(no subject)
HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS/ARBITRARY DAY OFF/NOT DAY OFF also feel free to stop reading after this if you like, I will only be complaining.
My brain is not going to take a break just because it's an arbitrarily-defined calendar day. It has mostly been a good one, though - presents of exciting sort, a nice AVALANCHE OF CALORIES (which I can berate myself over in January), a good round of Cards Against Humanity, no family, some films, moderately little fighting. Nearly forgot to take testosterone, had same old same old problems sleeping.
Also had some intense dreams which, for the first time in a while, produced a character who persisted when I returned to sleep. Possibly because I see a lot of them at the moment, he was a doctor. Possibly because I *lie* to a lot of them at the moment, he was associated with rather a lot of guilt and desperation. Nice man, though.
Links
Don't Feel Bad About Not Talking To Your Parents
In my own life, my mother and I were the only people in our home, and thus, all our conflicts were her word against mine. When my word conflicted with hers, she went to great efforts to proclaim that my memory was cloudy or that I was a liar - to the point where today, at 33, I barely trust my own memory of where I left my keys, let alone my memories of interacting with other human beings. -- she's not only in the same situation but is the SAME AGE.
[things have been made less easy by me seguing from "cheerful remembrance of ways i used to dick around in choir" to jess asking me why my mother didn't take me out of shitty schools when shitty things happened (some thoughts there re: her determination to be both cast as a hero fighting against The System for her child and her desire to have me as far away as she could at all times) to me recalling bad and good relationships with teachers and the fact that behavioural traits which i have which can be fitted into a framework of asperger's can also be fitted universally into "traumatised child" framework too, and that confronted with the child i was with knowledge about what i'd experienced and knowledge that i have relatives with varying degrees of functional autistic spectrum disorder i might not have picked ASD as the more likely culprit... my mother liked it as a diagnosis - and pushed for it - because it meant:
1. i was special and ~magical~
2. it was not her fault that i behaved the way i did and no one could accuse her of shitty parenting
3. she could be a misunderstood heroine fighting The System
i think i do have a lot of traits which align with autism. i also know i get on best with people who are on the autistic spectrum because nerdy hyperfocus, uncontrolled emotion, aversion to eye contact, and a supreme HATRED of being touched but enjoyment of being compressed - either by clothes or by whatever - are things i can understand easily and have in common; but i think also this diagnosis was very convenient for my mother both financially and psychologically and that it did not happen independently of what she wanted.]
... the point of reference was the two of us contrasting our experiences with Being Told Off in primary school/attention-seeking {when I was sub-pubescent I almost never sought peer validation and only wanted authority-figure validation and was very loud about it; in one school I used to bite people who tried to remove me from the book corner/stop me reading a specific book repeatedly - it was about a rockstar cat's secret funeral - and while this is a behaviour that can very easily be ascribed to ASD it is also, as i noticed while we were talking about it, pretty characteristic of trauma responses. given that i'd been moved around a fair bit in the preceding two years and had some experiences which amounted to "fuck familiar circumstances you are going to be stranded somewhere you know nothing about without anyone you know and trust" while, like, five, it's plausible that I wasn't necessarily dealing with that shit in the best way.
Sorry this has turned into Therapy Blog but hey, it does mean I'm unravelling this crap here instead of having undefined unexplained shouting matches with people in person. Also not drinking myself unconscious and bleeding on things. Go me.
My brain is not going to take a break just because it's an arbitrarily-defined calendar day. It has mostly been a good one, though - presents of exciting sort, a nice AVALANCHE OF CALORIES (which I can berate myself over in January), a good round of Cards Against Humanity, no family, some films, moderately little fighting. Nearly forgot to take testosterone, had same old same old problems sleeping.
Also had some intense dreams which, for the first time in a while, produced a character who persisted when I returned to sleep. Possibly because I see a lot of them at the moment, he was a doctor. Possibly because I *lie* to a lot of them at the moment, he was associated with rather a lot of guilt and desperation. Nice man, though.
Links
Don't Feel Bad About Not Talking To Your Parents
In my own life, my mother and I were the only people in our home, and thus, all our conflicts were her word against mine. When my word conflicted with hers, she went to great efforts to proclaim that my memory was cloudy or that I was a liar - to the point where today, at 33, I barely trust my own memory of where I left my keys, let alone my memories of interacting with other human beings. -- she's not only in the same situation but is the SAME AGE.
[things have been made less easy by me seguing from "cheerful remembrance of ways i used to dick around in choir" to jess asking me why my mother didn't take me out of shitty schools when shitty things happened (some thoughts there re: her determination to be both cast as a hero fighting against The System for her child and her desire to have me as far away as she could at all times) to me recalling bad and good relationships with teachers and the fact that behavioural traits which i have which can be fitted into a framework of asperger's can also be fitted universally into "traumatised child" framework too, and that confronted with the child i was with knowledge about what i'd experienced and knowledge that i have relatives with varying degrees of functional autistic spectrum disorder i might not have picked ASD as the more likely culprit... my mother liked it as a diagnosis - and pushed for it - because it meant:
1. i was special and ~magical~
2. it was not her fault that i behaved the way i did and no one could accuse her of shitty parenting
3. she could be a misunderstood heroine fighting The System
i think i do have a lot of traits which align with autism. i also know i get on best with people who are on the autistic spectrum because nerdy hyperfocus, uncontrolled emotion, aversion to eye contact, and a supreme HATRED of being touched but enjoyment of being compressed - either by clothes or by whatever - are things i can understand easily and have in common; but i think also this diagnosis was very convenient for my mother both financially and psychologically and that it did not happen independently of what she wanted.]
... the point of reference was the two of us contrasting our experiences with Being Told Off in primary school/attention-seeking {when I was sub-pubescent I almost never sought peer validation and only wanted authority-figure validation and was very loud about it; in one school I used to bite people who tried to remove me from the book corner/stop me reading a specific book repeatedly - it was about a rockstar cat's secret funeral - and while this is a behaviour that can very easily be ascribed to ASD it is also, as i noticed while we were talking about it, pretty characteristic of trauma responses. given that i'd been moved around a fair bit in the preceding two years and had some experiences which amounted to "fuck familiar circumstances you are going to be stranded somewhere you know nothing about without anyone you know and trust" while, like, five, it's plausible that I wasn't necessarily dealing with that shit in the best way.
Sorry this has turned into Therapy Blog but hey, it does mean I'm unravelling this crap here instead of having undefined unexplained shouting matches with people in person. Also not drinking myself unconscious and bleeding on things. Go me.