Thoughts from this week
Feb. 3rd, 2006 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmuppetIM format, sorry. -- trimmed to remove personal bits about other people's lives, and other people's IDs.
ccfSarah: Had an interesting conversation with my Mom during my visit to Nashville, though.
ccfSarah: About being mentally ill, and reaction to strong emotion.
ccfSarah: That it gets harder to feel safe when feeling strongly emotional because so often it's actually a warning sign that we're getting sick again.
A: But then, if I can be disgustingly romantic, love's a mental illness in it's own right
ccfSarah: Yup. Most closely related, biochemically, to OCD.
ccfSarah: (although long-term partner-bonds are more heavily mediated by oxytocin)
A: hah! You counter "disgustingly romatic" with biology. Well played, signora.
A: signorita? Yeah.
ccfSarah: Oh, have I mentioned that the protestors outside the clinic have upgraded me from "young lady" to "mother death"? I think I'm flattered.
ccfSarah: (partially because "mother death" has mythological, rather than negative, connotations for me)
ccfSarah: But, damn, I hated that "young lady" bullshit.
A: Mother death -- mythological? which pantheon?
A: I mean, I'm thinking maiden-mother-crone, personally, so the combination of "young lady" and "mother death" hits all three nicely
ccfSarah: I'm thinking Kali, in large part.
ccfSarah: Although female images of death are pretty common.
A: Kali, thank you.
ccfSarah: I ran across a lot of them while doing my fertility figure research (of course, they weren't appropriate for that tattoo)
A: maybe on the other side?
ccfSarah: Gotta finish this one first.
A: yep.
ccfSarah: I'm seriously considering creating a paypal account, and for the next year or so, asking for donations to the tattoo fund for birthday/holiday/etc.
A: Oh sweet idea! I would totally chip some dollars towards finishing up that artwork for you.
m: The vote was over the new religious hatred bill, which makes it an offence to "stir up hatred" about any religion.
ccfSarah: Hmmm. Was it a good or bad bill? Big on censorship, or tackling it some other way?
m: A lot of people were saying it was bad-- that you could run into trouble by, say, writing His Dark Materials. The government said it wasn't that bad. Not sure who to believe.
ccfSarah: Hmmmm. I tend to be very cautious about those sorts of things.
ccfSarah: I'm not even certain I support the bill being put through in Ohio to ban protesting at funerals (because of Fred Phelps)
m: Right. It disturbs me when the government want to stop people saying bad things, in general, because I'm not sure I trust the government to decide what the bad things are. I'm not even sure I trust myself.
m: The version of that bill which was defeated prohibited behaviour which was "both threatening, abusive or insulting and intended or likely to stir up racial hatred". The bold parts were deleted in the version which passed.
m: You see how that made a big difference.
m: You could make a joke about Religion X, and someone could say "it was likely to stir up racial hatred, and I think it was insulting", and there you are, you've broken the law.
ccfSarah: *nod* I still have mixed feelings about it -- I have mixed feelings about hate speech laws in the US, too.
m: *nods* right
ccfSarah: Although at least the amended version is clearly more limited.
ccfSarah: In some ways, I'd rather know what people are saying than drive them underground and give them a persecution complex to play with.
m: right. It's pretty much what we already had for Xtianity, Judaism and Sikhism, only for any religion.
m: Right, yes, very much so.
m: (Or as someone I know once said: "Free speech for fascists! how else will we know where they are?")
ccfSarah: *chuckle* Yes. That.
ccfSarah: And I'm escorting again on Saturday. *grump*
s: oh jeez, more sucky
ccfSarah: Yeah, it's the only time in February, which is nice, but given that it's the first weekend, it's just feeling like I've been doing it every week for forever at this point.
ccfSarah: (every weekend last month except when I was out of town)
s: So you're nto escorting the rest of this month?
ccfSarah: Nope.
ccfSarah: (oh, and the last two weekends of december -- so that's 8 out of the past 9 weekends, I think)
ccfSarah: Nope -- 7 out of 8.
ccfSarah: Still.
ccfSarah: *bitch* *moan*
s: *blinkblink* and people say you never leave the house.
ccfSarah: I never leave the house to be social.
ccfSarah: Mostly because I'm so damn glad to finally be back in it.
s: *snertsnert*
ccfSarah: I was talking to my counselor about that. About how part of it is just being a homebody, but a lot of it is really tied to the chronic pain/fatigue probs.
ccfSarah: my first thought about going places is largely about "oh, it's going to suck to get stuck there if I start hurting/run out of energy"
ccfSarah: And that when I do stuff in the evenings, I pay for it the next day. Like today, for instance.
s: Owwy day?
ccfSarah: Owwy, and tired.
s: i sowwy, wahwah.
ccfSarah: Mostly, really, really tired.
ccfSarah: And I don't like going places and then being the "drag in the corner", ya know? It's kind of embarrassing.
ccfSarah: It seemed for a long time that people I was interested in kept pairing up with each other, actually.
ccfSarah: Then again, I tended to feed that pattern. As soon as someone else shows interest, I back off.
ccfSarah: And then I start playing matchmaker for them, as often as not.
ccfSarah: *nod* It's still a pattern for me, although at least it's somewhat less of a problem due to poly.
ccfSarah: Although I still tend to fall into it in regards to primary relationships, I think.
ccfSarah: Can't choose something else if you aren't really aware it exists.
m: hardly at all. I knew they existed, but nothing much about them.
m: Right.
m: I mean, like, I know Norway exists, but I have no idea of what it's like to live there.
ccfSarah: *nod* The same thing was true for me about bisexuality.
m: :-(
ccfSarah: I had heard of the term in high school, but it was very foreign -- didn't apply to people I knew, or anything. Wasn't something that it even occured to me I could be.
m: right, sure.
ccfSarah: It was in college that that changed, and it because a valid, real concept to me.
ccfSarah: And then it was a complete "lightbulb" moment.
ccfSarah: "Oh, well of course I'm bi"
ccfSarah: *nod* When I came out to my parents, they responded "Yeah, we kinda figured"
m: Aww. :-)
m: That's happy. You have wonderful parents, I think
ccfSarah: *nod* My folks are pretty great.
m: I think there's a sequence you go through, from "unaware of X" to "aware of X but not understanding it" to "happy with the idea of X and able to see why people are involved with it" and then finally sometimes "identifying as X".
m: I knew about poly most of the time I lived in C, because of g and her friends
m: But i didn't really grok it.
m: I couldn't imagine having one SO, let alone plural.
ccfSarah: *nod*
ccfSarah: And I knew one woman who identified as bi, but she was much older than me, and I couldn't "identify" with her in a way that made that identity feel like something I could apply to myself.
m: Right.
m: I am so happy I made the connection and arrived at being bi and poly. Happy like strong wine.
ccfSarah: Yay!
ccfSarah: me too.
m: I was just tying myself in knots before.
ccfSarah: *nod* I had a lot of trouble in college, before I figured out the poly thing.
ccfSarah: I knew I didn't want a monogamous relationship, but I kept falling in love, but trying to keep those relationships as "friends-with-benefits", and getting all sorts of hurt.
m: "What's wrong with htis picture?"
ccfSarah: *nod* Exactly. I didn't have a format in my brain that would allow for me to have the types of relationships I needed.
ccfSarah: Although I remember wandering into the alt.polyamory irc channel as a freshman, I didn't really "get it" -- it just seemed like more of the swingers and such in the hottub channel, and that all felt like "online sex games" to me -- I don't think it even occurred to me that people were actually having these open relationships in reality.
m: Right.
m: There's always the intermediate bit where it's like you read about it in a textbook but hadn't really understood about it happening in real life. It's not real to you.
ccfSarah: I have to admit to having a little bit of a crush on my prof.
ccfSarah: Happens to me all the time though.
ccfSarah: (academic crushes)
ccfSarah: mmmmm.... teaching things is sexxxxxxy!
m: *grins* I remember you saying. I think that probably goes back to Aristotle or further.
m: (saying about academic crushes, not this one particularly)
ccfSarah: *chuckle* Yeah, I think it likely does.
m: Teachers have always been marked as "inaccessible" in my head, so I never really had crushes on them. Then again, I never had crushes on anyone when I was an undergrad.
m: (Like coworkers being "inaccessible")
ccfSarah: I've always developed them, since back when they were truly inaccessible (I was way too young for person-in-question). Now, it's very easy to develop them. My profs are well within my age and experience range.
ccfSarah: And some part of my brain says "I won't always be X's student, so it could happen at some point"
m: *smiles*
m: I wonder how it'd be if I ever went back
m: I think my subconscious is way too sensible about crushes. It probably means I'm all kinds of repressed or something :-)
ccfSarah: *chuckle*
ccfSarah: I find myself curious/pondering very easily.
ccfSarah: It's rarely something that goes beyond that to actual yearning or pursuit.
m: I find it easier now than I did in my twenties, but still not much.
m: *nods*, I see what you mean.
ccfSarah: And for me to get to the latter level, it generally has to be reasonably "sensible" too.
m: right.
ccfSarah: Had an interesting conversation with my Mom during my visit to Nashville, though.
ccfSarah: About being mentally ill, and reaction to strong emotion.
ccfSarah: That it gets harder to feel safe when feeling strongly emotional because so often it's actually a warning sign that we're getting sick again.
A: But then, if I can be disgustingly romantic, love's a mental illness in it's own right
ccfSarah: Yup. Most closely related, biochemically, to OCD.
ccfSarah: (although long-term partner-bonds are more heavily mediated by oxytocin)
A: hah! You counter "disgustingly romatic" with biology. Well played, signora.
A: signorita? Yeah.
ccfSarah: Oh, have I mentioned that the protestors outside the clinic have upgraded me from "young lady" to "mother death"? I think I'm flattered.
ccfSarah: (partially because "mother death" has mythological, rather than negative, connotations for me)
ccfSarah: But, damn, I hated that "young lady" bullshit.
A: Mother death -- mythological? which pantheon?
A: I mean, I'm thinking maiden-mother-crone, personally, so the combination of "young lady" and "mother death" hits all three nicely
ccfSarah: I'm thinking Kali, in large part.
ccfSarah: Although female images of death are pretty common.
A: Kali, thank you.
ccfSarah: I ran across a lot of them while doing my fertility figure research (of course, they weren't appropriate for that tattoo)
A: maybe on the other side?
ccfSarah: Gotta finish this one first.
A: yep.
ccfSarah: I'm seriously considering creating a paypal account, and for the next year or so, asking for donations to the tattoo fund for birthday/holiday/etc.
A: Oh sweet idea! I would totally chip some dollars towards finishing up that artwork for you.
m: The vote was over the new religious hatred bill, which makes it an offence to "stir up hatred" about any religion.
ccfSarah: Hmmm. Was it a good or bad bill? Big on censorship, or tackling it some other way?
m: A lot of people were saying it was bad-- that you could run into trouble by, say, writing His Dark Materials. The government said it wasn't that bad. Not sure who to believe.
ccfSarah: Hmmmm. I tend to be very cautious about those sorts of things.
ccfSarah: I'm not even certain I support the bill being put through in Ohio to ban protesting at funerals (because of Fred Phelps)
m: Right. It disturbs me when the government want to stop people saying bad things, in general, because I'm not sure I trust the government to decide what the bad things are. I'm not even sure I trust myself.
m: The version of that bill which was defeated prohibited behaviour which was "both threatening, abusive or insulting and intended or likely to stir up racial hatred". The bold parts were deleted in the version which passed.
m: You see how that made a big difference.
m: You could make a joke about Religion X, and someone could say "it was likely to stir up racial hatred, and I think it was insulting", and there you are, you've broken the law.
ccfSarah: *nod* I still have mixed feelings about it -- I have mixed feelings about hate speech laws in the US, too.
m: *nods* right
ccfSarah: Although at least the amended version is clearly more limited.
ccfSarah: In some ways, I'd rather know what people are saying than drive them underground and give them a persecution complex to play with.
m: right. It's pretty much what we already had for Xtianity, Judaism and Sikhism, only for any religion.
m: Right, yes, very much so.
m: (Or as someone I know once said: "Free speech for fascists! how else will we know where they are?")
ccfSarah: *chuckle* Yes. That.
ccfSarah: And I'm escorting again on Saturday. *grump*
s: oh jeez, more sucky
ccfSarah: Yeah, it's the only time in February, which is nice, but given that it's the first weekend, it's just feeling like I've been doing it every week for forever at this point.
ccfSarah: (every weekend last month except when I was out of town)
s: So you're nto escorting the rest of this month?
ccfSarah: Nope.
ccfSarah: (oh, and the last two weekends of december -- so that's 8 out of the past 9 weekends, I think)
ccfSarah: Nope -- 7 out of 8.
ccfSarah: Still.
ccfSarah: *bitch* *moan*
s: *blinkblink* and people say you never leave the house.
ccfSarah: I never leave the house to be social.
ccfSarah: Mostly because I'm so damn glad to finally be back in it.
s: *snertsnert*
ccfSarah: I was talking to my counselor about that. About how part of it is just being a homebody, but a lot of it is really tied to the chronic pain/fatigue probs.
ccfSarah: my first thought about going places is largely about "oh, it's going to suck to get stuck there if I start hurting/run out of energy"
ccfSarah: And that when I do stuff in the evenings, I pay for it the next day. Like today, for instance.
s: Owwy day?
ccfSarah: Owwy, and tired.
s: i sowwy, wahwah.
ccfSarah: Mostly, really, really tired.
ccfSarah: And I don't like going places and then being the "drag in the corner", ya know? It's kind of embarrassing.
ccfSarah: It seemed for a long time that people I was interested in kept pairing up with each other, actually.
ccfSarah: Then again, I tended to feed that pattern. As soon as someone else shows interest, I back off.
ccfSarah: And then I start playing matchmaker for them, as often as not.
ccfSarah: *nod* It's still a pattern for me, although at least it's somewhat less of a problem due to poly.
ccfSarah: Although I still tend to fall into it in regards to primary relationships, I think.
ccfSarah: Can't choose something else if you aren't really aware it exists.
m: hardly at all. I knew they existed, but nothing much about them.
m: Right.
m: I mean, like, I know Norway exists, but I have no idea of what it's like to live there.
ccfSarah: *nod* The same thing was true for me about bisexuality.
m: :-(
ccfSarah: I had heard of the term in high school, but it was very foreign -- didn't apply to people I knew, or anything. Wasn't something that it even occured to me I could be.
m: right, sure.
ccfSarah: It was in college that that changed, and it because a valid, real concept to me.
ccfSarah: And then it was a complete "lightbulb" moment.
ccfSarah: "Oh, well of course I'm bi"
ccfSarah: *nod* When I came out to my parents, they responded "Yeah, we kinda figured"
m: Aww. :-)
m: That's happy. You have wonderful parents, I think
ccfSarah: *nod* My folks are pretty great.
m: I think there's a sequence you go through, from "unaware of X" to "aware of X but not understanding it" to "happy with the idea of X and able to see why people are involved with it" and then finally sometimes "identifying as X".
m: I knew about poly most of the time I lived in C, because of g and her friends
m: But i didn't really grok it.
m: I couldn't imagine having one SO, let alone plural.
ccfSarah: *nod*
ccfSarah: And I knew one woman who identified as bi, but she was much older than me, and I couldn't "identify" with her in a way that made that identity feel like something I could apply to myself.
m: Right.
m: I am so happy I made the connection and arrived at being bi and poly. Happy like strong wine.
ccfSarah: Yay!
ccfSarah: me too.
m: I was just tying myself in knots before.
ccfSarah: *nod* I had a lot of trouble in college, before I figured out the poly thing.
ccfSarah: I knew I didn't want a monogamous relationship, but I kept falling in love, but trying to keep those relationships as "friends-with-benefits", and getting all sorts of hurt.
m: "What's wrong with htis picture?"
ccfSarah: *nod* Exactly. I didn't have a format in my brain that would allow for me to have the types of relationships I needed.
ccfSarah: Although I remember wandering into the alt.polyamory irc channel as a freshman, I didn't really "get it" -- it just seemed like more of the swingers and such in the hottub channel, and that all felt like "online sex games" to me -- I don't think it even occurred to me that people were actually having these open relationships in reality.
m: Right.
m: There's always the intermediate bit where it's like you read about it in a textbook but hadn't really understood about it happening in real life. It's not real to you.
ccfSarah: I have to admit to having a little bit of a crush on my prof.
ccfSarah: Happens to me all the time though.
ccfSarah: (academic crushes)
ccfSarah: mmmmm.... teaching things is sexxxxxxy!
m: *grins* I remember you saying. I think that probably goes back to Aristotle or further.
m: (saying about academic crushes, not this one particularly)
ccfSarah: *chuckle* Yeah, I think it likely does.
m: Teachers have always been marked as "inaccessible" in my head, so I never really had crushes on them. Then again, I never had crushes on anyone when I was an undergrad.
m: (Like coworkers being "inaccessible")
ccfSarah: I've always developed them, since back when they were truly inaccessible (I was way too young for person-in-question). Now, it's very easy to develop them. My profs are well within my age and experience range.
ccfSarah: And some part of my brain says "I won't always be X's student, so it could happen at some point"
m: *smiles*
m: I wonder how it'd be if I ever went back
m: I think my subconscious is way too sensible about crushes. It probably means I'm all kinds of repressed or something :-)
ccfSarah: *chuckle*
ccfSarah: I find myself curious/pondering very easily.
ccfSarah: It's rarely something that goes beyond that to actual yearning or pursuit.
m: I find it easier now than I did in my twenties, but still not much.
m: *nods*, I see what you mean.
ccfSarah: And for me to get to the latter level, it generally has to be reasonably "sensible" too.
m: right.
