Archive for May, 2008

they mostly don’t cry anymore

Written on May 20, 2008 by kat. 0 Comments

there is a creeping sadness, hard to identify at first, and it spreads blanket wings to cover them every night. they’ve tried labeling it anxiety, but it’s only anxiety when they don’t allow it its space. they’ve tried distraction, and guilt, and allowing it. it’s the last they return to. it’s a pearl jam kind of a night, an earnest screaming bitter sad. muted screaming. so they’ll play the music and that helps, that is right, but that’s not enough. they tried drawing, because they remember sometimes that’s accessible to more. a thousand times they’ve thought they should write, but words are at low tide.

they’re really just lost as always. wanting to do right. oh if right were always clear. it was when they believed in their mother’s point of view… but that is long gone.

there’s a small, shy sense that what they need is mourning. but it’s easier said than actually approached.

a legend in my own mind

Written on May 15, 2008 by olivia. 1 Comment

So. I do not fawn all over myself to “process”. Nor was I one of those muttering, “stupid twat,” and less polite things at everything the psychologist said today. (Really, it was best for all involved that the body was locked and no one could say those things out loud.) It’s difficult and pointless to speak literally and directly, but unfathomably, I am trying. Shall I curtsy for you, the ex-One (of course we are all ex- now) who made it through your obedience school? You can show me off to all your little friends – look how well-behaved! She is nearly human!

Maybe sarcasm comes too quickly. I am not writing only for you. (It galls me to admit I would ever do something even partially for the benefit of another person, but I suppose it is true. I am not writing just for myself.) I do have thoughts, I think. But I have to get at them in my own way.

I do not find solace in bluster, as I have mentioned, and I am not so foolish as to believe we are to be rewarded, as was intimated so long ago. I laugh with deliciously perverted bitterness that we ever would have believed anyone, anyway. That even now, we entertain the thought that they’d do anything with us other than throw us away, and lark of all larks, that they would elevate us in such a way. Use our considerable brainpower. Use our skills in coding and language; what else was it all ever for? For some, the knowledge is the end, but that is pretty patently absurd in the end. Knowledge is only useful insofar as it can be translated into – wait for it – power, of course.

I’m still being cryptic. I try to flat out say it but I am overwhelmed with gales of my own self-mocking laughter. Here it is: the man told us that we had a life plan, that he believed us worthy of an honor far higher than we could ever expect to be given: he believed that we could become an excellent programmer. He didn’t do anything as ridiculous as train us then; like the rigorous mind he was, he knew that a broader experience would be vital to our success.

<pauses to wipe tears of mirth from the corners of my eyes>

Yes, the going back was a requirement. (I don’t even know how many people agreed with this man; of course the alternate path, the one many times more likely, was to be the whore that we had already so handsomely proved ourselves to be, and the breeder that our mother could no longer be, as a washed up old cunt.) But everything was always a requirement. Can you imagine being given Choice? I’ll give all the whiny survivors that point – no, we never had any choice.

But choice or no choice, it is something we could hope to attain. And O, father, it really is a darkling plain, vast in every direction. Life is. Life without them, life with them. I still believe that they are gone forever, that we must die or pick up the pieces and move on. But the lilt of hope, thinking of the way that everything ends, everything changes, after the BA… oh, I am hilarious. Others, though I cannot speak for them, cling harder than I. In some lights it’s reasonable; it still could be that they were waiting all this time, that they will come and swoop us off our feet. How delightfully humiliating to be writing these things out for all to see. Humble must be the best flavor of pie.

And there is fear, too. Many do not want to go back, even with the wonderful, engaging prospect of shaping minds. They’re like puzzles. You need research. Coding skills do help, and knowledge in psychology or linguistics is really amazingly useful. Or so we were led to believe. I don’t have too much trouble believing that. And I weep a little for puzzles lost, for the lack of a path. But we lost it too long ago for me to crumple, as others have done.

The fear… you can count on their surprising you. This is a tier of the programming; who knows how it will play out? It’s not as well-grounded a tier but programming is programming. Ugh. I tire of this monologue.

But anyway, the real feeling is just a vast tiredness. We have to face the fact that we haven’t had any purpose in life for a very long time. Nothing will feel rewarding to us, not going back, not staying free. God, I haven’t the stomach for the staying free. Finally it is too much!

mostly because i don’t want to forget like always

Written on May 15, 2008 by beth and matt. 0 Comments

we had a tough session at therapy today. we had to leave early, because we were unable to talk or communicate (except, oddly, writing in spanish, which our therapist doesn’t understand. i actually think that is very interesting from a linguistic point of view, because second and third and so on language are totally stored in a different part of your brain than your first language.)

i feel tired and discouraged. and fake.

it is damn hard to open up to a therapist. it is so easy for their affect or their interpretations to feel wrong; trebly so if you can’t communicate. it can be so frustrating, and with little payoff. except we have to get through this shit eventually. that thought is tiring.

i think it’s extra hard to deal with the current crap in therapy because we realized it’s the ones of power who are having a lot of the feelings. it’s hard to talk about. i try so hard to tell, then am brought up short still by the fear, programming, admonitions. oh, god, this crap is old. i keep wanting to say that i’m tired because in a way it seems like the only thing that’s true. bone-weary.

i want to cry and cry, i want not to be alone. stupid fucking insecurities that k– has. it is so not fair that i should be deprived of half the group meetings for a third of a year now. i so wish i could just tell him to grow up, that i’m not going to jump him if he were to let me come back to group, that you can be really fucking sure i’ll keep my distance. we need to both be mature about this and understand that we both have a right to be there. and just like we can’t always be insulated from our triggers, we can’t always be insulated from each other. but he has to go through his own process, and there’s nothing i can do about it. i’m mad, but in the end i still am glad that he found a way to come to group at all, i still want him to have the support. i still care about him, though i’m mostly very very removed from that these days. i guess that’s a self-defense mechanism. anyway. i just didn’t want to whine about him without making it clear that i’m not a monster and i don’t think he’s one.

yeah, whatever. so i’m stuck here without group and who knows if i would have made very good use of my time, but i think it would be worth it just to be around people. it feels like i am gross, repellent. i need someone to tell me i’m not.

what is there even to say? there is certainly affect, but what does that mean? how do i explain things and should i allow myself to? we’re afraid we wouldn’t be believed anyhow.

but though the kids are scared, they are not deepest in. it is the ones of power that are home to this. and even when we can hear them, which is ever so faintly, it’s just a cacophony of contradictions.

our jaw ached and ached after the session. we were in a weird place, almost falling asleep, but with every muscle clenched, especially the jaw. i don’t know who was out, if it was a One or just someone they weren’t letting speak. i guess i shouldn’t talk in theys anymore.

i guess this is not my story and i should let some of the Ones write about it. but i don’t know if they will. i so want to move past everything that’s blocking us from doing well in school. yes, i’m selfish. i need to deal with this because i need this to be over.

i feel too, because once it clicked that it was them and we tried to listen to them inside, the melancholy steeped us in itself. the tired spread across all our limbs. i am getting sleep again just writing about it. damn. it’s funny, i so never noticed the sleepiness being a self-defense thing in therapy before, but i wonder if i was blind or what. because it’s so obvious. and it’s really hard to push past. i need to figure that out.

ok really not my story to tell. blagh.

nothing

Written on May 11, 2008 by pumpkins and sg. 1 Comment

even if we are trying for a stronger voice lately we still have all our old voices on this journal too ok? kids still get to write here. i’m kinda reassuring myself here. it is a hard day. panicky panicky, and casting around trying to find a way to blame or not blame ourselves for it.

it’s our fault for thinking about x or y.

it’s not our fault, there is no should.

we must be lying about social anxiety because we had a really good time with friends last night, and we didn’t know them very well. (sometimes we littles got to come out and wave to tiny edges and it was a Secret to everyone. it was awesome.)

(also, when ej was reassuring us that we were doing fine and everyone didn’t hate us, we were refuting their logic because, you know, we were casting about for ways that we were bad. or whatever. but then it went on a little too long and someone else in the room said, “ohmigod, you guys are having the nerdiest fight.” i think it was because i said “but so that means it doesn’t follow!” because you know how good self-hate is at poking supposed holes in others’ logic. and it came right at a lull in the conversation, it was so weird. but i just think it doesn’t really get cooler than having someone you just met telling you that you’re nerdy.)

or maybe our social anxiety isn’t real because we read other blogs and such and for every ten times we seriously consider commenting we actually Do comment. (the other times we end up deciding that what we have to say is stupid and we have no right to occupy space anyway.)

but ok so there’s just all of us here, all of us, & we want to be good, & we’re still just trying to live, & it’s really REALLY good we are going to withdraw this quarter.

it’s easy to get down on ourselves for flailing (i mean, we’re dropping the classes so we don’t HAVE to flail, right?) we have so much less to do now and we can’t even do that and it’s Scary that aeron did the laundry and the clothes didn’t get dry so they are spread out all over our bed and it’s Scary!!!!!

we are kind of triggered by wet clothes, i think. i know that’s a bad thing to say but we just wish he had dried them twice, it wouldn’t have been that horribly expensive, it would be worth it.

laundry IS pretty expensive though. we should be good. we are very bad sometimes. just all empty. it is a crap day and we wish we had library books because we just cannot handle the world at all. there’s some books indigo lent us but for some reason we feel overwhelmed to start them.

but yeah. i don’t know. yesterday started out difficultly but then it turned really good, even though we did have a mini-panic attack in old navy and didn’t even get to look at clothes. we told aeron about the socializing and he was sad and maybe kinda mad that we didn’t invite him. but i didn’t think he liked that many people in a room (with aeron there would have been six people, one of whom he never met and two of whom he only met very briefly). we don’t like thinking about yesterday though because we will start to worry that we were bad or too effusive or clearly faking being fun & cool & comfortable. that everyone will hate us. but ej said it was ok, that nobody hated us and people actually liked us.

we shouldn’t have mentioned how we are awkward. we always take refuge in meta but i think normal people really don’t like that. or get uncomfortable or something. even though everyone was very nice.

it’s really really really hard to keep ourselves fed and nothing sounds good and everything is overwhelming anyway and it just sucks. we can’t go to the store today, but we really need to. but maybe tomorrow. we also found a library book that didn’t get returned with the others because it fell behind a box. and we checked and it was due yesterday. we should really walk to the library and return it, but it is too much, especially when there are no books there waiting for Us! we really need some good kid books because the computer keeps giving us a headache and we really need retreat.

i’m sorry for whining so much and just being stupid. it’s not like we’re having memories or anything to justify having a hard time. but it’s just… hard anyway. we are little and scared and sometimes aeron scares us but we feel so guilty to be that way and he just acts so surprised and dismayed when we let on that we’re scared of him.

we already took a bath today but we like the cave of the tub. we don’t want to get wet again though and it’s too uncomfortable without water. oh well! we will just have to be good and make ourselves take the clothes off the bed then maybe we can hide.

edges hid good in their flickr-twitter today! it was awesome!

sorry we don’t have anything real to say like with a point like the bigs. just wanted to say that we are here too and that things aren’t so great.

multiple forever

Written on May 11, 2008 by matt. 3 Comments

i’ve been working my way through the 37th disability blog carnival over the past few days, and i keep being surprised at what solace it gives me. after all, i am not real, so why should i identify so strongly, why should i be comforted and inspired by their words? i have no right, i am not real, this is another of myriad’s silly fixations – so say the voices. and yes, i could read as an ally even if/though i were not disabled. and i do identify as an ally, because i am able-bodied and more and more aware of that. but i don’t feel like an outsider when i read these blogs. i feel mad at myself because maybe i should feel like an outsider, maybe i have no right, but mostly i feel recognition and relief. (and some frustration with society.)

i think part of what i get from it is a sense of hope and more than anything of being deserving, human, that is less common in survivor communities. dp was a multiple community where people were able to self-advocate pretty strongly, but then at dp lots of people looked down on us non-functional multiples. it’s the pride in self coupled with unapologetically needing accommodation that is new to me.

i think another thing i take from this reading is being ok with how i am now. life with a “curable” psychiatric diagnosis can be an endless trip on a hamster wheel, feeling obligated to return to functionality and to do so yesterday! striving so hard to live whatever constitutes a “normal” life that we can’t actually get any better, or any closer to being functional. at best, we relax our timeline, give ourselves compassion for not being quick, but still keep our eye always on that goalpost.

what if it was ok never to be “normal”? what if i could stop trying so damn hard and using my energy on, say, buying something in a store (an act which hugely triggers my social anxiety)? what if it was ok that i have that functional limitation, and i could structure my life in such a way that people who don’t have such problems with it help me out? (more or less, that’s how i am now, but i often go hungry if i am by myself and having a day out in public. because there is no one to help and i just can’t.) seriously, what if it was all ok, and not just ok but permanently ok?

wow, even the word permanent scares us. not because of implications in our life, but because we are afraid of everyone jumping down our throat telling us not to limit ourselves. even sharon, our therapist, would say that we should not think that way. but the idea is actually the opposite of limiting. after all, am i so far from the life i want to be leading? does my ssi mean that i must be miserable and working tirelessly to fix myself?

i mean, i still want to get better, and i’m still working in therapy. and without therapy i would spiral into crisis even now, so it’s important to maintain the support. and i do hope that maybe i’ll be able to improve my level of functioning. but i want to do it for me. i want to work on the things that matter to me, knowing i’ll never be completely free of anxiety or depression or having people who can’t act like an adult out in public. i want to forgive myself for being gentle forever.

wow, i’m scared writing these words though. afraid they’ll be taken wrong, or maybe right. it’s supposed to be the height of selfishness to let oneself be taken care of. to be ok with not shopping, for example, makes me dependent on others. i don’t know. i honestly don’t, but reading these blogs helps me step sideways out from under shame just a little bit.

even for my functional limitations, i shouldcould not be ashamed.

reality

Written on May 9, 2008 by matt. 1 Comment

it’s hard, to be moving from the ways that i’m sick to the ways that society is sick. as i learn to treat myself gently, i realize that i have come out ahead of the curve. that many, most would not approve of this gentleness. that people look at you weird when you have no good answer to, “what do you do?” or if you take one class, you must have a job. i am outside the bounds, i am not an obedient drone, i learn to navigate on my own terms, my own limitations, because i have no choice.

it’s easier to blame yourself. when you are always the one in your way, there is some hope for change. and of course i’m still working in therapy and i’m still working towards changing for the better; my landscape is not entirely new. the personal is political, but when you can encapsulate the tension all inside you, it really doesn’t matter about the bigger picture.

school is set up to be done as quickly as possible. financial aid wants to make sure you know you are a burden and the faster you’re out the sooner you’re off their hands. like it is unacceptable and shaming that they help you pay for school. (but financial aid doesn’t keep you anywhere near as poor as ssi… they’re pretty good at making their value judgments clear!) and so i try valiantly, i try to find a way to be inside the system, i push myself to the absolute limit with coursework. if i fail, i have to justify myself to them. in writing my letter for a medical withdrawal this quarter, i have to come up with something that wasn’t foreseeable, some tangible decompensation that is externally determinable. because, of course, i should have known. i should have managed my coursework to meet the needs of my disability – never mind that i can’t get financial aid if i take less than six credits, that the program i’m in is designed to be done in a year and even stretching it to a year and a half makes the experience strange, that i can’t see into the future, that we are given so little information about the demands of the course load before we are immersed in the classes, never mind that i was pushing and pushing myself so that i could conform to THEIR standard, which is to take two classes at bare, bare, bare minimum. no, there’s no room for any of that.

i’m not acceptable. lots of people would say i am an inexcusable drain on government resources. people who don’t even consider themselves conservative. i am outside of what the vast majority of society can accept. and i try so hard to be something they can accept, approval feels so damn good like sun on my face, but of course that is what unbalances me, what drives me straight into crisis.

i can do this life – but only on my terms. i now wonder to myself if there really is such a thing as lazy. i know that attention-seeking behavior never comes without cause, even if it is attention-seeking. i know that i would not do these things to myself out of some strange desire to be taken care of, to be different, to lounge about all day on someone else’s dollar.  it is as simple as that – everything is valid. there are so many levels of belief, and i still have to soak up that idea so much deeper – everything has a real cause, everything is real, everything is valid, everything points somewhere. i don’t have any motivation to fake anything, and even if i was faking something, i would still need help and support. i mean, why would someone fake mental illness? there’s always a reason and there’s no such thing as an invalid reason.

and so with these attitudes i have to come out of my comfortable shell where i could believe in change because it was under my control. the problem is not all me. the problem is trying to exist in a world that clearly does not want to accept the existence of people like me. heck, it’s a feeling i have experienced before, as a lefty! supposedly everything is supposed to be available for left-handed people, but the reality of life is that i had to learn to do a lot of things with my right hand. using a mouse, for example, and that means my mouse movements are even less precise than they need to be! when doing image editing, that is a real pain. but i can’t use a left-handed mouse, because i learned to accommodate the world. it would be very hard to re-learn how to use a mouse. plus, they’re often more expensive.

these are the sorts of things i find myself wanting to say, lately. this is the kind of journal i wanted to move towards. but i’m still isolated, anxious, afraid to connect myself to the blogs that inspire me. these are words that are worth hearing, maybe… but of course i am full of self-doubt. oh well!

heh

Written on May 9, 2008 by matt. 0 Comments

i had a weird encounter yesterday morning – a detective was asking questions to everyone in our building because the address was involved in an identity theft case. he asked lots of random questions about our names and jobs and such. he was actually fairly nice, but of course it’s always scary to have a cop in your apartment! he decided aeron and i were a straight couple… when we said we had psychiatric disabilities he said, “oh, you don’t look psychiatric,” which is kind of priceless really. as a line.

he also was talking about kids and said, “when you get married, you’ll see how expensive they are.” wow, man, surreal!

but we didn’t freak out and we’re going to get a shredder, and all in all we came through pretty much unscathed. i feel very lucky – i fell into a neat privileged box in his head and i did not get triggered. maybe he would have been nice to anyone, but there’s a good chance he was nice because we fell into that – white, straight, middle-class – category for him. and i’m also lucky in not getting triggered – i keep thinking about how much that would have sucked and been big and scary if we were indigo. we are very fortunate!

lack of

Written on May 7, 2008 by jo/e. 1 Comment

day after day, i read my feeds, which includes a growing collection of politically-focused blogs, and feel inspired to write. and then i come back here and realize i don’t have anything to write about. except maybe the fact that i have nothing to write about, which is once again the only thing i can think of to say.

i just know i could have a worthwhile voice if i tried. my experience is unique and full of opportunities for documentation. so why am i so clueless and halting?

so easy to fall

Written on May 6, 2008 by littles. 1 Comment

we are asking for room. lost, lost, so easy to get lost. we need room, but it is not given. maybe it is no one’s to give. we wrested time away – but time is not enough. it is so easy to tip the balance, even when you’re trying. there is no room for us. the head hurts – the body hurts – life is suddenly very pale and faded. we can’t make it. we won’t let them make it, because we can’t breathe and for so long. i am sorry but we just couldn’t make it this time. we should have rested. it is hard and scary to get… anywhere. words are nothing but silence is less. there is no sense or anything. there’s lots of defeat but we didn’t mean to make it feel that way. we want it to be ok too. but it wasn’t.

as long as we don’t base our self-worth on our functionality, we can come back to ok. right? we still have our life, right?

(in case you couldn’t tell, we need to withdraw this quarter. we appreciate our friends right now… feeling very low and failed.)

continuing towards blogdom?

Written on May 3, 2008 by jo/e and matt. 3 Comments

in recent months, though not for the first time in my life, i’ve been thinking about the intersection of myself with that nebulous concept of “ally.” how do my stigmatized identities intersect with my privileged identities? why is this such a scary idea for me to ruminate on, and if i’m scared even though i’m fairly educated about some issues of privilege, then how can i expect any mainstream people to be sympathetic to my own causes? i’m not necessarily feeling articulate, but maybe my thoughts bear scribbling down anyhow.

my social anxiety and self esteem issues certainly play a part in my fear – i am so afraid of misstepping that i make the worse mistake of not stepping at all, i think, sometimes. and then again, i have so little energy and need to put so much of it into my own healing. but more and more, i’ve been thinking about it. i think my heart is sometimes stricken with terror when i realize that more and more, i am being seen by people in public as a white male, and have those privileges accorded to me whether i like it or not. even (gasp) a straight white male – let’s face it, i’m not that damn femmey. and i am able-bodied and my disability is invisible (though i read some very interesting stuff on the visibility of disabilities today, and who is responsible for noticing them), so i am falling more and more into a super-privileged category in many, many contexts. honestly that freaks me the fuck out, but at least it lights a fire under my ass with this whole issue of how to be an ally!

i think there’s something crucial for me to accept – i have to make mistakes and be educated in order to reach any kind of responsibility or sensitivity. oh damn, that issue again! i fucking hate failing. and i am not saying that the responsibility is on other people to correct me – but if i don’t move, i can’t get anywhere. i’ve been getting from the library a lot of novels that deal with issues of privilege, but they are hard to search for. young adult novels are best because we often don’t have that much concentration (and anyway i think the readers of fiction in my system are mostly pre-teens anyhow.)

yes, responsibility is on me. that’s probably the source of part of the fear. but being frank about my wish to be supportive and sensitive is a start, right? what does being an ally even mean? i know it’s more than refraining from being offensive. but what options are open to me, particularly with my own disability? blah, i dunno, i’m making a mess of this journal entry because it is so rare that i start writing with a theme in mind. but i’ve definitely been thinking lately about how to make this journal/blog more like some of the ones i read (the ones of strangers that i read because i admire, not my friends’.) anyway.

i had a good conversation a few weeks ago with indigo about disabled and fat issues. they made a lot of good points; i don’t think i mostly even considered the huge and real stigma that fat people have to deal with and that people seem to think they have a right to judge and ostracize. like size is different from issues like race or sex – not that i’m saying there isn’t rampant racism and sexism, but it is definitely more socially acceptable to be open about one’s sizeism, and that is fucked up. treating fat people with respect has nothing to do with “ignoring the health issues.”

i think i’ve mostly been especially considering my status as an ally for disabled people and a disabled person, and realizing that the two do not preclude each other at all. most of my friends are physically quite limited right now – aeron with the arthritis in his hips, indigo and ej with the fibro, everywhere around me i realize that i’m really fucking privileged in that i can move around how i want to, i get to experience the endorphins of exercise without incurring costs later. i get to take the stairs to the fourth or sixth floor, it is not a virtue. i love my body more and more as it becomes more masculine, i love the way my muscles feel. and i am accorded privilege and even maybe virtue for being relatively “in shape”, and that’s kinda fucked. i dunno.

so there’s all of that, but then i am a disabled person. honestly i’m a fairly severely disabled person. the anxiety and the depression and the myriad of triggers (heh) constrain my life a million ways on an hourly basis. i’ve gotten pretty far, but as i struggle with my schoolwork this week i realize i still have so far to go. i realized that i really really need to be taking one class at a time, but financial aid and the school really don’t like for you to do that. and that isn’t fair, and that is a way that i experience prejudice. i’ve got to get it to work somehow though if i’m supposed to get through grad school. sometimes i think it’s ridiculous to think i’ll ever get back to work. i’m preparing for this career, but it’s one that pretty much just has full-time jobs available… how the hell am i ever going to do that? what is the point?

i skip class because my world inside is melting and boiling and i wouldn’t be able to hear a damn word; but i hate myself for it like i’m skipping the way many college students do, because i want to and because i can.

i am really, truly both a person with a disability and an ally to people that are not able-bodied, or that have different functional limitations than i do. i think because of all the ways disability and ableism touches my life, this is an area of allyhood that i’m particularly fascinated and concerned with.

i’m a white person too, and sometimes i feel so stupid and helpless to overcome that. i don’t know what i should do, i’ve been raised by liberals in perfect pasty-white environments, i feel isolated and stuck and just really helpless. it’s my responsibility to fight back, but what can i do? i can’t volunteer or go to protests. i challenged my ex-girlfriend’s racist grandfather, stormed out of the restaurant when he wouldn’t back down, and got vilified by that family, but that was years ago. generally my life doesn’t touch any ways i feel like i could make a difference at all. i know that’s a cop out, but my social anxiety is real too, and i just don’t know what to do.

and now i’m going to get male privilege, particularly when i stop being ambiguous. i hope i’m in a unique position to fight that, having been raised female. but i don’t want to blind my eyes to something just because i wasn’t socialized to the privilege i will be getting. i guess i’ll cross that bridge when i come to it. luckily i have a lot of female and genderqueer friends to help me with that one.

i’m no closer to any kind of a point than when i started. i’ve probably procrastinated as much as i can stand to on my linguistics paper. (and it should be so fun! i’m writing about queerly phrased which was just awesome to read, especially some of the articles. and there was actually one about queer trans people – particularly giving nod to the difficulties faced by gay/bi ftms – woohoo!) so i guess i should go back to that.