I finished that goddamn paper.

I dragged it out as long as humanly possible, but it's done. Now I can just concentrate on waitressing (whoo-hoo, it has been too long!) and then one more paper, then a meeting, then a final, then a rally. Then it's smoooooth sailing forever and ever, I'm pretty sure. No deadlines ever again.

Deadlines are actually the backbone of life, right? That's what fills up the time in between the things we look forward to- all the things we just need to get done. Everything that isn't a dance party or a hot date. It's hard to learn to enjoy all the non dance party or hot date aspects of life, but I'm working on it.

Maybe I'll become a drummer. Drummers don't have deadlines so much, right? And they have awesome arms. But let's not front like this pullup bar isn't giving me sexy goddamn arms.

My Approach to Therapy

I have this paper due in a class which is only worth 5 percent of the total grade, but which I have been dwelling on and not working on all week. It is about OF ALL the theories of therapy we learned about which one am I going to use once they put me in a room with a client? And in that topic is contained: how does change happen? how does pathology happen? how important is the past vs. the present vs. the future? How does development happen?

These questions are scrambling my brain. Every theory we've covered I have bought into. Except for Freud, because he covered for a friend of his who was molesting his daughter-client-of-freud by telling her she was fantasizing all of it. Thus Freud has no credibility, and in addition a lot of his ideas sound like the ramblings of a cocaine addict. "Women want penises! I have to write this down NOW!"

The other theory that I reject, although not for lack of effectiveness or credibility, is solution focused therapy. Solution focused therapy I bet works in a jiffy. But if I wound up in a solution focused therapists office I would have to smack a bitch.

So here's how it goes: you know how you expect when you go to your first therapy session to get to bitch about your problems for awhile? The solution focused therapist has all these sneaky questions designed to get your focus off of how horrible your problems are and ONTO the times your problems are not so bad. So you can figure out why sometimes they are not so bad and if you can create those conditions yourself. Thus focused on solutions.

So you walk in and the therapist asks, "Often clients see a change in their problems after they make the appointment but before they actually come in. Have you seen any changes?"

Then, like a SCHMUCK, you go "Oh geez, I guess so, my rat-bastard of a husband did do the dishes when I asked him the other night."

Then this turncoat of a therapist will say, "What was different about this time when you asked him to do the dishes?"

And again like a total fool you'll go, "Well I guess I was a little calmer then normal, and asked when he didn't seem so tired, and also mars was in transit and 40 sparrows had just dropped dead from the sky."

Um, so I am making fun of you and your responses because I have to exaggerate the stupid things you'll say because the reality is probably ALREADY the therapy session has been helpful to you. Two responses in. And you haven't even gotten to expound on the many aspects of your husband that make him a rat-bastard.

Everytime I've gone to therapy I've already alienated all my friends with my bitching, and a big part of why I am paying someone 40 bucks for an hour (sliding scale, what what!) of their time is so someone will LET ME BITCH. And these solution focused therapists will redirect you as soon as possible. If you say "Gawd I am so depressed all the time" they'll say, "Are there any times your depression is a little less intense?" and even if you hold to it and say "No, it is always consistently awful!" they'll say, "Wow, that sounds terrible, what are you doing to cope?" Or they'll say, "If a miracle happened, and you woke up tomorrow and your problems were solved, how would you know?" And you, the idiot, will say, "Well, I would get up and look forward to the day, and might work out a little, and make some oatmeal, and make it to work on time and blah blah happy people things blah blah."

And then you'll have spent the hour talking about actions you can take to tackle your depression instead of bitching about how terrible depression is. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I guess every therapist needs to have these annoying questions in their skill set because clients will probably come in and talk themselves into a miserable lather all the time.

I just hate the idea of taking a beautiful negative nancy, who can see all the spirals and curliques of her misery, who can sketch out elaborate castles of despair, and tossing all that aside! To focus on the positive! "Well, I guess I do have a friend I could take a walk with in the morning, that would make me feel good." Ok ROBOT. Happy ROBOT, taking walks, having friends. There are child soldiers! You're gonna take a morning walk in the face of that?!

Because the roots of happiness are in fact, exceptionally simple. It really does often boil down to taking a walk. Or having some social contact. Or getting even one task done, taking your garbage out, putting all your dirty clothes in a hamper.

And honestly, isn't your first reaction as a person with a goddamn brain, to glare at these propositions? Why are we turning problems over and over again in our big frontal lobes if it's not identifying all the intricacies of the problems that makes us happy? If we could be happy now BEFORE solving the problems? If we could be happy the way a cocker spaniel with a big empty skull is happy, chasing the same stick over and over, thrilled as hell? Even though he's gonna eat kibble made of corn and chicken butts for dinner?

Supposedly happy people can also solve the world's problems. Supposedly people who are not miserable can also figure out how to quit having kids be soldiers. I am not convinced of this.

This, my friends, is why I'm on psychotropic drugs. BEST FUTURE THERAPIST EVER FTW!

Woman Stuff.

I told you raspberry bush tea cured cramps. It totally does. You just have to drink it consistently, not just on your period. You can't have a good period, and forget about drinking it. That won't work.

So here we are, it's 6 in the morning and I'm guzzling the stuff. (And ibuprofen. Not a masochist anymore peeps.)

I sit here in my own apartment, which is getting cuter by the day. In the great historical context, what a blessing this is, for a woman my age to have all this space to herself. Well, and an ecological disaster, but let's keep on the positive tip. Everyday this place becomes more of a treasure trove, like Ariel's creepy human artifact cave in The Little Mermaid. Except the organizing themes here seem to be Weird and Brightly Colored.

It seems perfect to me that I would discover a powerful new weapon in the Fight Against Cramps shortly before my thirtieth, and then forget to use it. Hasn't this been my twenties, right till the end? Learning what I need to do to take care of my soul, then not doing it, then spending early mornings contemplating this? I don't really learn a lesson until I see the consequences for not learning it.

Have I said on here how I think this is my first go around as a woman? Or it might have been the last time I was a woman was before agrarian civilization took off. This is my explanation for why the material conditions of womanhood have been such a struggle for me. Not just societal misogyny, but things like bras and bikini line maintenance and Real Simple.

But I think I'm blessed to get to be a woman right now.We are slowly getting our shit together, right girls? We are slowly but surely figuring out how to set society right again. And even if we don't, this has got to be one of the better attempts.

Oh, my penchant for extreme emotional states. Maybe this isn't a special time at all. Maybe my life is an isolated, privileged outlier in the great sea of shitty lives through history. I'm still happy to be here.

On an exceptionally serious note: One of the most striking ways you can tell we live in a society that is afraid of valuing women I THINK is the extreme violence women who are trans face on the daily. In Chicago recently a very young woman, a baby really, 23, was murdered and left in an alley. Her name was Paige Clay and she was ambitious and beautiful.

23 is obviously not a long enough life, not for Paige, not for the people who loved Paige. There will be a rally on May 1st in Chicago to put pressure on the Chicago police department to take this murder investigation seriously. Paige's life was valuable, women's lives are valuable, and we won't accept the police acting any different.

And in light of Paige, how can we allow Cece McDonald to be prosecuted for defending herself against a hate crime? How can women be expected to walk around knowing that threats against their lives are very real, and that the police will not be there to defend them, and then be punished for defending themselves?

Let's not even GET INTO a system that doesn't arrest George Zimmerman for stalking and murdering Trayvon, but throws Cece in solitary for fighting back against a group of people yelling slurs and physically attacking her.

I tend not to write about the world outside my head on this blog, and it's because I don't feel I can write with authority or add a new perspective on most of it. I don't really think I can do either with this topic either. Just- if you are a woman who never had to transition into it, and you think the way women who have are beat up, and murdered, and disproportionately thrown in jail doesn't have to do with you, you're delusional. People attack trans women because it is terrifying to them that someone would choose to be a woman. If a person has the opportunity to live as a man and decides to forego that, it shows that our society's system of male supremacy is one choice among many, that there's nothing natural about who gets assigned what gender role and nothing natural in the privileging of one gender over another.

And defenders of our gender role system are absolutely willing to sacrifice anyone who steps out of line. Anyone who dares to live their life authentically, who decides their self-determined gender is at least as important as what a doctor wrote on a form awhile back.

This is why I stay away from real life on this blog, because shit gets real too quick for me. Just- if you're in Chicago, lend some support to Paige's loved ones and go to the rally. Show them we notice that she was here, that her life was valuable, and that she should have gotten a much longer life.

Chubs.

 Uh, blogger changed the format of their blog-composing page, and I'm very troubled by it. Now, it doesn't take a lot for me to be troubled, so I'm not claiming to be representative of a broader audience, BUT. I'd still like to register my dissatisfaction.

 Important things have fallen by the wayside in this final week of classes. My apartment has spots which are now gross, as opposed to disorganized. I have two letters to respond to and two bills to pay. And I have recently become aware of how chubby I appear in photos. To sum up, the world is collapsing.

 That final thought, the one about my body, my home, my space ship to explore the world in, being visually unacceptable, was of course put in my head by our corporate overlords, who have very specific ideas of how women should feel about their bodies. Women should want their bodies to be tinier and tinier and tinier until we disappear. Women should trip along on shoes with sticks poking right into the pad of their heel so that they cannot get away quickly. The great project of a woman's life should be monitoring her appearance.

 If I sound like a femi-nazi, screw you for using that term, that's effed up. CHECK YOURSELF.

 Uh...right. Ok. So. I look chubby in photos because I am a little bit on the chubby side because I don't bike anywhere nowadays. Even though my running abilities are steadily gaining ground. And even though I can almost do a pullup. So I don't believe I am particularly unhealthy at this time, or not physically active enough. I'm just chubby. It is an unlikely pattern in my life that the chubbier I am the more people hit on me. I guess when I'm svelte I must be so hot it just TERRIFIES people. Whereas chubby Carey is within people's leagues. That must be it.

 Or I meet more people when I have a car at my disposal.

 Or maybe our lizard brains subconsciously reject cultural programming in favor of chubby people. Yes, this is the one I choose to believe.

 Alright, so I'm gonna clean this gross apartment, and go for my run, and settle in to tackle those end of semester obligations. If at all possible have a happy sunday everyone.

1 Paper down, 2 to go

I might not have the best perspective on it, but I'm pretty proud of the paper I turned in yesterday. I think it was really well organized and concise. I am already aware of one thing wrong I did on the citations though. WHY ARE CITATIONS SO IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME?

So now I can concentrate on my theory paper, which is supposed to be about what I think my theoretical orientation as a therapist will be. WHAT WHAT. I still like Adler, but watching a video of Fritz Perls doing gestalt really did a number on me. Just constant confrontation. This is a half hour video but it's pretty engrossing.



How did he not have EVERY client ditch him? I guess underneath it all lots of people like being yelled at.

And then there's cognitive behavioral, which I think you sort of have to incorporate into therapy when you have clients struggling with their moods and emotion regulation. It's just CBT therapists are not supposed to interested in their client's childhoods and pasts, and I think it's really helpful to find the source events of unhelpful thought patterns. I just really like stories.

There's a style called "Liberation" psychology, coming out of, whodathunkit, latin america that I think really wraps up my approach. But we haven't learned about it in class, and it comes out of models we have learned about, so I'll just stick to ones we've covered. People use it with queer peoples in America a lot. It's basically about figuring out how you can self-actualize despite the many oppressions coming atcha. So a lot of work goes into identifying those oppressions. Oh, and hooking you up with groups of people dealing with the same shit. It's like organizing, but for people who are too much of a mess for being actually organized. The people an organizer would visit and be like, "Alright....not gonna be on the steering committee."

I just think a lot of negative thinking is helpful in therapy, since we're always getting messages that we are solely responsible for our own situations, and if we're not rich and happy and hot it's because we're not sufficiently emotionally advanced. And that kind of thinking can kill someone pretty quick. So I think it's important to orient yourself to the realities of what systems are effecting you, who is profiting from them, what their historical context is, the ways you have been primed for low self esteem, anxiety, depression, emotion dysregulation, fits of rage, etc. Cause yes, of course it is your parent's fault, but your parents did what they could in a context of being overworked and underhugged, you know?

I will not be writing like that in the paper, I swear.

So that's what today will be about, reading my theory book, brainstorming for an outline.

I am really lucky to be in school for such interesting stuff. My end of term assignments, while stressful, are also very engrossing.

Running, Facebook, Intimacy, TV

I ate pizza and drank a cup of water, so now I have to wait an hour and a half before going running. Sounds extreme. But my body loves to cramp. Besides side stitches, I also get what feel like period cramps if I run without making sure my digestive system is in perfect alignment. So that means no water, no food, hopefully a recent grosser of the two evacuations. I am not talking about micturition.

Turns out running around the zoo is a 3 mile route, which is GREAT, I thought it was around 2. I don't run the whole time, but I'm running the majority of it now. My route in Akron was a lot less than I thought, but I worked out what a 3 mile route down there is.

I started to read The Atlantic's "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" story. It makes me lonely. Or rather, the way I use it as a substitute for face to face contact makes me lonely. Because with face to face you just have to have that with whatever schlub is around you, and you probably don't have anything interesting to say. But it still eases loneliness more than internet contact with very interesting people linking to very interesting things. I use facebook a lot in the morning, when I sort of like being alone. But it can turn into a 3 hour internet spree. And then if I'm not careful I'm left to flail around for some social contact.

I particularly liked this paragraph:

"Our omnipresent new technologies lure us toward increasingly superficial connections at exactly the same moment that they make avoiding the mess of human interaction easy. The beauty of Facebook, the source of its power, is that it enables us to be social while sparing us the embarrassing reality of society—the accidental revelations we make at parties, the awkward pauses, the farting and the spilled drinks and the general gaucherie of face-to-face contact. Instead, we have the lovely smoothness of a seemingly social machine. Everything’s so simple: status updates, pictures, your wall."

Farting, dudes. The constant anxiety of will.i.fart. If you're me, yes, you probably will. No farting on the internet. Facebook is a fart free zone.

I want the fruits of going through hard stuff with people, while protecting myself from actually going through hard stuff with people, if at all possible. I would like the feelings of safety that come from being with people who have seen me be a mess, without ever having to be a mess. Luckily I have little to no control over when I look like a mess. I look like a mess in sudden, unexpected spurts.

I think about this a lot with my sister because she has really seen me be all over the place at this point. And a lot of times we seem like such different people to my eyes. Like she really likes to argue, and enjoys other people who argue a lot, and she's really forgiving about egotism. And I sort of want everyone to be good at hiding their narcissism and be very very gracious and charming. Even though demographically we're the same person, we seem really different to me.

But it turns out that has nothing to do with anything. A bond just has to do with how many times you freak out in front of a person. It's very counter-intuitive. Intimacy makes no sense at all pretty much. You could be intimate with a dragon with stalin's soul if they just were around you all the damn time.

And to connect all the things I think about every 5 minutes, here is a montage of Britta Perry on Community. Who is me, except blonde and thin, but really, she's on tv, it's gotta be that way, it's ok.

Money and A's.

It's a friday! Fridays are my day to make MONEY, to make BANK, to work a double and get that GREEN!

I love making money. Money in my pocket, is there any better talisman to ward off sickness and death? Nopers.

I have this big research paper due tuesday, and I'm struggling with perfectionism. You may take away from this that I have the paper done and am endlessly editing and proofreading the citations. HA. That would be exceptionally helpful perfectionism. No, my perfectionism means I avoid working on it at all because I can't find the perfect way to outline it.

And the topic of the paper is actually really engaging, and the papers I've found for it are really interesting, so I'm doing this thing where I put off working on it, and then finally start working on it and say to myself, "Hey! This isn't so bad!"

My mom is gonna leave comments telling me to work on this paper now. That's fine. I do need to work on it.

But I have a good outline now. And I have an awesome bibliography. All you queermos, I got to read Dean Spade for this paper, what what.

I'm just gonna make more and more specific outlines until I just need to add punctuation and it's done.

Also trying to remember I don't need to get all A's for this semester to count. But yes I do. I just really want all A's. I got a B+ on one of my midterms but I think I can still bump that up into an A. If I get a B+ I will be bummed the eff out. I want all A's, I want to be recognized as a therapy prodigy. I want my professors to say, "It's like you've been a therapist for years and years!" I would like that to be a comment on this paper: "Wow, I can tell from your citations you'd be a life changing therapist." You're too sweet, I do what I can.

After the rush of papers and finals in April, I have May off before my summer classes start. I guess I'll spend some time at my mom's farm, and I'd really like to visit Lilydale New York and get a really intense reading of some kind.

Money, success, money, success, adoration, money, success. Mo money, less problems- that's how it works?

Narrative.

Ok dudes, back to real life. It's a well known fact that what makes the past the past is it does not exist anymore. And the you of back then doesn't exist anymore either.

Recently the theorists in my counseling theory class have been all about the past not existing anymore, because they are behaviorists. To a behaviorist the past just doesn't matter- what matters is your behavior now. So they work on your thoughts right now, your faulty beliefs right now, and acting opposite of how you feel.

I think they're basically right. But I also think we can't ignore our brains' hunger for narrative. It's true we could, if we tried hard enough, forget about our narrative. I think you might as well work with the narrative. We can't all be meditating 24/7. Well, ok, we could, but we're not going to.

It comes down to whatever works for you. I want a narrative. I try to keep in mind it's my own creation.

Stories create reality. Because we pick up a story and repeat it, and look for it in our lives. The stories you hear set the boundaries of what you'll pay attention to.

If you know the story of the reward coming in the form of a prince, you'll look for a prince and you won't look for money or friends or princesses. If you know the story of young black kids being criminals, you'll look for criminals and you won't see nerds, or goofy dumbasses, or sweet shy types.

Action so often means talking. This is how humans do it. We chatter it out. We organize the randomness that flies at us.

If you can tell an engaging story, you're golden. Just remember you wrote the story, it didn't write you.

Cotton Balls.

When I was 19 this guy I worked with came close to destroying me. I don't know if that's what he meant to do. He made me do some stuff and I didn't have the time or sobriety to decide what I wanted to do. That sounds like such a small thing to do to someone. If you have the right people saying the right things to you afterwards maybe it can remain such a small thing. But I kept it a secret, and lied about it to the people I was closest to, and so it turned into a secret between him and me. That gave him a lot of power. He told me a joke two weeks later about how cheap I would be if I was a prostitute. This guy who knew a secret about me I was hiding. When he told me the joke I got the same feeling as when the incident he was referencing was happening- like I was in a box stuffed with cotton balls. Like I had retreated into a pin point so deep inside of myself that I'd have to walk miles and miles to be able to operate my body. He told me this joke at work, at the beginning of my shift, then he left, and I worked as a cashier for 8 hours.

Being in that box is not so bad. Not being able to move is not so bad. I've felt that way a lot since then. I have dreams of not being to move.

The problem is that I can move, and am moving even when it seems I'm not. The problem is sometimes I can look at how I'm moving and it's like my intentions have nothing to do with it. Like my body and me are only connected unexpectedly sometimes, like a newspaper's headlines and it's horoscopes. That's what I cry about, frustration at not being able to move the way I want to.

I started calling it a rape in my head many years later, when I was in a criminal law class. At first it was this funny thought experiment. "Huh, according to the laws of many states, that time with that guy was a rape. Huh. What a funny thing."

That doesn't mean I didn't think about it almost every day. But before the criminal law class I thought how I could argue that what he said wasn't true, and I could never find a way it wasn't true.

Then after the class I thought about whether it was a rape or not, and I could never decide.

You can fit so many thoughts into a second. Our brains perform so many calculations so quickly. Still there is a chunk of my brain set aside for that incident, always turning it over, trying to remember something that would make it one thing or the other, trying to find the definitive thing that would make him wrong. I'm never convinced.

I cycle through intense depressive episodes that have lasted 2 months to 2 years. During these episodes I cry a lot. When I'm not crying I'm in my box of cotton balls.

This is why I can't believe that psychiatric drugs are a bad thing. Getting to go weeks and months without being in the box is amazing. It's such a gift. I'd rather something besides a prescription had gotten me out of the box, but who cares? It's so wonderful to be moving with intention, to feel that my body and I are the same thing.

I called a rape crisis line after I had written a suicide crisis email service. I had been having intrusive thoughts about ways to kill myself for several weeks. That was new. I had never thought of that seriously. It's not something I'm ever going to do.

I kept coming up with conditions I would arrange before killing myself. I would get on food stamps before killing myself. I would see a doctor for antidepressants before killing myself. I would move back home before killing myself. I would be drunk or high all the time before killing myself.

Then I made a chart of when my depressive cycles started, and my first one was immediately after that incident. So the new condition was that I would call it a rape before killing myself. Even if it wasn't a rape, if that kept me from killing myself it would be worth it.

I called and got a referral, and got counseling, and attended a support group, and told some family members, and told my best friends. I wasn't sure it was the truth. I am not sure even now what the truth is. I wish there was a lesser word I could call it. I don't want to use the same word that people use when there are guns involved, when horror stories happen. I don't want to lie. Maybe other people who are saner would not be as affected as I was. Maybe this happens all the time and other people are not so sensitive. I believe that is the case. This is more for the other sensitive souls that I don't want killing themselves. Or living in the cotton ball box.

Before this, when I was getting closer to coming up with convincing arguments for why it was a rape, or at least why it was traumatic, I was catching some hype doing comedy. And the knot in my brain where I was arguing about the incident was growing and pressing on the rest of my brain. When I'd hear a rape joke, or actually, more than that a slut joke, my whole body would have a reaction. Like the cotton ball box but also like my skin was on fire. Like I couldn't move but my whole body was screaming at me to move. This sounds like a terrible cheesy joke, but I had bad dreams about comedian friends raping me. I'm not gonna defend the part of my brain that came up with that dream, it's ham-fisted and obvious and cliched. I guess the part of my brain that came up with the dream didn't believe I could handle any subtlety about this.

I used to strongly believe rape and slut jokes were not ok to make. I don't feel as strongly about it now, maybe because I've lost that argument so many times. Maybe because I have to concede I have individual specific reasons why they bother me. Comedians are just repeating themes when they tell jokes like that. They aren't creating the culture. They're trying to get laughs and audiences will probably give those in response to those jokes, because it's a paradigm we're all comfortable with.

I want to do standup about this. Because standup is the way my ruminating thoughts create something good. Thinking about how to make this into standup is a better way to use that part of my brain that's been taken over by this.

It's a really hard thing to figure out how to do. I can't figure out an angle into it. That's why I'm just writing this post instead. It's not as dramatic of a triumph. I'm trying to let some air out of the task. And I have to seriously consider the possibility I'll never figure out how to create standup out of it.

It's a story I want to tell, onstage, but I don't like the character I am in it. I feel sorry for her. And it's ridiculous to feel sorry for me- I am one of the luckiest people on this whole planet. I've had more lucky breaks than anyone I know. I had this one thing happen to me. I got the opportunity to deal with it and get support for it. I've had the opportunity to think deeply about it, in an intellectual way, in an emotional way, in a spiritual way. I have gotten to think deeply about this because otherwise my life has been very secure and blessed.

This journey I'm on is the one I would choose to be on. This is the life I would choose for myself. The dark parts have been integral. It's a journey I am on with so many people who have experienced the same thing, and they are amazing people to get to go through this with. I believe we're changing the world at an incredibly fast clip. I don't believe we'll ever end rape. I do think we'll stop culturally supporting and enabling rapists and start limiting the harm they do. I think someday soon a rape will be about as traumatic as getting mugged- because the crime will be regarded as clear cut and there will be no shame attached to the victim. There won't be people parsing the crime committed against them for 10 years. I do think in the future the word "slut" will be meaningless, a concept everyone will be befuddled by.

I think someday soon calling yourself a rape survivor will make about the impression calling yourself a cancer survivor does- it'll be a way to build community and pride, but it won't be like dropping a silence bomb on a dinner party.

That's all I got for now folks. I do appreciate your audience for my thoughts, as always.

Flipping the Switch.

I had a weirdly hard weekend. Noting about the actual conditions placed upon me was hard. But sometime around saturday night/ sunday morning I made some irresponsible decisions about being tired or something, and I paid for it at easter dinner by attacking my family. It was not a good scene.

I think there was too much society to my weekend. I mean, I went out three nights in a row, and all of that going out with new people. None of the nights involved 8 hours of sleep, because now no matter how late I go to bed I still wake up at a reasonable hour.

I'm just digging for some kind of stress building story to explain my easter dinner freakout. I don't like being someone who all of a sudden is mad and attacking people.

It sucks because I thought I had changed a whole lot. Or that the drugs were working.

This is called "catastrophizing:" extrapolating the very worst foregone conclusions from an incident. I have an intimate relationship with this kind of thinking.

What am I in school for if I don't believe that people change their patterns? What am I in school for if I don't believe good people can act very badly, and change intentionally?

It's hard to change when you're tired. It's hard to intend anything if you have worn yourself out.

Sometimes I just feel so far behind everyone in emotional development. Then sometimes I feel light years ahead of so many morons running around. I've been on a streak of not feeling needy and feeling confident about pretty much everything. Now I'm having a relapse of feeling needy but also like I don't want anyone to come around because I don't want people to see all the ugly parts.

It's really ridiculous when I feel this way because usually it's preceded by a lot of ugly coming out all at once. And the people in my life do not jump ship at the sight of ugly, sometimes to a fault.

I've already slept a lot today. I'm gonna try to sleep a lot tonight, and hope my jack-rabbit-inspired-effective-primed-for-success mindset pops up again tomorrow, or maybe wednesday.

Let it never be said I did not feel strongly about everything I could have a feeling about.

Comedy Report.

I had a good show last night. It was "Unsuitable Language," which John Wellington and Joe Hannum and pretty much the Cleveland Comedy Festival crew produce. It was John, Mark Colella, Dave Arena, me, and Micheal Ivy.

It was in the Kennedy Cabaret at Playhouse Square, which is a little tunnel room with a stage and a bar. The layout is actually a lot like Zanies in Chicago. Meaning they're both dark little tunnels. And actually, that's a great setting for standup. It primes the audience to focus.

And we all did well. Like, really well. It's maybe effed up of me that every time I'm in a show that is consistently good all the way through it's all I can talk about.

But it's special, because so many things can go wrong with a show. Even if all the performers are bringing their A game, which, come on, usually at least one person is having a bad night. (Me.) The venue matters a lot, how the tables are arranged matters a lot, blah blah spreading out the responsibility yadda yadda.

But of course what I really care about is that I DID WELL. ME. ME. I did much less time than I told John I'd do, because a month ago I told him I could do 25. In retrospect, that was completely insane. That meant I thought I could come up with 10 more minutes in a month. Really 12.5 more minutes.

But he was very cool about it when I confessed I'd have to do much less time. Unprofessional of me, but yeah, I'm not at a professional level right now. I'm in a rebuilding phase.

I'm repeating my jokes a lot more recently. And it's working. Instead of trying to write new material I'm just trying to get the jokes to come automatically so I can find new tags and play with the delivery. There's no reason to rush this. 25 minutes is actually quite an accomplishment, I don't need to front like I'm there right now.

And what's funny is that as I get better I have to blame the audience less. That's my favorite defense mechanism. If I don't do well it's because the audience is a bunch of woman hating bigots who have an IDEOLOGICAL PROBLEM WITH ME. Feel free to copy this reaction. Every once in awhile you won't be able to fool yourself, but the general atmosphere of denial really softens the sting of painful realizations.

When I was first doing comedy, way back when, around the time Roosevelt lost the use of his legs, I did a show once with a guy who got so mad at the audience for not laughing he told them he'd be waiting outside for them if anyone wanted to fight. I thought he was a psychopath. But now I get it. I've become the comic who will just turn vicious if the audience doesn't get on board with me. It's probably gonna turn dangerous for me. Because that dude had some bulk on him. It would take some effort to knock him over. I just think I'm 6'5 and 300 pounds. I should probably get my ass kicked in a not life ending way to learn some humility. You watch too much Buffy, you get weird ideas about how body mass affects fighting skill.

Habits.

I don't have anything to say.

Then why not not blog?

Because the minute I hit publish on this entry, I will have things to say.

Habit, not inspiration.

But is a blog really the project you want to develop a work ethic on?

Man, I'm OVER defending this blog as a worthy project, self critical voice in my head. No, it's not a worthy project. And yet, it is one of the most consistent projects in my life. When are you gonna get on board, shrill inner critic?

Habits are funny things. They creep up on you. Sometimes the minute you can't do them is when you notice you do them. Until you're at your friends house and they have no bananas to put in your peanut butter sandwich. Until someone offers you 2 percent milk to put in your coffee. (Half and half and sugar or black. I'm into extremes.)

I read once it takes two weeks to establish a habit. That's the period you have to get through if you want exercising at the buttcrack of dawn to be your new normal.

That seems to me to be our cultural ideal. It seems there is not one institution, one medium, one spiritual tradition, that doesn't want us all to be waking up early to work out. From the Catholic church to the ACLU, from NBC to the Anarchist Black Cross: we've all agreed that's the right way to live.

And I've noticed whenever we want to do ANYTHING, be that quit smoking, or work on a novel, or beat depression, we include a first thing in the morning workout routine in that equation.



Supposedly you'll feel fantastic for your whole day. Supposedly you'll have so much energy, but feel so peaceful. Supposedly your whole life will get made over. Even Don Draper, when he was going to turn his life around for a second, started swimming in the morning.

Then he married a younger woman.

I think that's a better strategy. And it's not that I think getting married is a good strategy for anything, ever. I just think it's a better strategy than running around your neighborhood before the newspapers get thrown.

For one, you're disturbing the birds.

For two, you'll have more energy, but it'll just be for work. You won't have energy at night when you're with people you like.

For three, you think you're better than me?

I thought so. You might be better at waking up to exercise, but I'm better at getting enough sleep.



Or even if you don't have a broken heart, try sleeping as long as I do.

Chasers

When I was a straight girl I always felt like such a failure at it. I remember my freshman year of college my boyfriend had a Playboy subscription, and it bummed me out so bad to realize the girls in Playboy were now my age. Like, shit, this is when I'm supposed to be hottest, and I am so far away from being hot. I mean, my face really looks better with no makeup or natural makeup, and my hair really looks better short, and I look better in loose andro clothing than tight push-your-boobs up stuff.

Still when I try to flirt with a cis-boys it usually doesn't work. When I was coming out I had sort of a complex about it, because I did think, "Wait, am I just interested in girls because I failed heterosexuality?" Because dudes, I did fail heterosexuality. Heterosexuality was the algebra of sexual pursuits for me. Wait, maybe specifically hitting on cis-boys was the algebra. Because you need to master algebra to move on to calculus and what not, and you need to master hitting on cis-boys to move on to...I don't know...roping them into marriage? I'm not sure. Just like I'm not sure what calculus consists of.

But the gayer I get the MORE BOYS ARE INTO ME. It's insane. If I put on a sports bra and a flannel shirt and glare at everybody suddenly a bunch of straight cis boys, who are way cuter than any one of those I dated when I was trying to date them, are huge fans of me.

And honestly, it's such an ego boost and I find ego boosts pretty alluring. And it's not like I don't like being taken out and romanced. I loooovvve it.

But it is the case that when I think about being married and having a baby with a boy, cis or not, I feel my chest clench up. My chest doesn't clench up at the idea of dinner, or dancing, or adult activities, but god the idea of a committed relationship skeeves me out.

Which is funny because when I was dating straight cis boys I would think about marrying them by the second date. And whenever we'd break up I'd be like "GOD WHAT A WASTE OF MY TIME. GOD I'M GONNA HAVE TO DATE MORE OF THESE MOFOS TO FIND ONE TO MARRY. JESUS CHRIST MY LIFE IS HELL."

Because I really like hanging out with cis dudes as friends. And sometimes they're sexy. But I hate being in relationships with them. I find all the differences between being a cis dude's friend and their girlfriend unbelievably obnoxious. It feels like you lose a lot by being their girlfriend.

Whereas I love how subtle the difference between being a lady's friend and being her girlfriend is. When you're in the kitchen making coffee, it's like you're best friends. And then- bam- no you're not! You're definitely doing things friends do not do. Time has slowed down. You have definitely gained something very valuable. I love that.

So I don't know what's up with dyke chasers. Maybe they're attracted to confidence. Maybe they're attracted to no makeup. Maybe it's the challenge?

But I don't mean to hate on them. The straight cis dudes I've known who were chasers were also really cool guys. The coolest guys, really. The guys I would date if I were into that.

I sort of want straight girls to know that the coolest straight cis guys are into dykey chicks. But then I don't want them to know, because then they'll start dressing dykier and it'll be intensely confusing and frusrating for me. So ignore this straight girls. Keep putting your makeup on and giggling because I need signifiers to know not to hit on you.

Fighting

So I've always been really confused about what an ethical way to fight with an intimate is. My parents are no help on this. They fight in the most dramatic, button pushing way they could. It's all name calling and ultimatums. The only real good lesson I could take from them on this is that they stay together through the fights. It works for them somehow.

There's this thing called "splitting" that happens with a lot of people with personality disorders. Now I am not copping to having a personality disorder, but I am gonna cop to descriptions of personality disorders being strongly reminiscent of my own thought processes. And frankly the more I learn about diagnoses the more the boundaries of various diagnoses seem to bleed into one another.

So splitting is black and white thinking about the people in your life. It means your friends and family either are categorized as good or bad. You can't hold in your head that a loved one may be basically good and well intentioned, and yet frustrate you. Supposedly most kids can't hold this idea in their head for the first three years of their life, and getting that idea down is a developmental stage that a lot of people with personality disorders still have to go through.

So I've definitely had a problem with splitting and still struggle with it sometimes, although treating my depression medically made this dramatically easier. Splitting is really hard for the person doing it because you swing between two self concepts constantly. Like maybe you have a boyfriend who has done very sweet things for you and who you have had good times with. And then he does something shitty, like dumping you. Since you can't hold in your head the idea that the person who gratified you and the person who frustrated you are in fact the same person, your internal dialogue goes something like this:

God, Don is a dick!

No, Don, made me dinner and gave me gifts and cuddled me, he's a GOOD person, I must be a bad person for him to dump me.

No, I did all those nice things for him I must be good and he must be EVIL to dump me.

No, he can't be EVIL, so it must be me that was evil and abusive.

No, I'm not abusive, so he must be terrible.

And so on.

Being the person who someone splits on is intensely disorienting and frustrating, but I still think it's worse to be the person splitting. Swinging between thinking you're an absolute piece of shit or thinking you are surrounded by absolute pieces of shit is terrible. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But I wouldn't have to wish it on anyone because lots and lots of people do this. And I think anyone when placed in a sufficiently stressful situation would resort to this kind of thinking. People who normally can hold the idea that everyone is a mixture of good and bad probably indulge in black and white thinking when they're going through breakups too.

It seems "it's only a problem when it's a problem" is the mantra in mental health. For me, it was a problem. I got locked in black and white thinking quite a bit and it definitely interfered in my life and ability to sustain relationships.

Part of my black and white thinking is I had constant insecurity about whether I was an abuser. I had this insecurity before I started dating anyone. You would maybe think this would be a helpful check on my behavior. NOPE. If a partner was upset with me the only options were that they were an abuser or I was. And if they're an abuser, I'm allowed to do very dramatic things in response to them, like calling them up and screaming. And if I'm an abuser, then me calling them up and screaming is definitive proof of it.

I had to have a therapist explain that you can fight in an inappropriate or unhelpful or mean way, and still not be an abuser. That there's a continuum going on there. You can regret things and try to do better without having "abuser" be part of your self concept. Non-abusers are still going to frustrate you, sometimes they're gonna be self centered, sometimes they're gonna be mean. Basically good people will sometimes act like jerks. In fact, they almost definitely will.

I try to fight fair. I try not to call people names. I try not to say "always" or "never." I try not to scream. I fail a lot.

But something that seems to be harder for me is giving my intimate acquaintances the same benefit of the doubt. When I fight with people there is always an hour at least where I consider ditching them forever. I have ditched many a friend in my lifetime, and it's not my grievances with them were unreasonable. It's just that friends are going to inevitably give you really good reasons to be pissed off, and that doesn't mean you don't want to hang out and laugh with them in the future. Friends don't need to be everything to you. People have annoying patterns that yeah, maybe they are not going to work on and change, they will be 70 and still pissing you off, and YET. They might be really valuable people who bring a lot to your life. And you are not going to feel close and peachy with your friends all the time. You might have some years where you think they are perfect, and then some years where you are not sure why you're friends, and then years where they're perfect and wonderful again.

You gotta listen to people's feedback and yet also take it with a grain of salt. Other people are also splitters. Hardly anyone is a good at fighting fair. You're gonna get called names, you're gonna be issued ultimatums, people are gonna say you're evil, unless you're hanging out with a bunch of Buddhas. You don't have to believe them, but maybe the action of yours they're reacting against does need to get criticized, and if we were all perfect, maybe that criticism would have been delivered in a non-threatening gentle perfectly effective way.

I mean, don't hit people, don't mess with their bank accounts or online stuff, don't call them 30 times in a row, don't call them names. (That last one you probably are gonna do though.) There is a real line between "person who is a jerk sometimes" and "person who is ruining my life." Your relationships should in general make your life more enjoyable. And if someone is consistently doing these things to you, maybe you can look at them and see that they're suffering, and also see that you putting up with it is very very unhelpful to them. They gotta grow up, and you aren't helping them by sticking around. If you need to see them as evil to get away from them, that's not so bad.

Stream of conscientiousness

Sort of hard to get back to normal after that last post right? Sort of hard to come back down to being annoyed and mildly ruminating. But the come down is inevitable. I highly doubt this will be my last lifetime. My enlightenments will always be short lived.

I saw Mike and Justin and they let me sleep on their couch. I love those guys. I love them because they make me laugh. That's what closeness comes down to for me, laughing together.

I've known Justin for over a decade now.

I guess I could talk about Mad Men. Last night's episode made me feel really sad. Because it was the first episode where it was like, oh shit, everything's different. The clothes are ugly. People are getting old. Not in a cute way. In an out of touch obnoxious way.

Really captured the disorientation of realizing something's over. It's an unpleasant feeling. I liked how I felt after the season premiere better.


I keep listening to this over and over. This is probably a bad sign.

I ate a half a pack of thin mints. They are my favorite girl scout cookie, but I think they gave me a headache. Maybe they only cause a headache at an exorbitant dose.



Well, I'm gonna wrap up this non-post and sit in the bathtub.