Con Work

I have not written for a while, but for a reason. I spent most of the last week prepping for Trotcon, and was in Ohio all weekend, and as soon as I got home, I hit the ground running on getting a few commissions done. It's been pretty much non-stop work, with hardly any time for writing breaks. Predictably, this did come with some sleep disturbances, a couple 3-6 AM bedtimes, but evening and late night is often the only time I can work undisturbed on customs for long stretches of time. As the con date snuck up on me, I felt increased pressure to make more and more stuff, and even when I was packing up, I still didn't feel like I have enough merch. Of course, I had brought enough stuff in terms of total dollar amount of merch, but I have to do my best to have the greatest variety possible to offer con goers in order to get those sales.

I was hoping to bring home about $1500, but only manage to rake in 1K. It was good enough to pay the rent for the upcoming month and probably keep the power and internet on... but not much beyond that. I spent my last few dollars trying to enjoy Fiver's birthday and get him a couple toys. Small things, some cars and a toy tool set, but better than this past Christmas when I wasn't able to get him anything. I might do Trotcon again next year. Maybe.

The stress of finances is starting to weigh heavily on me. Jesse is having some financial aid problems, and may not be able to return to school in the fall, so the burden of bills is starting to shift back onto my shoulders. I'm starting to consider work again, just to keep my family afloat. Returning to the retail wage-slavery has crossed my mind already a time or two... It's hard to consider applying for any serious jobs and investing time and energy in interviews I may even have to drive miles out of my way to get to. I still don't feel like I'm in a place where I can emotionally handle possible rejection. If I apply for a job, I really go for it. I pour myself into getting that position, and really get attached to the idea of working there. I get my hopes up very high. While it could help my prospects for landing a position, if it doesn't, it leaves me emotionally drained. When I worked for Family Resources already, I was able to take rejection with stride because I was in a position I was happy to continue working; there was a cushion there waiting when I got knocked down. At least then I was secure. Now, not so much. I imagine driving out to Sarasota or Clearwater for a job interview (again, if I were to even get a call back for one), investing precious dollars in gas to get out there and precious time that might be better spent making ponies to sell on ebay, so that if I get turned down for the job, I feel like it was a complete waste of effort.

We should be able to make it through July, even if we have to just scrape by. Rent is set aside, so that by the time we're desperate again, it'll be time for Bronycon, and I should make a few grand there. It should be a lot better than last year, since I'm working months in advance, as opposed to 4 days in advance like last year, and last year was still pretty good. Then 2 weeks after Bronycon, I'll have the Grand Brony Gala where I'll be selling a lot of retail merch. That should bring in at least another grand, maybe two. We might even take the money and move the fuck up north. To hell with Florida.

Jesse's run into some bureaucratic trouble at school and may just be taking some time off, so it's as good a time as any to make the leap. It would be refreshing to all of us just to get out of here, and I don't feel like I'd be cut off from support networks, since I have a lot of family in Cape Cod. I'd only feel bad leaving my mom behind, and likely with only a month or so of notice. I'd probably leave some cash behind to help cover rent or bills for a while, if I can. Just browsing some of the job listings on Craigslist for the area we'd be staying, job prospects look so much more promising than down here. It's really energizing just to fantasize about it, especially since it is becoming and increasingly plausible prospect. It's like a fresh injection of hope into my life.

I Knew Why the Caged Bird Sang... I Just Thought It Should Have Screamed

I tried to watch as much of the Maya Angelou service as I could today, though mothering duties often impeded my attempts. She sounded like such a profoundly wonderful woman to know and I envied the people who spoke of having her in their lives directly. Perhaps it's because I'm still young (relatively), but I don't feel like I have any people in my life who are really that powerfully influential and inspiring. I would love to have someone to personally look up to like that. I think I might have a couple of people who think I am that person in their life, and I confess it makes me question their sanity. Which is really, really unfair, I realize. I just can't imagine truly larger-than-life personalities like Dr. Angelou thought as little of themselves as I do of me. But I wouldn't know. I don't know any larger-than-life people personally. Maybe they did/do. Maybe they're just as crazy as I am, just more successful at it.

My relationship with Maya Angelou is probably not much deeper than most people's. I had to read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for school as a kid, and my life and social media experience has been sprinkled with various wonderful quotes. I will not pretend Caged Bird was a life-changing book for me - not in the immediate way Atlas Shrugged was - but it was influential, albeit in more subtle ways. When I first read it, I didn't really get it. I did my assignments for it as per my class requirements, but I didn't GET what was so important about it reading it at thirteen or fourteen. Reading about her rape made me feel uncomfortable, her childhood was so surreal, her sexual exploits so emotionally detached. In fact, I recall a distinct lack of emotionality through the whole story, that made the biography seem almost journalistic. I have not reread the book since then, so I don't know how well my initial impressions from a decade ago hold up. I wasn't really sure what to make of it all at the time.

Despite my early disinterest, the story stuck with me. Perhaps that's part of what makes a great book: it leaves you thinking for years afterward, coming back for constant reflection on the ideas and themes and events, such that it's impossible for it to not have an impact in some way. I think I came to really appreciate the somewhat detached voice of the story. It allowed me to experience the story with her, apply my own feelings to the situations. Since she left out so much of her emotional experience, it forced me to ponder: "What must that have felt like to go through that?" She gave enough details that I could imagine myself in her shoes and gauge my own hypothetical emotional responses. And only now am I realizing, her form and style truly allows for exercises in empathy. How conscious of a decision was that? Did she write that way out of a need to just get the story out and shared, did she just not want to delve on her own emotional inner world because it was too painful? Or was it a deliberate artistic decision, was I doing exactly what she wanted me to do with the book? Of course at this point, I'm probably thinking about it too hard.

At the time I read her book, I was very fixated on the titles of stories and why the authors chose it. Unlike To Kill A Mockingbird, another book I was required to read around that time, at no point did she mention birds in cages, either as metaphors or actual things in the world she encountered or reflected upon. I had to put the metaphor together myself. Because of racial tensions and discrimination, her youth, her poverty, her trauma, she was like a caged bird: small, helpless, and trapped. But caged birds still sing, out of, we assume, joy. How can something that feels so trapped still feel such joy in their confinement? At the end of the book, when she discovers motherhood, she finally finds out why.

I got the idea, I understood the underlying inspirational message. I just never really agreed with it. Reflecting on it now, maybe I should have taken the lesson more to heart, maybe I should have looked for more joy in my life when Angelou told me to. Then again, I never really was good at doing what I was told.

From an early age, my mother tells me, I was a crier and a screamer. I was a radically, notoriously discontent baby, and all efforts to soothe me failed. I was not unhealthy or otherwise maladjusted. I was just not the baby she was hoping for. "Your sister was such a wonderful baby, I wanted another one" my mom has told me, more than once. Her hopeful tone drops when she says: "And then I had you." It seems perhaps counter-intuitive in this case that she also tells me I was her "cuddler." Still, I was just not happy. I couldn't tell you what made me that way; I remember my early childhood fondly. I was very active, proud, and tough. My hair grew slowly, and I was mistaken for a boy frequently (and no amount of pink attire would cure this). After moving to Florida at a young age, I dug my heels in to be dissatisfied by principle. I was not happy about the move, and mentally blocked the idea of ever being happy again until I moved back home. At twenty-six, I am still in Florida. Thus, my insanity.

During puberty, I became so passionate about things I felt like I was losing my mind. Sometimes I just wanted my brain to shut off. I still get that feeling sometimes, but as I got older I learned how to temper the intensity. Mostly. I still get pretty worked up sometimes. But whether I'm angry, depressed, or perhaps manic, the problem is always a matter of my intensity.

The past few days, I've felt like I've been slipping into a depressive episode. But for most of today, I've been pretty irritable and snappy. I must confess I think I yelled at Jesse once or twice, over various seemingly minor annoyances. Despite my irritability, I've been able to get a lot done.

I think the irritability started yesterday when Jesse asked me to look at his chest because it was really itchy, and we figured out he had ringworm. This forced me into motion, getting the medical stuff together to treat it and decontaminating where necessary. At first he didn't think it was a big deal enough to treat, but I insisted it was extremely contagious, and I didn't want it, and I didn't want the baby to get it, and we're treating it whether you like it or not, goddamnit. I called my mom, made him take a shower and shave his chest, applied the medicine and dressing, and started washing laundry to decontaminate. I was kind of annoyed with him, both for his lax attitude about it, and for his poor hygiene that probably caused the infection in the first place. But that irritability help me to do what was needed and push back against Jesse's resistance. I was probably unpleasant to him, but I felt I needed to be. It was bad enough it took pretty much all day to get the infection properly treated, with waiting on my mom to bring home medical tape and him dragging his feet to take a shower. The wave of agitation carried over into different tasks, too, like cleaning up the baby's nursery thoroughly, because he had pooped and peed in places that now needed scrubbing (potty training is hell). I collected trash bags and scrubbed carpets. When I sat down at my computer for the evening, there seemed to be a lot more interesting articles online, and my browser was full of tabs in no time (still is).

The agitation carried through into the next day. I wanted to get things done and finish cleaning the carpet and take care of laundry. I also wanted to read more, and was getting more writing ideas. Unfortunately, with the baby interfering with much of the things I wanted to do, I needed some help, and I just wasn't getting it. The baby woke me up before my mom was even up, and when she did wake up and make the breakfast she'd been wanting to make, she left for the afternoon to visit Papa and do a little shopping with a friend. By the time she was gone, Jesse was feeling ill again, and tired, and I couldn't even get him to sit with the baby in the living room to watch him. My agitation turned quickly to irritation as I waited for my mom to get back and help me out. I was (unfairly, even unrationally) mad at Jesse for being sick, for not toughing out his discomfort, for not trying hard enough to help me do the things I needed to do for our family. Of course, these were things I'd been wanting to do for days and hadn't been able to set myself into motion to do. But now, in a more agitated state, it was a little easier to move. I say a little easier: I still struggled somewhat, dreading the task ahead, even resenting the fact I had to do it myself. I yelled a little bit, huffing about shampooing the carpet or having to move load of laundry back and forth. But still, I got things done.

Something that made it easier to start those tasks was that my mom decided to do the dishes, since I still had not done them, and they hadn't yet piled up as badly as before. I had been struggling between prioritizing laundry and the dishes, so when she took on that task, I experienced a relief of some anxiety, and a sense of reciprocity. If she's helping out with the dishes, for all the things she already does, I need to be doing something, too. If I just sit here doing nothing while she works, I'll feel guilty.

I know my annoyance with Jesse was there, but I was aware of it in the moment, I know how unfair those attitudes are, and I hope it was sufficiently muted. I did try to counter the negative thoughts when I had them, but I was still very obviously agitated, and may have taken some of that out on him. I do think I snapped at him about the deplorable state of our bedroom once or twice, as it interfered with me completing some tasks. I said something to him about it, when I noticed he had missed some laundry when he separated it for me the day before, because it was hidden in the mess. I explained it was really frustrating, that I was trying to make sure all the laundry got cleaned so that anything that might be contaminated would be in the laundry, and how his messiness impaired that. I'm not sure how cross I seemed, but regardless, I doubt he listened to me. Because he never does. I could report the problem like a robot and he still wouldn't listen.

I think that's what my anger only ever is: a manifestation of manic agitation. When that agitation does not result in something productive, or I'm unable to do whatever thing I want to do with that agitation, it becomes anger, directed at whatever's in my way. Oftentimes, that gets interpreted as Jesse, whether he is unable, or just plain unwilling, to help out.

But when my agitation is unimpeded, when I "get my way" so to speak, to use a phrase my parents liked to throw around when we were kids, I get a lot done and I feel good. I can be very productive, do a lot of chores and tackle daunting projects. Perhaps that was the root of my irritability from infancy: a powerful desire to do when I simply wasn't able to do hardly anything at all. I just imagine, if I were as helpless as a baby right now, I WOULD be screaming and crying! It would be so irritating and boring and I would not be able to develop all those baby skills fast enough to do the things I wanted to do.

Depression really isn't my default state. I lean into opposition. I don't live under a lot of labels, but I've always sort of identified myself as a fighter. I do not sit back and enjoy. I am not tranquil, I am not peaceful. I am rarely joyful. I am a mover. I push, I pull, I thrash against the bars of my cage and screech in my captor's ears until they bleed. I'm not interested in singing while there's a cage in my way. I want to tear the cage down and raise a rebellion against my imprisonment. I do not find peace and contentment with injustices. I try to burn them down, or burn myself down in the effort.

Today my mom told me everything would be a lot easier if I were on medication like she is for anxiety. "All those things don't matter so much anymore." It sounds horrible. Sure, the dishes and the laundry and the dirty rooms wouldn't get on my nerves so much, but what would that do to the bigger things I care about? Those big, complex ideas and bursting passions and finished projects? Because yes, I rarely feel joy, but I do feel ecstasy. I may not sing often, but when I do, it is the most beautiful song.

The pill doesn't just make the chores matter less. It would make ALL the things I love to think about matter less too. And if the intensity of thought was dulled, how long would it be before I was like her? Unable to cope with the world without pills. Being entertained by shallow-minded memes and video clips of funny animals. Unable to follow a chain of complex thoughts and ideas. Worse! Not even interested in them!

That's the really scary idea of taking medications: having no idea how it would affect all my other cognitive processes. Psychiatry doesn't know what it's even doing yet. It's a science in its infancy. Diagnoses are based on best guesses and a cluster of symptoms, nothing objectively testable (yet). I would have a lot more confidence in psychiatry if we really knew what we were doing with it, but the truth is we really don't know. We're working with best guesses, and right now everyone's just a guinea pig in a poorly recorded trial run. These pills are just Band-Aids at this point, because we are only barely scratching the surface of how the brain and cognition works. When something actually does work, we're not even sure how or why!

I'm not satisfied enough with what we have for psychiatry right now to be comfortable with being medicated. My brain is really important to me, and I'd rather not mess with it if it can be avoided.

Resilience

I'm having a hard time writing now, because I feel like I don't have anything to say, like my mind has gone quiet. Not a boring, peaceful kind of quiet, but the kind of quiet of something just giving up. In moments when I am able to stem the tide of negative thoughts, I can sometimes interpret them as "relaxing."

I did manage to do the dishes yesterday. I woke up (and that is getting much easier, and coming with much more regularity) and asked myself, "Do you think you can do the dishes today?" And somehow, I managed to mobilize myself enough to get almost all of it done, save for a few pots and the last batch that still needs to be put away. Fiver spent most of that time at my feet running around and climbing on things, and didn't want to go play by himself away from me, but he didn't get in the way, so it was fine. I tried to spend the time on the dishes thinking about stuff, but my mind was numb, and had very little to offer. My mom was happy to see the dishes finally done, and Jesse said he had wanted to say something about it, but thought it would sound patronizing. I had to explain to him, I need the encouragement and positive reinforcement, because I have a really hard time motivating myself internally.

My mom keeps telling me about the bills. I don't want to hear about the bills. I can't hear about the bills. I transferred all of my money out of Paypal to pay the rent, and have nothing left. There is nothing more I can do, and I can't stand hearing about the bills. Every time she says something, I try hard to unhear it. I have to accept there's nothing I can do about it, and throw all the faith I can muster into Jesse to figure out how to keep us on our feet for the time being. Because I can't even really think about bills or jobs or income without crying.

I did start dabbling on Craigslist. I sent some emails for some writing gigs, nothing really promising yet. One of them is for a website project that sounds fun, but it will "take a while to monetize" meaning I'd be writing for free indefinitely. I figured I'm writing for free here, and I'd rather work on someone else's project with prompts and direction so I don't have to promote my own material (I'm not egotistical enough to be any good at self-publishing). Today I found an ad for a CPS case coordinator, listed today, which is right up my alley. I have the page open in my tabs, but I don't know if I'm ready to open that can of worms. I would have to update my resume, and I have embarrassingly little to show for this last year. I can't even convince myself that being a stay-at-home parent is good experience, would certainly have a hard time convincing an employer. It also requires 3 years of experience, which again, is infuriating. Every job that requires a degree also requires experience in the field, which I WOULD have had if some idiot at the Sheriff's Department hadn't messed up my juvenile record and caused me to lose that internship for no good reason. I had a hard time after that even looking for another similar position, because I was so nervous about the same thing happening, even though I'd had the error corrected. And then at a job interview, I would have to tell them why I wasn't working for Family Resources anymore, which is... I can't even think about it without tearing up. I don't even know how to talk about it.

When they let me go, they told me they'd be happy to recommend me wherever I might apply, but I haven't had any interviews since then. I put in applications for a time, trying to fulfill the requirements for unemployment, but when the red tape got to be too much, I just gave up. (It's not like they ever sent me the fucking unemployment checks anyway.) It was bad enough, halfheartedly sending my resume out into the void every week, getting an inbox full of rejection emails. Part of me was glad I didn't have to deal with an interview, the other part of me felt dejected about all the copy-paste rejections. I felt so disposable. So useless. Like there wasn't really any place in the world for me, I was not valuable to anyone.

At least while I worked at Family Resources, I felt valuable to them. I devoured all the training information, jumped at any opportunity to improve my skills, and they were willing to invest in me. Most other jobs I've had, it's like pulling teeth to get them to set aside time to train you. You're just a breathing body that can take commands, that's all that matters to them. But there, I was a real resource, and it was refreshing to be valued like that.

I don't even know how to explain to myself how I lost the job. No matter what I wrap the story in, it's still devastating. In watching the recent news on Jill Abramson and her firing, I found her reaction to it heartening, when she talked about resilience in the face of setbacks. She talked about how it was more important to her father to see his kids handling setbacks and bouncing back than to see them basking in success. "Show what you are made of," she said, quoting him.

If this past year is me showing what I'm made of, I must be made of soggy noodles and slush.

I was told, when I lost the job, to tell a future employer that I "needed more time for family" or that I left for "personal reasons." This was something I found really offensive. I don't lie. Not even if it's in my "best interest." In order to make any convincing lie, I'd have to lie to myself first, and I just can't do that. There's a moral barricade, and it is completely impossible for me to do. If I were to do it, I would feel ashamed, I would feel like they thought something worse had happened. I would feel like a phony. I would feel like I didn't deserve a job, even if I got it.

Telling the truth is never pretty. But if I did tell the truth, what would I have to say that was true, but would also still win me the job?

"I see here you worked for Family Resources as a Youth Care Worker, but it says here you only worked there for a few months. What happened?"

*deep breath* "I was told, when they let me go, to tell employers I left 'for personal reasons.' The reason it's taken me so long to apply for any jobs was because I couldn't say that and still pride myself for my honesty. If I had to lie to get a job, I didn't want one. The truth is, a lot of things went wrong. Some of those things were out of my control, some of them I only saw clearly in retrospect. I understand it's not the explanation an employer wants to hear, it's not pretty and it doesn't fit in a neat little package, but that's the truth of it."

Assuming they don't shake my hand at that point and say, disingenuously, that it's been "a pleasure" and "we'll give you a call," I will continue:

"I was eager to work for a company I loved in any capacity, so when the job opened up, I dove in head-first. I was given the choice between a weekday afternoon/evening shift or an overnight shift. This was my first mistake. I chose the afternoon/evening shift because I wanted the shift with more time to interact with the kids, so that I would have more opportunities to develop my skills and interact with them. I was naive about how difficult the job might be for me, and bit off more than I could chew. Had I chosen the other shift, the learning curve would not have been so steep, and I could have taken on more responsibilities as my skills developed.

"Next, my work partner was not an ideal match. Though he had two years experience on this job, his previous partner had ten years. He was knowledgeable about the job, but lacked the skills to manage the large groups of children the way his partner did. This was a skill I also lacked, and I had difficulty learning quickly without a strong model to emulate. As a team, we failed to manage larger groups when they became difficult. We were not able to communicate effectively enough to make up the difference. I often looked to him to lead when I wasn't sure what to do, and many times he failed to rise to that, at times when I felt unprepared to take control.

"I was very good with smaller groups. I connected very well with children on an individual level. Unfortunately, individual children behaved differently in groups. Even if I had a strong rapport with several children individually, if the group became large enough they would be hard for me to control. Four of five kids was manageable, but the shelter's population was often between eight and twelve residents. After a few incidents of groups becoming too unruly, management was forced to let me go.

"I made every effort to improve my skills as rapidly as possible through training opportunities and watching how my coworkers handled misbehavior, but unfortunately the learning curve was a little too steep. I lacked the experience, and didn't have a strong leader to learn from, so despite my best efforts, and the management's best efforts, we had to accept that I just wasn't the best fit for the job."

I don't know how much of that an employer would actually listen to, or if it even sounds good... but it sounds a lot better to me than saying "for personal reasons."

Drag

I think I'll be going back to my usual drag of talking about myself, but because... I don't know. I guess I feel like my brain is slowing down. Like my thoughts are trying to run through molasses and it's hard to even think of words. That active internal monologue that's been running so fluidly since I started writing seems to have gone silent. I started feeling worse last night. I hadn't had any particularly negative interactions online or at home. No fights, no hostilities. I just started to feel dragged down. It didn't help that I hardly did anything yesterday; didn't paint, didn't write, didn't do any of the chores that desperately needed to be done. For a moment I had some self-destructive thoughts that I deflected pretty easily, but the negative thinking manifested itself in other ways, like feeling like everyone else is an idiot, and that sense of hopelessness I'm starting to feel about the state of some of the chores, and even a little about the state of the world (but only a little).

My sleep is good, and in fact I'm getting tired and going to bed before midnight, and today I woke up in the morning hours before the baby. My appetite is fine, but because of the state of the kitchen, and because the cabinets are a little bare right now, I haven't been eating as well or as regularly as I need to be. Yesterday in particular I felt like I couldn't do anything at all because I had so little energy to commit to anything. Even though I ate this morning, it hasn't been enough to take the weight off that's dragging me down. I don't feel like I can deal with anything, and eventually just want to sleep. It's a less aggressive form of not wanting to exist or wanting to kill myself, sleeping through the rest of the day. It's not that I'm tired, it's the appeal of unconsciousness. Although, at the moment, I am legitimately tired, the appeal of unconsciousness is still especially powerful.

I think it would be fair to say this is the onset of a depressive episode. However, it does not seem to be coming on as strongly as usual.

Feminist or MRA: You're Either Both or You're Neither

*sigh*

Part of me hesitated to write my previous blog posts on empathy and the anecdote relating to the folly of victim-blaming because it would invite an audience. But, discussing actual ideas and happenings outside of myself is much more satisfying in terms of writing, so I couldn't help myself. So I guess I can only blame myself for this.

I am always open to critique of my ideas, but this at first glance just seemed like an incoherent tirade. I had to read it six or seven times and then put it in the context of the entire website to parse out what exactly the thesis was. Most of the critiques were just a result of reading my writing with blinders on. Any legitimate arguments he may have had weren't couched in any citations to outside sources, though they may have been worth discussing if we were on the same page.

But we're obviously not on the same page.

I think the primary meltdown in communication happened when he assumed A.) I am a feminist and B.) that I am against men's rights. But if A is true, then B cannot be true. If B is true, then A cannot be true.

Let me begin by clarifying what feminism is: it is about the push for equal rights for women. Not, as it is often misinterpreted, the domination of women over men, but rather, their equality to each other. This fundamental misunderstanding that causes many people to be unwilling to call themselves "The F-Word" even though many of their beliefs and values may be in line with what feminism teaches.

Another thing a lot of people don't understand about feminism is that it's not a static ideology, but rather an ongoing discussion. There are a lot of things even educated, passionate feminists disagree on. One of my favorite things about my first women's studies professor was that when I voiced disagreement with the concept she was teaching (which I did a lot), she often said, "Yes, it's super problematic." She was always willing to address the fact that there were these ongoing disagreements about the best ways to achieve gender equality. (Example: Feminists have a hard time agreeing on whether to be pro- or anti-porn.) Even though I was not satisfied with certain theories and beliefs, there was always room within the movement for me to disagree, and therefore help to shape the movement. That said, it's important to remember, when talking about feminism, that not all feminists believe the same thing.

Now, that said, I don't usually call myself a feminist. Not because I think it's a "bad word," but because I don't think the word accurately reflects my ideals. Third-wave feminism tries to make the argument that feminism should also be about fighting racism, classism, and all sorts of other -isms. While the goal is noble, I think feminism's reach has exceeded its grasp in this respect. I believe that feminism can really only address gender issues. Trying to do much else with it just leads to undue confusion. I've seen a lot of people even within #YesAllWomen who have used the word "equalist" to describe themselves, and I think it'd be more accurate to say I fall in that camp.

As I alluded to before, I have my fair share of scruples with feminists, especially with the misandrists I've seen on #YesAllWomen masquerading as feminist crusaders. Of course, the moment I challenge these so-called feminists, the assumption they make is that I am a misogynist or otherwise anti-feminist. Which of course is not the case. I just think that feminists who are also misandrists should not be calling themselves feminists at all, as they tend to have a very skewed perception of what "equality" means.

I even had a debate with an older feminist who argued that "Misandry is like reverse racism: It doesn't exist. The oppressed cannot oppress the master." Her argument was that since misandry is not systemic the way it is for misogyny and racism, it does not exist. But I beg to differ: misandry can still exist and is still a relevant problem on an individual level, and in certain aspects of society, it does exist systemically. Just because it is not oppressive to the degree that misogyny is, does not mean that we should dismiss it as a non-issue. If we want to create true equality, we must make sure we don't create inequality in the process.

Now, let's talk about Men's Rights Activists (MRA). They have been getting a LOT of bad PR since the UCSB rampage, but even still I have always sympathized with the movement. I suppose you could call me a MRA apologist.

The problem seems to be two-fold. First, feminists (especially radical feminists misandrists) are unwilling to acknowledge men's legitimate grievances. Second, MRAs fail to recognize that feminism does in fact have their interests in mind already.

So first, let's look at what I mean by men's legitimate grievances:
"The list of grievances for MRAs is long. It includes the elevated rate of suicide for men, educational discrimination against boys, economic and workplace conditions for men, violence against men, false rape reporting, fathers’ rights in custody battles, rates of male imprisonment and prison conditions, and the horrors of war." - JACLYN FRIEDMAN

A feminist who is unwilling to acknowledge that men can experience injustices and oppression can hardly call him/herself a champion of equality. Though feminists have fought for women to be able to serve in the military alongside men, you can hardly call this equality when men can be forced into the service at any time. And though women have fought hard to be included in educational institutions, you can hardly call this equality when more and more boys are being diagnosed with ADHD and sedated in school, and their graduation rates are stagnant when compares with girls. Personally, I find it unsettling how more and more popular media is inclined toward portraying male protagonists as utter buffoons. All these issues merit intellectual discussion and investigation.

But let's move on to the next part of the above-mentioned quote:
"Many of these issues deserve a thoughtful response and the force of an organized movement for address them. It’s too bad that’s not what men’s rights activists are offering." - JACLYN FRIEDMAN

You know where I learned about a lot of those men's issues? It wasn't from MRA groups. It was from Women's Studies classes in college, specifically Masculine Studies. Though much of the theories are couched in feminist jargon, it is a field of study that does bring up a lot of these issues. The feminists who discuss these issues don't just talk about them, but are true activists for change, in the better interest of women and men. For instance, feminist activists influenced the change in the FBI's definition of rape to include instances of rape that affected men and boys. Feminist analysis also enables a balanced examination of father's rights and offers solutions that are not hinged on blaming men or women for systemic problems. For MRAs to ignore the merits of feminism is to deny a powerful ally.

Despite the nauseating amount of misogyny and misandry from both sides of the aisle amidst the whole #YesAllWomen trend, feminism and the men's rights movement have the same end goal: gender equality. It is the responsibility of feminists and MRAs to keep the bigotry within their camp in check, as it only serves to hurt the cause. Anyone who identifies solely as feminist, or solely as a MRA, is someone I hold in deep suspicion. If you're incapable of seeing the overlap in the goals and importance of each movement's views, you're doing your preferred movement a disservice.

Personally, I would rather be called an equalist than either a feminist or MRA. But if you must call me a feminist, you must also call me a MRA, because both are equally true.

Unloading Shit

I didn't write yesterday because I posted my writing so late the night before, I thought it superfluous. But I had a hard time sleeping because I spent all night being an information vortex, I stayed up until past 5 AM and then couldn't even readily get to sleep. I had too many thoughts racing through my head.

The things I really want to think about and write about are starting to get pushed out by all the things I don't want to think about and are too shallow to want to write about, so I think I'm just going to unload the pressures in one stream-of-consciousness turd.

Electric bill is overdue. Appliance rental guys came by yesterday to ask when we'd pay, because that's overdue too. Car insurance is due, not to mention we're still sharing the car with my mom, who's truck broke down and she doesn't have to money to either fix or replace it. Food stamps are out for the month, no milk in our fridge for days now. Down to our last $50 and not sure which bill to put it toward. Afraid to use the money I have put away for conventions on bills because I need that money to make more money later. But I'll probably have to use it all for rent. Papa's still in rehab after surgery for his hip, won't be coming back. Dishes are my job. Cleaning the house is my job. Dogs I don't want shit everywhere. Been hungry for two days, even though I've eaten. Laundry needs to be done. Can barely dress myself. Need to work on customs for conventions, but also need to write. One will bring money in later, one will maintain my sanity. The sinking realization that I will kill myself if I don't write. I will go completely and utterly insane if I don't write. Wanting to write too many things. Too many ideas. Not enough time to write them all. But at least I'm writing some, and that's all I can tell myself. We need to pay bills, pay bills now, and writing is too long term an investment. Afraid to keep writing, but afraid to stop. Desperately wish to be in school again. Desperately wish to be doing something that mattered. Have to trust family to deal with everything because I can't. Feeling like a failure for not contributing, feeling like a failure because I can't keep it together, feeling like a failure because I know they need my help. Crying because I feel completely trapped. Because this is how I know the depression takes hold. It seems completely hopeless yet somehow I have to keep moving forward. Bigger world problems seem easier than this poverty. At least they make sense. At least they're solvable. Every day I'm in a Catch-22. But there is only one of me. I can't spread myself any thinner than I am. I will snap. My brain will just break.

I think I'm just going to try to find something to eat and paint all day. I feel a little better just getting that out. At least if I go crazy, people will know why. #poverty.

Not *That* Kind of Woman

"I don't understand how so many girls get raped," my friend said, as we were discussing the finer points of feminism. I was in college taking my first women's studies class. Though even I was dubious of feminism's merits going in, I found I agreed with a lot of the principles I was introduced to. "How do they even have so many stories to tell. It seems to me like a lot of them lie. Like, how do you even end up in those situations? You're a girl, you don't have any stories like that to tell."

I could see how he thought that assumption was reasonable, in retrospect. For a time, even I bought into the idea that only a certain kind of woman got sexually assaulted or raped. I was not that kind of woman.

***

I don't know where I got this idea, but from a very early age, I believed that to be girly was to be weak. And I was not weak. I was not timid. I was not frail. I was tough. I was bold. As my step-grandfather later recalled, after calling 5-year-old me a nice little girl, I replied: "I'm not nice; that's my sister. I'm Heidi. I'm mean!"

I rejected girliness with the full force of my being. As soon as I was old enough to pick my own clothes, my wardrobe reflected as much. I did not wear dresses or skirts; it was all jeans and t-shirts. What feminine clothes I did inherit from my sister went largely unworn. The dressy clothes my parents did buy were worn only on select occasions, when my parents made me wear them. I climbed trees and played in the mud. I loved catching snakes and frogs in the yard. I asked for G.I. Joe and Legos for Christmas, but never got them. It confounded me to see my brother getting Legos, though he'd long since stopped asking for them.  He even complained that he didn't want them. I got a Barbie the one time I asked for it (which my parents were surely relieved to see on the list when it appeared), but I was disappointed by it anyway, and gave it to my sister.  I never stopped asking for boy things, til I stopped believing.

When I was in school, I fit in pretty well, up to a certain point. If my intelligence ever would have isolated me, I always had the peers in my gifted classes. I did make an effort to take an interest in the things the other girls liked, though most of their talk bored me. I tried to dance with them along with the Spice Girls music, but I was not as practiced as they were. I was quietly left out, passively discouraged from participating. Which was fine by me. I was tired of being the catcher on my softball team anyway, just because the other girls were too cowardly to do it. My hero was Ash Ketchum, not Brittany Spears. I decided I didn't really like other girls anyway; they were shallow and sly, not deep and honest, like me.

In fifth grade I joined the baseball team (my parents looked at each other, shrugged: "Okay honey.") There were try-outs, and I could tell I wasn't as good as some of the boys I was playing with. But I still wanted to play. I loved the game. But they loved winning more. So I warmed the bench. A lot. I knew what was happening. I knew I was being left out again. And I cried about it, shamelessly.

But I wasn't a boy, so no one told me not to.

I went to practice, I worked hard, because I loved to play, but I didn't get good enough. When we got our trophies at the end of the year, they went out of their way to get one for me with a girl on it. But when the coach talked about our progress over the course of the season, I realized they didn't want to go too far out of their way for me. Other boys were getting training between seasons. No one offered any to me. I wanted to become the first professional female baseball player, but after that season, I gave that up.

My breasts developed sooner than the other girls. I went with my mother, red-faced, to the store for my first bra. I skipped the training bra and jumped straight to a B cup. I wore all my shirts baggy after that. I didn't care when people told me it made me look fat. It took a lot of goading by other girls before I was finally shaving my legs and armpits. I could only get told I looked like a gorilla so many times before I started wearing my 4-H jacket every single day, even though I lived in Florida. And it wasn't enough that I shaved my gorilla legs; now they were pasty. So I wore only pants. They didn't have much to say after that; most of my body was hidden. At least I felt sure that the few friends I had liked me for who I was.

I hated my name. "Oh, like Shirley Temple?" "Oh, like the super model?" Sweet little girls. Hot, sexy super models. It was not the impression I wanted. In middle school I got people to start calling me H.R., my initials.

Though I worked so hard to keep my body to myself, it didn't stop me from going a little crazy for boys once in a while. I fell hard once at the end of middle school, and two month later had my heart torn to shreds. By high school, I fell again, this time a relationship that had such high highs and low lows I felt insane, and we eventually parted ways. Both were good boys, who loved me for my confidence and intelligence. I never felt violated, because they never took more than I was ready to give.

My closest friends in high school were almost exclusively boys. We were outcasts, mostly, even the other girls. But I still hated girls. The girls in our clique said the same thing. We did not paint each other's nails. We did not have slumber parties. We did not go to the bathroom together. We ate pizza, drank Mountain Dew, and played video games with the boys. We were as content in each others company as discontented teenagers could be.

I joined the swim team, and realized it was a great excuse to shave my gorilla arms. By that time I had been wearing that jacket constantly for about five years. I was happy to retire it. I found I could enjoy sports again, because if I didn't win races, I could still compete against myself. Compared to what I normally wore, my swimsuit was liberating. From then on I never even tried to wear a bikini; the one-piece competition swimsuit was fine by me. Bikinis didn't hold me in very well, anyway.

I also joined the wrestling team. I had always been pretty rough-and-tumble, and I found I really enjoyed this sport, too, though I didn't expect to win. I practiced with the daughter of a wrestling coach and some of the smaller boys. In competition I was matched with boys, though 128 pounds for a boy means something different for a girl. They were tall, lanky, and had long reaches. I was short and stubby, with significantly more body fat than them. When I bested an opponent, I knew it was my practiced skill, not raw strength, that won the match. I loved to play all the same, but this was when I learned how fantastic it felt to win.

Sports left me confident in my physicality. I knew I was no super model, and I was fine with that. I never tried to be. But I was never afraid. Then again, I didn't know what I was supposed to be afraid of.

I grew up on dirt roads. Walking home from the bus stop, I got in folks cars when they were going my way, and waved when they honked if they passed the other way. I knew everyone in my neighborhood, and applied a naive trust to them all. And why wouldn't I? They all came out to help each other when someone's car got stuck in the mud, they came together to petition the county to fix the roads. My mom put banana bread in their mailboxes for Christmas and we played barefoot in everyone's yards. It was a borrow-a-cup-of-sugar sort of place.

So I didn't understand what the big deal was when I told my mom I'd just walk to our family friend's house after school. What's the big deal? I asked. We've driven there enough times, I'm not going to get lost or anything. Grudgingly, my mom allowed it. But of course I got lost. And as I backtracked and tried different routes through the ghetto, I felt like a small child lost in a grocery store, until I finally borrowed a phone at a greasy-looking tire place. The men stopped their work and were happy to oblige. I was picked up just before the sun went down. It felt stupid for getting so turned around (I wasn't far, I'd just missed a turn), so I nodded passively when my mom told me to walk with someone next time.

She was our family friend's daughter, who I affectionately called my cousin. We didn't get along all the time, but it was easy enough to consider her family. The first day walking with her, a passing driver honked at us, and I instinctively waved.

"What are you doing?!" my cousin yelped, aghast.

"They honked at us. I figured they probably know us or something."

She shook her head, looking at me like I was crazy. "That's not why they're honking."

"Oh."

Oh.

It wasn't the last time we were honked at or whistled at. I followed my cousin's lead, kept my head down, avoided any eye contact, and ignored it, even though it enraged me. Why would you honk at us? You don't know us. My friendly rural default settings were slowly being adjusted.

Though the catcalls were annoying, I was still fearless. I did not shy away from walking down the street or even taking shortcuts. One day, after wrestling practice, I got impatient waiting for my ride outside the gym, so I walked down the side alley by the school to the main road to wait there. Even before I headed out, there was a warning voice inside my head: "It's very late and there's hardly anyone on campus right now. Maybe you don't want to walk down such an isolated path." I scoffed at myself. I was sweaty and gross from wrestling practice, in a damp, over-sized t-shirt and high school gym shorts. Who's dumb enough to attack a wrestler?

I had made my way halfway down the alley when a strange man came alongside me. The sirens went off in my head. I began sizing him up. He might have been in my weight class, but barely. And he was kind of scrawny. I could take him, I thought to myself.

But I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was a homeless guy who wanted to ask for money. Maybe he legitimately just wanted to talk. I continued walking. Even still, I was replaying in my head the moves I had just been practicing.

"Hey, how you doin'?" he asked, innocuously enough.

"Fine, just getting out of wrestling practice," I replied, hoping my tone came off warning enough. Even then, I was thinking of how I would pin him and scream if he tried anything at all. My pulse was quickening.

"Cool, cool," he said. After a brief pause, he continued, "So you wanna guess how big this is?"

I glanced over, and he was gesturing at his groin. I rolled my eyes and turned on my heel after a quick calculation: the main road is closer than the gym, but I don't know if anyone is there. But I know my teammates are still waiting for their ride by the gym, so it's a longer walk but they'll see me or hear me. I could hardly believe this was happening to me. It was difficult to run with a bulky backpack, but I walked as fast as I could manage.

He followed me back up the alley. I cut across past the dumpsters to get to where my teammates would be able to see me sooner, and the man made one last attempt. "Oh, c'mon baby," he said, and grasped my shoulder. The sirens in my head shrieked, and so did I. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" I slapped his arm away, dropped my bag and bolted toward the back road.

I could see my teammates in the distance, looking in my direction, still sitting where I'd left them. That's when I stopped, and looked behind me. The man was slinking back through the opening in the fence, walking fast but trying not to move too fast as to look suspicious. And then, he disappeared into the foliage.

I went back to grab my bag, and headed back toward the safety of numbers. I had barely gotten halfway back there when my mom finally drove up, and I hopped in the car.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

I was trembling, trying my hardest not to cry. "Nothing. Let's go home."

***

My friend stared at me as I told the story. When I finished, he just said, "Oh."

Oh.

***

In the aftermath of the event, I struggled with what to do about the incident. I knew it was important for me to report it, and I told myself I needed to report to the school deputy's office first thing in the morning to let them know.

But the guy is long gone, they'll never catch him.

Still, I needed to report it. The school personnel needed to know that area was dangerous, and that there was a predator prowling the area.

You don't remember what his face looked like.

It didn't matter. If I didn't give them a chance to do something about it, some other girl would get hurt.

But I shouldn't have been walking there in the first place.

In the morning, I didn't report it. My conscience berated me again and again to go in and say something. I felt ashamed that I wasn't doing what was right, but I felt even more ashamed for being assaulted in the first place. You can tell them tomorrow, I told myself. Then the next day. Then the next. Finally, I felt like the time had passed, I would just be shamed for not going in sooner, if I wasn't shamed outright for going there in the first place.

I was now part of an under-reported statistic.

That moment haunted me for years before I took a women's studies class in college. Only then was I able to process it and work through my shame. But even now I still feel guilty.

A few weeks after the incident, they announced over the intercom at the start of the day that the afternoon before, one of the cafeteria staff was assaulted and robbed on her way to her car, in the exact same spot I had made my escape.

I could have helped, I should have, but I didn't.

An Exercise in Empathy

I don't usually participate in the inanity that is Twitter hashtag trends, but I couldn't help but get absorbed in the collective story unfolding before me last night with #YesAllWomen. I contributed my own, but before I get into that, a little caveat:

The shooting spree in California that left 7 dead prompted an outpouring of stories on the hashtag and caused it to trend, after a Youtube video released by the killer revealed that his motives may have been rooted in his difficulties with women. I would just first like to note that this is only a fraction of the story, and his full manifesto reveals a whole myriad of alarming beliefs and thought processes, not just about women, but also about his racially superiority, disdain for the underclasses, and his entitlement to praise. I don't usually armchair diagnose, but I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to say that he clearly had narcissistic personality disorder, or something near to it. Of all the psychological disorders you can have, personality disorders like this one are the hardest ones to tackle and effectively treat, and this one in particular because it is very hard to convince someone who has grandiose delusions that they need help. As with most shooting sprees, calling the killer a madman, crazy, or sicko is in no way a satisfying explanation for why this happened, and only serves to stigmatize mental illness on the whole. He was, plain and simple, mentally ill. This is not time to debate about guns (indeed, he had no qualms about stabbing his victims either), it is not even a time to call for better mental health coverage in our national healthcare system (indeed, he came from such wealth he certainly had access). It is a time to call for more psychological and neurological research, to better understand these disorders so that we can better detect problems and take steps to intervene before tragedies like this happen.

That said, the killer justifying his actions by blaming women for choosing lesser men than him and leaving him a virgin was something that seemed to resonate well with certain individuals on the internet, namely men's rights activists and certain other men who felt victimized by being friendzoned.

They will be dismissed as "a few bad eggs" or "just internet trolls," but it is not that simple. These are all feelings we're familiar with, complaints we've heard from men online and in our lives. This is not new. This is not some kind of revelation. Elliot Rodger's actions are these beliefs made manifest. And if you read his manifesto, it's like reading all the worst internet trolls spilling out of one disturbed mind. Which makes you wonder: who's trolling?

This so-called "nice guy" was likely rejected by women precisely because he lacked empathy - a distinguishing trait of his personality disorder, as well as many other antisocial personality disorders. It is the human capacity to experience the emotions of another person, as well as to respond appropriately to those feelings. We have been making great progress in the field of neuroscience in identifying the brain regions associated with empathy, but we have a long way to go in developing any kind of immediate, 100% effective treatment for psychopaths. The good news is, empathy is something we can train. The article I linked suggests meditation, exercise, and volunteering as ways we can strengthen our capacity for empathy, which is of no surprise. We've known for a long time that these activities are good for our overall mental health, and this may very well be the reason. Some have even suggested we can use augmented reality to better understand other people and become more empathetic. But I would like to suggest another method: listening to and telling stories.

In an effort to prevent killing sprees like what was seen at Columbine, one Pennsylvania school is trying to teach its students empathy simply by having them tell each other deep, personal stories about themselves. Though it's too early to say for sure if this will stop senseless acts of violence, it seems to be making a difference for the students and the school's culture on the whole.

#YesAllWomen is an important opportunity for some much-needed empathy training. For too long we have told our young men that they were weak for shedding tears, that their feelings didn't matter, even that they need to turn in their "man" card if they do feel too much. This misguided socialization is at the heart of what creates men's violence. We train our boys to have as little empathy as possible, so that when the government sends them off to war, they can kill other humans without batting an eye (and when they do bat an eye, they go home with PTSD, and encounter barriers to treatment and even diagnosis). Their reward when they return: women and sex. With this system reinforced by the media and art, it's no wonder men learn to objectify women so. It is absolutely despicable what we are doing to young men. And it's killing women and men, and leaving women to lead lives in perpetual fear of men.

So go and read #YesAllWomen as an empathy exercise. It's okay to cry (we've certainly shed our share of tears). The more hostile you are to the idea of even checking it out, the more likely it is that you are the problem.

And yes, I did contribute to the stories being told. Here was my tweet:

"I did not mean for this to rhyme.... DAMN IT!"

The idea that, only a certain kind of woman gets sexualized and victimized, is ludicrous. Yes, ALL women experience these kind of things. Those who have nothing to report have likely grown so accustomed to the abuse and harassment, it just fades into the background. Indeed, last night I saw a few tweets by women who thought they had nothing to contribute, but upon reading the hashtag, found they had more to say than they thought.

One of my favorite tweets from the evening

These stories are important. In contributing to this continued empathy education, in my next post, I would like to tell the tl;dr version of my tweet. I hope this will provide some insight into what we, as women, experience every day, and perhaps help give strength to other women who are even now still afraid to tell their stories, even within the bounds of 140 characters.

Hold onto your butts.

Chores and Peeves

I have been feeling pretty good about my progress for the last few days. Though I haven't been going to bed as early as I would like (more accurately, as early as Jesse would like), I have been more able to get to sleep when I do go to bed, and it is less of a struggle. Waking up is getting easier too, though again, I'm not waking as early as I should be.

I have been making some progress in other regards, especially yesterday. Between writing and reading, I managed to finish the dishes my mom had started, empty my trash, and even empty the overflowing diaper pail in the nursery. Like with sleep, the process of getting it done didn't just involve gritting my teeth, buckling down and doing it as a force of will. My writing for the day was done, I'd read quite a bit and felt free to do those chores throughout the day. I felt like there was energy there to do it, and I felt like I had untangled some of the complicated thoughts and feelings that came along with those tasks (or at least, if I had not, I was confident that I would and could.)

The dishes were, psychologically, the easiest. They had already been sorted and part of them were already clean. I even managed to get Jesse to put away the dishes my mom had cleaned so that I would have space to lay more out to dry. It wasn't just that they had helped me chip away at how overwhelming I found the whole task and getting it started, but that I didn't feel alone when doing it. It had become a team effort. I was doing it because I wanted to help my mom and make her life easier, but I felt like since everyone else chipped in to help get it started, that somehow they cared more about me. It wasn't just about doing the dishes, it seemed to run much deeper than that.

After doing the dishes, I had completed one major task and felt accomplished. I knew other chores needed to be done, but I told myself, One step at a time, and would have been okay with myself had I not finished the trash. When these tasks crept up on me, when I saw them from the corner of my eye, I reassured myself, You don't have to do them if you don't want to. You've done a good job today. I guess now that I didn't feel the psychological pressure to deal with the trash, it was somehow a lot easier to do. That is most of the stress involved in the task, my thought processes attached to it. When I get anxious or depressed, the problem seems to be that there is so much stress, I withdraw from it. What stress there was attached to the tasks when I did them yesterday wasn't psychological pressure that squeezed in on me, but pressure that projected outward.

The first thing I did was take out the trash that had been sitting just outside my door for days. It was trash from the can by my computer, and I had taken it out days ago, but left it outside my door. I had had to clean it up once already because raccoons had gotten into it, but I had still left it out there. The raccoons had gotten into it again, so I needed to clean it up again and actually take it out to the curb. But I was avoiding it. I finally felt compelled to get it done when my mom asked me to help her clean up a garbage bag by the other door that raccoons had also gotten into. Usually my grandfather takes the trash out, but since he wasn't there, one of the bags got left out and forgotten, until the animals made a mess of it. I helped her put the torn up bag in a new one and picked up some of the trash that had been strewn about. While she was standing there talking to a neighbor, I felt a compulsion to go over to my door and clean up my own raccoon-induced mess. I completed the task with ease, and didn't run into any mental roadblocks. The only thing I can figure is that cleaning up a different mess with my mom gave me momentum to clean up my own garbage. Or, because we had accomplished the task, maybe I now had a subconscious confidence to tackle my own mess. Or, maybe still, it was more like the dishes where, since someone else was participating, it felt more like a team effort and I was more comfortable with taking care of my own end. Either way, I felt compelled to clean up the mess and even take the trash to the curb, and suddenly it was easier to do.

The next thing that demanded my attention was the diaper pail overflowing in the nursery. It was pretty bad; I probably could have filled the pail twice with what was there. I wasn't sure if I was ready to tackle it, so I asked Jesse to take it out for me. It took a while for him to get around to it, but when he did, he complained that the trash can I told him to put it all in was already overflowing too. I told him to just take it out there, I'd deal with the rest. The next time I went into the nursery at bedtime, it was all still there. When I confronted Jesse about it, he said he told me the garbage can was full so he couldn't take it out. I told him that he should have put it in a garbage bag or something, whatever had to be done to get it out. I was irritated that he hadn't even touched the task, and frustrated that I couldn't get the help with it that I had wanted. But instead of getting mad at him, I started to think that, perhaps, though he hadn't said anything, he found the task overwhelming, too. Maybe he had tried to take it out, but couldn't find the box of garbage bags, since it was in my desk drawer and not under the sink. Maybe the smell and other sensory information was too much for his brain to deal with, so he had to withdraw from the task. With a more forgiving mind about it, I felt like at least he had tried to help. I was still a little annoyed, but I did start taking out the diapers, with relative ease. I was delighted when the baby started helping me put all the overflow into a garbage bag (he can actually be pretty helpful, from time to time).

While I was on a role, I took the garbage out from the can by my desk, even though it was only half full. Jesse had been using my computer earlier in the week, and dumped a half-eaten chili dog in it. Since that can doesn't fill up very fast, it sat there in the garbage for a very long time, attracting bugs. It was starting to get on my nerves, because there was a swarm of gnats flitting about in front of my computer screen every time I sat down to work. There was no use in blaming him for this, since he probably hadn't thought the consequences of his actions out all the way through. And, as evidenced by his work space, he is completely oblivious to filth to begin with. So I just sent him a message on Facebook about it:

Also: DO NOT put half eaten food in my garbage can by my computer. It doesn't fill very fast so I don't take it out very often, so I have all sorts of gnats and roaches crawling and flying everywhere

I was still a little irritated about his lack of consideration when using my work space, so just making this comment to him set off a little cascade of peeves I had related to him making messes in my area.

Also, if you don't want me sweeping through your computer table and that whole fucking nasty disgusting room and scrubbing everything down, stop letting your filthy habits overflow into MY workspace

That sink is not meant for you to pile your dishes in

and I don't appreciate you leaving fast food cups for weeks on end on countertops

It's bad enough trying to manage my own clutter, without having the mess exaccerbated by your filth.

Probably not my gentlest reprimand, but I figured it was better to say it than leave it unsaid. Not that I expected him to listen to me. These complaints aren't new. I've tried telling him these things multiple times, but I get ignored, for whatever reason. I know I am probably even less pleasant to deal with when I'm irritated and making a complaint like this verbally, in person. Hopefully he's more receptive to this information in the written format, though through this whole thing he made no reply whatsoever. My irritation isn't unreasonable, to a normal person. But he just doesn't seem to get it. He doesn't seem to understand or respect that having that kind of mess pile up really bothers me, and distracts me in a huge way. And when I have a hard time even cleaning up my own messes, it's really frustrating to have even more messes piled on top of that due to someone else's inconsiderate behavior.

His messy work area gets so bad sometimes, it drives me to clean it top to bottom. He leaves dirty dishes everywhere, food containers just lying about, attracting pests, and so much clutter that stuff easily gets lost. And if I just had to collect his dirty dishes and throw away his trash every once in a while, I might be okay with that. However, when I do clean his area, I get an earful myself. He complains that I misplace things, or that I touched or moved something I don't even remember running across. One time I did clean his entire work space, getting all the dishes to the sink and garbage to the trash and putting away everything on his desk so that I could wipe the desk down and vacuum underneath, and when he got home and saw what I'd done, all he said was, "God damn it, Heidi." I was unphased by this comment, as it was the sort of response I expected, but at the time, a friend of ours was visiting. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he told Jesse. Jesse began his rebuttal, but our friend cut him off. "No, no. If my mom had done something like that and cleaned up my whole desk, I would be all like, 'Wow, thanks mom!' I would be so grateful."

Jesse made no further reply. At least it was clear to someone besides me that he was being unreasonable, and our friend was clearly disgusted with his attitude.

He seems to think that, if he corrects the behavior, he is just rewarding my negative behavior of being emotional about the issue, expressing myself with irritation and anger. But I've tried asking nicely too. It doesn't seem to make a difference. And if I tell him I tried asking nicely, he doesn't remember it, or tells me to cite when I did. Of course I don't remember any specific dates. I just know that I have tried. And the lack of response to me asking nicely is an irritation in and of itself.

I respect that it is his work space. But he needs to respect that his work space affects other people in the house. Leaving dirty dishes laying about makes those dishes inaccessible to other people, so that when my mom needs a spoon or a certain number of bowls or cups, and doesn't find them, it creates added frustration. And the trash and food containers attract bugs that not only now live everywhere in our bedroom (so that every time I have to go to sleep, I have to mentally block out his filth), but also travel throughout the house, such as when perhaps a bag or a pair of shoes bugs may be hiding in move from one part of the house to the other. Even without that, it's not a long trek for them to crawl around to the nursery or my workshop or the bathroom. It makes everyone else less comfortable, it makes me feel like I'm living in a complete shithole, no matter how hard I might try to keep things tidy. And these feelings erode at my self-worth. That may even sound silly, when I put it like that, but the irritation with bugs crawling everywhere goes deeper than just sanitation. We feel worse about where we're living when things are this messy. We don't feel proud of where we live, don't feel comfortable enough to invite in guests, or even have them in our houses for the shortest amount of time. And even when we do have guests, when they see a lot of bugs and a big mess... I know it's not important to him, what other people think of the environment he lives in, but it matters to me. I know it matters to my mom too. I don't want people to think of me as a poor slob. Because I know that's not who I am. And I also want to feel comfortable inviting people into my home. Because I'm a social creature... even if he isn't.

He deters me from cleaning his desk area by telling me I must respect his space. The problem is, his space doesn't exist in a vacuum. My work space certainly gets cluttered, yes, but it gets cluttered with piles of mail and half-completed commissions, paint spills and toys. Garbage and dirty dishes don't sit around for very long, because of said reasons.

What's worse, is that he loses things all the time. Whenever he loses stuff, I suggest that he cleans up. I always find a bunch of things when I clean up (indeed, last time I cleaned up his desk, I found easily a half dozen things he or I had lost that we had basically given up on looking for). But he dismisses me entirely. He loses his car keys all the time. His solution, instead of cleaning or finding them somehow, is to instead "borrow" my keys. But, inevitably, because he has not confronted the likely cause of the problem, he usually loses my keys, too. Which, in turn, forces him to look for them, or his own keys. And if he finds his keys, he does not continue to search for mine. For probably the third or fourth time, my keys are missing as a result of this ridiculous cycle.

As proudly analytical as he insists on being, you would think he would have a very good answer as to why he does these things. But I have never gotten a clear response. And I can't think of one for him. I think my rationale is completely sound. Even now, looking it over in writing, I am baffled by his behavior, from a rational standpoint. Of course, I could perhaps think of some deeper psychological reasons for his behavior, but he has never taken well to my psychoanalysis, so such an effort would not have much utility, other than perhaps to cause me to resign to his ludicrous and unacceptably inconsiderate behavior. If I act out in anger or irritation, it is only because I am at a complete loss as to how to even deal with him anymore.

Paying Attention

It was, on the whole, a pretty laid-back day. Writing, frankly, took up most of my time. Then, reading. Everything.

I probably seem like a very negligent mother. I am really inattentive in this department. I can't count the number of times he's gotten into the change table drawer and pulled out all sorts of things that, frankly, Poison Control would probably call Child Services if they knew what has been inside his mouth. I can't tell you how many baby wipes I have lost to him just throwing them around the nursery like they're confetti. I don't mind drawing a bath for him and cleaning behind his ears, but once that's done, it is a special kind of torture to have to sit there and watch him play. It's endearing, sure, but it's also mind-numbingly boring. I'm not doing a very good job with potty training either; how can I possibly expect him to sit still long enough for a bowel movement, when I can't manage to sit still with him? And he arguably has more energy than me.

For instance, at this exact moment, I am absorbed in writing. What is he doing right now? Playing with a comb and a tube of baby toothpaste... BRB...

And I wouldn't have even noticed that if I wasn't trying to make a point. I'm really not that good at paying attention to my kid. There are lots of mommy internet memes out there that assure me that this is normal. Toddlers are supposed to unravel the entire roll of toilet paper all over the room and eat rash creme. At least, it's a normal thing for them to do that they're totally not supposed to do.

But my doubt really seeps in when I just don't understand what's going on with him. Is he hungry? Tired? In pain? Is he demanding a specific thing? Just wants attention? This was always my biggest fear, even before I gave birth. How do I even decipher his needs and wants, when he doesn't even have any language (or, as is the case now, barely has any)? For instance, yesterday Fiver woke up from his nap screaming, startling me, and I went straight to him and took him out of the crib. He was quiet, almost as if he was still half asleep, and when I tried to put him down in the nursery, he clung to me, so I just continued to hold him. I was a little annoyed by this, because I just wanted to get back to writing, but I figured if I held him for a bit longer, he would finish waking up and leap from my arms, ready to continue playing. But he didn't. He screamed if i tried to put him down, and when I got tired of standing there with him, I sat down with him laying on my chest, just waiting for him to get that usual little burst of energy he gets to run off and play. But he didn't, he just laid against me, like he was sick or something, and I started to worry. It was especially strange when he would just start kicking his legs in violent spurts, then immediately return to the calm, lethargic state he was in. I couldn't figure it out. I called Jesse into the room and asked him to hold the baby, just to see if it made any difference. He seemed fine, equally lethargic, and sat for a while before reaching down to me again.

At a complete loss, I just started asking him, "Are you still tired little guy, wanna go back to bed? Wanna go play? Go get a pony, you wanna play with your ponies? Are you okay little guy?" All the while he's just staring off into the distance, completely slack in my arms. "You want a snack?" And immediately, he lights up. He sits up in my lap, turns to me, looks me in the eyes, and starts babbling.

I felt so stupid. It should have been obvious to me. He'd barely had anything for breakfast, and it should have been my first guess well before assuming he was sick. So I brought him out to the kitchen and started preparing things for him with Jesse. But first, I made a Hot Pocket, because I was hungry too (my appetite has been pretty stable for the last few days, a good sign). While Jesse was making something for the baby, Fiver was demanding everything we were eating. He climbed into my lap while I was trying to eat and said, "A bite? A bite?" I was not inclined to share my food, but how can you say no to that? I have to reward him for using words, after all. This whole incident from earlier would have gone a lot more smoothly if he had just said "Hungry. Hungry."

I worry about my inattentiveness because I'm pretty sure it's the reason he yells and screams and throws things as much as he does. Since I'm in my head so much and always so absorbed in whatever I'm doing, he pretty much HAS to do those things to get my attention sometimes. Even if I find it annoying, it does work to get my attention. And I can't just ignore him when he does it, because he's usually trying to get my attention for a legitimate reason. He's not just "being needy"; he actually needs things. Even if he's just bored and wants attention, that's still a legitimate need. But if he learns that that is the way to get people's attention when you need something, he's going to be in a lot of trouble when he goes to school. He'll be running around, throwing things, screeching, hitting people in the face and knocking their glasses off... I pity the teacher. Chances are they'll think he's just ADHD and want to put him on medications, like they did for my brother. And the hell if I'm going to let that happen to my child, whose brain has barely had time to develop even a fraction of the way toward maturity.

The problem with training him out of those bad habits is that it will take a ton of attention on my part. Frankly, I just don't think I'm cut out for it. To be fair, most parents aren't. Which is why so many kids end up sedated on psychiatric medications. If one of us needs to be on medication to treat an attention deficit, it'd be better if it was me than him. But me? On medications? That's an entirely different can of worms.

Hopefully it'll just get easier as he learns words. For now, all I can do to discourage the negative behavior is grab his arm when he hits me in the face and firmly tell him, "No. You do not hit people." When he screams, tell him firmly (trying very hard not to yell myself), "Fiver, do not scream." And when he throws things, firmly tell him, "Stop throwing things." After correcting him, I still need to help him fulfill his needs - that's my job, after all - but I can only hope these corrections are more than just platitudes.

Click Moments

It was so strange yesterday to be awake so long before the baby. Even after I finished my last blog, I had a few hours to myself before I had to attend to him. I just checked my mail and read some news articles and such, like I do with much of my free time, except this time it wasn't late at night so there wasn't a pressing demand for me to go to bed, and no distraction from a rowdy baby. A lot of times I will just open articles I find interesting and leave the tabs open forever, feeling like I don't have the time to read them. Even when I do technically have the time, and I'm just idling away in front of my computer, something keeps me from reading them. I can't sustain focus on the stories, or I feel guilty for still being awake, or I feel like I should probably be doing something else more pressing. But it was early in the morning, with no other immediate obligations, and an important task for the day already out of the way; all of those usual feelings were absent.

Once the baby was up, I went ahead with our usual rituals, and we sat together in the living room watching cartoons as I fed him oatmeal. I ran into trouble, though, because I hadn't realized the variety pack I bought came with "original" flavored oatmeal, and he kept spitting it out. I went into the kitchen to look for some cinnamon, and found myself getting extremely irritated when I couldn't find it. I was shuffling things around in the cabinet as I searched, getting increasingly agitated. It had been such a good morning, and I couldn't understand why I was feeling so cranky. I gave up on my search and just threw the bowl of oatmeal in the sink, not bothering to scrape it into the trash, and sat back down in a huff. Obviously I was irritated because without the cinnamon, I couldn't get the baby to eat his food. If he didn't eat it, it would go to waste, which is irritating in itself since food is not always plentiful in the house. I also felt guilty, because without resolving that problem, the baby would hardly have eaten anything for breakfast. I also felt guilty because I didn't scrape out the bowl and was adding to the mess in the kitchen that I knew was bothering my mother, if not everyone else in the household. It seemed like my guilt and concern for the baby would outweigh everything else and compel me to find a better solution than just throwing the oatmeal out, but I didn't feel like I could handle making something else, since the dirty dishes in the sink made any work in the kitchen feel like an insurmountable task. I did still have to make sure he ate something, so I opened a package of crackers and started feeding them to him. It wasn't a very hearty breakfast, but it was better than nothing. And as I fed him the crackers, the real root of my irritability revealed itself. I started dozing off in the chair. I forgot, I had only slept for a couple of hours, and since I was up so early I had already been up about six hours. I was just tired!

It was so obvious. And yet, it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on with me. It's almost like I have a reversed fundamental attribution error. When examining our own behavior, most normal people attribute negative behavior to something besides themselves, such as something in the environment or various circumstances. But when we examine other's negative behavior, we attribute it to something intrinsic about the person: we call them evil, stupid, bad at their job, arrogant, selfish, etc. We don't consider that they may just be having a bad day, or be under a lot of stress, or maybe they recently experienced a major loss. I seem to function in the reverse; when someone else acts out in a negative way, my default is to ask myself "Why are they behaving this way?" and dismiss any of the intellectually two-dimensional solutions such as "They're just a bad person." This is why I feel I can readily see into other people's thoughts and feelings. This is why I often feel such intense empathy with others. But when looking at my own behavior, such as not waking up in the morning and immediately attending to my baby, my default is to attribute this behavior to something intrinsic about myself, such as "I am a bad mother." Those are the kind of thoughts in my head that I am constantly trying to stomp down, because just like if I were thinking such things about another person, I know that they are fundamentally flawed, intellectually shallow, and profoundly maladaptive. But for some reason, I find it much harder to keep these thoughts at bay and offer a better solution to why I behave the way I do. Even though the solution is so obvious, as it was in this case.

It's like when I was in college and started to feel like I was getting dumber. I didn't grasp ideas and concepts as readily as I did when I was in high school, I was losing my intellectual curiosity, I just wasn't making connections the same. I didn't contribute to conversations like I once did. My friends would talk about their ideas, and I rarely had anything to contribute. When I did, it felt so forced, and nothing seemed as clever as what they were saying. Even they were taking notice and thought it strange it seemed I was becoming stupid. Even I was starting to believe it. I was ashamed and disappointed in myself. At times I felt like it wasn't worth living if I couldn't think the way I once did, if my mind was just going to continue to deteriorate year after year.

But then I heard a story on NPR about a recent study that examined why it seems like poor people make bad decisions. They found that "the condition of poverty imposed a mental burden akin to losing 13 IQ points" (or comparable to the cognitive difference that’s been observed between chronic alcoholics and normal adults, which I found really interesting... but that's another tangent entirely). All of a sudden, it made complete sense to me. I wasn't going crazy, my brain wasn't inherently broken. Since beginning college, and especially after graduating, my socioeconomic condition had changed drastically. Now I was responsible for so many things, like my housing and food and classes and work, things I hardly had to worry about when I was living in an upper-middle class household. Even when I moved out at seventeen, there were still adults making sure I was taken care of, so that I could focus on school. But in college, sometimes the financial burden was so bad, I would not have enough money for food. There were times I went without eating. Sometimes that lack of nourishment or general stress prompted depression that kept me homebound for days. I would miss classes. One time during the summer, I had been eating so little for so long (whether it was from depression, or empty cabinets, or a combination of both, I don't remember now), when I did leave the house with a friend to go see a play, I fainted. I fainted perhaps two more times as I tried to make my way to a vending machine and scrape together what little pocket change I had on me to get some crackers - something, anything - in my stomach. All the while, my poor friend was shocked and horrified and at a complete loss for what to do. (Again, upon recalling the incident, I feel more for his plight than I do for my own, an impulse which speaks to how much more deeply I empathize with others than feel for myself.)

Even my gaming binges made sense in this context. I spent so much time and energy stressing out and obsessing over how I was going to manage to pay the rent and bills, that it was so refreshing to turn my brain on to World of Warcraft and obsess over something else for twenty hours at a time. One might criticize me for not spending that time searching for a better job or doing something more constructive (indeed, my father said such things; part of the reason I don't talk to him anymore). But given my mental state at the time, solving all my problems simply was not possible. It was the gaming, connecting with other people there, and the blatant escapism, that my brain needed. It was better than wishing myself dead. And isn't that precisely at the heart of suicidality: escapism?

Once I had this out, once I knew that I felt dumber because poverty was gobbling up my mental bandwidth (what a savory concept, mental bandwidth), the menacing voice that whispered to me You're stupid, what's the point of living if you can't think right anymore? completely dissolved. It was the same with this incident; once I knew that my irritability was a result of just being tired, rather than some moral failure on my part, all the anxiety and shame associated with my failure to control my mood completely vanished. The new problem at hand was simply to get some sleep, which, granted, was it's own struggle, but once the baby was down for his nap I managed to get the rest I needed.

When I woke up, it was five o'clock, and Jesse was telling me to get up, sounding irritable with me, his volume escalating. Again, I felt resentful, and wanted to continue sleeping. The baby was awake, sure, but he was cooing calmly in his crib, entertaining himself within the confines of a safe area. The only real pressure on me to get up with any urgency was Jesse. At the time, I was just annoyed with his attitude, and it didn't make much sense to me why he was being so urgent given that there was nothing to get pushy about. I did eventually get up and let the baby out of the crib, but not without engaging in a short shouting match. Even when I was awake enough to get up, I didn't want to move. Perhaps out of spite. Perhaps from the anxiety imposed by his shouting. Either way, in retrospect, I understand that he's responding to a pattern of my behaviors, and not taking the time and energy to analyze the individual situation. My patterns of sleep have been an ongoing problem, and he is still annoyed with me when he sees me sleeping at times he deems inappropriate. There have been times that I have slept through entire mornings, and well into the afternoon, not even beginning to rouse at my baby's cries from his crib. Those are the times I have felt most like a failure as a mother, such that the shame I feel over the incidents is tangible. I am almost too ashamed to even confess it here, but I know I must. His anger, given this established pattern, makes sense, though in this particular moment, when the baby and I are waking from our naps at the same time, he is being unreasonable. Now he is just getting angry at me out of habit, and is too cognitively lazy to fully assess the individual situation.

While I'm feeding the baby in the evening, I notice that my mother has finished doing half the dishes. I am relieved, though again I feel guilty. I had been wanting to tackle the dishes for the last two days for her, but couldn't bring myself to do it, for the same reason I couldn't bring myself to search my room for a dirty pair of shorts. Just the process I have to go through to do the dishes brings up so many emotionally draining thoughts and stresses that I can't even begin to deal with it. I don't normally have to worry about the dishes, and neither does she, because her father usually does them. But Papa broke his hip this weekend and is in the hospital, and we don't expect he'll be back anytime soon. Even when he does recover, my mom plans on putting him in an assisted living facility, since she can't be home to care for him. He's been pretty independent up until recently, with periodic seizures and dementia that makes it difficult for him to remember to take his medicine or even remember what he's taking it for. Not to mention he's cranky all the time. I would pitch in in caring for him more, but I can barely take care of myself as it is, let alone my son, let alone an elderly person with memory loss and a sour disposition.

I really hate doing the dishes. But so does everyone else in the household. And my mom is working all day, and absolutely deserves a free pass on dealing with that extra chore. Jesse is usually in school, but even when he isn't, his sensory disorder makes it difficult for him to do the dishes and deal with water (coincidentally, same reason I usually end up the one who has to give the baby his bath). So the responsibility now falls on me.

Though now that she has done half of it, and sorted the unfinished dishes in neat piles the same way I would have done if I had been able to bring myself to do it at all, I feel like the rest of the chore is realistically doable for me. (Granted, the dishes are still only half finished... but at least now I feel the chore is possible. I just have to commit the time and attention to completing the task, which is a whole different can of worms.) When I noticed, I thanked her for doing it, and told her I meant to do it myself, but couldn't bring myself to do it, explaining that when I looked at the pile of dishes, I became overwhelmed. She replied that it was really simple to deal with, that you just take them all out and sort them in piles (as she had), but I had to interrupt her. I knew the process I had to go through. But I simply couldn't even get started on it. I just couldn't. There was not much explanation needed. My mom knows the feeling; she has been diagnosed with anxiety herself. The difference is, she's medicated for it.

While the baby ate, my mom was on her laptop, browsing Facebook and watching videos. "Look at this rehab center, it's like a spa!" This sent me off into a spiel about the function of luxury and comfortable settings when treating people for drug addiction, which she nodded her head in understanding, entirely missing the disconnect in communication that just happened. "I think Papa will really like this place," she said.

I was so far inside my head when she directed my attention to the video, that the tangent I flew off on was completely disconnected from the context of the situation. She was researching to find a rehab center she could put Papa in, and it should have been obvious to me that this was the kind of rehab she was talking about, not drug rehab. I was embarrassed for a moment, but less so since I was the only one who seemed to notice what happened, and also a little alarmed when I realized what had occurred. On the whole, I feel a lot better. I can already tell I'm thinking more normally. My cognitive capacity is where I think it should be. It's like when I was depressed, all of my neural connections were shut off, but now that I'm writing again, I've flipped a huge lever that has turned the whole system back online, and there are so many connections, it's insanely easy to get lost in them.

This absentmindedness is manifesting in other small ways too. Like when I was preparing food for the baby, I was getting steps mixed up, almost forgot to set the timer on the oven, forgot what it was I was planning on doing when I walked into the kitchen initially, etc. They are the briefest lapses in memory, and I recover from them quickly enough, but they are unnerving. I fear they foreshadow a more crippling disability in old age. Not an unrealistic fear, given my family history.

While and after we put the baby to bed, Jesse and I were talking and I noticed I had things to say. A lot of times, he has a lot of ideas to bounce off of me, and that's all they do: bounce. I have trouble reflecting anything of substance or merit back at him. But now, I really seemed to be engaging in the conversation and bringing something of my own to the table. At one point while we were talking later, just before he was ready to go to bed, he had an "Aha!" moment after I explained how my brain was working and why I have some of the problems I'm having. It suddenly clicked with him the similarities between that and his sensory processing disorder. I got glassy-eyed and asked him, "Can you write that down?" I wanted him to explain it and write it down the way I have been writing here. It wasn't that I didn't understand what had clicked, it was that I wanted to lay out his idea and examine it more thoroughly. But since his thoughts aren't in my head, they're in his, I can't just examine the ideas in my head. I don't know what clicked as well as I want to. As we continued talking, it happened again, this time talking about an interaction he had with someone at school, and how his decisions in dealing with others impacted them. Again, I wanted it in writing. I could see so many other ideas I wanted to explore with the story he was telling me, but I felt like writing it down or being able to read it would make it so much easier to make those connections.

I slept late again. After playing Minecraft and working on a project with friends, I went to bed at about four in the morning. Again, sleep came naturally, and there was no anxiety about going to bed like there normally is. The trouble with sleep isn't always just racing thoughts. I have anxiety directly related to sleeping and all that entails. A lot of times I just feel like if I sleep, I'm going to miss out on things, or that its wasted time. Time, time, time. There are so many things I want to do in life, so many things I want to accomplish and read and learn and make, sleeping just feels like time wasted. It's like a curse, robbing me of so much potential. I'm dreaming away all my opportunities. And so often I get hung up on this. Why sleep? When I could be doing this or that or the other thing. I feel pulled in so many directions, sleep gets lost in the tussle. Now that I'm writing, this particular brand of anxiety has evaporated. It's as if, for all the things I want to do, as long as I'm writing, I feel satiated.

This morning, I woke with a start at the first sound of the baby crying, and sprung out of bed to begin the day. Achievement unlocked.