Greenstorm's Journal

Perils of indie podcasts: I start listening to an autism podcast and the dude is low-key abusing his wife for the ten minutes I kept listening (as they talk he's tearing down her ideas, interrupting her, making fun of her for speaking, making fun of her for not speaking, all the while she's giving him enormous tolerance for doing the same sorts of things x 10)

Some resources to read, they may be the same article, for my own use later:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/well/live/autistic-burnout-advice.html
https://medium.com/autistic-discovery/autistic-people-are-the-experts-on-autistic-burnout-6992dca38615

While I hear rumours that some folks go out of their way to be terrible to other people, sometimes for a long time, I don't meet many folks like that. Even my dad -- who objectively spent nearly seventeen years after the divorce making mom's life hell as a nearly full-time job, including writing multiple self-published books about her and getting known on a first name basis at the courthouse and police station because of the number of times he took her to court/called her in -- didn't conceive of his behaviour that way.

Folks are usually trying to get the minimum amount they think they can survive on, they're trying to get what they feel to be fairness, they're trying to get what they believe they're owed. They're looking for safety and for security. Some people believe that they can get security and care through kindness and through giving security and care; some people believe they're safer when they're open and known. I'm generally in this group by nature but not by early reflex (dad trained us pretty well) and the more I surround myself with folks who are also in this group the more my reflexes are aligned with my nature. Surrounded by similar people, this strategy works.

Other people believe in zero sum. They believe no one would offer them security and care freely. This shows up in a couple ways but the effect is usually manipulative. Maybe the way to get someone to be kind is to present only the most carefully curated and limited self, aligned with what you think the other person wants, so they will never leave you. Maybe the way to feel secure when you've done something harmful is to shift the discourse to how much hurt or panic you feel at the idea of having harmed someone rather than linger on the consequences of harm and the uncertainty of repair. Maybe its unfathomable to think that someone could offer you affection at the same time as they offer someone else affection and so you can't cope with what could be competition.

The problem with zero sum is-- there's no real way to be with someone else, let your guard down, stop playing the game, and just feel ok with your actual self. It's always so much work, and you always know deep down that it's your manipulative behaviours that are keeping folks there and not your actual self so you are trapped in maintaining those behaviours. It's always teetering on a terrifying edge, it's exhausting, and it's alienating.

You know, child abuse only started to be understood as x rays became widely used. There were all these children with broken bones and at first they couldn't understand why, maybe infants and young kids just had bones that acted weird? But no. They were being badly harmed. Folks who grew up during that time, when that sort of parenting was so normal, are still alive. We're not too many generations of parents removed from that, and certainly not from parents who learned their parenting skills from those folks. Of course x rays never caught folks who did soft-tissue damage, and they never had a hope of catching folks who did damage with words. There were a lot of those. And even if a parent was ok there are an awful lot of potentially harmful adults in a child's world.

So of course there will be lots of folks in the world who don't feel safe, who don't feel that kindness and love will be freely given, that showing their selves will be ok. Of course there will be. And of course they fight so hard for the only security they know to exist. Their marvellously crafted brains harness millennia of survival strategies to protect them and they fight, and they fight, and they fight for love, for security, for a place in what they understand society to be. They fight for a place in the kind of society that formed them.

And through that fighting, through that manipulation and withholding, those folks recreate the conditions that formed them. It's a cycle that continues not just intergenerationally but laterally into friends and romantic relationships and colleagues. Good ol' DARVO can spread.

When it's not ok to say "this isn't for me" and step away without someone having done something wrong -- that's entitlement. It requires the world to be cut into team bad, which it's ok to leave, and team good, which is allowed to leave. It denies the diversity of desires and needs in the world. It's reductionist and creates antagonism. That's the cycle winning.

I was going to list more but thinking about it makes me tired, I'm tired, and I have a 5 gallon bucket of lard in my kitchen I can make into soap, I have a pork loin to make into jerky, I have a couple other primals to break down, I have a smoker (gloriously loaded by Josh, it's full to groaning) to start, I have leaf lard to strain into molds for baking, I have biscuits to make. I go down these old dark paths when my mind takes them, but I won't force myself to stay on them right now.

Instead I'll go into the light of my daily life and cradle my heart through the process of making and nourishing. No amount of beautiful food can help someone believe that they are worthy of love and joy as they are, that they are allowed to ask for it and seek it, and that if they're not finding it in some folks there will be other folks who will be happy to give it.

I can't fix that about the world. I just want to. I escaped from those places. I wish at least the people I love also could.

Whatever is going on with my head has been a pretty substantial problem.

Best guess is that some stuff with partners + covid instability + residential school abuse being everywhere has been putting me in a constant people-aren't-safe/no-one-has-my-back/the-world-is-never-kind trigger state. I've been crying. A lot. I pass two memorials to the Kamloops kids when I drive into town, which doesn't help.

I called in sick and spent today calling help lines etc because I'm pretty much nonfunctional at this point: it takes all day to feed myself and do animal chores. I haven't been able to garden or do anything really. So.

Work has set up a crisis line because a lot of our work involvwes first nations, and many of us are. I called that. It has a person who listened some and validated, which was nice, but I think couldn't do much else. He was kind and caring but said some stuff about me speaking to a woman because it might feel safer for me.

Strike one for "intersectionality sucks". I'd really like to be able to access this resource but can't handle explaining the gender thing to someone right now. So.

Tried calling my doctor. I had an appointment with her last week to follow up on the medication which put me to sleep, made me unable to drive, and may (?) have precipitated this instability some. I mis-remembered the appointment date and missed it, and now she's on vacation, I can see her in just over a month.

Called the employee whatever-it's-called line, the one work always has that's part of the benefits and not the event-specific crisis line. Got a counselor who was actually pretty great and put me in for a trauma-specific program and talked with me some. Good to have another thing to try since I'm basically nonfunctional and this can't go on.

I have a headache from crying, I feel like I got nothing done today, ravens carried away some piglets and ducklings, people seem awful, and I just want to sleep.

Oh. And it would be nice to feel safe.

I haven't been this bad for a really long time. Bah.

Well, now.

Last night it snowed. I'm not ready but then I never am? The snow may not stick out the week yet and I may have a chance to rake before the snowblower.

Yesterday I was given notice; the company isn't waiting it out till the sale. That removes some of my decision-making load anyhow; I have the less money/more time offer in my back pocket and I'll move forward with that. My life will be changing. Last day of work is Friday the the 18th, federal election is the Monday. The following week is hunting/butchering with Josh. Then I will start the new job.

This week Tucker is at his parents'. He's... it's hard that he's on the other side of the continent right now, it's hard that he's seeing his other partners and not me, it's hard that he's not prioritizing time to talk to me over there. But, except, well. So this is someone who actually really does the work. In the couple years that we've been together he's been setting boundaries, striving for things, enjoying things. Being back there is like flicking a switch; we talked a little last night and the depression/self-loathing was turned up to 11, enough that it was very very difficult. Every couple sentences there was an insinuation that the relationship would end, that I was stupid and horrible for liking him, that he was going to do all sorts of deliberate self-harm that was just deniable enough that I wasn't sure what to say.

I don't know how to handle this. I am out of my depth. There's no way to argue with someone's self-loathing, and I'm too far away to get a blanket and offer tea and snuggles and a rewatch of The Last Unicorn. It triggers all my worries about being *inconvenient*: when my presence is treated with such indifference and I have to push hard to have time made to talk to me at all it's a struggle not to back right off. And maybe I should back right off? It has the effect of putting me in my abused place, in walking on eggshells and disappearing as much as possible.

And of course my emotional resources are so low right now. I'm losing my job, I'm going to be worried about money for a bit, my partners are far away and can't support me through this right now, my community has mostly been my work people & I'm losing those too. I haven't been sleeping well with one thing and another, mostly from just being busy.

Luckily I have a whole bunch of beets to can/ferment. Such a concrete gesture of hope for the future coupled with visible achievement always helps me.

I mean, I'm also hopeful about the new job, about having time to myself, about creating a domain and running it in reasonable and orderly fashion, and about doing so in service to the environment (my current position has been so removed from the ecosystems I work in, really). I'm excited about my hunting/butchering week. I'm enjoying my harvest so immensely and can't wait to take down notes on what varieties of which I'm growing again and how I'm organizing things in the future.

Things are really mixed right now. I'd like to have someone bring me a nice cup of tea with milk and honey and pet my hair. I'd like to rewatch The Last Unicorn while snuggling, and eat jam on sourdough english muffins (the sourdough is such an amazing compliment to fruit). I'd like to cry some and have that be ok.

Given a sufficiency of time everything will happen.

Hey.

Remember, oh, sixteen or seventeen years ago when you came into the kitchen where I was washing dishes and told me how out of tune my singing was?

I didn't sing where anyone could hear me for a decade after that.

You tried so hard to destroy me so I wouldn't be a threat. Sleepless nights, isolation. Even now you post a couple of times a year on Facebook about how people like me are trash.

I am in the city today, walking down the street, singing quietly into my space where strangers can hear. I may still be out of tune. I don't know. I've never taken a lesson.

No doubt strangers agree with you. I'm out of line. When I drive I wave to the folks I pass. This is the city, who wants that?

Where I stand is always my space. This is where I'm singing. I am allowed to be in my skin.

I hope you are having a nice life. I know I am. Sorry about that.

The point of a counselor is for someone to ask me questions that are too scary or shaky for me to think of asking myself. Last week it was, "what does it say about you if you don't give people second chances/collaborate/work with them after they've done something wrong"?

And there's history and background here. I'm an abuse survivor. There's a very real way in which I consider that if I ever get in an abusive situation again it's my fault, because I know what it looks like and I should know better. At work, there are legal standards our work needs to meet. So in both interpersonal and work relationships there is a part of me that wants to hold a strong line, that wants to say "if you fuck up there should be big consequences." I have a lot of bend for someone who independently figures out they fucked up and brings it to me; I get sketched out when I discover issues on my own and bring them forward more than once.

On the other hand, I've done abusive behaviours because I was scared of losing folks and didn't know how to handle that well. I've been new and learning, or had really bad days and done bad work with ridiculous errors. I'm only where I am now because people extended me lots of latitude, lots of love, and lots of teaching. I believe the best of everyone. And most folks say that relationships require compromise.

So I don't want to be taken advantage of. I want to shut down relationships where there's a repeating pattern of bad stuff happening. But I want to be *in* relationships, not be too much of a hard-ass to be around folks who are kind and accepting of others' humanity.

And so what does it say about me if I don't work with people, or give second chances? It means I, myself, don't deserve a second chance. It means that I don't deserve basic human consideration and kindness. I don't deserve people bending for me.

And I'm not well-calibrated as to what a good line is, about how much I should accommodate people. Writing that, I see that if things are harming me I should not accommodate. My fingers feel literally heavy as I write that. I...

...think that on some level I object to protecting myself from harm in functioning relationships. I feel like if I am polite and respectful and caring, then people should be so to me, and there should be no harm. There shouldn't be a need to protect myself all the time, or even in spikes when it pops up. I should select relationships that don't harm me, and then I should inhabit those and be safe. So I try to accommodate other people's needs as a way of protecting myself, as a way of saying "hey, if you don't need anything more from me you have no reason to harm me."

And of course as I write this I know that's not how boundaries work. Regardless of what I do or how I behave, if my boundaries are expressed they should be respected. Otherwise that's the logic that people can be asking for it to be raped. Otherwise that's saying that people who are abused deserve it for their behaviour. It's not true.

The bigger part,maybe, is figuring out how to determine my boundaries.