stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
I wanted to go for a ride but my ears get cold at this temperature. Just now, I looked in my bike stuff I brought up from Kenosha and I found one, but not the other, of the ear-cover flaps I'd forgotten about that came with my bike helmet. I looked through everything and couldn't find it the other one, and it felt symbolic of the many things, physical and otherwise, I've lost since moving to Europe and it made me tear up.

I'm having some trouble with this sort of thing in the last few days. Yesterday, I played some of the Final Fantasy VII remake for the first time and loved how faithful the recreation was in certain parts. But it also reminded me strongly of playing that game for the first time at home with my family in Kenosha, and that made me cry too.

Things are reminding me of times when I was fundamentally happy and satisfied with my life. I haven't been, since Europe and Covid, and it's hard to be reminded.

I'm so grateful for Miriam's understanding, reassuring presence.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
A couple days ago, Miriam and I were playing Baldur's Gate 3 together and I was hit hard by the sadness of not having had girl experiences growing up. One of the characters reconnected with a childhood friend, and they talked about spending time together in a hidden place that other people didn't know about, doing things like talking and braiding each other's hair. I just felt a twinge of sadness at first, but it kept growing and then I was crying on Miriam's shoulder as she silently comforted me.

I wanted something like so much, though I didn't understand that. Even when I was older, in my 20s and 30s, there were a couple people in my life who I would have loved to have that with. But to various degrees, I didn't understand that was what I wanted, and didn't know how to ask. I think I could probably have that now, finally, except for Covid, and missing it now hurts just as much sometimes, when I think about it too much.

- - - - -

The doctor appointment for Miriam came and we did not get a diagnosis. The rheumatologist has ordered more tests. MRIs, X-rays, and blood tests, including the blood test that the testing center failed to do last time for some reason.

Myself, I'm still in that sort of depressive span that I've been associating with the upcoming appointment. Maybe, since the appointment didn't resolve anything, I guess the anxiety and depression hasn't really gone away. In retrospect, I had so much more hope pinned on that appointment than I thought. And about half of it was self-centered hope that if we know what's going on with Miriam, we will have information to reconsider our precautions to avoid Covid exposure.

- - - - - -

I hear some of you are having warmer weather. While that's disturbing in itself in some cases, I am pretty tired of the winter here. We're in another cold snap and had a lot of snow over the weekend. I had to move my car to the street yesterday so the parking lot can be plowed, and there's enough snow on the ground to make it hard for Ella to find places to pee off of the sidewalk.

The temperature is -20C / -4F, so it's warmed up a little bit from the last couple of days. I managed to get out and buy a replacement car battery a week or so ago. The old one was on its last legs, and it's reassuring to know I won't have to go out there in weather like this and deal with connecting our jump pack to start the car, as I did a few times before that.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
I've continued to be a mess. No surprise there I suppose.

My neck and shoulder continue to be in pain. This morning, though, it was improved enough that when I woke up I was able to roll over and lie on my stomach for a while. That's been mostly out of the question for about two weeks, so that's a relief.

I tried to go to a walk-in clinic on Tuesday, but the two that I went to did not have walk-in hours that day, and I gave up. It was nice to be called "ma'am" at the second one at least.
On Wednesday, there was a trans and allies night at a local brewery, Malty National, that Miriam and I talked about going to. We ended up not staying long because of Covid exposure, and I've been having a really hard time since then. I wrote:

Miriam and I got to the trans and allies event yesterday and only stayed for 10 minutes or so because even though the building wasn't very crowded yet, C0₂ levels were already pretty high. High C0₂ levels indicate poor ventilation, and are a proxy for one risk factor for Covid transmission. I bumped into someone I know from the online group who invited me to join them for pizza (which I couldn't eat because of the respirator), but I declined and went home with Miriam. And then I intended to be in the online meeting for the trans group on Wednesday, but I was too distracted and/or distressed and missed it.

I'm having a really hard time with this. I don't know how many more years of this I can deal with. I don't know what else to do. I'm sad and lonely.


I'm still having a really hard time with this, three days later. That, on top of being sick and being in pain have really destroyed what regularity I'd managed to find in my schedule with exercising and managing my food better. It's really hard for me to feel like anything is really worth doing in the abstract long term.

That said, I'm working on trying to get a CV done to either submit for academic library/archives jobs or to construct resumes from as necessary. If I get it done, I'm going to order some pizza for myself, because at least immediate tangible rewards feel somewhat motivating.

I do rather like the picture of myself I took when I got a little dressed up to go out, ane before I had to put a big ugly respirator on my face. This is the ear I'm going to get a helix piercing on, as soon as my mental health is good enough to manage taking care of it.



Yesterday, I was having something like a panic attack in the morning. I wrote:

My brain is a mess lately.

This morning, a combination of two things are in there. 1: I have to get out of bed to take care of animals even if taking care of myself doesn't matter. 2: What if something happens to Miriam (who is going to a job-related thing) and she's just gone without me even getting a chance to see her again, like my dad. I was in tears at the door as she was leaving, asking her to please be safe as though she's going to visit a war zone instead of driving across town to the university.


Today, though, with the pain reduced and the chaos in my brain a bit more under control, I'm going to write about my ideas for my upcoming name change.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
These past couple of weeks were difficult in a few ways. Miriam's parents were for a week. Her dad is pretty conservative in a lot of ways and I got kind of upset with him a few times. I got sick about halfway through their visit. My best guess is I caught something while at the dentist without a mask while people were in close vicinity of my open mouth for an hour or more. Today, I finally feel like the symptoms are just ghosts of their former selves.

I reaggravated my neck and shoulder in the same place that I hurt it while I was in Wisconsin. I think it's because of all the coughing I was doing while sick. That started around when her parents left on the 15th, got really bad on the 16th, and is still giving me twinges as I move around today, but it's finally mostly better after a week of pain meds and a heating pad. I need to be careful not to type too much or do other things with that arm though, or it gets worse again.

Five days ago, I wrote:

"I think I've aggravated whatever was giving me pain in my neck and shoulder while I was in Wisconsin. (Maybe related to all the coughing I'm doing?) There, it was some of the worst pain in my life: far worse than when I broke my wrist. It's not as bad now: I am functional and able to write. But it's around a 7 when lying down and is keeping me from sleeping. I can get in a position while sitting up where it's more like a 4-5. That's while on several painkillers.

I'm also still dealing with symptoms from being ill and trying to manage all of that on like four hours of sleep. And when I did sleep last night, I had a dream where my dad told me that if I needed him he's a phone call away, and obviously he is not, so I kind of don't want to sleep anyway, except I'm exhausted. So I'm basically a mess right now. Sorry for not being communicative."

So yeah, there's some grief too that's keeping me down. That was exacerbated today by going to CostCo to pick up prescriptions and seeing Christmas decorations. I've been expecting some kind of holiday grief to come along, and today was the first big wave of it. I managed to not cry in the store at least.

On the way home, between grief, loneliness, and isolation, I ate a bunch of cake bites. I bought some after deciding that I was not likely to binge-eat them all too quickly. I was wrong. I ate half the CostCo sized container on the way home. I was feeling pretty disappointed and upset with myself while I ate them and thoughts of self-harm were in my mind, but then I thought of the inner-child work I've been doing with myself. If I was taking care of Little Meghan, and someone wanted to hurt her, I would fuck them up. And I am Little Meghan, and sometimes she eats too much because she is really sad and hurting, and that does not mean she is bad. It means she is a human being who hurts and deserves love.

---

My birthday was nice, if kind of lonely. At least Miriam and her parents were there. We ordered tasty Regina style pizza and pretty unremarkable cheesecake from a local place, Western Pizza.

---

I've been having some one-person girls' nights on the couch, snuggled up with my dog and my stuffed animals under a warm blanket and watching sapphic media. Those really help get me away from my thoughts sometimes. Miriam helps a lot too: I was feeling particularly bad on the morning of the 11th after my attempts to reach out in a few places online didn't get anywhere. We were at a grocery store to get something her parents needed and while she was inside she bought me a bouquet of flowers. I cried sad, happy, and deep tears against her in the car, feeling loved, and thought of, and cared for, and validated. I would be lost without her.
stormdog: (floyd)
This is not a very polished post.

The last few days have been pretty rough.

I attended the weekly online trans support group the week before last, for the first time in many months, and had a really nice time. I'd been avoiding that, as well as the Facebook trans groups I was in, because reading about people being social just hurt too much when I can't do those things myself. On top of my dad's death and everything else, it was too much.

But I'd gotten my grief somewhat more under control. Miriam and I had also worked out ways for me to be social in limited ways, too, and together that had me feeling stable enough to want to be reach out again. I did and it was good.

This past Wednesday, I was in the group a second time and it made me crash pretty hard again.

I ended up talking a little bit about how distressed I'd gotten in grad school when I was reading about social justice in an urban context. That I ended up feeling like there was nothing I could do to fix the broken systems and it made me non-functionally depressed. One of the local community organizers talked about how hard it is for her, too, dealing with the bureaucracies and politics of the local area. She's been burned out, and has recently been trying to reconnect with her motivations for doing the work that she does. A primary motivation for her is community and "queer joy." "I want to kiss cute girls," she said.

That hurt so much. Of course she didn't mean it to. But it hurt deeply. On top of that, she was also talking about having just begun a relationship with a new partner, so she was pretty bubbly about that and about community and joy of being with others.

I still can't have that in the same way. I WANT TO KISS CUTE GIRLS TOO, GODDAMMIT. I want to meet people and date people and have sex with people. But I can't, and I don't know when I'll be able to and it hurts a lot. That need for community would be one of my primary sources of motivation and joy if I could pursue it, but I can't right now. Instead, it's a source of pain. What do I do instead?

I left the group early and was not at my most emotionally stable for a couple days. I was working on getting myself together when the next thing happened.

I've wanted to get together with Train Girl for so long. I like her, we have similar interests, and we are both starved for in-person contact and touch. She recently said that I am her only local trans friend and am important to her. She posted on Facebook wondering whether there are still professional cuddlers since Covid, and I pointed her at Cuddle Comfort, a website that connects people looking for cuddles. I also messaged her and said that if we could work around our mutual masking/Covid safety needs, I would love to have some cuddles with her. That there is nothing I want more in my life lately than people to cuddle.

Earlier today, she posted on Facebook saying that she's looking for local people to cuddle, and is no longer masking but is up to date on shots. I've already told her that masking is a hard limit for me: people I'm in spending time with in close proximity for longer periods must be masked for me to be able to do that. That being the case, and her looking for cuddles when she knows I am available, suggests that it's not an option for us.

That hurts too. It adds to my feeling like my own desire for community and touch and kisses doesn't work in the abstract by showing me that it doesn't work in this very specific instance either.

I shouldn't read this as overly symbolic, or as an omen maybe, but it feels like it. Train girl is the first person I've expressed interest in since transitioning. She's sort of an example to me of me figuring out what I want and knowing how to pursue what I want now that I know who I am. There are so many reasons to think we'd get along fabulously and have a wonderful time cuddling and watching stuff together. But because of Covid, I can't.

Meanwhile, lots of people I know in Illinois are talking about the convention they're at this weekend and that hurts too, and I'm just feeling broken.

Miriam's parents are here right now too, so that's disrupting routines and making things difficult even more.

Miriam and I went to the grocery store together this morning. While she masked up and went inside to get a few things, I sat in the car, tried unsuccessfully to find music to listen to, and just sat with my fear and loneliness. When she came back, she presented me with a bouquet of flowers and it was such a wonderful gesture that I completely lost my composure and cried against her for a while.

I would be lost without her.

But I'm feeling pretty hopeless right now. And the places I've tried to reach out in new ways — the Reddit T4T group and the Discord servers I've looked at — have made me feel more isolated too. I'm feeling like self-isolation again is what I need to do to get away from the pain of constant reminders of my isolation.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
Me last night: I'd like to sleep now.

My brain: Sure, but remember how much it hurt when you had to give up the dogs you were fostering before you moved to Europe? Also, what if the used HEPA filter you just bought has bad wiring and starts a fire while you're asleep? Ok, sleep well now!

---

Having determined that the budget to replace my computer just about covers all the parts I've bought and nothing else, I went back to trying to save the old graphics cards. I took one apart, cleaned it, removed and replaced the thermal transfer compound, put it back together, and tried it. It seemed like it mostly worked except that the HDMI port was dead so I could only use the Displayport Port. I need more than one monitor and couldn't get the integrated graphics to work at all with the card in, so that one's out. I tried the second card and that one wasn't even recognized as a video card by the computer.

I've started feeling like it will be good to take those things to an electronics recycler anyway. One more reminder of something awful that will be gone. They smell bad too, despite all my cleaning. The smell of the condo after the fire is seared into my brain. I can't quite recall it from nothing, but when I smell something that the odor lingers on, it's right there in my mind.

So I'm back to the integrated graphics on my Ryzen 5700 for now. They work well enough. I can't play Satisfactory very well, but that's really about the only thing it affects. I would possibly like to try Final Factory, a new factory-building game in early access, but that can wait.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
For a few days, I was feeling, paradoxically, both less mentally stable than usual and more able to be functional and productive than usual. Random crying and panic attacks were more frequent (once, while working in the kitchen, I ended up leaning against the refrigerator and crying with absolutely no idea why), but I also cleaned and organized and made decent food more than usual and made progress on the insurance spreadsheet. I almost felt like the instability and productivity were going together somehow: like I was making some kind of subconscious progress.

But, as Christmas and the new year got closer, I kept the mental instability but kind of lost the improved ability to do useful things. There's a lot of anixety and depression connected to this holiday span. Even though I've been able to play some games online with family and a friend, and got to talk to my brothers especially more than I have in a long time, I still feel terribly lonely and isolated here.

A lot of people are expressing optimism about the end of the old year and the start of the new, but after the last three years being so awful, it's hard to feel any of that. Instead, I feel apprehension. Dread, even, sometimes. It's a bit like when I'm feeling really depressed and the idea of going to bed is off-putting because it means I just have to wake up and deal with yet another day. The year is ending, and it means I just have to deal with yet another year of pandemic-caused isolation, being thousands of miles away from most of the people I care about, and now trying to navigate life as a transwoman.

Don't get me wrong: realizing I'm a woman and doing things to affirm that has been, without question, the biggest source of joy for me in the last year or two. But just going out and doing things - anything - in public as a trans person is mentally taxing, and sometimes I just don't have the spare capacity for it.

Hoping that the new year is going to be wonderful, or even just better, is too big a chunk of optimism for me right now, I guess. Instead, I'm going to hope that, now that the holiday stuff is done and I'm not actively missing people and a former way of life so sharply, I can get back to feeling like maybe I'm making a little bit of progress with the panic, anxiety, and depression and maybe becoming a more functional human being.

And maybe I'll manage to keep doing things online with family and friends. That would be really nice.

Stuff

Nov. 7th, 2022 11:03 am
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
I looked at 538's predictions on the upcoming US midterm for the first time yesterday, and the result is not helping with my depression.

I'm near-completely inactive these days, especially this past week or so. Even when I'm not sleeping, which is a lot of the time, I kind of wish that I was? I spend a lot of the time I'm awake pointlessly scrolling through social media updates because...I dunno. At least there's other people?

I've tried to play some computer games, but the decision-making is too much for me a lot of the time. Several times, I've made it to the title screen of Oxygen Not Included, then just kind of panicked and closed it. I am still enjoying Stardew Valley with Miriam in the evenings. Though I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by decision-making there too, snuggling on the couch and discussing what to do with her gets me past those moments.

Before the fire, I'd started regularly taking little one hour bike trips, and they were really good for me. I'm probably going to buy an indoor trainer to use my bike with today. I'm worried I won't be motivated enough to use it and will have wasted money on myself, but maybe I can think of some kind of self-reward system that will get me to do it.

One thing I'm really looking forward to is the arrival of some shoes that I ordered from Torrid. At present, I'm still wearing either the sandals that survived the fire (and whose straps have broken and been repaired with twist-ties multiple times), or the worn-out low-top leather shoes I thrifted to have something close-toed for salvaging stuff from the burned-out condo.

Assuming they fit, I'll not only have shoes in decent shape, but they'll be cute too!

I hope they fit.
stormdog: (sleep)
I am losing significant portions of time to feelings of fear and anxiety. I will make it through this MLIS. Hopefully it will even get easier as I go and reacclimate. But right at this moment, I'm essentially paralyzed by fear and anxiety. It's a familiar enough set of feelings that I know it will eventually reduce to a manageable level and I can get things done, but it would be really nice if I could just skip to that point. Which is, of course, what some of the goal of therapy has been for me; improving my general state of mind, giving me tools like focused breathing to get my brain under control.

There's also petting and brushing Seregil. That helps too. I'm going to do some more of that right now.
stormdog: (floyd)
I haven't been around here in a while. It's basically because I haven't been together enough to write a lot about what's been going on.

(Having posted this, I looked at the dates. A month‽ Wow. That's probably the longest I've ever gone without posting something since I started Livejournaling. My perception of time has been a bit off for a few reasons.)

The situation here in the Netherlands has been pretty rough for both Danae and me. For her part, she has an emotionally abusive PI (Primary Investigator) on her post-doc project who has driven numerous undergrads and grad students from the project and has had an ethics investigation opened into her in the past here at UvA.

Danae has been on sick leave for a few weeks due to significant stress-related health issues and is discussing options with the department. If she is, in the end, forced to work with that PI, she is going to resign and we will move in with her parents in Canada. I'm doing my best to support here, and it's rough seeing her going through this.

Meanwhile, Danae is doing her best to support me. I have a level of anxiety and depression here that I think needs therapy to address, and that also make it hard for me to navigate an unfamiliar health system that defaults to the Dutch language. Though I don't have any responsibilities outside the house right now, feelings of enervation frequently keep me from doing the housework I ought to or want to be doing. I am managing to more-or-less keep up with having the kitchen clean and preparing meals for us in the evenings.

My lack of ability to communicate in Dutch combines with my irrational feelings of anxiety and deep fear about taking up metaphorical 'space' socially to make going out really hard. Every time I go grocery shopping, I have significant anxiety about being a nuisance to anyone I might have to communicate with because I have to ask them to speak English. In the US, I happily went out of my way to accomodate people who communicated in a way I did not and loved to be in places where I heards or saw multiple languages. When it's *me* as the one who is outside the dominant group, and especially when I think of the reputation Americans have for expecting everyone to speak English, it bothers me a lot. I know that this is irrational. There are folks who live here for *years* without learning any Dutch and get along just fine. But that doesn't keep it from bothering me.

I had been working on Dutch for a while with Duolingo, but between general depression making it hard to concentrate or feel motivation, and not knowing if we're even going to be here for very much longer, I stopped.

It's been pretty hard being so socially and physically isolated. I've never really had a lot of in person friends anyway, but here I've spent the last few months in the apartment for 24 hours a day unless I have to go shopping. I haven't been able to get myself motivated enough for bike rides or walks when sometimes it's hard to just get out of bed.

That's changed in the last couple of weeks though. Through an ex-pat group, Danae found a nearby person who is happy to let me walk their puppy a few times a week. They get free dog walking, and I get a litle time with a cute 7-month old poodle named Poesjkin. Win-win. The first time I went over to meet them, I was terrified. Literally terrified. I spent a couple hours on the couch beforehand, feeling panicky and occasionally whimpering. But I went, and it was good. Very good.

Poesjkin likes me and there's a nifty park near his people's place to walk and look at birds. I don't make it there as often as I intended to due to depression/anxiety, but I've been going a couple times a week for two weeks now and I'm pretty sure it's good for me. I'm so grateful to Danae for connecting us. She felt awful at first when she saw how scared I was, fearing that she'd pushed me into something I didn't want. In truth, whether if it was something I didn't want to do, I probalby wouldn't have been able to fight down the anxiety long enough to do it.

I'm pretty unhappy about my the state of my body. I'm doing a lot of over-eating, my go-to self-medication response. That combined with little exercise has lead to being heavier and having ankle and knee pain. My left ankle has been a little arthritic or something since a minor bike accident years ago and it's acting up with more weight. My left knee, the one I injured in my fall in Amsterdam, is being tricky when I'm carrying twenty or thirty pounds of groceries plus my own self upstairs to our apartment. It still has a circular scar-like mark and a numb spot, but at least it's functioning mostly well! As my sweetie Lisa says, it's not the age, it's the mileage.

I'm still glad to be in the Netherlands instead of the US. I'm stressed about what's going on there. No, I'm horrified. Or rather, I alternate between horror and a sort of disconnected numbness. My dad teaches high school, and is a high-risk person for Covid for a few reasons and the schools where he is in Wisconsin are planning in-person instruction. My mother would love for him to retire a few years early, but they're not sure if that's doable financially.

Meanwhile, anonymous people in unmarked cars are grabbing people off the streets in Portland, OR. People are threatening, or even using, lethal force against other people over whether they have to wear a mask. I just don't have words. I hope Biden is elected in November so we can try to turn this around. I hope it isn't too late. I hope we don't have armed conflict in the wake of whatever outcome occurrs. I am registered to vote from here and will do my little part that way, for what it's worth.

That basically covers the state of the dog up to the last week or so. Most of it is unchanged, though I've requested help from Danae to find the mental health care I need and she's doing so.

There is one last piece of major news. I may be burying the lede here, but I'm still pretty scared about telling anyone since my last school experience was pretty awful and I have a lot of stuff to get past from it still, and I'm feeling a lot of fear about telling people I'm doing anything new for fear that I'll fail and embarass myself...

But I've been accepted to my first-choice MLIS program. It is an entirely online program with Simmons University in Boston, MA. They are a highly-rated program, and I'm taking their concentration in cultural heritage management which I think is a perfect fit for my background and interests. They're giving me a small merit-based scholarship, and it looks like federal loans will cover the rest of it.

The day I got the news, I had to spend the next few hours in bed, being excited, terrified, hopeful, ashamed, determined, and bunches of other things all at once. I'm still working through a lot of those feelings too, but this has also given me some optimism for the future that I haven't felt in a long time.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
I started getting a feel for my new bike a couple days ago. Compared to my physical condition prior to grad school, I'm in awful shape. But cycling the Dutch countryside is fantastic!
I expect I'll be avoiding Amsterdam for the foreseeable future.



---

This depression/anhedonia/lack of motivation is getting worse.
I need to get some library schools apps together by the end of the month to be considered for Fall and it's really not easy. And I'm not doing the housework I ought to be either.

Today I'm listening to They Might Be Giants and cleaning. Music really helps me feel up to doing things when I can manage to feel good enough to convince myself to start playing it and do something.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
Last night, I got home from work and thought a little bit about what I wanted to accomplish that evening. Then I laid down on the couch while Danae played a video game and napped.

I got up and started to load Factorio, but I realized I'd have to reinstall a bunch of mods and that seemed like too much to deal with so I laid down again. Then I made dinner and napped some more. Then I took the dog to bed and watched a forty minute long video about starting up a steam locomotive. Then I went to sleep.

It was a good day, I guess? Just not feeling like doing anything. At least i'm getting more sleep.
stormdog: (Tawas dog)
My therapist suggested I direct my attention back to some of the anti-depression basics. Getting enough sleep. Eating decently. I haven't been very good about either of those things. I feel tired almost every day, and that leads me to drinking things with caffeine. I hadn't used caffeine for a decade or so, but I started again and have been using more and more of it. And yesterday I wanted a break so I walked over to Jewel, 'just for a walk' and ended up eating a bunch of clearance chocolate. That may have contributed to the headache I had yesterday.

So I'm going to do my best on all that for a week and see how I'm feeling. I'm still tired this morning even though I got to sleep earlier, but I *did* manage to get up and moving more quickly and easily than usual.

They also suggested talking to a psychiatrist again. That means I'd have to find a new PCP (my previous one moved away) and then find a new psychiatrist because I don't actually have one. (I'm glad I have some refills on my brain meds still.) I should deal with that soon, but I might be moving soon and that gives me an easy excuse to not deal with it...
stormdog: (floyd)
I feel uncomfortable with the idea of sex without a certain level of mutual commitment. But that's true for nearly everyone who's interested in sex. Even meeting someone for a hookup on something like Tindr or Grindr isn't without a level of short-term commitment. In my case, I believe that necessary level of commitment to be greater or more intense than it is for most people. For me, this is the essence of demisexuality*. Condensing my thoughts and experiences into that kind of articulatable concept is a good starting point for my thoughts about what I hope to find in other relationships, and whether I actually want to look. Therapy and reading "More Than Two" together have clarified my thoughts tremendously, but it's only a start and I am still so uncertain.

I don't know what minimum level of commitment I want there to be attached to sexual relationships. I also need to decide what level of commitment I am willing to offer, both at present and in the future. How much time do I want to invest in my relationships while ensuring I don't feel stressed and anxious about meeting existing commitments and having time for my solo pursuits? I owe partners a reasonable idea of what roles I may or may not be able to fill in their lives.

I need to make more space for myself in my own mind. A few weeks ago, I expressed to my therapist that that is something I want out of therapy. I've been going for more than a year, and that's the first time I directly expressed a goal more concrete than wanting to be less anxious and depressed. It feels like a big step for me and I'm proud of myself for it.

There really isn't a lot of room for myself in there when it comes to other people. That makes relationships really difficult. I feel very lucky in my relationship with Danae. After most of a decade of being her partner, I feel that I am strongly in touch with myself about what I, myself want in my relationship with her. Our lives together make me consciously happy and my being her partner is the expression of a continuing active decision to maintain my commitments to her. I believe this is how relationships should be; an ongoing conscious commitment in something that increases the happiness of everyone involved. I think it could have been nearly anyone who approached me at the convention when I met her and I would have been responsive to their advances because of the way I tend to automatically return expressions of interest. I'm very glad it was her.

*I do not reify Demisexuality. It does not have any existence outside of its nature as a social construction. Whether or not I am demisexual is purely a matter of whether the label serves to foster a feeling of understanding and helps me feel less alone. That, it very much does.

--

Another aspect of my confusion is difficulty in feeling, and being aware of feeling, attraction to people. I think it's connected to being faceblind as well as being demisexual (interestingly, someone in a demisexual discussion group I'm in asked recently whether there were other faceblind people there). I just don't find people very aesthetically interesting. I love looking at people with long hair, and I love touching and brushing and combing it. But that's more about the hair than the person; I would enjoy doing that with anyone with long hair, and while there may be a connection to sexual attraction in that, it doesn't mean I'd enjoy sex with anyone with long hair. I think it's more that I feel an atypical amount of sensual joy in doing things with people's hair, which doesn't necessarily connect to wanting to have sex with them.

My understanding is that a lot of people can look at a stranger and feel a purely aesthetically-grounded sense of attraction and feel motivated by that to want to get to know someone better to see if there's deeper attraction. I don't really feel that, so I'm not motivated to approach people in that way. It's not at all that I'm not interested in sex; rather the opposite is true. It's that the idea of sex with any specific other person typically makes me pretty uncomfortable.

(Some of this, too, may be all the messages I've received through life about how who people are is more important than what they look like. If that's true, as I believe it is, then appearance shouldn't factor into my feelings of attraction. But then what does? I don't know, because there have also been people who I feel *should* be attractive to me - who are thoughtful and caring and insightful and fun to talk with and be around - who I'm *not* attracted to, and I feel a lot of confusion about that. What, then, makes someone attractive to me?)

--

Making things more confusing for me is that these parts of my own nature do not make sense to me. I once analogized my ideal form of polyamory as being like playing board games with people. Different people like different games, and they can be casual or intense, and it's lots of fun to find new people who like the same kinds of games you do. I wouldn't enjoy playing board games with someone who I have nothing in common with, but it doesn't have to be someone I have a deep connection with either.

That's the way I dearly *want* to feel about relationships because I see the ways it provides a rich, caring, and loving social environment for people. But I don't feel that way and I don't know why.

Other than the general anxiety and depression, understanding why I do or don't feel attraction, and what to do about that, is a primary thing I'm trying to figure out now. For lots of reasons, it's scary when someone says they are attracted to me because I don't know what to do with that or how to know what I feel about it when I can't even figure myself out without worrying about additional variables to manage.
stormdog: (floyd)
I have an intake appointment with a new psychiatrist in a couple of weeks. The one I was seeing before moved out of the area some time ago and slots for new patients seem to be at a premium.

I'm dealing with some major depression lately and it's time to talk about changing my medication. No motivation. Nothing seems fun or worthwhile except playing and snuggling with my tiny-dog and being with my partner. This past weekend was Open House Chicago again, and for the second year in a row I just didn't feel like visiting any of the buildings. I don't want to play games that I usually enjoy. I don't want to try to be social. Those things just sound both uninteresting, and like too much work to deal with. My life right now is work, dog care, and lying on the couch and just that feels barely manageable. Moving several days' worth of dirty dishes into the kitchen and brushing my teeth yesterday both feel like real accomplishments.

Why does this happen to people? I had depression and anxiety problems before grad school, but now it's a whole new level. I feel like something physiological happened to my brain; like something is really different. How do I feel like I used to? Is it possible? I've missed doing and learning and experiencing so much over the past years. I've been wondering lately if the way to reduce depression and stress about that is to just lower my expectations for myself. To just accept the way I am now. Maybe that would be the first step to changing it. But that seems inherently contradictory and irrational. I don't accept the way I am. I don't want to be this way.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
People at work saved me some food from the Fall welcome back party yesterday evening. I ate the two Italian beef sandwiches, thinking I'd save the hot dog for later. Then I ate the hot dog. Then I went downstairs and bought a brownie. I ate the brownie with some chocolate syrup on top of it from a bottle left over from a party that happened before I started here. A co-worker commented that that would be *way* too sweet for her to eat, and that it would be almost as bad as just drinking the syrup out of the bottle.

After she left, I drank the rest of the syrup out of the bottle.

I don't seem to be coping well today. I want a puppy to snuggle.
stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
More depression whining, in case you want to skip it. In short, I'm sorry I haven't been very interactive with people. It's not you.

I'm not managing depression well right now. I'm stuck in that difficult space I've been alluding too. Feeling hypocritical, in conflict with my own sense of self. The regular weekend dungeon visits with Danae haven't been happening (particularly ironic given how very long I've wanted that kind of thing in my life). I haven't been trying to plan a first meeting with a Facebook friend who's indicated that she' like to meet in person and see if we'd be compatible for dating or as play partners. (To be fair, she's pretty busy and has her own mental/physical health issues too.) I've been ignoring Posi's suggestion to come help him build a firepit. There's a game convention coming up in Milwaukee this weekend that I have Friday off for and a hotel booked for, but I'm not really excited about being there. All things that I'd normally really like to do but I don't want to. I don't want to leave the house if I don't have to; I just want to stay home. When I'm at home, I'm not working with my electronics or reading books. At least I'm snuggling my partner while we play video games together; That's pretty enjoyable.

I did see this come through Facebook today, which is a good reminder that it is not too late for me to do the sort of crazy thing I keep imagining myself doing.
stormdog: (floyd)
A couple paragraphs I wrote elsewhere in response to a discussion of politics (and a lengthy expansion of those thoughts):

"I'm frustrated with myself that it's so hard for me to try to rationally engage with people who are right-leaning politically. Understanding and respecting alternate systems of understanding, recognizing their internal validity and engaging them in ways that make sense not to 'me' but to 'them' is the very core of my undergraduate degree.

Hurtful language and petty attacks are counter-productive, but oftentimes these days, it's all I'm capable of. So I stay largely out of the discussion. I feel like I'm failing at politics."

My therapist asked what it was that kicked my legs out from under me in Syracuse. There were a few things that reinforced each other. One is that I have lost the belief that I have a chance of having an effect on society; of making it better. Because of that, so many things I was fascinated by because they were important to me as part of understanding how to do that are just depressing. Rather than being motivated to thoroughly understand systemic inequalities in urban geography, they just make me want to cry. Geographers and anthropologists and others have been talking about ways to make things better for decades, but the ears of the dominant paradigm are deaf to them.

The ruined buildings and blighted urban landscapes that, as objects of fascination for me, led me to photography and school and art and anthropology and geography, are also symptoms of that dominant paradigm's disregard. They are still history and the passage of time made manifest; that was what I hoped to convey in my photography. But their meaning as the chewed-up and spat-out leavings of a seemingly inescapable and deeply discriminatory system overshadows their other meanings.

Artistically, I'm still fascinated with the thought of how a space is made and unmade. When does a space become a place? When does it unbecome? When is a room no longer a room, as its doors and windows and ceilings and walls slowly rot away? I'm drawn to that kind of liminality in ways I can't explain. But that making and unmaking does not occur in a vacuum; it is part of the making and unmaking of communities, and livelihoods.

Divorced from that context, it is apt to call images of Detroit's burned out houses or Gary's empty church 'ruin porn.' It's an empty aesthetic that provides a thrill disconnected from the reality of the subject's life. "I love Brutalist architecture!" I excitedly commented in an online discussion. "You don't have to live and work in it," one person responded. In Detroit, a woman approached me to ask why I was photographing a crumbling stone house with a sagging roof. "It has a kind of beauty," I said, somewhat self-consciously. "Ain't nothin' beautiful here," was her sharp response.

The more I've thought about those exchanges, the more photography of ruins feels like a kind of exploitation; converting someone else's miserable day-to-day existence into some pretty pictures to show to other people to evoke some sense of authenticity and wonder. "I was there! I saw this myself and I am sharing it with you!" What does my brief passage through the place really teach me about its nature and its place in the lives of people for whom is is part of their everyday world? How much less does my self-conscious abstraction of that experience into a few photos show someone who looks at my photos? It's hard to think of a more inauthentic way to experience a place.

It's not documentary work with some redeeming intent to communicate what these places are like. That's been done, and claiming that's my intent without doing the very real and extensive work necessary to contextualize what I'm producing is a poor excuse. If anything, it has the opposite effect, abstracting real, living places into mysterious empty landscapes of decay and ruin that contribute to unfounded apprehension of cities, the very places I feel are the best way for vast numbers of people to live on Earth.

I...think I've lost my thread. I was writing about geography and ineffectiveness.

The study of urban geography makes clear that, just as these ruined landscapes are a result of the destruction part of the engine of creative destruction that powers the economic redistribution system of post-Fordist capitalism, their reconstruction is a result of the creative part of that same engine. When buildings are created or revitalized, when infrastructure like highways and rail transit are constructed, it doesn't matter who the metaphorical architects of such plans claim will benefit from them; the real winners are those who have the means to invest in their creation and the real losers are those who do not have the means to avoid the consequences of significant and irreversible change to their landscape. Everything I read in my urban social justice class (with the possible exception of that damned inscrutable book by Henri LeFebvre that I wanted to pitch into Onondaga Lake) pointed to that conclusion. Some of the best minds in geography and progressive academia can't figure this shit out; what can I do?

I don't want to feel so ineffective and helpless. But I do.

I also don't want to see random pictures of dying places anymore. I don't want to produce more of them myself. If I produce more urban photography, I want to make images of living systems. Working infrastructure that shows how deeply interconnected we all are. How many ways we all work with and for each other. How we all cooperate, consciously or unconsciously to create these beautiful, ridiculously complex, heart-achingly imperfect yet deeply optimistic engines of assault against entropy called cities. (Is that even what cities are anymore, or is it just a side-effect?)

But I don't know how to do that either.

In the meantime, right now, I'm conducting my own tiny fight against entropy as I work to repair my VTVM. For now, as I slowly work out where to go from here, that will do.
stormdog: (sleep)
My primary motivation for going back to school, both undergrad and my interrupted attempt at grad school, were motivated in large part by my desire to understand and improve the social systems and political economies that are such a large part of shaping people's lives. I want to understand, publicize, and fight systemic inequality.

My experience in Syracuse connected those desires to feelings of frustration, anger, sadness, and futility that I haven't been able to get out from under. The results of this election have exacerbated those feelings. I feel scared and helpless. I don't know what to do.
stormdog: (sleep)
Today is the first day of Open Doors Chicago: it's an architectural tourism event where over a hundred architecturally remarkable buildings are open for free tours to the general public throughout Chicago. I've wanted to get to Open Doors for years, but somehow there has always been an unavoidable scheduling conflict. Now, finally, I'm in easy distance, don't have other commitments, and could make a list of cool places and jump on my bike to see them.

And I just don't feel motivated. It's so strange for me to have the chance to do something so awesome related to architecture and just not be feeling it. But I also haven't been doing much bicycling at all lately either; I just haven't really felt motivated. Maybe I'm having another depressive spell? I mostly want to sit at home and play Factorio.

Danae and I have a really nice evening yesterday. It was the day of the NU anime club, and they were viewing four episodes of different TV shows to decide what series to watch for the rest of the semester. I'd been really tired and a little headachy, so I took a long nap during the day and was up a little late for the five o' clock start. I'd been hesitant about whether I really wanted to go, but in the end I decided that both of us get out and see other people so little that the chance to do so together is one I shouldn't pass up. I walked to the campus and met her there, seeing the end of the first episode and the other three with her. One of them, Occultic 9, was so fast and disjointed that trying to keep track of it was a bit like scouring my brain with something abrasive. It was tiring to watch. The second, Drifters, was kind of interesting but not inspiring. The last one, the first episode of a show about an alternate World War II with a witch/sorceress helping the princess of a tiny mountain kingdom standing against "Germania" was really good and I enjoyed watching it. I hope that ends up being the series they see more of.

Danae and I walked home and stopped at Chipotle for a buy one-get one burrito deal (you can get a coupon if you go to their site and play a silly game) and then snuggled on the couch for more Anime. My dad had found Vampire Hunter D for me, a wonderful post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy horror western romance from 1985, and I wanted to share it with her. But it turned out the copy he gave me was a newer redub and I hated the voices immediately. To my delight, I found the version that I new in whole on Youtube, so we put it on the TV and curled up with Piper. Once it was done, it auto played the newer movie with the same character, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. I'd never seen it so we watched that one too. I prefer the original, but I have to admit that the newer one is really pretty! As is D. If I have any 'type' when it comes to guys, it's vaguely feminine long-haired men. Even as a kid and before I had long hair myself, I loved seeing long-haired men in fiction.

Anyway, here I am this morning. Piper woke me again as usual. She's calm and quiet most of the night in her crate in the living room, but she tends to start barking around 8. I'm hoping both that I can train her to stop doing that, and that I can also leave her out for the night once she's not in heat and her diabetes is under control.

She's doing better in the last week or so I think. When I took her to the vet on Tuesday, I found out that I was only giving her half the does of insulin that she was supposed to get. She needs five units, but I was drawing insulin up to the fifth line, which on these syringes, mark half-units. I thought I'd been taking such good care of her, and when I found out I'd been doing it wrong I felt deeply awful. I was depressed for a lot of the day, and napped on the couch where I had nightmares about her bleeding and peeing on everything while I helplessly looked on.

The shelter staff reassured me that it wasn't my fault, and that they had incorrect information. I don't know where it came from; maybe it was from the previous owner and that's why her diabetes was not managed well. Anyway, she's now getting her full dose and I do feel like she has more energy and is feeling better. That's a huge relief for me. There are things I get from being with a big dog that I don't get from her, but I really care about her a lot and felt just terrible when I learned that I was doing things wrong. Small or not, I can still bury my nose in her fur and sniff, and the smell of dog is reassuring and soothing in a way that I just can't explain. I'm glad she's here, and I'm glad that we're able to take care of her. However imperfect I am at it, I know that she needs special care that not a lot of situations could ensure she gets.

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stormdog: a woman with light skin and long brown hair that cascades over one shoulder. On her other side, she is holding a large plush shark against herself. She has pink fingernails and pink cat eye glasses (Default)
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