@David: It’s hard to talk about this stuff with anyone, really. I mean, not as in I can’t, but as in when I do, it’s always in a kind of “I’m super strong, I will overcome!” kind of way. I deal pretty well with a long history of crap, but the only thing I can’t seem to manage with people around, is admitting when I feel helpless, weak, damaged, scared and violated. So I guess that’s why I share it here..
@JJ: You know, your boyfriend really needs to understand that women don’t just ridicule, shame, insult,… any guy who dares to talk to them. We generally try to engage as little as possible with creepsters, hoping they’ll get the message of “not interested” when they’re being mostly ignored and met with responses which are designed to end the conversation or indicate a lack of interest. And even if that doesn’t seem to work, we either leave or very clearly say shit like “go away, I do not want to talk to you. Stop bothering me. I am not interested in your attention. I don’t want a drink from you. No, you can’t have my phone number.” I don’t know about everyone else, but before I say something nasty to a guy or scream at them or kick him in the testicles, or tell all my friends to stay faaaar faaaar away from him, he absolutely already did plenty to deserve that beyond merely seeming somewhat creepy.
Now, if he seriously believes that “socially awkward yet perfectly okay, nice, non-creepy dudes” getting caught in the ehm.. “crossfire” of rejection is unacceptable, then he really needs a lesson in entitlement and agency. If I’m out having drinks and a socially awkward guy comes up to me and he, for whatever reason, does not seem like someone I would like to have a conversation with, then it’s my damn right not to. I don’t have to explain. I don’t have to humor anyone because they might possibly maybe perhaps somehow be interesting underneath their uninteresting first impression. I don’t owe strangers my time or energy however fun and awesome they might be.
And you know what, if a guy is consistently viewed as creepy, he might want to.. I don’t know, undertake a journey of genuine introspection sometime before assuming the problem lies with eeeeeeeeverybody else.
@maggiesausage: Sorry about your mom. Hugs!
@Ally: Glad your brother eventually understood your point and apologized.
JJ, I wonder if your boyfriend read the original Schrodinger’s Rapist thread on Shapely Prose, and the endless whining from entitled dudes in the comments, whether it would sink in?
Though I suspect he’d just do the “But I’m Not A Rapist!!!” stuff – though the reaction to that could be “Good, then this isn’t aimed at you, so stop complaining and listen to what women are saying!”
bekabot
10 years ago
Late to the party as usual but…
{brainwash; picture at the head of the page}
That looks like a Nice Guy Tom.
Little orange kitty: “I wuvz you!! I wants to follow you ’round all umz times!! Have my motley kittens pweez!!”
Little black kitty, practicing for adult-cat boredom: “Whatevz.”
(I’m tired of my new username, trans_commie. It just doesn’t sit well with me. I just prefer being called Ally.)
I think I’m finally ready to start being nicer to myself. I’ve told my therapist that focusing solely on my external life circumstances – which is what I’ve been doing for the past two years – has only caused me constant anxiety about the future. Of course it’s important to plan for the future, but when that’s all I do, I find myself overwhelmed by an anxiety-fueled surge of what-ifs and the ensuing thoughts of suicide and self-harm. If I can focus on the present a bit more and try harder to see myself as deserving of love and support and not worthless/horrible for existing, maybe dealing with external issues will become easier. It’s the least I can do before returning to Bay Area.
sparky
10 years ago
That sounds like a really good idea, Ally. Take care of yourself first, and it will be a lot easier to accomplish your external goals without anxiety/fear/feelings of worthlessness getting in the way.
Looks just like my Jack and Jezebel who I rescued from a dumpster in new York. Jezebel disappeared November 8th (orange). Not a sign of her. Had her for six years. My heart is broken. 🙁
@Ally: Sounds great! Absolutely everything is easier and less complicated without the self-loathing.
@Catherine: aww, so sorry. 🙁
The sun is out, spring is apparently here to stay now. I’ve been at my parents’ all day, saw my brother off to music camp, cleaned, wrote a post on false rape accusations, and then sat on the couch with tea for two hours trying to convince myself that it’s normal for me to still be shaken by those guys basically threatening the crap out of me for at least half an hour. I managed to get pissed about it, which is good. I managed to believe they were at least wrong and that what they did was completely fucked up. I’m just having a hard time accepting the magnitude of the effect it has on me. I’ve been less sleep deprived and a LOT less anxious after actual rape and I don’t understand whence the difference. (okay, there were also times a was a lot MORE messed up after rape, but still). Ugh. I wish I could reach the point where I can be glad nothing worse happened already. It would be so much easier if this shit got easier to deal with as the frequency increases, you know. Like the sixth time around you could go like: *sigh* hmkay, I know how this works, bring it on!, and then you could go through an entire healing process in a week or something. I know that place where everything’s okay, I also know how to get there. It’s just beyond fucked that I have to go through all the weeks and weeks of nightmares and anxiety and feeling super icky and the random crying and the nausea-inducing triggers on television or in books or basically anywhere. Been there, done that, more than once. They can get it the fuck over with already.
Ah, dreams!
But hey, at least the sun is out and the house is clean and I posted to the conspiracy blog. I even sang for a bit while doing the dishes. It’s not that bad.
That sounds like a really good idea, Ally. Take care of yourself first, and it will be a lot easier to accomplish your external goals without anxiety/fear/feelings of worthlessness getting in the way.
I agree. Of course, I can’t possibly accept myself completely because a lot of my self-hatred is rooted in dysphoria and internalized transmisogyny (much of which won’t go away until I start easing my dysphoria). But it’s better than being so overwhelmed by self-loathing that I start to have wild delusions about who I am.
When I was 17, I hated myself so much that it only took a little bit of intellectualization and a misunderstanding of the DSM-IV for me to convince myself that I was a “sociopath”. Somehow my inability to cry, the emotional blocks I got as a result of denying feelings about my gender, and the ensuing lack of emotional expression led me to believe that I was incapable of empathizing with others. I was just an awful person out to exploit and hurt everyone I knew. Instead of recognizing all of that as indicative of being abused and hurt by bigotry, I only recognized it as proof of how morally corrupt I was. Interestingly, it was only by tacitly accepting what I called my “female side” (which I would later found out was not a “side” of myself but rather my true gender) that I was able to fight that self-hatred. It was almost a spiritual experience to me.
Anyway, I’m glad I don’t have those delusions anymore, but I still need to work with a therapist. Trying to get rid of all of my self-hatred all on my own was too much for me to handle, and it still is.
KathleenB
10 years ago
So. Because there was a mix up on the frequency of my painkiller refills (I thought I’d been switched to 30 pills 2x a month instead of 1 – you’d think that’s something they’d communicate, but they didn’t tell me they were switching me from vicodin to norco last month, so my faith in the office’s communication skills is not at an all time high), my LPN now thinks I’ve become dependent and has cut my monthly scrip by two thirds until I can see her on the 29th to talk about cutting me off completely. I’m floored – I’ve spent five damn years toeing their lines, accepting scrip cuts, getting lectured, taking drug tests whenever they wanted, etc, and now because of their fuckup, I’m being denied treatment for chronic pain. Luckily, I now have insurance and thus options. Most of which involve referrals to a pain management specialist and an ortho, and probably finding a new doctor over the summer. Because this? This is bullshit.
Don’t even get me started on how the dentist treated me like I barely had two brain cells to rub together…
KathleenB
10 years ago
Other than that, things are looking up a bit. We have insurance, a line on a small job for a friend of my mom’s, the car is working, and we have food. Plus, my sister is getting married on Friday! Small, family ceremony with a big blowout party to celebrate that and finishing house repairs after the fire in June.
Eek! I’m not really in a good condition to give support at this time, but I can share some good news: my con went pretty well over the weekend! Which is good, because I am completely bushwhacked after all the shit I’ve done the past couple weeks. I didn’t collapse though, which is good, but I plan to just… flop for a while and rest and read books.
KathleenB
10 years ago
LBT: I’m glad your con went well! My control freak nature would not allow me to be involved in such things, I’d drive myself and everyone around me up a wall. Enjoy your reading! (if you like humor, I recommend ‘In A Sunburned Country’ by Bill Bryson. He talks about his love of Australia, it’s myriad perils, and cricket on the radio, and it’s all sweet and utterly hilarious)
Yeah, I can’t do the hardcore con circuit like some folks I know, but I’m glad I went to this one. Just… oof. Very draining. A good kind of draining, but still wears me out.
And also hubby wanted to, er, “celebrate” afterward, which was very nice.
Well, I just got Fribs back from her six-monthly check at the vet. She did her usual Cat Goes Comatose thing, which is easier than most of our kitties, who’ve preferred the seventeen-legs-eight-tails-climb-the-walls method.
No surprises about her health: she’s lost another 500 grams, and our doc wants to change her medication (she’s hyperthyroidal). Poor vet, though: Fribs had a strange growth on her neck, vet said it was a hair cyst (glorified zit, more or less), squeezed it and BLAT! Vet was hit with goo.
We also decided that whoever chose black uniforms for vets must have had an office job and not owned any pets ever.
On the good news front, which has been a long time coming (cloudiah whines), I was offered a new job last week, which caused my current employer to match that new job offer. Not a huge amount of money or anything, but nice. I’m hoping my good job hunting karma will rub off on others who might need it. :: waves good job hunting karma at kittehs ::
Also, has anyone here tried Soft Paws (or the equivalent) on their kitties? My two current kitties are the worst for scratching things. They’re very careful not to scratch furniture while I’m home, adorable little devils.
AL3H
10 years ago
A couple of threads ago, in the “what is attraction like?” there was a discussion about single target attraction.
I was wondering if anyone knows any good books about it.
The problem is that it takes me a while (months to a year) to become attracted to someone, am only attracted to one person at a time, but I move a lot, and associate with people who move a lot so it ends up being quite frustrating. It isn’t anyone’s fault of course … just annoying for me as it takes about a year to “reset”. So not an urgent, world-ending problem, just an annoying problem that I would like a better way to deal with.
I can deal with it, but if anyone knows any e.g. books with methods better than mine, it would be helpful.
Yay for good job news, cloudiah! Is that the job where you had that marathon all-day interview process?
I haven’t tried Soft Paws. I suspect Maddie would kill me in my sleep if I did. It’s a violation of feline rights to stop ’em destroying furniture. ::looks at disembowelled tapestry armchair::
AL3H – I’m sorry, I’ve no idea what books there might be on the subject. My reading on that was years ago and tended to the “your astral lover” type. Yes, I confess, I read some total rubbish.
A winter warmer! (Okay, it’s spring up north and autumn down here but hey, one should be prepared.)
KathleenB
10 years ago
cloudiah: We did not have good luck with the soft paws on Kamikaze. But she’s a) really smart and b) REALLY touchy about her claws and figured out how to lever them off (despite the fucking superglue holding them on) within a day or so. YMMV, lots of cats deal really well with them.
We Hunted The Mammoth
Thanks for all the hugs and kindness, everyone.
@David: It’s hard to talk about this stuff with anyone, really. I mean, not as in I can’t, but as in when I do, it’s always in a kind of “I’m super strong, I will overcome!” kind of way. I deal pretty well with a long history of crap, but the only thing I can’t seem to manage with people around, is admitting when I feel helpless, weak, damaged, scared and violated. So I guess that’s why I share it here..
@JJ: You know, your boyfriend really needs to understand that women don’t just ridicule, shame, insult,… any guy who dares to talk to them. We generally try to engage as little as possible with creepsters, hoping they’ll get the message of “not interested” when they’re being mostly ignored and met with responses which are designed to end the conversation or indicate a lack of interest. And even if that doesn’t seem to work, we either leave or very clearly say shit like “go away, I do not want to talk to you. Stop bothering me. I am not interested in your attention. I don’t want a drink from you. No, you can’t have my phone number.” I don’t know about everyone else, but before I say something nasty to a guy or scream at them or kick him in the testicles, or tell all my friends to stay faaaar faaaar away from him, he absolutely already did plenty to deserve that beyond merely seeming somewhat creepy.
Now, if he seriously believes that “socially awkward yet perfectly okay, nice, non-creepy dudes” getting caught in the ehm.. “crossfire” of rejection is unacceptable, then he really needs a lesson in entitlement and agency. If I’m out having drinks and a socially awkward guy comes up to me and he, for whatever reason, does not seem like someone I would like to have a conversation with, then it’s my damn right not to. I don’t have to explain. I don’t have to humor anyone because they might possibly maybe perhaps somehow be interesting underneath their uninteresting first impression. I don’t owe strangers my time or energy however fun and awesome they might be.
And you know what, if a guy is consistently viewed as creepy, he might want to.. I don’t know, undertake a journey of genuine introspection sometime before assuming the problem lies with eeeeeeeeverybody else.
@maggiesausage: Sorry about your mom. Hugs!
@Ally: Glad your brother eventually understood your point and apologized.
Angelica – brilliant comment.
JJ, I wonder if your boyfriend read the original Schrodinger’s Rapist thread on Shapely Prose, and the endless whining from entitled dudes in the comments, whether it would sink in?
Though I suspect he’d just do the “But I’m Not A Rapist!!!” stuff – though the reaction to that could be “Good, then this isn’t aimed at you, so stop complaining and listen to what women are saying!”
Late to the party as usual but…
{brainwash; picture at the head of the page}
That looks like a Nice Guy Tom.
Little orange kitty: “I wuvz you!! I wants to follow you ’round all umz times!! Have my motley kittens pweez!!”
Little black kitty, practicing for adult-cat boredom: “Whatevz.”
(I’m tired of my new username, trans_commie. It just doesn’t sit well with me. I just prefer being called Ally.)
I think I’m finally ready to start being nicer to myself. I’ve told my therapist that focusing solely on my external life circumstances – which is what I’ve been doing for the past two years – has only caused me constant anxiety about the future. Of course it’s important to plan for the future, but when that’s all I do, I find myself overwhelmed by an anxiety-fueled surge of what-ifs and the ensuing thoughts of suicide and self-harm. If I can focus on the present a bit more and try harder to see myself as deserving of love and support and not worthless/horrible for existing, maybe dealing with external issues will become easier. It’s the least I can do before returning to Bay Area.
That sounds like a really good idea, Ally. Take care of yourself first, and it will be a lot easier to accomplish your external goals without anxiety/fear/feelings of worthlessness getting in the way.
Looks just like my Jack and Jezebel who I rescued from a dumpster in new York. Jezebel disappeared November 8th (orange). Not a sign of her. Had her for six years. My heart is broken. 🙁
test comment – please ignore
@Ally: Sounds great! Absolutely everything is easier and less complicated without the self-loathing.
@Catherine: aww, so sorry. 🙁
The sun is out, spring is apparently here to stay now. I’ve been at my parents’ all day, saw my brother off to music camp, cleaned, wrote a post on false rape accusations, and then sat on the couch with tea for two hours trying to convince myself that it’s normal for me to still be shaken by those guys basically threatening the crap out of me for at least half an hour. I managed to get pissed about it, which is good. I managed to believe they were at least wrong and that what they did was completely fucked up. I’m just having a hard time accepting the magnitude of the effect it has on me. I’ve been less sleep deprived and a LOT less anxious after actual rape and I don’t understand whence the difference. (okay, there were also times a was a lot MORE messed up after rape, but still). Ugh. I wish I could reach the point where I can be glad nothing worse happened already. It would be so much easier if this shit got easier to deal with as the frequency increases, you know. Like the sixth time around you could go like: *sigh* hmkay, I know how this works, bring it on!, and then you could go through an entire healing process in a week or something. I know that place where everything’s okay, I also know how to get there. It’s just beyond fucked that I have to go through all the weeks and weeks of nightmares and anxiety and feeling super icky and the random crying and the nausea-inducing triggers on television or in books or basically anywhere. Been there, done that, more than once. They can get it the fuck over with already.
Ah, dreams!
But hey, at least the sun is out and the house is clean and I posted to the conspiracy blog. I even sang for a bit while doing the dishes. It’s not that bad.
🙂
@sparky
I agree. Of course, I can’t possibly accept myself completely because a lot of my self-hatred is rooted in dysphoria and internalized transmisogyny (much of which won’t go away until I start easing my dysphoria). But it’s better than being so overwhelmed by self-loathing that I start to have wild delusions about who I am.
When I was 17, I hated myself so much that it only took a little bit of intellectualization and a misunderstanding of the DSM-IV for me to convince myself that I was a “sociopath”. Somehow my inability to cry, the emotional blocks I got as a result of denying feelings about my gender, and the ensuing lack of emotional expression led me to believe that I was incapable of empathizing with others. I was just an awful person out to exploit and hurt everyone I knew. Instead of recognizing all of that as indicative of being abused and hurt by bigotry, I only recognized it as proof of how morally corrupt I was. Interestingly, it was only by tacitly accepting what I called my “female side” (which I would later found out was not a “side” of myself but rather my true gender) that I was able to fight that self-hatred. It was almost a spiritual experience to me.
Anyway, I’m glad I don’t have those delusions anymore, but I still need to work with a therapist. Trying to get rid of all of my self-hatred all on my own was too much for me to handle, and it still is.
So. Because there was a mix up on the frequency of my painkiller refills (I thought I’d been switched to 30 pills 2x a month instead of 1 – you’d think that’s something they’d communicate, but they didn’t tell me they were switching me from vicodin to norco last month, so my faith in the office’s communication skills is not at an all time high), my LPN now thinks I’ve become dependent and has cut my monthly scrip by two thirds until I can see her on the 29th to talk about cutting me off completely. I’m floored – I’ve spent five damn years toeing their lines, accepting scrip cuts, getting lectured, taking drug tests whenever they wanted, etc, and now because of their fuckup, I’m being denied treatment for chronic pain. Luckily, I now have insurance and thus options. Most of which involve referrals to a pain management specialist and an ortho, and probably finding a new doctor over the summer. Because this? This is bullshit.
Don’t even get me started on how the dentist treated me like I barely had two brain cells to rub together…
Other than that, things are looking up a bit. We have insurance, a line on a small job for a friend of my mom’s, the car is working, and we have food. Plus, my sister is getting married on Friday! Small, family ceremony with a big blowout party to celebrate that and finishing house repairs after the fire in June.
Eek! I’m not really in a good condition to give support at this time, but I can share some good news: my con went pretty well over the weekend! Which is good, because I am completely bushwhacked after all the shit I’ve done the past couple weeks. I didn’t collapse though, which is good, but I plan to just… flop for a while and rest and read books.
LBT: I’m glad your con went well! My control freak nature would not allow me to be involved in such things, I’d drive myself and everyone around me up a wall. Enjoy your reading! (if you like humor, I recommend ‘In A Sunburned Country’ by Bill Bryson. He talks about his love of Australia, it’s myriad perils, and cricket on the radio, and it’s all sweet and utterly hilarious)
RE: KathleenB
Yeah, I can’t do the hardcore con circuit like some folks I know, but I’m glad I went to this one. Just… oof. Very draining. A good kind of draining, but still wears me out.
And also hubby wanted to, er, “celebrate” afterward, which was very nice.
maggiesausage, so sorry for your loss. My condolences, virtual hugs if you want them.
That last bit applies to anyone here who needs them. A lot of people here going through some rough shit at the moment.
Catherine, hugs! It’s horrible when they just disappear, it’s the not knowing.
🙁
I took some selfies of my dog bite:
Before stitches
After stitches (Ten in all! I got most of them out today, but they left three in so the bigger wound can finish closing. I get those out on Thursday.)
I was all set to go around town looking like a badass with my stitches, but nope: mustache made of Band-Aids
Misdirection
@emilygoddess, OUCH! OUCHIE OUCHIE OUCHIE! Glad you’re recovering nicely.
Emilygoddess, it’ll be a bad-ass, sexy scar, though. It will go so nicely with your piratical eyepatch. Still. OUCH OUCHIE OWWWWWW!
Ow ow ow oowwwwwwwwwww
But you’re rockin’ that moustache.
Well, I just got Fribs back from her six-monthly check at the vet. She did her usual Cat Goes Comatose thing, which is easier than most of our kitties, who’ve preferred the seventeen-legs-eight-tails-climb-the-walls method.
No surprises about her health: she’s lost another 500 grams, and our doc wants to change her medication (she’s hyperthyroidal). Poor vet, though: Fribs had a strange growth on her neck, vet said it was a hair cyst (glorified zit, more or less), squeezed it and BLAT! Vet was hit with goo.
We also decided that whoever chose black uniforms for vets must have had an office job and not owned any pets ever.
On the good news front, which has been a long time coming (cloudiah whines), I was offered a new job last week, which caused my current employer to match that new job offer. Not a huge amount of money or anything, but nice. I’m hoping my good job hunting karma will rub off on others who might need it. :: waves good job hunting karma at kittehs ::
Also, has anyone here tried Soft Paws (or the equivalent) on their kitties? My two current kitties are the worst for scratching things. They’re very careful not to scratch furniture while I’m home, adorable little devils.
A couple of threads ago, in the “what is attraction like?” there was a discussion about single target attraction.
I was wondering if anyone knows any good books about it.
The problem is that it takes me a while (months to a year) to become attracted to someone, am only attracted to one person at a time, but I move a lot, and associate with people who move a lot so it ends up being quite frustrating. It isn’t anyone’s fault of course … just annoying for me as it takes about a year to “reset”. So not an urgent, world-ending problem, just an annoying problem that I would like a better way to deal with.
I can deal with it, but if anyone knows any e.g. books with methods better than mine, it would be helpful.
Yay for good job news, cloudiah! Is that the job where you had that marathon all-day interview process?
I haven’t tried Soft Paws. I suspect Maddie would kill me in my sleep if I did. It’s a violation of feline rights to stop ’em destroying furniture. ::looks at disembowelled tapestry armchair::
AL3H – I’m sorry, I’ve no idea what books there might be on the subject. My reading on that was years ago and tended to the “your astral lover” type. Yes, I confess, I read some total rubbish.
A winter warmer! (Okay, it’s spring up north and autumn down here but hey, one should be prepared.)
cloudiah: We did not have good luck with the soft paws on Kamikaze. But she’s a) really smart and b) REALLY touchy about her claws and figured out how to lever them off (despite the fucking superglue holding them on) within a day or so. YMMV, lots of cats deal really well with them.