The Privilege of Nomenclature

It’s been a busy week, not without accomplishment but definitely without stability. I’m glad Shanda will be back tonight.

In therapy Wednesday I talked about practical tools for avoiding dissociation during my next piercing. A thing I’d like to avoid because it’s very unpleasant and because it will take me away from the people I am with. It’s also a thing I’m ashamed of because of the way it was part of punishment interactions with Mother. This process included some general advice ¹Actually the advice was much more specific but the generalized concept is more useful to me. I like to be prepared but I often find improvisation less stressful than a strict plan when things are tough. Not to mention more adaptive. about using controlled bodily sensation to reinforce my focus. And then the same sort of technique I use in LI to reexamine the last time this happened and identify likely trigger points and possible mitigations. Key discoveries included – I could not get Shanda’s attention last time and holding your breath for 6 minutes while you’re in minor shock is a bad time. There’s also a complication with the fact that I’m terrified of being touched, particularly from behind, and it’s hard to get pierced without being touched.

Some of those things should be easy to fix. I’m only getting one piercing this time so there won’t be this period between them in which I’m already suppressing a reaction while anticipating the next one. That was far and away the biggest factor last time – not allowing myself to be a human for the whole time between my right ear and my left. And the touching from behind should be better because I’m doing my eyebrow and should be able to see what’s going on. I also suspect that, with coaching before we go, I can get Shanda to pay attention to me and offer me support afterward. It’s still not easy for me to get your attention while you’re nervous but if we talk about it first I can probably make it happen with only a few tries. I just have to get you into a mindset where you imagine that I’m capable of having a hard time unrelated to you.

I’ve also got a plan to have a focus somewhere between repression and obsession in terms of bodily sensation. Which has traditionally been very difficult for me in this sort of situation. I’m going to take a half frozen water bottle to hold, so I can focus on the tolerable but intense sensation of cold. And I’m going to immediately react when it’s finished, so that I only spend a few seconds in high tension. In the bad party tricks category I am often very good at controlling my reaction to, well anything but in particular to bodily discomfort. It’s easy for me to imagine that I want to not react at all, not when something happens, not 20 minutes later, just swallow it down and turn it into autoimmune disease instead of letting it affect me in any externally detectable way.

I realized this is a skill that I not only needed for survival but that I was explicitly asked to undertake and rewarded for. One of the few things Pete was ever proud of me for doing. To not react. He made me so good at it that now he’s afraid of how inhuman I am. I always feel like I’m out of control emotionally if it’s even possible for someone to detect my feelings, let alone if I attracted attention to them. Obviously I’m not afraid to share – you’re reading my feels newsletter – but it is an active choice I have to undertake. I spend all day deciding to mirror my emotions to my face and my voice so that other people can see them. It’s one of the reasons I don’t want to spend all day in a big group.

So when I talk about not reacting I don’t mean that I silently cried or went quiet to hide my pain I mean that I’m play acting a normal human so that no one can tell that I’ve frozen all motor functions. I mean that I’ve picked an emotion for my face that I think you’ll believe and am holding it there and modulating it to make it seem genuine regardless of what happens. Whatever reaction I might have had is left unattended while I focus on being sure that my cover as a human isn’t blown by this disruptive event. Which is of course bad for the human parts of me. Hence the plan to do something different.

Pete spent a lot of time in denial, as you might guess. About everything but specifically about his disability. He has clearly had a neurological disease since childhood – the same one that gives him seizures today – but refuses to admit it. It was the 50s when he was young so that probably didn’t help, but the symptoms are not exactly subtle, so active denial was clearly a thing. It’s quite possibly why he writes left-handed, despite doing almost all other things right-handed ²Pete required Ben and I to do hockey and other sportsball things left-handed even though we are both right-handed and Pete does hockey right-handed. He could never explain this (he rarely bothered to explain anything even if you asked) but he was pretty insistent about it. And I can see now that question triggered his active denial response, so … Continue reading. Regardless of the details it provides a great example of the way he used denial as a basic social tool.

Like a lot of rich white dudes, Pete doesn’t notice or care when he’s wrong. Pete takes this to a pretty extreme level though, and I suspect it’s one of the reasons he’s so successful at capitalism despite his lack of understanding of many important parts, and his lack of inherited wealth ³Not that his parents were poor. His father was a foreman in a railroad repair yard and retired in the 80s on a good pension. But they were just middle class small town rich, not 1% rich. I’m unclear on how much money they gave Pete when he was young but I get the impression it wasn’t insane.. When he gets going its not just that he doesn’t notice what’s wrong, it’s that he requires everyone around him to deny reality and adapt to his (usually unspoken) hallucination. When a thing he’s in denial about is happening in a way that can’t simply be ignored he just disconnects from reality and imagines something else it happening. He also rarely shares (probably because he doesn’t bother to figure out) what exactly he imagine is happening, which makes it very difficult to comply with his fever dream.

Pete is always in simple denial about any aspect of life he doesn’t like, like the general existence of his disability, or his emotions, or the behavior of his wife, or the starvation of the young people assigned to him. But sometimes simple denial isn’t enough. Sometimes the thing he wants to deny is having consequences that don’t go away when he ignores them. There are a million examples but a common one is him coming home at 9 PM to find the kids are still up because they haven’t eaten yet, and Mother is not hiding in her room but is actively fomenting the situation. He just starts making up a new situation and insist that everyone agree with him about facts not present in reality. We have eaten and should go to bed, but not until we do the dishes. There are no dishes because there was not food, which makes doing them real hard, but it’s a requirement anyway, and your non-compliance is the reason he’s angry. It’s full-on crazy town and it doesn’t end until something changes to resolve his need for denial. Sometimes that means taking on his responsibility, or volunteering for some pain, and doing whatever thing he wants to ignore. Sometimes there’s nothing to be done and he just gets increasingly angry. That version eventually results in him leaving, but not before he gets real mean.

Which pairs so well with the other thing Pete extolled as a virtue – that you could accomplish anything if you were mean enough. This is presumably another reason he succeeded at capitalism, and it’s a thing he not only did and bragged about in his own life – both at work and at home – but that he rewarded me for doing to others. He talked about how it was a substitute for being smart or fast or even for being right. About how it worked for any situation with any person. And he was good at it, not so much in execution but in the steadfast belief that it was righteous. In the way that he was never ashamed of it, because bragging about how mean you can be is just grooming the people around you to give up before you make good on your promises.

Being meaner than everyone else is a skill that pairs well with repression of reactions. It’s much more effective as intimidation if people look at you and see complete calm while you threaten to hurt them. If you can respond to their escalation with increasing apparent control it’s terrifying to anyone paying attention. And it helps to be able to repress those interactions later, so you don’t ever have to feel the feels that were happening in the moment. It is awful for everyone involved, including him, so feeling it would make it harder to do again. But if you just detach yourself from the feels – from reality when necessary – you don’t have to worry about any of that. You can feel proud and capable because you can put up with the short period of unbearable torment and then never have to think about it again. Until next time.

Which is one of the reasons I feel ashamed to react to pain, or to other sensations. My brain tells me that because I know it will hurt I don’t need to react when it actually does. That if I were sufficiently in control I wouldn’t need to flinch, to cry out, even to breathe. As if knowing you were about to drown somehow made your lungs stop burning and your need for oxygen evaporate. All of which ties uncomfortably into – and at the same time conflicts with – the way Mother demanded I perform punishment correctly. Stay engaged enough to respond, but don’t respond strongly enough to make me feel bed. Yell enough to be cathartic for me but not son much as to trigger sympathy. Pete wants no reaction and thinks checking out (or going to crazy town) is a fine way to get it, but Mother demanded a more refined approach. Pete wasn’t looking to have his emotions managed, just to avoid having them, whereas Mother needed a place to dump her feels, and so needed to hear the right story from me. Needed me induce the right feeling even as she unilaterally decided the plot.

So there are two new feels there. One is about how Pete’s abuse slots into the more frequent abuse I got from Mother. It’s a general feel I’ve been working on – to see the way he not only abandoned me but also demanded his own abusive compliance. It’s not news on a rational way but it’s important to peel apart the layers so I can heal from all the seperate parts.

And the other is a feel about how I like storytelling and believe I can use it to induce feelings, but also believe that is malicious manipulation and that I’m selfish for wanting to control the plot. My whole life was an improv game where Mother shouted out plot points and I had to make her laugh (or cry it whatever) regardless of what she picked or how it hurt me.

Sometimes my pain was actually useful for that, but mostly it was a distraction from my acting. Sometimes I could figure out how to change the plot – how to influence what she thought she wanted – but only a selfish monster would want to do that. If I was a real human I would want to make her feel good regardless of the impact to me. The fact that I didn’t like how it worked for me was itself proof that I wasn’t a real human, and this was her kind attempt to teach me to better fake it.

Talked to V about building a hammer out of nails, among other things. I didn’t quite convince you to collect more nails at Volunteer Park, but I’m pretty sure I convinced you that you need your own hardware store. And I got to see you smile quite a bit, at least in images, about some of the practical outcomes of all the hammering you’ve been doing. It’s so good to see you happy, and to hear you believe that things might be better in the future. And it’s good of you to share some of that with me.

Talked to M about the value of labor and the banalities of market participation. I’m really excited to be able to work on a project with you, and to imagine that I can help with a thing you’re uncertain about. I like working with you, and I am always looking for opportunities to inject some comfort and support into your life. And I shouted for help with many of my own insecurities. You were kind enough to hear some of them and offer me reassurance. There’s still space between the place where I’m comfortable – where we both are – and where I am now, but I feel like you have me pointed in the right direction. It still feels like a deadly risk for my selfish gain whenever I share my worries but you’ve been really graceous in listening to my fear instead of objecting to my attention. Thank you.

Talked to DerbyK about illness and lists and missing people. You let me complain about how your care for people makes me uncomfortable without feeling sttsckrd. And when I asked you even wrote me a story about noticing discomfort and expecting accommodation and tolerating your default responses and receiving care. I need more stories about how things are supposed to work. Lots of people hear about my life and tell me how terrible it was and how they cannot believe anyone would treat me like that. That reaction to me is right up there with disgust in terms of popularity. But I know it was bad – I need more people to help me see what good would have been. And your story helps. I still don’t understand well enough to start writing a list – at least not one I could apply to myself – but you are helping me feel like it’s possible to do some of the research I need.

By Thursday I was doing pretty well recovering my sleep schedule and doing my day job during daytime hours. I got to most meetings and kept up with SRs as they came in even when they required paperwork or asking others for work. But I had a lot of trouble getting my BZ project going and still had 0 hours into it by Thursday night. It’s been driving my anxiety a bit these past couple if weeks, but I just haven’t had the time to get it done. So on Thursday night I did something sort of unwise but also very productive, and stayed up all night fighting it into existence. I didn’t get to bed until almost 8 AM but I did get the project maybe 80% done. It’s ugly and inflexible and has no UI and it gives slightly inaccurate answers, but it works well enough to produce some interim data. And I finally have a a good understanding of the scope to know how long it will take. I was worried it would be 6 or 8 full days of work but I think there are only 2 or 3 more required, and that’s much more feasible to get done before the end of the month. And I’ve got Monday off, so it’s really good to be out of this anxiety before the weekend.

Went to dinner with C on Friday at Purple. I like to go there because they’ve often got duck, they always have interesting flights, and they’re cheaper than a schmancy French place. They did have roast duck but I went for cassoulet even though it only had duck fat – it’s possibly my favorite food (definitely if you throw in a confit leg) because it’s fatty and spicy and full of hot mushy beans and crunchy crumbs. And because it’s a whole meal in one dish. Really good sausage this time and I had a flight of intense reds with it. Talked with C about the tyranny of the rich and the weird way they are often helpless while perceiving themselves as independent. It’s been a long time since I was out with a friend for supper, and it was pretty good despite me being on real short sleep.

Painted my nails for the first time in months. Got the door stop installed and the walls washed for painting. Installed the fan and door closer. Ordered a new vacuum for upstairs and storage tools for socks. Changed Dog’s tags, cleaned the shower, got to the vet ⁴The vet says Dog is old and fat and has slightly abnormal liver test results (which are part of the reason he’s fat). So mostly okay, other than we have to cut his food yet again. I think he might be going deaf, which is pretty common in older large dogs. Dog did pretty well with all of it and spent the rest of the day being very quiet and … Continue reading. So good progress this week on a number of chores and small things that had been waiting. It’s hard to keep those going when there’s not enough time to do all the big things, but my life is better when I find 10 minutes a day to advance the plot on them.

I’m watching Good Omens (Amazon). The book is Pratchett and Gaiman, the series is Gaiman alone now that Pratchett is dead. I was going to wait for Shanda to get back but I wanted something I could dig into. Plus I’ve read it and you haven’t so it’s probably best for me to watch it once alone anyway. The central themes are about the way institutional good and evil are neither on our side (Gaiman) and about how names mean things (Pratchett) and about the way institutions create expectations and environments specifically to give power to names and individuals in hopes of furthering their own interests (both). There’s some parallel storytelling about how young people are hurt by the existence of controlling institutions and how leaving them to their own devices almost certainly has better outcomes for everyone. And there’s a great scene where a hellhound is delivered to the 11-year-old antichrist, who will name the beast – which will then take the properties needed to hold that name – and begin the apocalypse. Evil expects that he will name the beast something violent and terrible. Good hopes he can be protected from the beast and never name it. But the boy actually just names the dog Dog and it becomes, as its name demands, the world’s best dog.

This show also has Adria Arjona as Anathema Device, Witch. They lean hard into a Wizard of Oz esthetic for her witch, which isn’t in the book but I think is a great adaption for screen particularly given the popularity of the 1939 movie. And it works really well with Arjona because she was Dorothy Gale in Emerald City ⁵Worth watching if you haven’t. It’s a very pretty show – not as stunning as Better Call Saul or American Gods – but really good for network TV. And it’s well written despite a thin premise. It could have become something in season 2 but even season 1 is quite good. a couple of years ago. The 1939 film doesn’t play Dorthy as a witch (though she clearly is) but that series did.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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