mindweasels

[mindweasels]

passport

When I went to check in at the polls on the 5th, the poll worker asked for ID and I handed him my passport. It quickly became apparent that he had never seen a U.S. Passport before and that he didn't know what to do with it. He nudged the person next to him, and asked for assistance, but the guy just shrugged. At that point I dug around in my bag and found my non-driver ID. The truth is, they see almost entirely driver's licenses in that position.

The thing is, when you're different, you are constantly aware that systems are not built for you. If they are built for you, they're not--to use a harsh term--idiot proof. By which I mean, people just don't have the skills or abilities to communicate with you and meet you where you're at. I don't feel especially anxious or alienated around elections. I feel anxious and alienated all the time. It's very rare for me to be able to talk to a person for even ten minutes without experiencing that same sense of alienation that normal people feel about elections. There is always some fundamental thing about my existence they don't know, don't believe, or don't agree with. Every moment I have to depend on other humans is precarious and frustrating.

I used to want to be involved in politics because positions of power or leadership made me feel less vulnerable. But of course, the nail who sticks up will be hammered down, regardless of how much money or power one has.

And I'm so angry that I don't always want other people to be free, or safe, or happy. In particular the people that make me feel misunderstood and alienated--I don't want them to get away with it. Other people and their needs feel like a threat to me. They're generally going to create spaces that exclude me and structures that oppress me, regardless of their party affiliation or professed ideology. I don't trust them to take care of me and I don't trust me to take care of them.

Sometimes, though, I do want other people to be free and safe and happy. As if making them so could make things a little safer for me. And when I work on it, it does feel rewarding---like connecting to other people. But then over time it becomes more and more apparent that I'm giving but not getting back. The asymmetry of it, it hurts. The list of people I trusted to care about my problems never included either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. It certainly doesn't include any local well meaning, left-leaning activists.

I volunteer, and I find it enjoyable, so if you find it enjoyable, by all means. But I feel like the anarchist response to this election being "well we just have to volunteer harder" is misplaced. At some point the government takes trillions of dollars and gives almost nothing of value. We have to destroy these people who don't listen and don't care. We have to destroy them.

[mindweasels]

psychosis and god

I saw in r/psychosis a person talking about how they saw it was 4:44 on their phone, looked up, and saw the license plate of the nearest car ended in 444. They had photos of this.

The odds of such a thing occurring are pretty astronomical. When I was having "psychosis," or whatever it was that happened to me, these coincidences would hit over and over, one after another. I'd be talking on the phone with my mom, and she'd mention she was stopped at a red light, and suddenly the power would go out at the doctor's office I was at and all the lights would be emergency-red. I didn't hear voices or hallucinate, it was just this--what psychiatrists call "delusions of reference," where you ascribe a special meaning to coincidences. I know dopamine imbalance affects pattern recognition, I know the science. And yet. I just can't believe there isn't Something Else going on. 444 and 444? What are the fucking chances, man? Hell, what are the chances humans would evolve in the first place?

The result of this kind of experience, for me, is that I've become fairly certain there is some kind of God. An entity. I don't think it's all powerful. I don't think it created the universe. I just think it's something beyond my level of understand which arranges things in this meaningful way to express it's existence. I don't know what it wants, but I do feel the borders of something in my life … a sort of limit to what I can choose to do with myself.

I was a pretty secular person until six years ago when I started having these experiences. I guess I was an atheist with a dose of Pascal's wager, a sort of "well if there IS a God…" to decisions I would make. And even now I'm not certain, because again, all my evidence is just a known symptom of psychosis.

[mindweasels]

Sad

[mindweasels]

I hate the way you changed me

[mindweasels]

Resist love for truth. Truth is my guide

[mindweasels]

I DM'd an artist on the commission, who I'm supposed to be working on something with, and he didn't reply. So I waited a week and DM'd again. And he didn't reply again, for a week. And now my brain is reminding me that when this has happened in the past it's because someone in The Group (TM) I'm in that person with has been badmouthing me. In the past this has usually involved--not just lies, but wildly fantastical lies about me, that I can't believe are actually being spread about me because how could people believe this? It doesn't make sense? And I have no evidence that this has happened but I do suspect strongly that the Republican mayor does not like me very much and doesn't want me working with the commission.

I'm not someone who gets paranoid being left on read for a day but after about 14 days a switch flips and I become Fully Insane.

And some work I submitted to an exhibition was accepted today but the acceptance email informed me incidentally that the show can only feature artists who own property in the township where the exhibition is located. I wanted so much to lie. I want so much to say, "oh yeah, I have a studio there." Not because there's money involved--there isn't--but because it would be right. It would be right for me to be in this show. I managed to tell the truth, though, because I know someday I might want to have a social relationship with some of the people involved, and I am biologically incapable of keeping up lies or withholding information longterm, particularly when I'm trying to socialize. And this feels like choosing people over power in a way that makes me want to die.

The constant agony of being untrusted. Of being trustworthy and being untrusted. Of trusting people and being untrusted. Of choosing to reach and being unreached for. Of doing work and being unworked for.

[mindweasels]

in the dream house

I'm reading "In the Dream House" by Carmen Maria Machado, which is a memoir that's supposed to be an account of an abusive lesbian relationship. The narrator has started by talking about how good it was, all the happy and sexy stuff at the beginning. This is interspersed with: tales of being loved a lot, growing up. Tales of having a pretty sheltered but privileged upbringing. Tales of emotionally connecting with a pastor when she was 16 in a relationship most people would call "grooming" but seems, more realistically, like two lonely people finding each other for a little while, where one of them is a child who has absolutely no support system to turn to when that relationship ends in heartbreak and rejection.

And I don't trust the narrator. Which is Bad, right? Because she's, you know, a battered woman. But in the relationships where I've felt abused, I felt I had very little else going on, and yet this is from the POV of someone who has a lot of friends who are all Deeply Concerned. So I trust her enough to believe the accounts of what she relates, but not enough to feel that this is a complete account, and to be fully in her corner.

So far the narrator is being pretty upfront about her interest in being dominated: physically, emotionally. Maybe not ideologically, which seems to be where she and the girlfriend are having disagreements. The girlfriend doesn't seem particularly naturally inclined to step into a dominating role. It's only page 70 but she doesn't feel pushy to me. She offers the narrator weed and when the narrator declines, she says "oh, too good for all this?" and the narrator says she never declined again. Which is. The intersection of two people. The girlfriend's comment doesn't seem like enough to tip someone over into the heavy use the narrator then describes. Something is outside the frame, there.

Around page 136 I start to get the sense that the girlfriend's rages are in response to something. The narrator is emotionally unavailable. She claims to be all in this relationship but it seems more like she just wants it to be over and yet can't bring herself to leave, because she's more scared of being alone. So she dissociates and declines and rejects and pushes her girlfriend away, all while saying "I love you, I want to be close to you." It's so gaslighty, so confusing, I don't blame the girlfriend for being beyond a place of reason and caring, beyond a place of empathy and solely in a place of demands and anger.

I'm not trying to victim blame, but it's very clear to me that this emotional abuse is a two way street. And because the girlfriend grew up with physical abuse, too, she has that inside her as a response to this situation. I feel bad for the girlfriend, because as Machado says--most of domestic abuse is perfectly legal. Most. Not all. These two women are hurting each other and I'm only getting half the story and it makes me angry.

By page 230 I'm really feeling tired of hearing this woman complain. I'm glad she's in her own corner, and I understand the suspension in empathy that comes with that state, but there's so much framing in the story and so little actual information.

Carmen Maria Machado ends "In the Dream House" with a note about how being abused has given her a sixth sense, a sort of innoculation against people. She meets a stranger at a party and gets physically ill, now. I too have this sixth sense, this prejudice, and I feel it in response to Carmen Maria Machado. Her narrative style hits every one of my red flags.

[mindweasels]

I believed someday she'd be kind again

[mindweasels]

I hate going through it when I don't have to do job stuff and I'm not in physical pain. Like, this is supposed to be free time. There is literally no good reason to feel bad

[mindweasels]

I like everything about my mom except that she wasn't able to stand up to my dad

[mindweasels]

Don't trust your heart to bullies

[mindweasels]

Working / waiting on:

Zooniverse

Emails to S and C

Mac application

Taskmaster

Dog momming

Other to do list items

Going through email

Wifing

Tumblr blog

Waiting for BS and see application

[mindweasels]

to have the power in the relationship:

want but don't need.

to be miserable:

need but don't want.

dominance means taking responsibility for that need. submission means displacing the responsibility for it.

[mindweasels]

Being perfect will not make them love you

[mindweasels]

Nobody else needs to know my feelings

[mindweasels]

I am ready to collaborate

[mindweasels]

She's shit and I hate her