Passing

I watched Sorry to Bother You (2018) today, as you may be able to tell from the orange brow blobs in [fig 2]. That movie makes text the subtext that I read in all sorts of things – that rich people should be afriad of being murdered because shit is already real bad and literally starving to death pretty reliably makes the peasants revolt. It also reminds me a lot of my own experiences in being invited to the capitalist class, and deciding to step back so it didn’t murder my soul. Guilty about not doing more to become an equine-spanien. Trapped by the white voice that we all use to discuss the abuses of capitalism from within the system, while trying to protect ourselves and those we love. The survival fight that we all share against people who are literally trying to kill us. The fight I try not to bring weapons to every day. If you watch only one movie I talk about this year, watch this one ¹It’s in Plex. As are all the other A/V media I mention. If you don’t have Plex talk to me and we’ll change that..

I had this interaction with @TAS: https://twitter.com/profplump/status/1109004294437507072?s=19 It’s always exciting to have the people you know from the Interwebs participate momentarily in the one-sided relationship you imagine. Makes me feel like the advertising networks I belong to really help me reach out to people I don’t know.

Got the rodent ramp glued together. The poorly matched drill size meant the gluing required lots of clamping, which induced a twist to the overall structure. I’ve got a plan to relax it back out tomorrow, which I’m moderately confident will work. E dropped off his contraption today, along with some documentation, both of which I think are really great. I know you’re a little anxious about it but I’m pretty sure it will do exactly what you hope, and that it fits right into the overall theme. Which is safety. The theme is always social safety. Your thing is about safety as a matter of design. You even told me about safety when you showed it to me.

It was a hard day for Shanda, gluing together the ramp. We talked about the way that “projects” are hard for you, before deciding to actually do it. Knowing it would trigger the thing. And it did, real bad. You were very alone. And you abandoned me while it happened. Much hurts. Many bad. But I think we got through, and can do it easier next time. It still sounds hard but I’d like to imagine we can do it less alone next time.

I was thinking about how I want to use weed. I have in the past used weed habitually. And also went years without any. When I was in Cleveland I used almost none for mostly logistical reasons, but also because general life stress was high. So abstinence is available to me, as is addiction. But I don’t really want either.

I want two things from weed: the ability to engage and empathize with other people’s anxiety, because weed makes me anxious, and the ability to turn down the volume on my emergency alertness protocol, because weed makes me less interested in planning. Sometimes weed helps me figure out a way to communicate some social idea I’ve been chewing on, when before I couldn’t get us to connect. And sometimes it lets me eat the last cookie instead of saving it for an emergency. It could always be worse, by abused brain tells me, and I need to save this coping tool for when things are really bad. For now I just have to wait it out. Just have to endure until the situation improves. And sometimes weed helps me step past that trap. But I think those are the main two reasons I want weed, and I’m going to regulate my usage around those goals.

If you’ve been traumatized and you feel like the sort of care people recommend doesn’t work for you, you’re not wrong. If you feel like calls to “take time for yourself” are unrealistic or otherwise useless, you’re not wrong. But you still do want healing, it can still be had, and you can have help. https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/b4iv1k/

Not that I believe any of that for myself. It’s a hypocrital lie I yell to force myself to become a better person or be caught being hypocrital. It’s a part of the authoritarianism game I played with Mother – my sensitivity to hypocrisy. So not being a hypocrite is a big, sometimes unwise or even unhealthy, motivation for me. Learning the skill was painful and is still sometimes dangerous, but tricking my own brain is a worthy use of it and presumably will make me a better person.

I thought more about my fear of watching movies, particularly alone. Part of it is my belief that my being around while you watch the movie will ruin it for you. Maybe if I properly restrain myself you can tolerate me but it would clearly be better without me, just like everything else. So alone is the only safe way to watch. And part of it is the way no one ever shares their media experiences with me, or engages in mine. Sometimes the fact that I have shared media makes that media feel burdensome to you. Which makes me feel like not only am I too much for other people, but even my relationship with media is too intense for normal people. So if there are parts of the movie I want to share I feel like I must wait for you to watch it with me, to have any chance of that ever happening. That’s still not the whole feels, but it’s more I need to deal with.

Finally got to watching @ContraPoints ²https://youtube.com/user/ContraPoints after months of meaning too. Had to make some repairs to my subscription following bot ³I have a bot that checks my YouTube subscriptions and Shanda’s and pulls them into Plex. Did you know that your subscription list is available via the API without authentication – Google treats your list of subscriptions as public information.. She’s on fucking point all around, and a great voice on masculinity. Good essays with simple but pretty pictures and effective framing tools. Plus all the makeup. Half-face too, which is just my speed.

Watched some Broad City yesterday. I like a lot about the show. It’s often very funny, and it knows lots of things about oppression and self-limitations. But sometimes it pretends to be about survival and it feels so privileged to me when it does. The hard part of survival is always the part where you choose to endure something terrible instead of letting something else kill you. Stories that pretend to be about survival imagine that the hard part is the world trying to kill you. That part sucks, but the hard part is who you have to become to stay alive. And Broad City never goes there. Russian Doll does though, if you’re into that thing. Just like Sorry To Bother You or Mr. Robot.

I’m still all over about feeling like a person. Not that I usually do, but maybe there’s space to move the needle. One of the things I’m supposed to do for therapy is practice touching. Like, for more than a few seconds. At least 10 times. I’m still at 1 times. It’s not impossible for me to make myself do it – I can endure touching indefinitely if necessary – but I need to practice not hating it, and that part is much harder for me than actually doing it. Because it feels like a demanding trap guaranteed to hurt me no matter what I do. It was one of the requirements of childhood that I bodily submit to Mother’s desire for external emotional regulation, and it’s hard not to feel that same panic. But I also wish I could physically comfort people for more than a few seconds. And in theory I could learn to be comforted by touch, if I can get past this first part, which I imagine would make me more human. At least make it easier to blend in.

Didn’t spend any time on M’s request, didn’t message DerbyK, didn’t poke Cowboy or follow up with CookieZ. All of you were on the list but I made essentially 0 list progress today. You’re still on the list for tomorrow, after D&D. I’m glad to have a sort of lumpy day. It’s good recovery for many things. But I want to imagine a life where I can get social support on a same-day basis, and that requires ongoing semi-daily contact. Or at least that’s what I imagine, though I’m pretty weak on experience. It’s no small thing to have been in charge and alone at every scary moment of your entire life. And I’d love for it to stop at any time.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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