Archive for the 'islanders' Category

i’m not apologizing for whining

Written on May 13, 2012 by matt. 0 Comments

lately, i’ve been semi-obsessed with thoughts of being kept in a cage or closet or some other confined space. and i feel so stupid, because i know exactly why i might have this… interest. because it was done to me so much growing up. probably for most people that means they wouldn’t go there with me. or it’s bad that i go there. i don’t know. i mean, i know everything i like sexually is from my abuse. our therapist seemed upset to hear us say so. but what can we do? we’ve known that for a long time.

but i guess, i guess mostly we have liked things that the people who only knew us in one context did to us. strangers, for some intents and purposes. maybe that makes it less shameful? but god, my mom did that to me. (i’ve said worse on this journal, but suddenly scared about saying that much. oh well. my bridges are already burnt there, right?) i feel like i must be so bad and sick to want something that happened from my mom. i think it happened from others too. but the memories we have worked with in therapy were of her leaving us there. so it’s so wrong. like we want our mom. ugh. i feel so sick thinking of that. but i know shame is my heritage, and it’ll be there around anything, sometimes thicker than other times, but never actually meaning that i am truly a bad or sick person.

some people would think the things i want are sick, i guess.

oh, but i want them. i guess i was writing here because there isn’t really an outlet. no one i know who is safe would do that to me/for me. i don’t know how to find these things. my social anxiety just kicks my ass when it comes to meeting anyone new for any reason. i don’t know how i’ve done it, before! well. i guess i met people from online, but i don’t even have an online presence anymore. and the anxiety grew like ivy to cover up the tracks i don’t use. i don’t know. it’s not impossible. but it seems and feels impossible to find people with the right kinks. i know part of that is the programming, defeating me before i can get started. but ugh, ugh.

i saw an image somewhere of a slave’s ‘bed’ – a cozy nest-looking thing inside a large cage. i felt so envious. i don’t know why i’m so obsessed lately. i mean, it would be primarily boring. why would i even want it? besides the obvious.

the ones in us who know how to get things can’t work with our new body. it’s tough, because they’re not really boys, so meeting gay boys seems dishonest somehow. i mean, the ones who would even be okay with a trans man. i know there are others like me, with broader sexualities. there’s just such a wall.

i could be such fun for someone. there are so many things i want and would try and could do. but the only confinement i get to have is from my anxiety. and that is not any fun at all.

your commute is not important to me

Written on April 11, 2012 by chris and matt. 0 Comments

this morning on my way to work, a car turned left directly into an ambulance’s path. sirens, lights, etc. it started from a stopped position and turned left when the light changed, with apparently no investigation of the sirens (or maybe they just didn’t care?) i got so angry. it felt like a key.

yesterday i noticed my anger joylessly, fought with my anger, had a stormy night filled with drinking and playing computer games and jerking off, anything to get away from myself. i always hate to see my anger arrive. i never greet it with love or respect. but i do know this about myself, and try to come around. when i can. it is just so hard, so unwelcome. today i feel resentful of everything. angry because of too much oversight at work. furious at thoughtless, selfish, indifferent commuters. angry that i have to feel anger. angry at the book i’m reading and its stupid fucking ableism. angry because of how fucking hard life is with disabilities, and angry that i feel guilty for them. every fucking day. i could go on and on.

i’m trying to write this in between working. my writing probably suffers for it. everything seems disjointed that way, now, but saying anything at all is still something.

so feeling angry at the car (i believe it was a bmfuckingw) that ignored the ambulance, i tried to realize that my anger has a source. i had tried to identify it but just felt angry, just resentful, just angry at everything. i think sometimes when i don’t know why i’m angry it’s because the reason is not deemed acceptable or worthy.  i am so angry at the people with the power, for whom everything is easy but they demand to be easier, who resent even us saying that they are in power, they want everything. freedom without responsibility, which is what they say that anarchy is. (i’m stealing that idea from a talk i watched with margaret killjoy and ursula k leguin.) i’m angry at people who think they are more important than other people.

driving, i think a lot of that becomes clearer. though why in a car more than a scooter, i’m not sure. i guess the scooter occupies my mind more, and somehow it’s easier to think i’m at fault.

speaking of which, i’m fucking heartsick that my scooter is dead and i don’t have the will to revive it. it may only need a jump-start. but i don’t know who to call or how to proceed. meanwhile spring sets in, and the weather is perfectly nice, and it is ridiculous for me to be driving a car around. i’m angry about that, too. i hate anger. it makes me feel so impotent. it shuts me down, blocks all possible action. i know it is foolish and impotent to be angry at my anger. (btw it’s not just mine those people have fucking names.) i know that the key in my healing is to unravel and experience this anger. fuck, that makes me pissed.

working is difficult, concentrating is difficult. it feels like this impotence can defeat me.

mother, i am not less important than you. you are very small-minded and i am furious at you.   … right?

there are no magic words. those words were in my head and i thought i’d get credit if i said them. i guess that was foolish. there is no such thing as credit. i want this to work its way out of me, i can’t work, i can’t think, i want to be dead.

your commute is not important to me

Written on April 11, 2012 by chris and matt. 0 Comments

this morning on my way to work, a car turned left directly into an ambulance’s path. sirens, lights, etc. it started from a stopped position and turned left when the light changed, with apparently no investigation of the sirens (or maybe they just didn’t care?) i got so angry. it felt like a key.

yesterday i noticed my anger joylessly, fought with my anger, had a stormy night filled with drinking and playing computer games and jerking off, anything to get away from myself. i always hate to see my anger arrive. i never greet it with love or respect. but i do know this about myself, and try to come around. when i can. it is just so hard, so unwelcome. today i feel resentful of everything. angry because of too much oversight at work. furious at thoughtless, selfish, indifferent commuters. angry that i have to feel anger. angry at the book i’m reading and its stupid fucking ableism. angry because of how fucking hard life is with disabilities, and angry that i feel guilty for them. every fucking day. i could go on and on.

i’m trying to write this in between working. my writing probably suffers for it. everything seems disjointed that way, now, but saying anything at all is still something.

so feeling angry at the car (i believe it was a bmfuckingw) that ignored the ambulance, i tried to realize that my anger has a source. i had tried to identify it but just felt angry, just resentful, just angry at everything. i think sometimes when i don’t know why i’m angry it’s because the reason is not deemed acceptable or worthy.  i am so angry at the people with the power, for whom everything is easy but they demand to be easier, who resent even us saying that they are in power, they want everything. freedom without responsibility, which is what they say that anarchy is. (i’m stealing that idea from a talk i watched with margaret killjoy and ursula k leguin.) i’m angry at people who think they are more important than other people.

driving, i think a lot of that becomes clearer. though why in a car more than a scooter, i’m not sure. i guess the scooter occupies my mind more, and somehow it’s easier to think i’m at fault.

speaking of which, i’m fucking heartsick that my scooter is dead and i don’t have the will to revive it. it may only need a jump-start. but i don’t know who to call or how to proceed. meanwhile spring sets in, and the weather is perfectly nice, and it is ridiculous for me to be driving a car around. i’m angry about that, too. i hate anger. it makes me feel so impotent. it shuts me down, blocks all possible action. i know it is foolish and impotent to be angry at my anger. (btw it’s not just mine those people have fucking names.) i know that the key in my healing is to unravel and experience this anger. fuck, that makes me pissed.

working is difficult, concentrating is difficult. it feels like this impotence can defeat me.

mother, i am not less important than you. you are very small-minded and i am furious at you.   … right?

there are no magic words. those words were in my head and i thought i’d get credit if i said them. i guess that was foolish. there is no such thing as credit. i want this to work its way out of me, i can’t work, i can’t think, i want to be dead.

you’d waste it

Written on January 7, 2012 by matt. 0 Comments

i feel like i’m missing the mark, lately. like when i do the work to stay afloat, to go to work, i miss the chance to stay with my emotions. no matter how consciously i try to stay open. i know this is a common point of view, and that my best emotional work has all been done in periods when it feels like i’m moving nothing. i can think of things to point to that represent progress. doing trauma work almost every week, this stupid crap with the cages and the bondage and the punishments has been slowly working its way through my guts. it is so hard to talk about to anyone, but i manage to get some things said, not much, nothing like what we experience inside. everything seems to lay together like it was mortared, too, because outside of these memories we have been working on opening to our anger, particularly to our “unjustified” anger, the kind that is petty and unreasonable and stubborn. in some way, stubbornness is just a refusal to step outside one’s own perspective.

it’s relatively easy to admit to the pettiness in the abstract, to say without examples how unreasonable and frustrating we find ourselves, how exacting, how unacceptable, how angry, how irritated; but in the concrete, it stays thick and stuck, tarred to our inside. in the first place it’s nearly invisible to the fronts, and/because it is … just… it’s just not okay. often i can’t even identify what the anger pretends to be about, but it still holds someone responsible, holds a hostage. i know that my attitude is a problem and gets in the way, i know that i have to find a way to open to these feelings more. but it overwhelms me.  after all, the resistance to the anger is as important as the anger, as therapeutic to work with. but the irritation gets all over everything. it’s hard to concede things. like that you can be mad at someone and not want them to change, not want them to have done anything differently. when others are angry at us, we always react to them as if they were expecting us to change.

oh, writing this makes me sick, everything makes me lost, and the sound left ringing in my ears is just “waste, waste, waste”. wasting time, wasting life, wasting energy, a waste of a person.

speaking of which, we told our therapist about our recurrent thought that has been coming up lately, which is the idea that we are too broken to be revived or saved. or even just that we are so broken, and it takes so much work to do the smallest things, that we should just die and let someone else have our place. we just need to work so much harder for everything. of course that is crazy logic, it is logic that leads to slaughter and eugenics and perpetuates the trauma that broke us in the first place. but while we don’t agree with it for anyone else, for ourselves we just keep thinking it. we just need to scrap it and start over. it is a bust. but anyway, we told our therapist about this, and she said we were angry. and it hit like a… not a *ton* of bricks but a good amount, at least one brick. i don’t even know how to process it. it’s just an interesting thought.

an iota of peace

Written on December 4, 2011 by matt. 0 Comments

feeling grateful and gracious today. i don’t have much to say but i want to say it anyhow. had another good meditation today, not like yesterday, but it helped us be present to our headache. which doesn’t sound fun, it didn’t decrease the pain (in fact our awareness of the pain is greater) but we feel so much more okay with it. and we felt a really cool sense of faith in ourselves. to ourselves. none of this language is quite right. a sense of being on ground, of being on a path, of pride in ourselves and peace. not overwhelmingly, but the feelings are there. and it is a relief.

we have been trying to listen more without shooting down ideas about what people want to eat. which we did try to do before, so i don’t know what shifted, but we realized that people just wanted corn chips yesterday and so we got some, and some salsa. today we are drinking pumpkin eggnog and eating cinnamon-bread toast.

a little bit proud of this

Written on December 3, 2011 by beth and matt. 0 Comments

i did three guided meditation tracks this morning. i find myself struggling with how to talk about it and realizing how much shame i have over various things to do with it. but anyway, i am trying to follow the program week by week in this book, “the mindful way through depression.” i feel so stupid talking about it, even to my therapist. but what is really wrong with it? so after the short standing yoga meditation and the longer sitting meditation, i felt unhurried in my path back to ‘ordinary’ consciousness. i stretched a very little, and had feelings of great compassion. a sense of being okay the way we are. not that we are totally okay with ourselves but that it could be a possibility. like giving ourselves permission to be okay with ourselves could happen in this lifetime.

with the compassion around, i felt moved to hold, touch, and otherwise be aware of my little statue of kwan yin that i keep just under my monitor. i keep a few stones and crystals there too. it’s a super mini altar that would fit in the palm of my hand. it just occurred to me that i have three green stones – i have always felt affiliated with green rock. and that reminds me of the three treasures from the tao – mercy, moderation, and modesty, as ursula leguin puts them; kindness, restraint, and balance, you could say, though that last is really just my interpretation. anyway i could go on about my interpretation but that’s not what i was trying to talk about!

being in touch with kwan yin, different people in our system felt united (i could crudely say ‘the taoists and the pagans’ but of course that is a strange separation and oversimplification) in the bath of compassion. we had a young one come out in therapy on thursday, who had a memory from about 4 of being tied and left alone in a cold barn with a collar and leash; and we have been trying to hold them in awareness and send them warmth and company as best we can. so we felt like going down to the place under the well and just doing the best we could do be with the compassion and with the insider both at the same time. and we cried a little. then i felt i had to write it down, to acknowledge it or cement it or something.

this memory is a hard one. i think it pre-dates the cages; i think the idea for the cages grew out of the being tied. and our impulse is of course towards denial and minimization. but we can tell from many little things that it is real. it is hard to say that or believe that, but we have been as best we can. and then, somehow we are also not so inclined to minimize it this time. there is deep shame, it is hard to talk about; but there is also a huge grief for the tiny, confused, abandoned, chilled-to-the-bone child that we were.

this is very hard to say and we are hurting, so we will stop.

a little bit proud of this

Written on December 3, 2011 by beth and matt. 0 Comments

i did three guided meditation tracks this morning. i find myself struggling with how to talk about it and realizing how much shame i have over various things to do with it. but anyway, i am trying to follow the program week by week in this book, “the mindful way through depression.” i feel so stupid talking about it, even to my therapist. but what is really wrong with it? so after the short standing yoga meditation and the longer sitting meditation, i felt unhurried in my path back to ‘ordinary’ consciousness. i stretched a very little, and had feelings of great compassion. a sense of being okay the way we are. not that we are totally okay with ourselves but that it could be a possibility. like giving ourselves permission to be okay with ourselves could happen in this lifetime.

with the compassion around, i felt moved to hold, touch, and otherwise be aware of my little statue of kwan yin that i keep just under my monitor. i keep a few stones and crystals there too. it’s a super mini altar that would fit in the palm of my hand. it just occurred to me that i have three green stones – i have always felt affiliated with green rock. and that reminds me of the three treasures from the tao – mercy, moderation, and modesty, as ursula leguin puts them; kindness, restraint, and balance, you could say, though that last is really just my interpretation. anyway i could go on about my interpretation but that’s not what i was trying to talk about!

being in touch with kwan yin, different people in our system felt united (i could crudely say ‘the taoists and the pagans’ but of course that is a strange separation and oversimplification) in the bath of compassion. we had a young one come out in therapy on thursday, who had a memory from about 4 of being tied and left alone in a cold barn with a collar and leash; and we have been trying to hold them in awareness and send them warmth and company as best we can. so we felt like going down to the place under the well and just doing the best we could do be with the compassion and with the insider both at the same time. and we cried a little. then i felt i had to write it down, to acknowledge it or cement it or something.

this memory is a hard one. i think it pre-dates the cages; i think the idea for the cages grew out of the being tied. and our impulse is of course towards denial and minimization. but we can tell from many little things that it is real. it is hard to say that or believe that, but we have been as best we can. and then, somehow we are also not so inclined to minimize it this time. there is deep shame, it is hard to talk about; but there is also a huge grief for the tiny, confused, abandoned, chilled-to-the-bone child that we were.

this is very hard to say and we are hurting, so we will stop.

swooping night

Written on November 25, 2011 by matt. 1 Comment

with the suddenness of a summer storm, i am awash in panic and dread. i was doing ok. i’ve been slowing cleaning my apartment, trying not to do too much, and playing the sims. i thought we were very good company for ourselves. but now we are sad and lonely, surrounded by void, filled with empty (my initials are MT… random fact). it feels like there is something terribly wrong and we don’t have a chance of making it better because we don’t know what it is. our body hurts. i guess i feel restless. earlier today we thought perhaps we could make it over to qfc (which is literally next door) and buy something to make something… like… i dunno, cookies or something.  we’re feeling more homey. but every time we think about it we get too scared.

some well has run low in me. i have nothing to hold on to. i am so oriented to other people. i want to feel complete in myself. to come to others overflowing, not with a need for them to fill. i don’t know what i want, i don’t know anything, but i know that i am terrified and i am never going to get it. there is nothing to write; why am i writing? i can’t say what i want. i need to say something. i can’t, i don’t know what it is. nothing will fill me. my life is meaningless. nothing good can happen again. i am alone forever. alone alone alone.

i know i need to be sad. i know i need to find some ground to stand on. i want to have company, to find approval in others’ eyes, to not feel empty inside. i have no ability to stick with things. i keep wandering around, and seeing things makes me feel like i want to do them. guitar, doodles, laptop, whatever. but that doesn’t come with energy or resolve. i don’t know where to go with myself. i am trapped. i am stupid. my head aches. i want to cry.

nothing to say but what a day

Written on November 17, 2011 by chris and matt. 0 Comments

intense discomfort. my face and neck and collarbone area are itching and burning and crawling today, no matter what clothes i change to (if the clothes are warm enough anyway). i want to know what that’s about but i don’t want to push or act like i deserve an answer. i am aware of it, i suffer for it, i want to make room for it. somehow none of this is convincing me of anything. big surprise.. sometimes i don’t know how to help. i want to be there for others inside but everything i do feels like it is not honoring them somehow. my system has a history of this. much as i hate to say it, some of us have the intuition that taking a parenting role might be more helpful than trying to just give them free rein. like getting out of their way is not being there for them. this makes me uncomfortable and scared.

i couldn’t get much work done today because of a server being down, and i feel like a failure. i am always more stressed out by work the less there is for me to do (that i know how to do and can proceed on).

thinking of making a big purchase that i feel irritable and anxious about. too much work required. i want to get to the point where it’s over.

i hate this country. i like this city more or less. if the west coast were its own country, i wonder how much more like europe we’d be… blah blah blah i don’t know what i’m saying.

nothing is ok. everything sucks. i hate depression. i hate how unshakable depression is, especially in the winter.

nothing to say but what a day

Written on November 17, 2011 by chris and matt. 0 Comments

intense discomfort. my face and neck and collarbone area are itching and burning and crawling today, no matter what clothes i change to (if the clothes are warm enough anyway). i want to know what that’s about but i don’t want to push or act like i deserve an answer. i am aware of it, i suffer for it, i want to make room for it. somehow none of this is convincing me of anything. big surprise.. sometimes i don’t know how to help. i want to be there for others inside but everything i do feels like it is not honoring them somehow. my system has a history of this. much as i hate to say it, some of us have the intuition that taking a parenting role might be more helpful than trying to just give them free rein. like getting out of their way is not being there for them. this makes me uncomfortable and scared.

i couldn’t get much work done today because of a server being down, and i feel like a failure. i am always more stressed out by work the less there is for me to do (that i know how to do and can proceed on).

thinking of making a big purchase that i feel irritable and anxious about. too much work required. i want to get to the point where it’s over.

i hate this country. i like this city more or less. if the west coast were its own country, i wonder how much more like europe we’d be… blah blah blah i don’t know what i’m saying.

nothing is ok. everything sucks. i hate depression. i hate how unshakable depression is, especially in the winter.