stormdog | (no subject)

I regret not having been here for some time. I'm really not doing well, mental-health wise. A former co-worker from Rush, where I worked just before moving to the Netherlands, had messaged me a couple of times since the fire but I hadn't gotten back to him. He messaged again saying that he was a little upset I hadn't written back. I wrote him a longish response, which I will copy here as it kind of sums up how things are going right now.

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Hi [name],

If by upset, you mean sad that I haven't written back, I'm sorry for that. I hate making people sad.

If by upset you mean that you're angry I haven't written back, I don't think that's fair.

I've never been very good at real-time communication. Being on things like Messenger and knowing people are waiting for me to respond in a timely way makes me anxious. Honestly, I missed out on so many social connections through the course of the internet in the '90s and on that way. Everyone was on IRC, or using MUDs, or on ICQ or AOL instant messenger, and I was more or less terrified of those things. Often when someone sends me a message, even my friend Mark who I've known for nearly 20 years now, my immediate response is anxiety that they may have expectations of a particular type and speed of response.

Now, that's exacerbated by the fact that I'm having a ridiculous level of anxiety lately about everything. I was at a doctor's office today for an appointment Miriam had. About 45 minutes into our wait, I nearly had a panic attack over being away from the house for so long. Miriam kept me from bursting into tears. When I leave the house or when I lie down in bed for the night, I am afraid that the apartment is going to catch on fire and I'll come home, or wake up, to all of my things being destroyed and my pet dying. Again.

I am really not doing so well, mental health wise, right now. My ability to do much of anything is pretty limited. Social anxiety is so bad that I've been trying to get myself together for weeks to order a birthday cake for Miriam and I to share. But it needs to be dairy free because she is lactose intolerant, and trying to explain that over the phone as well as figure out the right size and the kind of icing and all the other details while talking with someone on the phone is so scary that I just haven't been able to do it.

Beyond that, our politics are different enough to present another layer of anxiety to overcome in talking with you. I've been watching US politics with fear and alarm for years now, and the situation just seems to get worse. As someone in a group that major Republican trend makers think are pedophiles who'd be better off dead, it's hard for that fear and alarm to be completely separate from some of your Facebook posts.

I do care about you, I appreciate you wanting to support me, and am sorry I am not doing better at communicating. Honestly, I'm not really sure when or if that's going to get better. Even in Canada, mental health is luxury health, like teeth are luxury bones, so the options I have for addressing the kind of trauma I've been through are fairly limited.

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And now I'm crying because I feel so completely useless that I can't even get a birthday cake made for my partner.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We're here.

Thanks for telling us what you need to say, when you need to.

Thank you.

Oh fuck. I am so sorry. I wish there was something I could do, like order a cake for Miriam over the internet. Given everything you've gone through it's not surprising that you're completely falling apart.

I'm similar about real-time communication. Notifications really, really stress me in particular. Discord is weirdly mostly okay because it's a bunch of people talking, so the pressure isn't on for me to respond immediately, but it is a very crappy trigger to have.

That's such a sweet thought about the cake, thank you.

Yeah, it's a really crappy trigger. I hate that I've been like this for so long. My inner child kind of resents the fact that so many people who had trouble with people in person did so well on the early internet while I really, really wanted to and just couldn't. I think maybe I would have learned things about myself earlier too. I created a female character on a muck called Tapestries well before I'd figured out I was actually trans, but I was too scared of people to actually to interact with anyone there.

I'm pretty scared of Discord too, and Mastodon where lots of people seem to be going in this round of migration. I'd like to get better at this. It's one of the things I was hoping the current therapist could help with, until fire trauma took over everything.

I'm still pretty shit at making friends.

I was an absolute shit on the early internet. Spent lots of time trolling Christians on AOL. I'm glad I got that impulse out before there was a collective memory or record.

DW is mostly a safe space for me, except that in the past 72 hours I've managed to piss a number of people off, friends and strangers alike, in ways that were unintentional on my part. And now I'm experiencing a little jolt of fear when I get comment notifications. So, hopefully that will pass. I hate being so awkward.

DW and LJ have always been the places I feel safest interacting with people online too. Long-form writing, less pressure to respond immediately. There seem to be federated platforms that are part of the Fediverse that are focused on long-form blogging and I keep wondering if there is somewhere I could fit there.

I'm sorry people are upset with you. I'm so scared of dealing with that kind of thing too.

I'm just very conflict adverse and if I'm having a day of Big Feels, even the gentlest call-out can devastate me. And I have been called out a bunch lately.

Whereas I can scream in the face of a bunch of Nazis calling me slurs IRL and I'm absolutely fine.