experiences. You can’t even talk about related concepts like “having fun” because I was lied to about the anyway such things work and do not know what you mean.

I need you to treat me like a 4-year-old or like a dog. How would you help Dog have a birthday party. That’s the level of help I need. And realize that I will hate it, at least initially, because it will likely trigger me. Even thinking about it makes me uneasy and I will not like it if you ask me about it ahead of time. You have to expect it to be complicated for me and hope that I can recover – plan to help me recover – so I can find something better.

I know birthdays are anxious for you too. I know your mother made them anxious for you because they were too anxious for her to even help. But we don’t have to play that game anymore. (And if we do try to imagine not that I’m the authority hurting you, but that I’m the young person being hurt). I don’t need you to help me avoid the topic to avoid the pain. And you don’t need to abandon me like you were abandoned yourself. You just need to see how it’s hard and try to help me feel better about it.

There’s still a bit about how being in a bad relationship teaches you the wrong thing. Makes you afraid of a whole category of relationships you imagine as “new” even though only one example went poorly. Or that your flaws are the thing that motivated the pain. That if only you could perform better at the role the other needed, or had demanded less for yourself, then maybe it would have worked out. And about how repeating the pattern is proof of your failure to improve, as opposed to continuing exposure to people who hurt you. And I still don’t have it. Maybe I just need to let it diffuse into something broader.

I do know you should be careful not to let the people you were hurt by make decisions for you about what you don’t want. They were wrong about you. So don’t take their word for it. Imagine what you learned is a refinement in what you do want, not a prohibition on what you don’t. And as always, consider if it would be safe to try a sample size of at least 2 before drawing important conclusions.

I wanted to mention that @Simone hides under the furniture when things are overwhelming – good or bad. It’s adorable when she does it [fig 1,2]. It is when you do too. But remember to pop out and share when you can, so you don’t get stuck alone down there.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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