Resistance

This is an outtake from a recent outfit post on my fashion blog. I desaturated the photo because anything looks artistic in greyscale.

Here I am examining my nails--which I do frequently--but I would like to cautiously announce that I haven't picked at my cuticles in three days or so. I'm having less success keeping my hands off my face, but that's okay.

Happy Halloween From Marcus And Me

There's always something--no, multiple somethings!--to be happy about. Today, Marcus being silly in his oversized pumpkin costume is one of those somethings.

At The Forefront

I took this photo while shooting an outfit post for my fashion blog. I like that you can tell how painted I am--you can see that my eyebrows are darkened with pencil and that my lashes are swept up with mascara. But the wide blank expanse of my forehead, untouched and unemphasized, is the dominant feature of this picture. I don't know if there is any artistic significance to that.

I take a lot of self-portraits. After all, I am the only human model who is readily available to me. And I am naturally self-interested.

I Know You Are But What Am I

When it comes to making things, I have always considered myself a writer foremost and anything else second. Well--perhaps not. Self-perception isn't steady like that, at least not in my experience. But words have persistently been the medium that I can use without doubt; the one I'm most keyed into. And I do always write. I go through phases with other kinds of art--my interest in collage/photography/drawing will wax and wane. But I use words constantly.

I haven't been doing a lot of artistic/literary writing lately. The occasional poem goes into my journal, but that's it. For the most part I've been writing on my fashion blog and my Tumblr, trying to be pithy and entertaining. It's fun, but something within me remains unexpressed.

Lunacy & Literature

I am forever interested in girl artists who make art about girls. Regrettably, I am unable to regret my lack of interest in other artists. (Just kidding--it's not regrettable at all.) However, the topics of craziness, having a body, gender--these all interest me, even when tackled by masculine people.

Sylvia Plath becomes relevant. I am so incredibly done being mocked for my emotional investment in Plath. "Lots of young women all relate to this other young woman who wrote about the experience of being a young woman? Gosh, let's do our best to make her fans feel small." Go to hell. Actually don't, because that's where Sylvia and I have been hanging out. (I know--overdramatic.)

I read something the other day about how it's misogynistic that Plath has been framed as a "crazy writer" in a way that male mentally ill writers haven't. (See also: treatment of Zelda Fitzgerald versus her husband.) Which is true, of course. But it also makes me angry, because Plath being crazy is a huge part of why I'm interested in her, and why her work and life are important to me.

She functioned/dysfunctioned in ways that I don't. Disparate experiences, and yet I see so much of myself in her. It's funny, though--I don't think we'd get along if we ever actually met. I would admire but envy her precocious, incisive genius, because I like to be the best, and she would feel contempt for me. We would jostle too much.

It's like how Lolita makes me feel. I'm nothing like Dolly and a lot like Hum, minus the pedophile rapist bit, but I relate to Lo almost as much as I relate to him. The feeling of being captured. The objectification and destruction of girlhood. I often fall asleep listening to Lolita--I wonder if it's good for me (the beautiful language) or bad for me (the tragic content).

It occurs to me that Dolly and I would also hate each other, but that I'd probably get along well with HH. Nothing has been as sad in weeks.

Freeze Yourself A Billion Times

I am forever preserving myself: this is what I did and this is what I look like and this is how I feel. A personal blog is the modern version of a diary, is it not?

I have such an archival urge. I don't know why I do it, really. For the most part, I don't look back through what I've recorded. So what's the point?

I still have all my old notebooks from middle school, full of daily happenings and poems and a lot of stuff about boys. They take up space that I could use to store craft supplies or whatever, anything that's part of my contemporary life, but I can't bring myself to throw them away. Or even to move them out of my room.

I guess I vaguely plan to type up all my journals one day, to maybe even use them as the jumping-off point for a novel. But that decidedly has not happened.

Temporary Weight Loss

[A personal poem. Necessary context: Galatea of Greek mythos.]

Temporarily, you look in the bathroom mirror,
at your stretched profile,
and the abdomen that holds the right curve.
Straight muscles and soft insulation.
It's time to make friends with Galatea:
"Did you have a surgery too?"

It was a throat surgery.
Temporarily, you have a lilypad voice.
You swallow like a debutante,
taking tiny bites and wishing you had champagne.
Temporarily, you are not allowed
to put bubbles in your stomach.

Some doctors,
they carved out two chunks of your throat.
You wonder where they put
those swollen excised pieces of self.
Apparently you leaked when they cut into you,
letting out the fluid of infection.
Plenty of blood, too.

Temporarily, you can't eat so good,
and you love yourself like a baby.
Therapy is all about
being gentle.

Lipstick Prayer

I consider myself religious. I'm not a believer, but I am religious.

I am not oriented towards worship. Maybe at some point I will be, but that's definitely not where I'm at right now. I don't know who or what I would worship, anyway.

I want to cultivate some kind of active, daily spiritual practice, but I feel a little lost as far as what direction to take that. Christianity definitely resonates with me--those are the symbols and stories I grew up with. Especially the aspects of Christianity that pertain to the divine feminine. The divine feminine in general, actually.

Maybe femme could be a spiritual practice?

My recent experiences with religion have been undertaken with the goal of self care. I don't know if pursuing religion will make me a better person, but I do know that saying the Hail Mary calms me down and makes me feel better when I'm freaking out.

I wish there were a church where I felt really engaged and excited. Maybe I'll try the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley again, but solo this time.

Whatcha Got

We do a lot of categorizing when it comes to mental illness. Many acronyms are involved: BPD, MDD, OCD and, oh, a hundred more. Sometimes we use the names, which range from general to specific: anxiety, schizophrenia, type two bipolar disorder--and that's just three of them.

These labels are useful. Medical information gets accumulated and tagged according to label--xyz drug works on people who fall into file 1 and file 2, but this other drug works for people in file 3. And it's not just drugs; therapeutic techniques and the like are similarly profiled. Overall, that information gets used to predict which treatment is most likely to work for which individual.

But we forget that diagnoses of mental illness are different from diagnoses of bodily illness. Diagnoses of mental illness are guesses that a person's behavior and experiences best fit a certain profile rather than another. Diagnoses of mental illness are wholly socially constructed--the idea of insanity itself is a social construct. That doesn't mean it's not real or important, but that does mean it's different from pneumonia or a staph infection.

I wish that diagnoses of mental illness were treated as descriptive rather than categorical; that they were regarded (correctly) as mutable, fallible, and all those other human things.

Friends With Benefits

I just had a friend get mad because I asked him to clarify that something he said wasn't a rape joke. I didn't ask very tactfully, and I think he felt like I was accusing him of being an Enforcer of Rape Culture or something like that. He told me he felt "shocked and hurt" that I found it necessary to check. Essentially, he was upset that I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he wanted my initial reaction to be, "This comment could be taken two ways, but he must mean it in the good way, because he's my friend and I trust him." That is what I thought, actually, but I had to have it confirmed.

My response was--and this is true--that I was looking for emotional reassurance. His comment upset me, as rape mentions often do, especially when their allegiances aren't clear. I wanted to hear him reaffirm that he was on my side, that he saw me as a valuable human being worthy of respect and love. Because when people make offhand jokes about rape, I feel very dehumanized. Luckily, it turned out that my friend wasn't making a rape joke--but I still got that feeling. I wanted him to comfort me. I didn't do a good job of communicating that.

Anyway, I was thinking about the whole thing some more, and I realized that I do tend to withhold the benefit of the doubt from men. Or rather, men get a lot less leeway. Asking my friend what he meant was the benefit of the doubt--if I actually thought he was vile, I would have cut him off immediately.

You see, in my experience, giving men the benefit of the doubt is dangerous. Not speaking up is dangerous. Ignoring little things that may be indicators of chauvinism--dangerous. Even if you think they're "good guys"; even if they're your friends. The only man I fully trust not to hurt or take advantage of me is my dad, and that's because I lucked out with him. Men just do not have a good track record, at least not in my past. I won't treat them like they do.

Good Morning

I'm having my first cup of tea since the tonsillectomy--six days ago--and it is very, very nice. I'm being cautious and only taking little sips, but it still feels great. I'm never so at home as when I have a warm mug of milky black tea and my laptop. It's a bit late in the day for me to be totally blissful, since noon is approaching, but things are still getting started and getting started well.

My dog just made a soft sleepy noise, a little dream-whine. I took him for a walk yesterday, and I'm well enough that I can do it again today, no problem. I might go see my bunnies in a bit.

Having my fashion blog as a project to work on has been really great for me. It gives me something to do every day--a lot goes into running and promoting a daily blog. Luckily, I love it.

So far, I have made $5.07, which is not very much, especially after taxes, but it's still not nothing. If I can make my traffic grow substantially (over time), then I can probably make blogging profitable. Well, depending on how you look at "profitable"--if you factor in the time/energy/money that my parents have put--and continue to put--into keeping me alive, then I would have to make about a million dollars before I could be "profitable". But, you know, whatever. I just want to be able to materially contribute to the household without having to do something I hate.

Medical Musing

This surgery has brought up all my insecurities about independence--or rather, my lack thereof. I kept thinking to myself, "What would I do if my parents hadn't been able to cover the copay for this? What would I do if my mom couldn't take me to the hospital and pick me up again? What would I do if my parents couldn't cover the cost for the pain meds? What would I do if I didn't have my mom to pick up the prescription for me? What if she wasn't there to take care of me afterward? What if I had to deal with panicking about nausea on my own? What if what if what if?"

I kinda know the answer. I think I would collapse and not deal with anything. I might just die. I mean, I probably wouldn't have scheduled the surgery in the first place without my mom's encouragement. I can't imagine coping with my day-to-day life, let alone a big medical event like this tonsillectomy, without my parents' emotional and financial support. That scares me so much.

Stay The Same

You might want to skip this post if you're triggered by talk about weight loss and body image stuff. Just a heads up.

When you combine that with two days of irrepressible nausea, you're bound to get a bit thinner. Oddly, though, instead of being thrilled by how skinny I look, I'm a little upset.

I don't want to have to deal with a body that changes all the time. I know that's unrealistic, given that bodies are not static objects, but rather living vessels, constantly in flux. It just seems like I'll get used to my body in one state, and then it up and changes on me. It's hard enough to love this lumpy flesh-being without it surprising me all the time.

None Of Your Business

Today I had my tonsils taken out. So far, recovering from the surgery has been about as fun as you'd expect, but at least this will (hopefully) put an end to the recurring bouts of tonsillitis that have been plaguing me since July.

The nurse who got me fitted out for surgery, with the gown and the IV and everything--she seemed like a nice lady, but she said some really offensive stuff to me. It started when she asked if I took any medication regularly, and I told her about Effexor. She inquired what it was for, and I answered honestly: "Depression." And then she went into a spiel about how lots of teenagers have a hard time, and was I sure that I was depressed, and how did I know... Is there even a good way to react to that? I found myself saying, "Oh, you just know." That was all I could muster. My thoughts were along the lines of, "None of your business! You have no idea what my experiences are! Shut up." But that's not the kind of thing I can say, especially not to someone who's clearly just ignorant, not malicious.

Regardless of her intent, it was very hurtful and invalidating. I have a hard enough time taking my illness seriously, being kind to myself, and caring for myself--I don't need to be told that all kids go through this. Who knows, maybe it's true. But if everybody experiences this, why am I coping so much worse?

And why do I still think of this nurse as a nice lady? She asked me some very personal questions that were obviously outside of the scope of her medical jurisdiction. Why did I feel obligated to be polite and deferential to someone who was so rude to me?

Please Do Save Me

Today I had a telephone appointment about my upcoming tonsillectomy. The nurse asked me, "If your heart stops during the operation, do you want us to perform CPR?" I surprised myself by saying yes immediately. No hesitation.

Maybe if I had thought about it, I would have concluded that they should not resuscitate me. But I would have been too embarrassed to say that anyway. As it was, my knee-jerk reaction indicated that I must want to keep living.

The other day, my dad mentioned to me that doctors don't like to put people under general anaesthesia unless they have to, because it's somewhat risky. Complications can occur, and a very small percentage of people just don't wake up. Instead, they die. When he told me this, I thought, "That'd be great. Death without having to agonize over suicide? Sign me up!"

Yes, there have been many days when I would rather stop existing. But lately things have been good. I am capable of looking forward; I am capable of enjoying.

Moving Fast

On the one hand, I'm not looking forward to therapy today, because it's arduous and uncomfortable. Therapy is never what you would call "fun". But on the other hand, I'm happy that I keep making positive strides forward, learning and growing and functioning better. In fact, that's one of the most optimistic sentences I've written in a while! Go me.

Part of my good mood is because my mom recently came home from a two-week vacation in Bali. It's such a relief to have her back! I missed her like crazy, as I mentioned earlier. A couple days ago, we went on an outing together, which was fun. So much glorious rainbow wool! (Click through to see it.)

Lots of stuff is happening right now. I finally got ads up on my blogs, which is awesome, even though I couldn't use Google AdSense. Chitika looks like it's going to be a good alternative. Maybe now I can start earning some (probably miniscule) income! The other big thing is that my tonsillectomy has been moved up to Thursday, and I have to get preliminary lab work done today. I've had blood drawn a million and one times, but it still freaks me out. Needles are just icky, you know?

Be Pretty

It's not a waste of lipstick when you only leave kiss marks on the blotting paper. On your shiny reflection, when you lean in too far while checking for smudges. On the back of your hand, to see how the shade looks against skin and sun. Your femme residue is not waste.

It's okay to get dolled up for yourself. You're not wasting an outfit. You can be both performer and audience. Make an effort to impress, and then applaud! Neither laundry soap nor effort is being wasted.

It is not waste when you keep growing hundreds of selfies in your files. That storage space is being used well; you keep yourself in it. You are just as worthy of documentation as any other person or phenomenon. You are not wasting your attention when you turn it to your own face.

[This is me addressing myself, and is not intended to be relevant to anyone else's situation. If it is, that's fine, but if it's not, that's fine too. After all, it's not a waste for me to write for myself and myself only.]

Wants & Needs

Here's what I'm looking for in a relationship, whether platonic or romantic: comfort, ease, and affection.

My boyfriend recently asked me to shave my body hair. I said no. He said he felt irked that I wouldn't do this "little thing" for him. This is what I responded:

"1. The actual physical process of shaving is really annoying, and it takes time, and razor burn is pretty much inevitable.

2. As a woman, there's so much pressure to look a certain way in order to be pleasing to men. It's taken a long time and a lot of effort for me to start thinking of my body as MY body, to realize that it's okay to prioritize my own comfort over how I look to other people--especially male people. Only recently have I stopped freaking out about my weight and not having big boobs every single time I look in the mirror, but those things still make me uncomfortable, and I worry about them. Growing body hair has been a way to say 'fuck you' to the standards to which women are held, to say 'my body's natural state is okay', to actively take ownership of my own damn flesh.

3. In light of #2, it's frustrating to me to be requested to shave. If I do it, I feel like I'm going back on all the work I've done to try and feel like my body is worthy and valuable the way it is. And I want my relationships to be comfortable and easy, not a source of stress. I want my natural, regular self to be sexy to my partner. I don't want to have to wear different things and change my physicality in order for the relationship to work. I've had to do that my whole life, and I'm tired of it.

So that's the long explanation."

When I was discussing this with my friend Kyndra, I told her that having body hair wasn't a political statement for me, and I stand by that. It's more of a desperate attempt to take care of myself.

Progress & Process

I wanted to write a substantial post for this blog today, and obviously I didn't. But I accomplished some tasks that address my physical health: I picked up antibiotics for my throat and scheduled my tonsillectomy. I've also been working on my fashion blog a lot and posting there every day. I'm really enjoying that. It feels good to be productive in at least some way.