the eclectic ecstasy of an ecphorizing eccentric

self-care is necessary: figure out your needs and the symptoms of going without

2021-08-23T00:07:22Z

If I could teach every empathetic person one relational/emotional skill, it would be making self-care a priority that comes first at LEAST half of the time. Constant caretaking without sufficient rest is damaging for the caretaker, the one who is being taken care of, and the relationship itself.

People who are generous and strong and good at managing emotion often end up in a caretaking habit by default. We know that even at the end of a terrible day, if someone comes to us with a need we can pull energy seemingly out of nothing in order to take care of them. The thing is, we're not pulling that energy out of nothing, we're pulling it from our cognitive/emotional capacity and our future. That's a great skill for an emergency but it is not sustainable; it cannot be a way of life.

When I was married, I spent about 80 percent of my energy on my spouse, who had no coping skills to speak of and worked at a job they hated. Every day I would soothe them and skirt around their sensitivities, thinking I was helping.

However, what I was doing was enabling them to feel okay without having to develop any skills at self-care. Rather than think 'what can I do to help myself feel better?' they simply unloaded all of their stress and bad feelings onto me, and I managed those feelings for them.

After 8 years we parted ways, and later they were in a relationship with someone who was quite selfish and did none of their emotional caretaking -- so by necessity my ex learned self-care skills which made their life better. All my caretaking and compromising my needs for their feelings did not help them to grow emotionally. I'm pretty sure it actually hindered their growth significantly.

Since I was able to be so intensely caretaking for someone for so long, I imagined I had no limits to the help I could give others. Then I ended up in three relationships which all took far more energy than they provided (mutually, I believe, as none of us had compatible needs & abilities at the time), which stripped me so far down that I could not get back out of the hole without medical, chemical help.

Until I experienced being suicidal and reality-broken for months, I did not admit to myself that I could not give to everyone whatever they wanted and still be a whole person. Until it almost killed me, I refused to value my needs above even the desires of others, much less over others' needs. But you know what? I'm no good to anyone if I am dead.

And emotional death is real. I was absolutely useless to the world for at least six months if not a year after I ran out of energy and if I hadn't had access to free doctor visits and cheap meds through my university, it would have been a lot longer of a period. It took me more than five years to recover to a point that felt complete, and it may have permanently reduced my capacity to function.

And you'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but in late 2015 and early 2016, I got in a pattern of caretaking without paying attention to my needs again, and this time it was the fact that Topaz is independent that saved me. They realized that they were relying on me more than was healthy, and they asked to take a break from our relationship. We took about six weeks separate -- reducing our communication to occasional, not being romantic, and not seeing each other in person. This allowed us to break the pattern of me ignoring my needs and focusing too much on Topaz. I can still get that way, but I'm more careful now and I am determined not to fall into that again.

I have found that when I sacrifice my mental health for another person, eventually my survival instincts will kick in -- in ways that I really don't want them to. Either I stop being able to feel empathy for them and develop a dread for their presence or I start escaping constantly in my every spare moment and cease being an actual person, or both. These things are obviously not helpful for the other person and they can destroy a relationship.

So my point in all this is that caretaking another person at the expense of your own needs is not sustainable. It will destroy the relationship if it continues too long, it will destroy the person sacrificing, AND it is ultimately damaging for the person who is being taken care of.

Coming to depend on someone for your needs and then having that suddenly ripped away is profoundly destabilizing and terrifying, but it is inevitable because no one has infinite energy. No one has the ability to give endlessly without being nourished enough to refill. If you love the person you're caretaking and you want to help them the most you can, you MUST take care of yourself. Otherwise you are setting them up for a really, really awful crash (and setting yourself up for the same).

As I said to a friend, you don't actually have the choice of caretaking someone without rest forever -- that's an illusion or maybe a delusion. The only choice you have is in what the end of the pattern looks like. It's literally impossible to continue giving while your needs are not met, while you are not taking in nourishment.

The problem is that caretaking others at one's own expense is not always bad. It's only unhealthy when it is the norm, which usually happens gradually. This is why you need to know what your needs are and pay attention to whether or not they are being met. I am sure everyone's tells are different, but usually there are things people do when they are nourished that they don't do when they are drained. To know if you're nourished it's important to keep some kind of log of those things if your memory is not that great (like mine), or check in with yourself every so often.

I'll give some of my needs and tells as an example. To be okay, I need to
1) spend at least three work nights a week relaxing and doing nothing effortful;
2) have a chunk of at least 12 hours of awake alone time every week;
3) connect with people in a meaningful but soundless way every day, such as through reading each others personal writing, texting, or snapchatting;
4) connect with people in a group setting at least twice a month (during pandemic, this is as a structured group video call);
5) not discuss stressful things close to bedtime;
6) have at least two days a week where I don't have to speak out loud or listen to speech without captions. This means not talking to my partner either, including when we are both in a shared space. Literally saying hi will drain me. It sounds small but is NOT.

I can do without any one of these needs occasionally, and when there is a crisis then it seems time to put those needs aside. But when there are crises often enough that a month goes by without me practicing good self-care, it's time to be conscientious about providing myself with what I need.

The red flags showing that I am not getting my needs met (sleep, food, mental rest, alone time) are 1) if I have not written a post (longer than 1 paragraph) on facebook or livejournal in three days or more, and 2) if my room gets messy enough that it could not be tidied in 30 minutes. My yellow flags include: getting easily irritated, going to bed late on a work night more than twice a week, failing to do basic things like dishes and laundry, or not posting to my snap story every day.

If you tend to give more than is good for you to your partner, I encourage you to think about the things that drain you, the things that nourish you, and the symptoms that show when you are drained or nourished. I encourage you try to distill these needs into concrete actions and ask your partner to help you maintain boundaries around them so that your needs are protected. In my experience it is much easier and it feels less like a slight to the other person when you make boundary maintenance a shared project.

People who can say "no" with ease and confidence make me feel so safe

2021-05-28T22:35:56Z

People who can say "no" with ease and confidence make me feel so safe. I love this trait in a friend (or lover, or anyone) so much.

I do understand how hard it is to get to that point, so I don't hold it against people who have a hard time saying no, but I just want to say that it is definitely worth it to do your best to *try* to become confident and comfortable with expressing "no." It is not selfishness. It is a gift.

When people can say "no" to my "do you want to do this thing?" that makes it safe for me to ask them anything. I don't have to calculate in how difficult it might be for them to say no and include disclaimers and offer them acceptable excuses to make it easier for them to say no. I can just ask, and be sure that if they can't or don't want to do it, they will say no.

It means that I don't have to worry that if I do something they don't like, they will start avoiding me or disliking me. If I can trust them to say "don't do that" or "I don't like that," then I don't have to be constantly watching their reactions to make sure that I am not hurting or upsetting or annoying them. I can just make a joke or be noisy or messy or silly or hyperbolic and know that if they dislike it, they will express "no" in some way that is easy for me to notice.

for me, love and trust are separate

2021-04-06T22:49:25Z

For me love and trust are almost completely separate, because I've learned that someone can have absolutely the best intentions and have ethics that I completely agree with, and yet they don't know themselves well enough for me to trust what they say: they can be wrong, or bad at predictions, etc. I can love them, and still not be able to trust them in many situations.

I trust people based on the situation. I know I could trust my dad to throw himself in front of me if someone shot at me, or otherwise literally die for me, and some people would call this a high level of trust, but it means nothing to me. I cannot trust him to respect my name or try to learn who I am, and that's what matters to me. A scenario that is extremely unlikely to ever happen has no bearing on my life.

I know there are people I can trust to care if I get hurt, but that's not the same as trusting that they will take any action for me. And I know there are people I could trust with every aspect of my emotional self, but I could not trust them to clean out my water bottle, because they aren't as thorough as I am. I recently realized that out of all the people I know or have ever known, someone I talk to maybe 3 times a year is one of the people I would trust the most when it comes to shared responsibilities.

I have seen how these things get tangled up, so I do my best to remind myself that they're not necessarily related.

I downloaded the new LJ app

2020-08-11T18:58:58Z

So far I like it much better than the old one for reading my friends page, but the post editor is bleh. I'll probably still write in color note and then copy paste in here, if I use the app to post.

Ugh no, I just realized you can't even choose an icon in this post editor?!?! Terrible!!

Ugh and the tags don't work.

P.s. if you hate people using the new heart/like feature on your entries please lemme know, because I like it as a way to say "I read this and especially enjoyed it or related to it."

people make their answer based on the question given, whether it's gender or ice cream

2020-08-07T02:37:12Z

icon: "curious (my face, looking straight forward with one eyebrow up and a sideways smile, head tilted down a little)"

Asking someone "are you a man or a woman?" is as illogical and leading as asking "what is your favorite flavor of ice cream, chocolate or vanilla? Circle one." When you ask a question and specify only two possible answers, almost no one* (statistically speaking) will choose an answer not given. But this is how people ask the question about gender, if they ask it at all.

Also, if you ask people "what is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Check one: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, praline, coffee, blank," you will definitely get more answers than just "chocolate" or "vanilla" but people will still mostly choose from the options given, even if that list doesn't make sense to them.

By framing the question in a way that makes being specific more work, you increase the barrier to being specific. Also, social desirability implies that anything on the list is more desirable than anything not important enough to be on the list.

So instead of making their own answer, many people will choose the one that is closest. For example, people whose favorite is rocky road may choose chocolate. Or maybe their favorite is a very unusual flavor that most people are unfamiliar with, so they choose the one that is closest while still being familiar to others. For example, my favorite ice cream of all time was Sheer Bliss pomegranate dark chocolate chip ice cream, but it is no longer in production and I have hated every other pomegranate ice cream I have tried, so I never mention it -- I just tell people my second favorite, which is not even a fruit flavor.

People will also take a cue on the range of acceptable options from the list -- for example from the list of five I mentioned, they may think that only single-flavor ice creams are being compared, so choose "coffee" because "mint chocolate chip" is a blend of two flavors. Similarly, I think many people initially describe themselves as "man" or "woman" because they felt like they had to pick the one that was closest, rather than define their own category. We choose from what we feel is the acceptable list of options and for many people that list is extremely short.

I am confident that if we stopped asking binary questions or asking people to choose from a short list, we'd find a much greater variety in the ways people identify, and a greater number that identify outside of the binary.

*I have loads of non-binary, neurodivergent, and artist/writer friends so I know this isn't true for most people who read me, but most people in the general U S population will not make their own line and write in their own choice!

my body parts don't have any gender

2020-08-07T02:32:18Z

icon: "bodylove -- me (belly goddex)" (my bare belly and breasts covered in colorful washable marker drawings with spirals on my breasts and a butterfly over my belly button)"

My g-cup boobs are not feminine and do not become so when I put them in a bra. My wide hips are not feminine and do not become so when I put on a skirt. My body hair is not masculine and does not become so when I choose not to cut it.

Only I determine if my body and clothing has a gender and I emphatically reject gender for all my clothes, all my grooming and self-decoration, and all my accessories. There is no gender in or on my body and if you see gender here, it's because you're wearing gender-coated glasses.

Actually, my boobs are one source of big dick energy for me so *shrug* cogitate on that

don't fucking spy on your kids

2020-08-06T00:47:45Z

icon: "snarling (a photo of a snow leopard snarling in profile with teeth bared, whiskers back, and ears flattened)"

As a parent, you do NOT have the right to spy on your child NO MATTER WHAT. I don't care if they are suicidal or doing drugs, that doesn't give you the right to spy on them. You don't have the right to read their email or diary or texts.

Not only do you not have the right, literally no good will come from you violating their trust like this. All they will learn is hyper-vigilance against anyone who wants to get to know them, and they will learn to see you as the enemy and they will learn to hide things much better.

Instead of treating your child as a wild monster that you're trying to control, treat your child in ways that make them feel loved and trusted and able to trust you. Things like using drugs and having suicidal thoughts are a sign that they need more care, better care, more experienced care, not control. CONTROL ALWAYS MAKES IT WORSE.

edited to add:

sometimes I honestly feel grateful that my parents were so neglectful and disinterested in my life. Because they did not value consent at ALL and if they thought they could control me better by invading my intimate thoughts or alone time they absolutely would have.

facebook posts about Kanika, Feb 20 to June 6

2020-06-13T01:49:30Z

icon: "Kanika kitty (my cat in profile with a blown-out background. Kanika is stark black with golden eyes, and looks like a statue of Bastet)"

[image: Cat petting preference chart with a line drawing of a cat, six colors in the legend, and name, Kanika. Purple means enthusiastic yes, blue means okay, green means maybe, yellow means "eh" or indifferent, dark red means emphatic no, and bright red means "I will bite."

The face, legs, feet, tail, belly, butt, and lower back above the tail are all filled with "I will bite." Most of the cat's flank is filled in with emphatic no over which are stripes of "I will bite." Around the neck and shoulders and upper back is indifferent, with stripes of "I will bite" along the neck and middle back. Along the back of the neck and top of the shoulders is maybe. Some stripes of enthusiastic yes are on the back of the neck just above the shoulders and under the chin above the chest. However, there are also stripes of "I will bite" on the neck.]
Feb 20, 2020, 1:48 PM

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The Lord is obsessed with fresh tap water and recently started observing my teeth brushing, immediately afterwards jumping on the counter and heading for the sink to lick up water drops. I found this really gross so I started giving them the "no jump" hand signal before they got on the counter, and then I would rinse out and refill their water cup right after I brushed my teeth.

Tonight they hopped up on the toilet to watch me brush my teeth as usual and when I finished and dried my hands and face, they meowed to remind me! I'm so charmed that they learned that they will get fresh water without getting on the counter by just reminding me. Such a clever cat.
Feb 21, 2020, 12:56 AM

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The Lord is such a jealous little copy-cat. They've noticed Topaz carrying their little dog, and now they occasionally come to me and ask to be picked up -- which they have NEVER done before (though they got more tolerant of it as they aged). It's cute and hilarious.
Mar 30, 2020, 2:16 PM

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Me being home all the time with Kanika's litterbox in my bathroom (attached to my room) has lead to me dealing with their poop almost immediately every time since I am usually within smell-range when it happens.

Now they think that this is to be expected, and they come and meow at me as soon as they finish. They also meow at me beforehand for some reason?? "Just letting you know you're about to be on duty, get ready!"
Apr 9, 2020, 4:32 PM

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Topaz keeps telling me that I've been exclaiming "what the fuck!?" in my sleep and today I figured out why. Whenever I do a big position shift in bed, Kanika comes and sticks their face, including their cold wet nose, on my hand!!

I thought it was just when I was going to sleep because they always come and get a good night pet after I first get settled in bed. But today I was close enough to awake that it woke me up and ugh, what a horrible way to wake up! Gross!
Apr 12, 2020, 4:08 PM

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I meant to get a colorful cat last time, after realizing how much harder it is to get a good photo of a black cat --

but then Kanika laid on their back in my hands and made eye contact with me for like 10 seconds as a TINY KITTEN and I was like oh well, guess I don't get to pick based on photogenic-ness. They are still the most eye contact-est non-human I have ever met.
Apr 13, 2020, 4:33 PM

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[five-second gif of a little black cat with a small white spot at the top center of their chest, sitting next to me and reaching over with one paw to tap my arm gently as they look up at my face. They tap my arm once, twice, then go to tap a third time and put their paw down instead. Each time they tap my arm, their paw is outstretched and their claws are extended, but in a kneading motion: their claws barely touch me. Text over the bottom of the image says "look how fuckin gentle those paws are"]
Apr 14, 2020, 12:23 AM

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I overhear quiet rapid stomping in the kitchen and I turn to look at Kanika and sure enough, they're gone. Topaz and Kanika are playing tag SO CUTE OMG
May 3, 2020, 1:37 AM

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My weirdass cat uses the litterbox like this:

1) get in and scrape up a big mountain.
2) pee on top of the mountain.
3) jump out of the litterbox in an attempt to avoid the liquid running down the side of the mountain.
4) reach in from the side to scrape litter to cover it (usually badly).

I think this is because their parent cat's caretakers left their box dirty, so they never learned the right way to use it. Instinct covers the need to scratch but not the practical application!
May 15, 2020, 2:15 PM

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In an effort to get the Lord to stop scratching on the wrong things, I started giving them a treat every time they used their scratcher. They caught on quick and now if I don't notice and reward them, they helpfully remind me with a meow.
Jun 1, 2020, 12:37 PM

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Kanika's new favorite toy is a bent thumbtack. I know I'm gonna regret this when it ends up in my foot, but I can't take it away because I haven't seen them so excited about a toy in aaaaages!
Jun 6, 2020, 4:11 PM

labels help you find your people, and help you find the right professional for your experience

2020-05-09T18:13:11Z

icon: "ADD-PI (two electromicroscope photos of crystallized acetylcholine, overlaid & warped in several ways)"

Neuro-divergent and mental health labels serve two purposes: helping you find your people, and helping you find the right professional to aid you in building coping skills and/or healing from trauma and/or prescribing you medication.

So if you don't need to find your people, build your coping skills, heal from trauma, or take medication for your brain function, then there is no need for the label. But if you do need one of those things, finding the right label or set of labels is really important, and is often something a very self-examining person can do better than anyone else. Coping skills can mask symptoms and prevent correct diagnosis.

I have had medical professionals doubt whether or not I had ADHD because I made A's in school. It had to get so bad that I was distractedly driving through stop signs before they would medicate me, because my coping skills resulted in an outward expression of normalcy (grades). Never mind that my mental health and physical health was suffering terribly due to me using stress hormones generated by panic and not eating to help me focus.

I support people self-diagnosing, and will continue to do so as long as the psychology community continues to treat external markers of capitalist success as one of the most important diagnostic criteria. I will continue to do so as long as it is expensive and soul-crushingly difficult to find a therapist who isn't incompetent or abusive.

belenen @ 2020-04-12T22:19:00

2020-04-13T02:19:27Z

I've been thinking about my definitions of friendship: this is an update of friendships are important / my levels of relationship for everyone. I have four levels:

1) friendly acquaintances / "casual friends":

people who are respectful and want to connect with me.

people who I care about, but don't know well yet.

people who I know share at least some of my values, but that is all I know.

we interact at least indirectly at least twice a year.

Most, if not all, of our interactions are indirect: reacting to each other's posts, but not commenting much or not commenting very in-depth. This is most of my facebook friends list.

2) part of my tribe / "real friends":

Just ONE of these things puts you in the "real friends" category for me (When I say "I can trust" I mean, I know through experience that it is true):

I can trust you to tell me that you don't like something I did, or that you want me to change my behavior in some way.

If I did something that seems to come from a shitty motive, I can trust you to ask about my motives rather than assuming bad of me.

You read my longer posts and care about them, especially the more personal ones.

I can trust you to tell me you disagree even when you think I won't like it.

I interact with you regularly, and you regularly reply and regularly share with me.

You have shared meaningful personal stories with me at least a few times.

The difference in how I treat people who I consider part of my tribe is that I try to initiate communication more often, though that depends on how they communicate over distance. I do this primarily through direct messages on snapchat or through texting photos back and forth, because that is a low-spoons activity that makes me feel connected. When I have the time, energy, and space to set up gathers, these are the people who I invite.

I deliberately build intimacy with these people. If they say something that I find hurtful or upsetting, I will make an effort to express this to hopefully decrease the block to connection. If I feel like I might have upset them, I reach out to see if they are okay, if they need anything from me, and if there is something I should do differently in the future.

3) core tribe / "best friends":

These are people who know me very well, who have ALL of the traits listed above, and who also nourish me by:

initiating connection with me at least half as often as I do with you.

sharing your thoughts and feelings in a self-aware and reflective way.

expressing affection for or appreciation of me at least a few times a year.

being creative, making or modifying things, and/or learning -- and sharing what you learned or created.

listening to me talk about something upsetting without trying to make me feel better or assuming that I haven't tried.

being silly and playful together.

challenging me to grow, and being willing to be challenged.

The difference in how I treat these people is that I want to include them in any social thing I do; I try to see them in person at least once a month, if possible, but often it is not possible because most of my core tribe is long-distance and almost everyone is neuro-divergent and has a hard time making and keeping plans. What usually ends up happening is that I see them about once every two months if they are local and once or twice a year if they are not.

4) life-sharers / "spouses":

These are people who have all of the traits listed above, and also:

We check in with each other before making big decisions.

We turn to each other if we need comfort.

We communicate every day, usually multiple times a day.

We spend time together in person and/or have real-time conversations at least twice a week.

We are comfortable asking each other for help when we are in physical or financial need.

We have a lot of experience giving and receiving "no" with each other and find it easy.

We tell each other about any difficult emotion that comes up because of each other's behavior, as soon as we have processed it enough and have the energy to express, and we make that a priority.

For me, romantic and sexual relationships are just friendship with sex and/or romance attached. The way I rank my relationships is by the friendship part, so "spouse" (or the term I prefer, life-sharer) is a kind of friendship and I don't need my life-sharers to be sexual or romantic with me.

consciously activating the transverse abdominis is vital for me as an office worker who does weight

2020-04-02T17:56:17Z

It has been about a year since I learned that the transverse abdominis exists and how it functions. This muscle wraps around your organs between your hips and ribs, behind your "abs," and helps stabilize your spine. A weak transverse abdominis can lead to back pain or injury.

It is NOT directly activated by crunches, situps, or other typical "abs" workouts. It is mostly activated subconsciously (before other abdominal muscles!), and in many people that is enough to keep it strong. However, in people who sit or lay a lot, such as people who have desk jobs or disabilities or health conditions that prevent them from standing or walking much throughout the day, the automatic activation can "turn off"! Then you get a weak transverse abdominis, even if you do abs workouts, unless you consciously activate that muscle.

I've been doing weight-training several times a week for about 21 months now. A few months after I began, I injured my back by continuing an exercise while I was feeling discomfort (it was one I had done before without incident), and I didn't understand why it happened. It took 6 weeks to heal, and I couldn't work out at all for 3 weeks because every exercise I would have done caused it to twinge and threaten that horrible pain. I now know this is because your transverse abdominis is automatically used anytime you lift an arm or leg, and I am pretty sure that is what I injured.

There are only two movements that have been found in studies to focus on strengthening the transverse abdominis: drawing-in and bracing. Drawing-in is where you pull your belly-button (navel) towards your spine. Bracing is where you tense your belly as if someone is about to punch it. Some studies show one is better than the other, but there isn't a lot of agreement about which is which. Personally there are some exercises where I can't do one or the other because it feels like rubbing head and patting belly, so both are useful for different things.

After I learned about this muscle I began tightening it every time I use a weight-training machine, and I have not had an injury since.

Last year I also began to lose fat (not weight), which made my belly sway more and lean out from my body more, because it was less dense and thus didn't stay in place. (Similar to how a very full backpack will stay in place as you walk, but a half-full one will sway from side to side) I wondered if this was creating strain on my back, but of course there is no information out there. Because no one studies the practical aspects of fat people working out, just the irrelevant and useless effects like "do you get lighter" or "do you get narrower."

I decided to believe in my own experience and give my back a "rest" after a workout (or a long walk!) by wearing a brace that wraps around my abdomen for about 30 minutes after. Since I started doing this I have had no back pain. Even more telling, I haven't had that weakness feeling where I feel like my spine might snap in half, like I used to sometimes after a workout. Once I learned about the transverse abdominis this made a lot of sense-- even before I tensed it on purpose, it was getting worn out supporting my spine as I exercised my arms and legs.

So if your back feels weak or gets achy regularly after a workout, I recommend trying a back brace to rest this muscle after a workout. And YES, losing fat can make your back hurt.

When I stopped working out 3 weeks ago because the gym is closed, my back started feeling weak again. So last week I started doing exercises for my transverse abdominis a few times throughout the day, and it is already helping. I do "bracing" while laying on my back or side and doing movements with my legs. One that I do is holding my legs out straight, bringing them up to vertical and lowering back, and another is holding my legs up vertical and swinging them side to side. With these I have to press my hand to my belly to feel the tension or else I will forget to "brace" which is the whole point.

So now, for any person I know who begins working out, especially for fat people whose belly sways or droops like mine, I would definitely suggest training yourself to tense up your belly as you do each rep (as long as this doesn't hurt). Initially I had to place a hand on my belly to give myself a physical reminder to brace, but now I do it almost without thinking. I also noticed my belly getting tired about halfway through the workday as I just sat at work, so I think it is actually starting to be automatically activated again.

anti-sex-worker sentiment horrifies me -- big gross fail in "Good Girls"

2020-03-28T23:33:22Z

One thing I have never understood is disdain for / disgust toward sex workers. Even when I was the Christianest Christian I've ever known, I never felt that. (Jesus treated full-service sex workers with respect so Jesus would say "it would be better if you drowned" to the so-called Christians who disdain sex workers -- because that is how you talk to religious bullies)

Last night I watched a scene in a show where a mom of a sick kid listens to a stripper describing how to swallow a pill so that you don't gag, which is something that the kid has been struggling with for months. Instead of being grateful that her kid now has a skill she needed to be healthy, and ashamed that she didn't previously treat the stripper character as a human, the sound faded out like it does in a panic attack. I was honestly worried that she was about to physically attack the stripper character.

In the next scene the mom is flipping the fuck out at someone else in clearly displaced rage. The mom describes her husband (bouncer at the strip club) as working at a job that makes *her* feel demeaned as a woman and as a mother. WHO THE FUCK THINKS LIKE THIS???

And the worst part is, the show writer is obviously sympathetic to that attitude because it is being portrayed as if it is the "natural" response! It's not fucking natural! It's horrifying and it makes no sense! And the stripper's explanation about the pill was clearly being written for "comedic" value because it was almost entirely double entendres including things you would never say to a child, like "just let it happen." This character is a goddamn caricature and I still like her way better than the mom. Your anti-sex-worker bullshit makes you a bad person, period. You are dangerous and gross.

To make it even fucking worse, the husband in the "demeaning" job of bouncer had just saved the stripper from getting raped the night before. She was bringing over a gift basket as thanks. How is your response not "oh my god, my partner's work is actually really important, now I can be happy he has this job, and also I want to offer support to this person who got attacked"?!?!?!? How do you see her as a threat instead?!?!?

I'm kinda over the whole show from this. Ugh. Yet it was really fucking good in the first two seasons. Like, groundbreaking excellence in some ways. *tears hair out*

CAPD means I miss jokes

2020-03-28T23:17:49Z

Note: I don't want anyone to change their behavior because of this -- it's just me sharing a bit of how my brain works.

Reading lips is only possible with a lot of context (at least for me). The same is true for any audio with no captions: if I know what the topic is, that limits the words you could potentially be using, so I can tell that you said "cool" and not "yule." But if you say something outside a conversation with a clear topic, I am lost in thousands of possibilities.

This has the really sad side-effect that jokes are way more hard to understand, because they usually break out of the context. So if we are talking about something and you suddenly reference something else, jokingly, I have to sift through my entire vocabulary to put together what you said, instead of the couple hundred words we were using before.

I think this is part of why I like jokes that you have to put together in your head-- that's how I have to do all jokes, so it feels like a "true joke." A lot of times I will make a joke and no one will laugh, and then someone else will make literally the same joke but put together so it is more obvious, and then everyone will laugh.

More often, people will make a joke and I will have to ask them to repeat it, or I will just miss it. Sometimes I laugh politely at what I thought was a joke, and then I worry that they said something shitty and I just accidentally expressed approval of it. So while I like jokes, I often find them stressful if the situation doesn't allow me to ask them to repeat themselves, or if they won't repeat themselves exactly.

taking precautions about covid-19 at the grocery store as an act of community service

2020-03-28T23:15:59Z

I went to the grocery store today, where I wore a dust mask and carried disinfecting wipes which I used to touch every handle I had to use to get items out. I put all my items into bags which I carried rather than using a shop cart or basket. At the self-check I wiped down the touch screen, the pin pad, the handles on the bag carousel, and the weighing surface.

As I was checking out, two people right next to me were talking about "panic buying" and how it was "sad" that people were wearing masks. I wanted to say "do I look scared to you?" and I thought about explaining, but I was already super overwhelmed like I always get in the grocery store, and I needed to pee and my arms were tired from carrying everything.

Instead I shot one of them an amused look with a raised eyebrow as I turned to walk out, and we made brief eye contact. Your attempt to shame me failed 100 percent. Also I know you were really trying to quiet your own fears by telling me that I am overreacting.

But the thing that bothered me most about these two strangers criticizing me is the assumption that I was acting out of selfish fear. I don't think I am likely to be killed by this virus. I don't even think it is likely that I will get very sick if I do get it, because I rarely get sick and I usually get better quicker than most. I think most likely I won't even know I have it, and if I take no precautions, then that means I would pass it to many people and some would die.

The reason I take precautions is so that I don't pick up the virus unknowingly and kill someone I care about. So that I don't touch a contaminated surface and then spread the virus to more surfaces, leading to the entire store being contaminated and indirectly killing a bunch of strangers. This virus lives on plastic for 72 hours and all the handles are plastic and people put their faces quite close to them, so it is logical that if a coughing person was in the store, they coughed on at least one of those handles, and other hands transferred it to many other surfaces.

The reason I wear a dust mask is not to protect myself -- it doesn't work for that. It is so that in case I am carrying the virus, the hot droplets of my breath don't get on someone else. The reason I carried disinfecting wipes is partly so that when I touch filthy surfaces like pin pads, I don't pick anything up, but also so that I can leave the place a little cleaner than I found it. So that whoever comes behind me has a reduced chance of picking it up, if the items were contaminated. (carrying something wet and chemical-stinky also reminds me not to touch my face)

You don't know who has a compromised immune system but it is a LOT of people and they still have to get groceries to survive. I take precautions as an act of community service.

I am also disturbed that most people are still so ill-informed and irrationally defiant. I am glad that so many of my friends understand and I selfishly hope that this means that they will be safer than the general population, but I also know that many people I love have compromised immune systems and I fear for them.

I take zinc to stay healthy

2020-03-19T02:02:26Z

Okay so I am pretty sure the last time I got a cold was January of 2016, and other than 2 bouts of food poisoning between then and now, I haven't gotten sick. (I just looked through all of my old texts with Topaz and all my old facebook posts) And some of this is luck but I did ride the bus 4 days a week for a good chunk of the past 4 years, and I have gone to the gym 3 times a week for almost 2 years now so I definitely had a chance to be exposed.

For many years I have taken zinc every day because when I don't, that's when I get the colds of people around me. If I had kids, I would have them taking zinc every day right now. I am currently taking zinc and plan to switch to a higher dose.

I just learned that it may have such an effect on me due to deficiency in my diet, since it is mostly available in meat (like a LOT of minerals) and the zinc in meat is more bioavailable than the zinc from other sources. "The requirement for dietary zinc may be as much as 50 percent greater for vegetarians." ESPECIALLY if you don't eat a lot of grain.

So if you are vegetarian or vegan or eat a low-meat diet, please take zinc (as long as it doesn't interfere with your meds or any health conditions you may have), if you can afford to buy some. And please don't grab any old zinc because brand really really matters when it comes to supplements, and don't take zinc mixed with elderberry! My suggestions:

Solgar – Zinc Picolinate 22 mg ($0.10 per day)
Solgar – Zinc Gluconate 50 mg ($0.10 per day)
Pure Encapsulations – Zinc Citrate ($0.13 per day)
Solaray – Zinc Copper Amino Acid Chelates ($0.14 per day after shipping)
Solaray – Zinc Asporotate 15mg ($0.18 per day)

How to Make Being Wrong a Lot Less Embarrassing

2020-03-14T22:54:55Z

Being wrong is very embarrassing for most people; because of this people will try to hide or cover up or explain away their being wrong. But the Streisand Effect applies here: the more you try to hide it, the more people will focus on it. So instead of trying to hide it when I am wrong, I avoid being wrong in the first place, and then if I realize I am wrong, I admit it immediately and openly.

How do I avoid being wrong? I use two practices:

1) I don't make claims* unless they are based in facts I have learned, or if I make it clear that I am only stating an opinion (such as "mint chocolate chip ice cream is the best").

2) If I am about to make a claim and I don't remember how I learned it, I look it up to confirm that it is true before I make that claim.

(Note: these practices are my goals and sometimes I fail at them, to my own embarrassment.)

If the topic is not something I'm an expert on, or if I have no experts to refer to, I don't make claims, or I phrase them as possibilities so that it's less embarrassing when I AM wrong. I usually learn that I was wrong in a passive way, where someone else makes a claim and I say, "oh I didn't know that!" I will look it up later if I feel unsure it is true, and if it is true, then I learn how I can behave or speak in the future to avoid causing harm.

When you phrase all of your opinions like factual claims, like defaults** are trained to do, all conversations force people into completely accepting or completely rejecting your claim. For example, a claim such as "this thing is bad" can be right or wrong but not both.

When I make a claim such as "this thing is bad," without references, that statement is resting on my authority as a person. If I have no facts to back it up, that proves my authority not useful (at least in that instance). But if I say "this thing might be bad" then if it turns out to not be, I wasn't wrong or right. I was considering.

If I say, "it seems to me like this thing is bad" then even if my viewpoint is incorrect, I was still correct in stating that I had that viewpoint. And once I realize my viewpoint was wrong, I can say "okay so the answer to my wondering if this was bad is 'no'." This is much better than feeling like I have to defend my previous claim when it makes no sense to do so because I know it was wrong!

And how do I handle it when I am wrong? I inform the people who I talked with about it that I was wrong, if I am friends with them. I usually explain my thought process to show where I made the mistake, and I explain how I learned what the correct thing was.

If I feel like me being wrong affected more people than the people I talked with directly, I also inform my broader social circle via a (usually public) social media post. I feel like this is important because I don't want to spread misinformation. But I also do it to avoid the embarrassment of having to talk about being wrong over and over in future conversations.

This process is very embarrassing but at least then it is over, and I don't have to dread it happening in the future. If I were to just drop conversations or start ignoring people when I realized I was wrong, I would then have the fear of being found out hanging over me.

I think it also encourages people to tell me when they think I am wrong, because I have shown that I will not attack people for telling me that, and I have shown that I will change. I'm not perfect and sometimes I am stubborn, but growth is always my goal.

*claim: a statement of fact, like "cats have fur" (which is a great example of the kind of claim you shouldn't make!)
**cisgender, white, male, nondisabled, straight, non-poor, etc

Busman's holiday

2020-02-29T23:52:25Z

Busman's holiday: "vacation or day off from work spent in an activity closely resembling one's work, as a bus driver taking a long drive."

Part of what I do for work is advocacy for oppressed people, particularly people with disabilities and queer and trans people. But this is such a part of my personal life that it's not really possible for me to take a vacation from it.

The advocacy I do is mostly small-scale person-to-person education work, and I don't actively choose to do it most of the time. Instead, I am put in a position where I have to choose between:

1) feeling wounded and dehumanized (by the oppressive belief systems of people around me) and also feeling like I am betraying myself and all of humanity with my silence, or

2) feeling wounded and dehumanized and also dealing with other people's defensiveness and dislike and sometimes hostility to the point of violence.

I usually choose number 2, but either way I don't get to escape feeling wounded and dehumanized. This is why it is almost always work to be around other human beings. The vast majority of people* have done very little work to unlearn the racism, sexism, ableism, cis-sexism, classism, capitalism, and other oppressive belief systems that are the sewage we all slosh through since we learn to understand language.

An example of how this work follows me when I try to take a "holiday" is this: I go on vacation with my partner and while we are shopping for snacks, a stranger asks if we are sisters. That is both assuming that we are not in a romantic relationship, and assuming that we are both women: I have to choose which to advocate about because in a brief encounter there simply isn't time to explain all the things that are wrong with that question. I also have to figure out if this is a time where any advocacy at all is possible, and sometimes it is not, because I have to respect the emotional safety of my partner and the physical safety of both of us.

Another example would be if I have a party at my home, I need to consider the accessibility needs of guests and try to accommodate or at least inform people of the access issues at my house so that they can determine if they are willing and able to navigate those issues. We live in a world that is inaccessible by default, and to "turn off" my disability consciousness would be to cause harm to the people with disabilities in my life. The basics of access don't really feel like work to me, but the work can come in if I invite guests who use ableist slurs (without knowing it, such as "stupid" or "lame") or who make ableist assumptions, because then as host it is my job to try and correct that (regardless of who is at the party!).

Also, even among people whom I can trust generally to not make hurtful assumptions or use hurtful language, my own access needs are a thing I must advocate for in order to be able to participate. For instance at a party hosted by someone else -- if I want to be able to understand what people are saying, I almost always have to go outside, because the ambient noise level is too high. Its worst when there is music playing and a game or show making noise, but even if the only noise is people talking, multiple people talking at once scrambles my brain.

However I have to balance my own needs with those of others, and I know that for many people, a party without ambient noise simply isn't a party. And certainly for many people, everyone taking turns to talk while being in a quiet environment would feel restrictive and not fun. So what works best is when the party hosts have established a noisier hang out place and a quieter hang out place. Advocacy for something like this can be very difficult because I feel like my needs go counter to other people having fun, and I don't want to be perceived as taking away people's fun. I want to be seen as a fun person, whose company is enjoyable.

I would love to be able to go on a real holiday from advocacy, but that would require going to another world where the dominant ideology is not hierarchy, competition, and punishment of deviance but instead equality, cooperation, and appreciation of variety.

And honestly that would probably be work too, because then I would be the person who was carrying the most oppressive ideas and I would feel the need to be constantly checking my behavior so that I wasn't causing harm to everyone I encountered. I'd probably be needing to learn and face my own issues at a much higher rate than I do in my day-to-day life.

So my only hope for a real vacation is to not have to interact with any strangers or any people who I don't already trust to have done and keep doing a lot of unlearning. I think this is possible but will require a great deal of planning and pre-work, but it sounds so lovely that I think I need to try it next time.

*(in the world that I have access to: literate people who speak English and have access to the internet, primarily U.S. citizens)

Barn-raising

2020-02-20T22:48:36Z

When I was a kid I read a lot of "frontier" fiction about white people in North America in the early 1900's, and the concept of "barn raising" -- the community coming together to help one person or one family -- always appealed to me but also seemed like a thing that only existed for other people. My best friend's family had this but only between siblings - not extended family and certainly not neighbors. And all other families I knew were like mine: every person for themself.

My family has never considered my life a thing that they would like to invest in. My parents always gave the bare minimum (and that begrudgingly), and my aunts and cousins who lived near me couldn't even be bothered to go to my graduation party, much less try to help me in any way.

My family didn't want to invest in me even when I was doing things that they considered good, worthy endeavors. As a kid I wanted to go to church mid-week (and that was all I asked for -- I didn't ask to go to the movies or shopping etc) but they didn't want to put that effort in, so I didn't get to do it.

As an adult when I went back to college to get my degree, they did not want to help me financially even when they were very wealthy and I was often going hungry. They have always been so reluctant to put forth effort on my behalf that it never would even have occurred to me to ask them for help moving, or to ask them to pick me up from the side of the road if my car broke down.

When I met my partner's family and realized that they considered it a shared value to help out when someone needed physical assistance, I was taken aback. I was skeptical that this would extend to my partner, because all I saw was my partner helping others physically and emotionally without receiving any financial help, which they needed at the time. I expected that when my partner needed physical help, their family would find some excuse to say no, because that was what my family would have done.

But when my partner moved three times in two years, both parents, both siblings, a cousin, and all of their age-appropriate sib-kids helped and seemed happy to do it. And when I moved, I was expecting to have to do it myself with just my partner's help, but both of my partner's parents helped -- not just with lending their truck and trailer, but with loading and unloading.

And then my partner's parent and sibling and sib-kids helped my partner with all the repairs that needed to be made to the house we bought last summer -- fixing the roof and demolishing the rotted back deck. Then my partner's parent helped my partner insulate the attic, fix the grading around the house to prevent moisture in the basement, install new kitchen counters and a new dishwasher, and a bunch of other things I can't think of at the moment. They helped us do things that had no benefit to them, just because they had the time and expertise or physical capability.

This was normal to my partner who had seen their parents and family do things like this all their life, but it was shocking to me. "Many hands make light work" was something I never experienced. Experiencing this made me realize that I want to be that with and for my community.

My community is trans and nonbinary people. Most of us have shitty families who would never be there for us. Most of us have no one or very few people to reach out to for help when we need physical support like with moving or picking us up from a car break-down or from a surgical procedure. "Barn raising" becomes an almost insurmountably difficult task when you're trying to do it alone.

I want to change this so I'm changing my attitude: if I can help someone in my community move, I will; if I can pick someone up when they need it, I will. I want to be this and I hope that more people make this same decision so that we can be for each other that support that our families never were.

"Fan death" and questioning what your parents taught you

2020-02-10T23:25:45Z

When I learned of the superstition called "fan death" (you will die if you sleep in a closed room with an electric fan on) at first I laughed, but then I realized that beliefs like this one are common despite there being plenty of evidence against them. I think a key factor is the age at which you are exposed to an idea.

When you are very young, you don't learn about the greater world primarily by experience: you learn by being told. Things like "don't cross the street without looking both ways" and "you have to eat vegetables to be healthy" and "brush your teeth so that they don't rot" aren't things we can learn by experience, either because it would be too dangerous, or because it would take too long and involve too rigorous or too costly an experiment. So we trust the adults in our lives to tell us how the world works, and the ways we should behave in order to be safe.

Unfortunately most adults don't know the answer to questions of how the world works, so they just repeat what they have heard, or say what makes sense to them. This can result in a lot of mistaken beliefs that are very deeply embedded in our minds.

I was in my 30s when I first realized that my parents were either mistaken or dishonest when they told me that if I ate too many spicy foods it would burn out my taste buds and I wouldn't be able to enjoy spicy foods any more. Looking back I can imagine that they thought this was an actual possibility, or they simply didn't want me to eat up all the salsa and pickled jalapenos in the house (which I would have since those are on the short list of foods I like). But I spent three decades limiting the amount of heat-spice in the foods I ate so that I would not "burn out" my taste buds, and it wasn't until I mentioned it out loud to someone that I realized that it didn't make sense.

In a more sinister example, when I was 11 years old I was in the "overweight" category for my age and height and a doctor told me that there is a valve at the bottom of your stomach that will not open until it has been 5.5 hours since you last ate, and if you eat too often the food automatically gets stored as fat. So I carefully made sure to wait at least 5.5 hours between meals, for years. I never questioned it because I trusted that adult to have good information and tell me the truth; it became a part of the facts of my life and I didn't even look at that belief for decades. I was acting on it as if it were true, and it was not.

I think she was trying to trick me into eating less, imagining that I must snack too often and thus have become fat due to overeating. Eating too much was never an issue I had because I don't enjoy eating, generally, and have to push myself to eat. I now know that this fucked up my metabolism and I am pretty sure it is the reason that I am at least 6 inches shorter than either of my siblings.

When I was a kid, it wasn't possible for me to fact-check my parents or my doctor with the internet. The closest thing to that would have been the set of encyclopedias my parents bought when I was in my mid-teens, and though they might have been able to prove that there was no magical time-sensitive valve at the bottom of your stomach, they wouldn't have had information about the long-term effects of eating peppery foods.

More to the point, it never occurred to me to question these authorities because I had no other experts to turn to. Now, almost anyone can find expert knowledge on any subject if they can read and have access to the internet. It has become easy for literate people with internet to resist superstition and other false claims, if they are inclined to do so.

In the past decade, the availability of the internet has driven a decrease in the percentage of people who believe in "fan death." I hope and imagine that youth growing up with access to the internet will develop habits of fact-checking early on, and will be less vulnerable to believing in false statements merely because they have been uttered by an authority. I also hope that parents will respond to questions about topics on which they are not an expert by saying "let's look it up" and in this way, childish curiosity can lead to better education for their parents as well.

failure on a grand scale: caloric restriction to lose fat

2020-02-02T00:56:09Z

Content note / trigger warning: eating disorders, restriction dieting, weight loss, fatness

Restriction dieting is an utter failure and we need to stop.

Failure #1: it does not reduce weight/fat significantly

Caloric restriction fails to create significant weight loss for most people and we have known this since the 50s. Numbers vary but most people don't lose more than 10 percent of their body weight. This is because your body fights back against starvation. In technical terms, your metabolism (energy expenditure) slows to match the pace of your weight loss and it stays slower even when you gain the weight back[1]. This is in addition to the fact that when you restrict calories, you stop moving around as much, because you have less energy to do so[1].

Failure #2: it does not reduce weight/fat for more than a few months

Even if you experience short-term weight loss, "one third to two thirds of dieters regain more weight than they lost on their diets[2]." This is partly due to metabolism changes as mentioned above, partly due to hormonal changes caused by not eating, and partly due to psychological effects.

Your body is a machine that has evolved to protect you from starvation. There is a hormone called cortisol which will tell your body to retain as many energy stores as possible[3]: it says, "store fat and don't burn it!" This hormone is activated by two things (among others I'd imagine): stress and low blood sugar. When you restrict, you activate this hormone and make your body more likely to store than to burn. It is incredibly counterproductive to restrict: even if you lose some fat at first, as this hormone builds up it will make you retain fat again.

In 1950, Keys, Brozek, Henschel, Mickelsen, and Taylor studied the effects of human starvation. Over a 3 month starvation period, participants were given the technical minimum of all necessary nutrients, so that they were not actually starving but were always hungry. The participants grew tired, irritable, and obsessed with thoughts of food.

When the refeeding stage began, they gained back all the weight they lost and even when they were back at their previous weight and eating 5 meals a day they were still obsessed with thoughts of food. Not having enough food is psychological torture and has lasting effects on your mental health, and it will change your relationship to eating.

Failure #3: it is not safe, much less healthy

Most importantly, restricting calories can literally kill you. Not eating enough to healthily sustain you weakens your heart. There aren't many studies on fat people who severely restrict calories, but the studies on thin people who restrict show how dangerous it can be.

"Cardiovascular complications are relatively common and have been reported in up to 80% of patients with anorexia, primarily in the form of bradycardia, hypotension, arrhythmias, repolarization abnormalities, cardiac failure, silent pericardial effusion, and sudden death (SD).[4]" Yes, sudden death. It is also dangerous even for young people.[5]

People engage in these diets because they believe the myth that eating too much is what causes you to be fat. This was disproved in the 70s, when Sims, Danforth, Horton, Bray, Glennon, and Salans experimented with overfeeding: most participants had to double their caloric intake in order to gain weight and not all of them were able to reach their goals (20 to 30 pounds). One person was eating over 10,000 calories every day and still could not reach that goal.

When this study was over, most people lost the weight they had gained, with the exception of people who had fat relatives. Why? because how well your body holds on to fat is genetically determined. So far we have discovered at least 8 genes that predict fatness.[6] Twin studies show that genetics have more impact on weight than home environment, and "overall, the heritability of obesity is estimated at 40% to 70%."[7] We can expect this number to rise as genetics research advances.

Restriction dieting (including that trendy euphemism "intermittent fasting") hurts you and does not result in permanent weight loss. It is a catastrophic failure and then some.

1.) Redman LM, Heilbronn LK, Martin CK, et al. Metabolic and Behavioral Compensations in Response to Caloric Restriction: Implications for the Maintenance of Weight Loss. PLoS ONE. 2009;4(2):1-9. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004377.
2.) Mann T, Tomiyama AJ, Westling E, Lew A-M, Samuels B, Chatman J. Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer. American Psychologist. 2007;62(3):220-233.
3.) Tomiyama AJ, Mann T, Vinas D, Hunger JM, Dejager J, Taylor SE. Low calorie dieting increases cortisol. Psychosom Med. 2010;72(4):357–364. doi:10.1097/PSY.0b013e3181d9523c
4) Oflaz S, Yucel B, Oz F, et al. Assessment of myocardial damage by cardiac MRI in patients with anorexia nervosa. International Journal of Eating Disorders. 2013;46(8):862-866. doi:10.1002/eat.22170
5.) Spaulding-Barclay MA, Stern J, Mehler PS. Cardiac changes in anorexia nervosa. Cardiology in the Young. 2016;26(4):623-628. doi:10.1017/S104795111500267X.
6.) Choquet H, Meyre D. Genetics of Obesity: What have we Learned?. Curr Genomics. 2011;12(3):169–179. doi:10.2174/138920211795677895
7.) McPherson R. Genetic contributors to obesity. Can J Cardiol. 2007;23 Suppl A(Suppl A):23A–27A. doi:10.1016/s0828-282x(07)71002-4

Not convinced yet? Try these two articles brimming with evidence:
The Weight of the Evidence: It’s time to stop telling fat people to become thin by Harriet Brown
Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong by Michael Hobbes

Edited to add more articles:
Dieting doesn't work. Rather than counting calories and stigmatising fat, we need to take on the food and weight-loss industries. -Susie Orbach

Friendship: how do you do it

2020-01-05T23:53:42Z

I got an amazing winter Solstice gift this year: a group of local friends.

I have always been a pretty odd person, which has made it difficult for me to find friends. Part of this oddity comes naturally, from my neurodivergent brain, my lack of gender, and being a minority as far as sexuality and relationship style goes. The other half comes from my unusual childhood.

When I was in school I didn't get to socialize outside of school, so everyone else got to know each other on evenings and weekends and the distance slowly increased between me and them. My mom began homeschooling me when I was 10, which took my chances for peer observation from low to almost none; we did not watch tv so I didn't have shows to learn from either. My socialization was exclusively in academic and religious settings, so I can make great contributions in formal discussions but am utterly lost in casual settings.

I made a friend at christian summer camp who was neurodivergent and far too serious, like me. We became best friends because I proposed it to her and she accepted, and very soon after we made promises to each other about how we would interact. She was my first real friend: not someone I was protecting or idolizing, but someone who I connected with in a deeply trusting, open, and extremely effusive way. I told her every thought that came in my head to say and I expressed my love often.

This was the relationship that became the model for all my future friendships, which was a bad idea because it was not at all normal. Now looking back I can see that we were in a relationship that was emotionally romantic though we did not do anything physically romantic, and it was far more committed than most people are comfortable with in a friendship. It also went from no relationship to extremely significant relationship in a single conversation, which seemed normal to me but is utterly bizarre to most people.

After we drifted apart I kept trying to make new friends in the same way. I wanted to bare my soul completely and I wanted them to do the same and I wanted us both to invest in each other in a continuous and deliberate way. And I got lucky, a lot.

I started using livejournal, which it turns out is where lots of naked-soul people congregate and share more than the average person cares to know about their friends. I met at least four people who were completely comfortable with sharing literally everything. We were often literally naked with each other as well as figuratively; when we visited each other we cuddled constantly; lies were taboo and openness was the air we breathed.

But all of these people lived far away. I had one local friend, but we went back and forth between closeness and hostility because we constantly misunderstood each other. I tried over and over to meet people near me but none of them wanted the same thing I wanted in a friendship.

Eventually I began practicing polyamory, and I finally was able to make the kinds of connections I wanted, but only by dating people. I didn't mind being romantic or sexual with my friends, but my primary desire was always deep friendship. For a little while I had all the intimate friendship I could ask for, but then for various reasons three of those people moved to three different states, and my relationship with the closest person fell apart.

Then I met Topaz sort of incidentally and after I posted on LJ about being desperately lonely and craving intimate friendship, they reached out and once again, I went from stranger to best friend in a single (nine-hour) conversation. We zoomed through all the "what do we mean to each other" stuff in a month, because we both knew who we were, we could read each other with shocking ease, and we had the same goals in a friendship.

Since then, every so often I reach out to someone but mostly, I don't know how to make friends and when I try it falls flat. All of my past connections have been made very rapidly and either through livejournal or through dating. I don't know how to get to know someone at a "normal" pace. I don't know what "counts" as friendship to other people. And because I have such a long-term habit of openness, what feels vulnerable to others simply feels normal to me, so we often have very different experiences with the same conversation.

So when I was asked to reflect on any friendships I made over the past year, I just came up with a bunch of question marks. Was I friends with the people I had gotten to know over the year, or were we just friendly acquaintances?

This question was finally really answered for me on Solstice, when people not only came to the gather that means so much to me, but several people said that they were determined to attend and that it was important to them to be there. For me, this would only be true if I considered the person a real friend and was internally committed to my connection to them. I felt overwhelmed by the care and deliberate effort that they were giving, and I think maybe, finally, I am starting to make local friends.

how my north star has shifted from the Christian god, to love, to justice.

2019-12-08T23:24:28Z

icon: "progressing (a deeply, vividly green forest of thick vines and trees, with a tunnel running through where unused train tracks lay)"

For the first 2 decades of my life, my guiding light was the Christian god, as understood through the Bible. I thought of the Bible as a way to understand God, and I thought of God as the reason for being alive. I didn't have to find a purpose for life because it was handed to me: obedience to God. I didn't have to figure out what was the best choice to make because in most things the church or some elder in it was happy to tell me.

I worked hard to fulfill this purpose: I read the Bible cover to cover multiple times, attended church with great interest and took notes, often talking with the pastor after a sermon about something I was especially interested in.

Then my pastor said something in church that contradicted the Bible. He said that our greatest purpose was to "spread the gospel" -- so I went up after the sermon and asked "how do you reconcile this with Jesus saying that the greatest purpose is to love God, self, and others?"

He did not have an answer, so he attacked me verbally and told me that I wasn't really part of the church, that I hadn't done this or that and so I did not belong. He attacked me to the point where I cried (which I almost never did at that age), and when his wife came up and tried to stop him, he told her to shut up.

At that point I was done with that church, and I began to question the validity of many of the things I had accepted as true. I spent several years looking for a better church and evolving my understanding of God to include other religions. I still held that "love" was the greatest purpose, the one all humans share, and I tried to find others who believed that and tried to practice it in their daily lives.

I slowly came to realize that most people who would claim that love was their highest value were wrong. Most of the time they would choose to do things that were not the most loving action available to them, but instead would choose actions that made them feel good or made them look good to other people.

When I became educated about how systemic inequality works, I also came to realize that love without justice is worthless. So many well-meaning privileged people are against hatred or overt bigotry, yet because they are unwilling to do the work it takes to create justice, they reinforce oppression.

They want to express their sadness about injustice and give out hugs, but if you ask them to advocate for equal pay, to elect people of color to positions of power, to resist oppressive policies in their cities and organizations, or to consider the words they use or the assumptions they make that end up hurting people, they will be offended that you even asked. They will claim that "love conquers all" as a way to avoid the responsibility to create justice, which is the only thing that actually conquers injustice.

So I rejected "love" as the greatest purpose and embraced "justice" instead. Now, when I come to a decision point and have to make a choice, I consider everything I know about the effects my actions will have on others and I choose based on what is most likely to lead to a more just world.

This does not work without constant self-education on the effects of my choices. For example, I cannot make the most just choice about how to host an event without understanding how to provide access for the greatest variety of people. If I just tried to make a choice based on what felt right, I would be very likely to unintentionally harm or exclude some of the most vulnerable people in my community. I know that my own access needs are not the same as others' needs. So I must self-educate, and my greatest tool for that is the internet.

My guiding light now is justice, as understood through as many stories as I can find. If I had a holy book, it would consist of people discussing injustice through both statistics and through personal stories about racism, sexism, anti-trans and anti-queer attitudes, anti-intersex attitudes, ableism, classism, ageism, sizeism, capitalism, and any other form of systemic oppression. It is through reading these stories and learning about the overall societal impact of injustice that I learn how to aim my choices to create the greatest amount of justice that I can.

A kindly stranger attempts to connect over transness and I fail utterly to respond

2019-11-25T23:02:02Z

icon: "eccentric (a photo of me tilting my head and with raised eyebrows and a pursed-lipped smile)"

The other day I was waiting in line at a store when a stranger attempted to strike up a conversation with me:

Stranger, abruptly: "what does the button on your purse mean?"
Me: "oh, it is a symbol for trans pride*"
Kindly stranger, smiling: "oh cool, my daughter is trans!"
Me: *smiles awkwardly*
Kindly stranger: "that's really cool, I like that."
Me: *smiles wider and nods* "thank you" *hastily buries self in phone*

I wanted to say more. The stranger had two elementary-age kids with them and I felt glad that the kids could be themselves. Wish I could have thought faster and said something meaningful like, "thank you for being an accepting parent. It makes a world of difference." But in that moment, it was all I could do to engage as much as I did.

There was a time about a decade ago when I would have responded by making eye contact, asking questions, and offering resources including my contact information. I would have been thinking about what that trans kid might need and what the parent might not have access to. I would have felt in my element and found the conversation easy.

But now, what I felt was just extreme overwhelm, as if lights were flashing and sirens were going off and I was being pulled in one direction and pushed in another. Part of it was from standing with my back to most of the store, part of it was feeling stressed about being next in line and not wanting to annoy the cashier, part was the overhead noise, and part was a piece of me saying "wow you have zero self-preservation instincts -- what if they hated trans people" and then the other part of me arguing back.

I feel such a sense of loss at current me's feckless response to this opportunity to offer potentially life-saving resources to a trans kid. I was just so thrown by how unexpected it was that in such a sensory-overload environment, I couldn't even process what was happening. I replied on auto-pilot and had to delay my emotional and mental response to the meaning of what the person was saying in order to simply absorb the literal words. I didn't make a conscious choice to say either of the two things I said -- they just popped out.

I couldn't really cope in the moment with an unexpected, completely novel experience in a loud, busy environment. But now that I have had that experience, I will be prepared for it to happen again. I will make up a sheet of local resources and try to let that be my touchstone and conversational foundation if someone says "my [friend/relative] is trans." I can ask how plugged in they are to the community and if they would like some resources. I can hope that something like this happens again and when it does, that I can be effective and useful in my response.

*it is actually a symbol for a gender and sexuality minorities conference which no longer seems to exist, but I used a shorthand without thinking

lj idol season 11 week 6 favs

2019-11-19T02:17:47Z

icon: "writing (a relief carving of Seshat, overlaid with my fractal "Colorflight")"

https://banana-galaxy.livejournal.com/6780.html
https://dadi.livejournal.com/1207389.html
https://emo-snal.livejournal.com/311200.html
https://karmasoup.livejournal.com/45426.html
https://minikin.livejournal.com/695665.html
https://static-abyss.livejournal.com/59821.html

Nutritional deficiencies discovered through practical experiments

2019-11-14T23:52:14Z

icon: "hypnotiq (my fractal "Windwheel" -- an abstract swirl of yellow red and orange with a little green)"

Solvitur ambulando: when you use a practical experiment to test if something is true

This could be my motto, but is especially true about how I treat my body. I often say that I use my body as my laboratory: it is where I test claims about many things but the most common one is dietary supplements.

About 7 years ago I began to experience severe cognitive decline. I was absurdly distracted and constantly forgetting everything. Focused, continual reasoning went from easy to horribly difficult. I stopped being able to read non-fiction because it was too much work, and even my fiction reading decreased sharply. To put that in context -- I started reading when I was four and have read thousands of books. Reading has always been easy for me. I was at a loss for what was causing the problem.

Then I came across something like this:

[image: a photo of three molecule-shaped pendants, each labeled with the name and function of the molecule. Dopamine: reward and pleasure. Acetylcholine: learning and memory. Serotonin: happiness and satisfaction.]

I thought "there is a memory molecule???" and went on a deep dive into wikipedia, which told me that acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter made from choline. So I looked that up and discovered that choline is primarily available in fatty meats, which I hadn't eaten in many years. At that point I had been a vegetarian for about 3 years, but even before that I ate almost exclusively lean meat because I dislike the taste of other meat.

I was pretty well convinced I had found the cause of my cognitive decline, so I went and ordered choline supplements immediately. I noticed that my dreams got more intense but otherwise didn't notice much change until I ran out -- when my thinking got worse again. Then I thought back over the past month and realized how different it had been! I wasn't half as absent-minded or forgetful! I began ordering them regularly.

I have since learned that almost every currently available dementia medication works by increasing the choline available in the brain, and that supplementing choline can be protective of memory. Conversely, medications that work by decreasing choline can cause dementia-like symptoms. And even in populations without dementia, supplementing choline is beneficial for cognition. I keep an eye on dementia studies for what they reveal about the functioning of choline and memory.

I got super lucky with that first brand, because I tried other brands and they did not help even a quarter as much. Since supplements are not classified as food or medicine, they are not regulated for effectiveness and it is often the case that they do not contain what the bottle says they do. I am glad I didn't get that null result at the beginning because if I had, I would never have known that it was true that lack of choline was causing my cognition problems. Nowadays I check all supplement brands on labdoor.com or at least make sure that they are tested by a third party.

After this first experiment proved my guess correct, I made it a practice that if I have a health symptom that could be explained by a vegetarian-diet-caused deficiency, I'll answer that question by testing it in my body. I started taking b12 because I was getting numbness in my legs: then it went away. I started taking glutamine after learning that it is primarily available in meat and it is the amino acid that allows for quick muscle healing; it makes a HUGE difference in whether or not I ache after working out. My lips and skin were dry, so I supplemented E and evening primrose: now I almost never need chapstick. Small cuts were taking a long time to heal, so I supplemented beta carotene (vitamin A): now they take a shorter time to heal. My hair was thinning, so I supplemented biotin: now it is back to normal. Taking zinc regularly keeps me from catching colds from my coworkers -- and if I stop taking zinc I become susceptible.

I've learned I need amino acids (especially glutamine and lysine), vitamins A, B5, B6, B12, E, Niacin, Biotin, iron, copper, magnesium, zinc, and calcium. Some of these I supplement because if you supplement one you have to supplement the other. For example, if you supplement zinc (primarily available in meat) you must supplement copper in order to prevent deficiency. In order to metabolize iron you need copper also. Calcium and magnesium compete so if you supplement for one you should supplement the other.

Proving any theory with a practical experiment is always my preference, and I enjoy having this organic laboratory to work with.