interlocking

"Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about the roving packs of young dudes in B-more who dumped on other young dudes, with no real pretext. So it was where I grew up, where those cats felt less like my contemporaries and more like a capricious force of nature. (I’ve said before that the reason folks at my high school tried hard not to get detention wasn’t because they were well-behaved kids, but because detention meant walking the five North Philly blocks to the subway on your lonesome.) You learned to look over your shoulder, to take the long way to wherever you were going. And if you got caught out there — and most of us did, at some point — that was your fault. You were slipping, actin’ like it can’t happen.

I remember my mom cautioned both my twin sister and me as teenagers to be on point, but there was a different shading to the warnings she gave my sister. They were: Don’t leave your drink unattended. Make sure your girls know where you are. My sister, it was assumed, was going to have someone say some slick shit to her, to hop in her personal space, to put their hands on her as she passed. The company of a friend wasn’t going to stop it. Nothing was. She was going to bear the responsibility for these transgressions when they inevitably happened. Others would have said my sister wasn’t cautious enough, or asked her what she was wearing, or why she was where she was. The response would always be to ascertain what she did wrong, how she should have known better, how she got caught slipping.

Our experiences were subtly, profoundly different, but they were mundane, and their ordinariness belied their injustice. To grow up like this meant developing a certain resignation about the specter of violence, and often — perversely — feeling personally responsible when something ugly happened. But I didn’t have a way to think about these things until I learned about feminism. The first time I heard the term “sexual terrorism,” then, I finally had a name to something I’d always fundamentally known. The great irony was that I was having these realizations and entertaining these conversations for the first time on a suburban college campus where I actually felt completely safe."

-Black. Male. Feminist?

eating

Gentle reader: I eat like a pig. Not always, but often enough. So that you will believe me, for breakfast this morning I ate nine slices of bacon, two eggs fried in bacon grease, and half a dozen extra-dark chocolate truffles. It was delicious.

Culturally this is a confession because that sort of lipid bacchanalia has largely been outlawed and, being a woman (let alone a fat one), I am supposed to be on a diet. I refuse to accept the shame of it, first because is it really anyone's damned business? And second, because improvement of dietary habits will come after improving suicidal depression, or it will not come at all. Bacon overload may make me feel a bit sick, but today it's unquestionably better than crying at work with a surveillance camera three feet from my face.

This is not to say I don't have goals. One is that someday, I'll be able to deal with my emotions sustainably, mostly using music, art, exercise, travel, friends, and bad-ass political action. If I eat half a package of bacon for breakfast, I want it to be because I just like bacon so much that eating it is worth both the damage it does to my body and the tortured life of an intelligent creature. That would be some extraordinarily bacon, no?

In the meantime, I work at smaller things--like being present while I eat. Like trying to make conscious choices, even if they are different from the choices I hope to be making in the long run. Like being able to feel hunger and fullness, even if I sometimes choose to ignore them so I can be numb. Eating can be fraught. Like dinner the other night:

I love the way the green of the cilantro looks against the sour cream. Oh no, I have so much more sour cream on my tortilla than he has on his! How did this happen? He's going to think that I'm a pig! It's practically all fat! And even though it's low fat it's still all dairy. I don't even like sour cream that much. I have been experimenting with eating it, to see how I do like it. God, it's right on top, just staring at me. . . no way to hide that. That's right Day, staring at it isn't going to make it magically disappear. I guess I was thinking about not leaving salsa in the sour cream container when I dished up. I feel so huge. Ok, stop it, just eat your dinner. Enjoy the view. Try to taste your food. He's probably looking at me eating and thinking about how incredibly fat I am. STOP THIS! DAY, YOU ARE BEING CRAZY.

I know that this is crazy. A quarter cup of low-fat sour cream on my dinner plate isn't going to make me fat. Drowning my sorrows in cheese is a solitary activity, and obsessing over how terrible it is will more likely make the problem worse than solve it. My dining companion was my boyfriend. He's thin, but to my recollection he's only ever said two things about my body--that he thinks I'm beautiful, and that I looked sexy in that outfit with the miniskirt. If he thought I was horrifically ugly, he would not be dating me. This does not make the crazy go away.

So it's an uphill fight.

book report: Vital Friends

If you ever read self-help books, you may have noticed that a lot of the better ones have one good idea. Vital Friends

a) describes in depth the fact that people need friends, citing all sorts of studies about how much happier people are when they have friends and (because really, what else matters?) how much more productive they are at work, and

b) discusses how to to appreciate your friends for what they are, rather than trying to make them fill roles that don't come naturally to them. Specifically, it outlines eight roles that friends tend to fill for one another. You aren't going to find someone who fills all eight roles for you.

And that's basically the one good idea.

Rath suggests that a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that a good friend--especially a best friend, or a spouse--should be able to fill all the roles they need. He offers descriptions of what you might not realize you're looking for, and some reasonably concrete suggestions about how to go out and find people to fill those friendship roles for you. He points out that most friendships are reciprocal, but not in the same ways; what you do for your friends is not likely to be the same thing they do for you. He also gives advice on how to strengthen the various types of friendships. Here are the eight in summary:

Builders--motivate you and push you to succeed. They tend to be generous with their time, help you to see your strengths and use them well, and love to see you succeed. To find them, pay attention to people who seem to care about other people's success, and be liberal about asking for advice. To strengthen builder friendships, ask for their kind of help when you need it, give them permission to push you, and make sure that when you succeed they know about it--and know how helpful they were in specific ways.

Champions--stand up for you and speak well of you, whether or not you're around. They tend to have a low tolerance for dishonesty, but they're also willing to accept you as you are and listen to whatever you have to say without judging. When you succeed, they'll be proud of you and tell people about it. To find champion friendships, watch for people who often stand up for others; to build existing champion friendships, let them know when their kind words made it back to you, and confide in them about your mistakes.

Collaborators--are the friends you share important interests with. You might see them less often than other friends, but it can be incredibly valuable to have someone in your life who shares your passion, and strong friendships are often built around this. To strengthen collaborator friendships, be aware of information and opportunities related to your interest, and be sure to pass these on. To find new ones, be open about your interests, and get involved in related events and organizations.

Companions--are the really close friends, who you can rely on in any circumstances; they know you well, and they're the first people you call when something really good or really bad happens. They take pride in the relationship, and are willing to sacrifice for you. Rath suggests strengthening companion friendships by giving gifts that show how well you know them, making a point of spending good time together, and being careful to create an emotional safe space so they can talk about important or difficult topics. To find new companions, look among your relatives and current friendships to see what can be strengthened, and remember that this particular friendship role is mutual.

Connectors--love knowing lots of people, and introducing people to one another. To strengthen a connector friendship, use it--let your connector know when you're looking for a job, a mentor, or whatever. Also make sure they know generally about your plans and goals in life, because they'll naturally keep an eye out for people who will help you achieve those things. To find connectors, keep an eye out for those weird folks who like big parties--and if you're in a new job or social situation, make a point of getting to know the people who seem to know everyone.

Energizers--these are the the ones who can always figure out how to make you laugh. The ones who can make you want to go to Lagoon, even if otherwise it's your idea of hell. They can help you relax, have fun, or break out of a rut. To strengthen your energizer friendships, let them know how their small actions on a day to day basis contribute to your over all happiness. Bring up some of their best stories and jokes and ask for a recounting when you're with a group. To find new ones, spend time with the people who lift your spirits--and make a point of being open to humor and optimism.

Mind Openers--are the friends who encourage you to expand your horizons, to embrace new ideas, opportunities, and experiences. They broaden your perspective on life, and are exactly the people to talk to when you need to challenge conventional wisdom about something. To strengthen mind opener friendships, give yourself time to soak up their perspectives, or ask them to help you out by playing devil's advocate. If you see an especially interesting book or movie, pass it on to create an opportunity for good conversation. To find new ones, go into situations outside your comfort zone, like taking a class in a very different field or going to a cultural event you normally wouldn't consider.

Navigators--are the people you turn to for help making hard decisions, people who you can talk through the pros and cons with, who will "help you see a positive future while keeping things grounded in reality." To strengthen navigator friendships, ask them for advice or stories about their life experiences, or tell them about your own dreams and plans for the future. To find new navigators, ask people you admire to mentor you, and make a point of building friendships with people whose experience and approach to life you respect.

I feel lonely and sad.

A most frustrating thing, lately, is being too emotionally overwhelmed to write.

I'm fairly functional in most other ways, but there are moments when I'm struck--by my current life, how much time I spend trying hard not to be present, stuck in an ugly cubicle with no practical reason to believe I can improve things soon, deeply lonely and failing to rationalize it away.

I also get overwhelmed trying to make sense of sense of the past. I really don't want to be that person, so absorbed in my own problems that I'm selfish and uncaring. . . still, some problems are actually worse than other problems. I'm sure it's not fun even in the middle of the bell curve, but statistically speaking, somebody has got to be out on the ends, no? And I've had this conversation so many times--

me: My family is pretty messed up.

interlocutor: You know, everybody's family is like that. They all fight, they all have their messed-up-ness. That's just how families are. You just have to deal with it. . . everybody does.

me: Maybe. . . I mean, I wouldn't rule that out. But it seems likely my family is unusually messed up.

interlocutor: *tells a story about extended family members who refused to talk to each other for years.*

me: *tells a story about one time, in my senior year of high school, when FHE ended with five people holding me to the floor while I desperately tried to leave.*

interlocutor: huh. Maybe your family really is kind of messed up.

Plus, I've been reading about Martha Beck, which makes me feel like writing an accurate criticism of abusive family patterns and the church's handling of child abuse. I feel both called and inadequate to the task.

adult symptom cluster for C-PTSD

(According to Wikipedia)

~Difficulties regulating emotions, including symptoms such as persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or covert anger.

~Variations in consciousness, such as forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes of dissociation (during which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body).

~Changes in self-perception, such as a sense of helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings.

~Varied changes in the perception of the perpetrator, such as attributing total power to the perpetrator or becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, including a preoccupation with revenge.

~Alterations in relations with others, including isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer.

~Loss of, or changes in, one's system of meanings, which may include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.



Theory: women are more likely to develop PTSD than men because they are more likely to have repeated experiences of powerlessness. Maybe. hmn.