The Self-Oppressing House-Elf

I am having a lot of trouble organizing my clothes. I missed that day of class – the one where you had clothes or a place to store them other than your body. I know most young people have access to drawers – even the foster care checklist requires young people to have their own storage area suitable for clothes – but I missed it nonetheless.

When I was young I stored my clothes folded and stacked on the floor near my bed. Which was fine because I didn’t have many. I got a dresser when I was like 10 but didn’t have much to go in it. When Mother remodeled the basement I got a big closet, which made Mother jealous, so she looked at it a lot, so I was required to hang things and spread them out so it looked full. I remember carefully arranging the spacing between my hangers for maximum coverage without obvious gaps. It was stressful but it did help me easily find the least good but still acceptable shirt for any given day. And it displayed the clothes that didn’t fit in a way that made it difficult for Mother to tell which ones they were without making it hard for me to use.

More recently I have stored all of my clothes in hampers next to the drier. One for shirts and one for everything else (which is mostly underwear and undershirts). It’s really handy to sort directly from the drier into storage. And since I literally wasn’t picking what I wore it was easy to just pull from the top without even looking. I made it a point to rotate sometimes so I didn’t wear the same few things day after day, but that’s about it. I bought new clothes if the level in the hamper got low.

But of course there are lots of problems with this system if you want to choose clothes like a human. You can’t see or select individual items. There’s no way to browse or compare or match things. There’s not even any way to tell how many you have. And for things like socks that I don’t win many of, you have to dig until you find one at all. So I’ve been trying to do something more normal. To imagine that I can have a wardrobe and not just technically sufficient coverings. I’ve done okay with the owning items of clothing part. I’m even starting to do okay with wearing them. But it’s been really hard to get them stored in a sensible way.

I have trouble thinking about it at all, and even when I do my brain only wants to suggest organizational plans that minimize mess, not that support use of my clothes. Like carefully packing things into bins and storing them in a closet shelf. Or grouping things by how efficiently they can fill a space. It’s not like I don’t know how to organize things ¹A place for everything and everything in its place. I’ve even modeled and printed mounting systems for game controllers and whatnot so thay everything has a tidy place to live. So for the past few weeks I’ve had a basket full of laundry next to the bed, and a bunch more down in my hampers by the dryer.

There are reasons for this other than my clothes issues – Shanda and I have been sick and injured and otherwise busy and had trouble keeping up with dishes and cooking and other household things as well. But this bit is hard to make go on top of that. And it’s sort of a problem because it means I don’t want to choose clothes and if I don’t choose clothes the hamper is a great plan and full of things that don’t need choosing. I’ve asked Shanda for help but it’s hard for you for different reasons. You avoid thinking about laundry and have let yourself come to hate it. And you feel line you should know “the answer” to organize my clothes, even though what I need is for someone to treat me like a 5-year-old and talk about how humans might use a closet and suggest and discuss things I’d like to try. How do you organize your clothes? Can I see ²I realize I was also taught to not see other people’s clothing, as worn or as stored. In Mother’s house closets were always hidden, except for mine, which was always open for inspection. But I learned to not see closets even when they weren’t hidden. To not notice anyone else’s laundry even if it day in a pile in front of my bedroom … Continue reading ? How do you wish they were organized? How did people talk to you about this when you were young? How do you talk to young people about it now?

Didn’t get much work done today. I felt ready last night. Pretty low anxiety. But today it just wouldn’t go. There was fresh bullshit for my longstanding SR, and I just don’t have a 3rd week in me. I can do a day or two of dumb work anytime. I can do a week or even two of full-time chase-the-emergency reactive dumb work, with some recovery afterward. But I can’t do 3 weeks in a row without getting real salty. Without getting burnt out. I also didn’t feel great today, with a sore throat and temperature disregulation. So I didn’t go to the office at all, and mostly didn’t work. Which was mostly fine, other than the fact that I felt terrible about it and couldn’t commit to not working until like 2 PM. I did eventually mail my boss about it, but not until just before our afternoon meeting. Deciding earlier to not work would have made my day better.

I did gym with E, which went fairly well. My back has been feeling fine and today I did a bunch of back extensions without undue stress. Not quite at my full fighting strength but at like 80%. I did have a hard time after we had been going for a while. I feel bad for not noticing it things getting worse – I was checking – but I was probably too close to the edge to be safe before I even started. Things were fine after a few minutes, but I decided to skip the sauna because I was already off kilter for temp. Also because the Monday Sweater was in there already when I got done.

I’m making plans to do some emergency prep with E. And to help you (and probably me) feel like the end of classes doesn’t mean isolation. Made plans to finish up C’s robot class on Friday and have a game on Saturday. I keep hoping I can sell a game to V ³Or anyone – you’re all invited. Ping me for details or if you need transportation. V is just on my mind today, and I know is interested in role play games, so they get called out by name. – maybe Saturday schedule will make it more attractive.

I’m a little worried about V after a few days of silence. Probably things are tolerable – based on recent context it’s unlikely that things are good – but it’s hard to convince my anxiety of that. I hope you’re doing things and not just stuck in your head. If you are stuck consider inviting me in. I’m not afraid of what might lurk there, not like you are, and I want to help you face it.

M made it home today, and is on track for a few things that have been on my anxiety list. I hope all of that goes well. I’m not sure what summer plans you’ve got – or even if you’ve had a chance to make them yet – but I hope your adaptation to them goes well. And that you consider help with any parts that are stressful. I’d love to get back on a fun project with you, when you have time, instead of just deferred chores.

I poked J again today, since it’s been a while. I still have no concept of pacing there, but I’m trying the thing where I assume people don’t hate me talking to them, even if they are busy or unable to reply. My experience tells me this is wrong, that I’m wrong for wanting to talk. Even my current life often includes feedback about how less of me would be better. But I’m trying to understand that as perhaps technically inaccurate – that you feeling disengaged or discomforted or unable to speak doesn’t mean I did it to you, even if it seems that way to you in the moment. And I’m trying to believe that my expression isn’t a burden on people merely by its existence – that at least sometimes you want it or find it useful.

I started writing tonight thinking I’d finally get back to @BPS. And I did start ramping back up to that, pulling up my previous Screeds to see what I wanted to share and queuing up their videos. But I’m gonna try to take advantage of my (relatively) early night. I’m less worried about it now that I started the process anyway. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to put the pieces back together but I’m already having new good thinks and feels. I guess I was mostly worried that I’d waste the bubble of good attention I can get at the beginning of relationships ⁴Relationships of all types. Friends, colleagues, groups, employers, bus drivers, dogs, shoes, etc. My brain is really sure that I hit my peak value in any relationship about 3 weeks in, and that afterward decay is inevitable and irreversible and hastened by any further exposure to me.. But thinking about the process by which I intended to interact with them helps me believe it isn’t so time sensitive. That I’m not trying to capture my one moment of utility to them.

Just now I can see how 4-year-old me decided that I had used up my lifetime supply of care already. That everything going forward was charity from Mother, and that it would last longer if I tried not to bother her. That our relationship had started fine and got worse when she realized that I wasn’t really human. When she saw that I would have to be locked out on the porch to keep herself and the family safe from me. Which is a lot like this feeling where I imagine I get one shot at some good feels and then a lifetime of pain. Pain caused because I need too much, because I want attention ⁵We often accuse young people of doing things “for attention”, as though that indicates some failing on their part. It’s certainly possible for people to demand attention in a way that is dangerous or harmful, though that’s rarely what we mean when we say this about young people. Occasionally we mean “use your words”, which would be … Continue reading, because I’m not like other people. Because people wouldn’t hurt her – you – like I do. Wouldn’t make her push them away.

But she never liked me. Not enough. She didn’t try and then give up when she saw how terrible I was, she just never tried. She knew how to do some of the things I needed. She provided some of them to the Kids or to other people. But those things weren’t for me. I was sure it was because I ran through my lifetime supply of care in the first few weeks of my life. That somehow other people needed less.That every other person on the planet would have less to give me. Rationally I know that’s not true – it’s not how care works at all – but that time I spent in solitary confinment in a political prison in the 80s ⁶I’m told this does make me eligible to be president of South Africa. really fucked with my head.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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