403: forbidden

My current book is Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I'm less than halfway through, but so far it's fantastic.

I want to talk about one of the exercises, which aims to shake out key bits of "how other people should change to make you feel valued". To do this, one is to quickly and without thinking much, complete the sentences:

* I wish other people were more ______.
* Why is it so hard for people to ______?
* For a change, I would love someone to treat me like ______.
* Maybe one of these days I'll find someone who will ______.
* In an ideal world with good people, other people would ______.

( Continued inside... )

After learning in mid-March that my liver was markedly unhappy after six-ish months of danazol, I decided to give the Mirena IUD a try. ( Cut for medical content. )

Being poked and prodded for the ultrasound has ratcheted my pain level up to the point where OTC medications are not adequate, and it's lingering.

All I wanted when this saga started was to experience less pain, goddamnit.

The writeup has been lingering half-written in a tab for a while, and I finally finished it off because I need to reboot. Here it is.

( Cut for medical discussion. )

Sleep disruption is a migraine trigger. (And sensitizer to other triggers.) Apparently halving my dose of sleep-hack meds counts as 'disruption'.

There went today.

Not a one. After investigating the local thrift store (no major furniture) & potential for Ikea crap (cheap bookshelves... prohibitively expensive delivery to the boonies), it looks like my best option is going to be to build shelving for this place. Except there are minimal tools here. If this town or the surrounding ones have a tool library, it doesn't have an internet presence that I've been able to find. I should be able to borrow at least a crosscut saw and a rasp from Z's relatives, but I won't be back in Seattle until next weekend. I suppose that between now and then, my task is to draft the shelving unit and how I envision its pieces fitting together. Not least because 'holds together firmly, yet disassembles with a little work' is a very desirable feature and not one you'll get without planning.

I have, at least, swapped the shower fixture out for my own. That will make being here a great deal more pleasant.

But seriously now. Drafting. Lumber. Bookcases. Must find out if the nearest hardware store will pre-cut your lumber and/or plywood to size.

This move has been a right clusterfuck, and not in the fun way. But we're out as of 2/14 (during which, it was so cold that Boston harbor was steaming), and had all the resulting boxes & furniture shoved into Tetrisland (AKA storage unit) early the next morning. I administrated my ass off, in exchange for Z taking on the vast majority of lugging boxes downstairs. plures' help has been invaluable throughout.

Then we fell over and slept for 16-20h, each. Badly needed.

Presently T-40h to departure for Seattle. Still need to refactor luggage, sort a last handful of items into 'important enough to ship or drag with us' vs. 'drop off at storage unit', and usefully dispose of the last contents of the chest freezer (which are currently sitting outside in a cooler, to take advantage of this past weeks' deep-freeze conditions).

I'm giving away some stuff that I'm not taking to the west coast.

[ETA 13:25 - Is gone. That was fast.]

How to get rid of your landlord and socialize American housing, in 3 easy steps.

 Homelessness, unaffordable urban real estate, devastating gentrification, and the housing bubble are all rooted in privatized housing.
- J. Myerson, writing for The Nation

Very, very interesting. Applicable to more than just U.S. residents.

I just realized that it's been a couple of months since I wrote anything here. I'm trying to be more consistent than that.

Mostly what's been happening in the intervening time is that depression has been kicking my ass. I got a little bit of relief while on vacation in Seattle, but that was also only a little bit of time, and now it's back in full force. Most (75%? More?) of the intrinsic reward that I depend on for motivation to do much of anything has simply evaporated into the ether, so far as I can tell. If nothing else, the habit I've needed to cultivate these past several years of 'eat every 4h like clockwork' is standing up well under stress testing, even if what gets eaten is banana-and-yogurt rather than a proper meal. Cooked food was an early casualty to the acute shortage of fucks to give, but regularly putting something in my stomach has not been.

I'm finding this difficult from another, unexpected direction. Some 2/3 of my life was lived in an environment where the family-unit (whatever its variable composition) had no resources to deal with awareness of my problems, let alone the problems themselves. And so I learned to wear the mask of okayness everywhere, to reinforce it at home, and to withdraw from people so that they wouldn't be burdened by my needs*. But right now, living with Z, there is no place to withdraw to. And I'm malfunctioning too badly to keep up a socially acceptable veneer, no matter how my conditioned reflexes scream that Bad Things Will Happen.

The fact is that my problems right now are a weight on Z, when he's already operating near the limit of what he can handle. I can see that my inability to get traction on dealing with the current MDE is deeply frustrating to him. (It frustrates me as well, of course, when I can feel anything besides the undifferentiated greyness.) And yet, he's still here. He has not rejected me for this un-chosen thing that my brain does, or backed away from my suffering out of self-preservation. I am inexpressibly grateful to him.

Now if only I could find where my unwanted programming lives and shove his counterexample down its throat.


* This meshes interestingly with having also picked up such a degree of hypervigilance in any social situation that it doesn't leave enough attention for being aware of what I need, much less what I feel. At any given time, which failtastic bit of programming predominates?

Spent Wednesday doing ALL the laundry, and packing my share of it. This evening zeightyfiv and I fly out to Seattle, where we'll arrive in the small hours of tomorrow morning. Going to be there visiting family until 9/6. If you'd care to have lunch/tea/blackberry picking/alien invasion with us, do please get in touch. :)

Coordinating to meet is going to be extra-awkward for a bit. I lost my phone on Monday, and until it's replaced, can't receive calls (mostly) or text messages (at all). Z hacked together a Frankenphone for me that can make outgoing calls, but it's barely more useful than a dumb landline. Please use IM or e-mail for all contact until otherwise noted.