moominmuppet

I'm about to do a bunch of toy reviews, so now seems like a good time to reshare this; I wrote it back in 2001 or so, I think? It doesn't include some of my earliest explorations, but it certainly explains a great deal about how central curiosity and exploration are in how I think about my sexuality.

Apologies for any formatting weirdness. Also, I'm posting it basically unread, since I'm all muzzy-headed at the moment. May go back and add some clarifications, corrections, and updates at some point, may not. Also, I suspect some of my age guesses about how old I was are over-estimates.

TINKERING
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This was triggered by a comment I made on my sexuality filter, but I think it's really relevant to how I interact with my social network overall, and deserves to be an open post as well. Additionally, I'm going to add to the bottom a good chunk (the less explicit bits) of how I navigate boundaries around sexuality-related communication.

The comment I made, in part:
...more fun to share with friends than strangers!
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Since I haven't talked about this one in a while, I figured I'd post some of my profile info from different sites as an example of how I describe myself, how it differs by context, and how it's overall very strongly similar (this has a lot to do with a strong commitment not to compartmentalize my life - again, another post topic for someday)

OKCupid Profile (the longest of any of my profiles out there, I'm pretty damned sure. Also the profile that has resulted in a number of awesome involvements in my life, especially Chad!):
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Fetlife (one of my briefest because I use it so rarely):
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My XTube Profile (cutting the bits that are copy/paste from my OKC profile, fyi):
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One of my random Craigslist ads from a few years ago (hate that CL makes me choose between posting in W4W or W4M):
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Hmmm. Wasn't I going to go back to sleep after the last post?

I've now got a custom filter going on over on my Facebook as well, so you're welcome to let me know if you'd like to be added there. I'm going to mostly try to keep the same posts in both locations, as much as possible.

Libido surge recently, so it's about to get all porny up in here.

So, before I tackle big long topics like trees and masturbation (no, really, that's a big long topic), I'm going to ease my brainmeats in and just rave about my new toy.
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Response to a question to me about how to address a teen's questions about poly stuff:

I think the most important thing to convey, whether talking about monogamous or poly relationships, is that there is no "default" she has to live by. That it's up to her and her partner/s to construct the relationships that are healthy and happy for them.
And that they can take pieces and ideas that work, and discard those that don't, and that every relationship is different.
And that any kind of relationship can be unhealthy, if done badly. Respect and compassion will get you far.

_______________________

Related to that, I find it every bit as true in regards to all forms of relationships:

Also from the conversation with the awesome sex-geeky couple I've been talking to, in regards to my public vids (and I get what they mean; there are times I've postponed looking into certain elements of folks lives until it felt "right" to me)
*grin* yeah, I get that. I do share them with my platonic local friends as well, so it may be less weird for me. I'd recommend starting with the moya filter; that's more general sexuality rambling. Graphic often links to or discusses vids and really directly porny writing that might be a touch awkward if you want to explore what boundaries feel right to you at the moment. I tend to believe in consciously building dynamics in relationships, platonic or sexual. I really hate trying to dump things into pre-existing molds. We get to construct this friendship in whatever way we all enjoy and find healthy.

_______________________
Related conversation with Chad about one of the most beautiful and meaningful elements of how he accepts and welcomes all of me:

Incidentally, this is why it's so incredibly important and meaningful that you react to me being poly the way you do, welcoming the joy it brings me and willingly taking on the extra emotional work it sometimes requires to support that.

me: I've had that treated as an irritating quirk to be grumpily tolerated, too. Especially by Mike. Haven't made that partnering mistake often in more recent years.

And something related that I just edited into the last post, but really fits here better:

This really relates to a lot of what I was talking about in terms of primary partners and ability to cope with my radical openness on taboo topics, and it being so important to me. Whether it's psych or sex or chronic invisible illness, or what-have-you that's on my mind at the moment, I basically see this as my calling. It's not just about the misery of having to hide, and hassle of remembering who knows what, the fun of talking sexy-sex. It's about my calling, what I can contribute to the world, my passion for committing to living this way.

Edit to add:
And it's about my joy, too. That's a big element of some non-LJ-appropriate stresses at the moment. I can't be in relationships where my joy is tolerated rather than celebrated. "No tell" relationships may work perfectly well for many people. For me, no. To not be able to freely share that joy with my partner, ramble happily in sexual nostalgia, share my excitement about new developments? Horrible. Horrible to lock down like that, and it kills my sexual relationship with that person, pretty much invariably. It creates a certain type of de facto monogamy that isn't natural, but stress-based. If a flirtation is likely to be a source of stress, of conflict, how can I joyfully enter into it? And what's the point of entering into it if I can't do it with joy, without a guilty conscience nibbling at me about the tensions and stress this is likely to cause? Some of my closest partners have all kinds of erotic frisson about secrecy, and playing at the edge of boundaries. I get it, but for me, it's a sexuality-killer; I can't eroticize it at all. I'm also totally unable to eroticize humiliation-play (see last few days of posts for crystal clear reasons why), or certain types of power dynamics, including being truly submissive (I play around that territory in various ways, and can enjoy other people in those roles on occasion, but I'm basically a switch: stone top/encouraging domme or power bottom willing to accept help being submissive to my own clit, but not to other people. I also cannot eroticize feminization (of me) in the vast majority of ways (there are a few earth mother/warrior woman tricks around that, though, that do connect authentically with my internal gender sense)

OK, the clonopin has kicked in, and HARD. Can't read paragraphs. No idea if the last few rambling paragraphs are even close to coherent. Back... later.

With permission I'm sharing part of what I've been emailing back and forth about with two new friend-crushes.

For reference, S has a photography blog, and C blogs about minimalism as it applies in her life.

Hey there, me again...

I've been having a pretty damned rough day, after finding out at about two this morning that an old friend from high school actually unexpectedly died about a year ago. I've been trying to pull myself back together after writing a post about her, so I decided to catch up on reading through your other journals (you know, chatting simultaneously with a couple is enough to make me really resent the English lack of distinction between 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural -- I rather approve of the southern work-around of y'all because I definitely see the linguistic need!)

S, your photography really is beautiful and calming in a way that hit me just right, right now. Thank you. (and the post about seeing rather than looking was lovely)

C, [the minimalist blog] is more challenging for me, even scary, and I'd love to talk some about that, compare perspectives a bit. I very much understand the logic and reasoning behind this kind of minimalism, and perhaps as a packrat I paradoxically understand it better (and I'm very familiar with the Paradox of Choice research), but also as a packrat it's scary and threatening to me in weird and emotional ways. I "declutter" now and again in small ways, but I'm so far from minimalist in my own life partially because of a difference in how I think about stuff as a resource. Part of that is a result of spending many years extremely cash-poor and therefore loathe to discard anything I might need again and not be able to replace. The even bigger issue, though, is how I construct my place within my community. I'm the packrat amongst a social circle made up much more heavily of minimalists. Several of my housemates showed up at my door with little more than a duffel bag. I'm the stable home base, the storage place for everyone, the junk store anyone can rifle through for the things they need. If being communal in that particular way weren't so central to me, I think I'd find it less scary to get rid of things, but it reminds me of my "spare pills" case in my messenger bag, which I was re-sorting the other day. It contains 10-15 pills, tablets, etc, of every med in the house, even the ones I never take, or am contraindicated from taking. I'm not so much carrying it around for me, as so that I always have the best chance of having what someone else needs when they need it. Over and over again, folks have found "just what they need" in my house, and I love that experience, find it rewarding and joyful. Best friend in a panic because he has an art project due that day, procrastinated, and hasn't the foggiest where he could possibly find a disc of wood in time for his plan? Well, damn, I have that. A souvenir piece of an art project someone else had done several years ago, making use of cross-sections of tree trunk. Same thing with my books; I have close to 4000 in the house. I wish I had digital copies of all of them for backup and ease of personal access, but for giving others access to new and interesting stuff? For enticing someone to pick up a book on the spur of the moment and leaf through it? I don't think we've figured out yet how to balance intellectual property and ability to share when it comes to online copies of books yet. There's progress, but it's nowhere near where I need it to be before I'd feel like I'd still be giving people the same opportunity to explore when they come into my space. I really regret some of the books I've ended up purchasing in digital format because of how it's limited my ability to share.

I'm really curious to hear your thoughts about the complexities of balancing a minimalist approach based on careful awareness of your needs, and a deeply communal approach that I feel requires me to have handy exactly the things I can't predict. Also, how do you navigate the balancing of minimalism and financial fears of lack of necessary resources to pick things up on the spur of the moment if they do become necessary again?

I hope I'm not coming across as defensive or attacking; I don't intend to be either -- these are things I've honestly struggled with philosophically over my life, and I'm very aware of the certain ways in which my mass of "stuff" also limits my life in certain ways, but I'm not at all certain that minimalism is a good choice for me, personally. Thoughts?

[Awesome Responses]
Good grief, I am intellectually smitten with you and would like to subscribe to your newsletter *grin* more later. Need to remember to talk about how pet decisions play heavily into all this. Watching lightning now, though!

[More awesomeness]
So happy to hear more from you! Oh, the backpacks I have had!

Sorry to say 'more later' again; you're meeting me at an extraordinarily intense and bizarre period. The past few weeks are eating my brain, and my LiveJournal doth overflow. Really, really interested in continuing to talk with both of you, but I may vanish intermittently and I'm really worried I'll end up sending mixed signals and damaging a set of baby-new friendships that I very much want to develop. I've been babbling to people in my life about you, and how excited I am at what seems like it could be Important Friendship for me down the line. And I don't mean that at all euphemistically. Your collective sexy brainmeats certainly aren't discouraging me feeling a bit tingly about things, but that's not the center or necessary element at all. When I feel what seems like potential exciting new friendship I get about twice as giddy and nre-ish as when I find new casual partners. It's always been a quirk of my personality and the role friendship has in my life, but it's been the source of confusion, misunderstandings, and unnecessary stress at times, so I just wanted to make very sure I'm clear with you about what's going on, especially since we're text-only at this point.

Also, way to grok the poly/stuff connection. Other big factor? I am miserable without my animals. Have lived about two years of my life without having my own pets, usually many, and barely emotionally survived thanks to the multitude of professors' dogs. It's a decision I joyfully take to limit myself mobility-wise in order to make as sure as possible I can continue to provide for a pretty large number of decades-long commitments.

Also, what I've just written here feels worth expanding into an lj post. Is what I've written about minimalism, and my excitement about developing friendship, something you'd be comfortable with me using that way?

[And yet again with the Awesome]
So much yay on all fronts!

Off to continue drenching LJ in my thinky-thoughts.

The reasons I hid my relationships and sexual involvements over the years are hugely complicated, and have been one of the bigger mindfucks in my life. It's taken a long time to sort out the multitude of often conflicting reasons that was such a strong pattern, most especially in middle and high school.

Reason the first (starting with the simple stuff): Access. Mom and Dad always accepted me having both male and female friends. I love them for that, but it also gave me an odd conundrum: if I told them I was involved with a guy (because I wasn't yet aware I was queer and women were an option for me), odds were good we'd get watched a lot more closely than they ever did about my friendships with guys. What halfway sane and horny teenager wants to risk fucking up that bit of excellentness?

Reason the second: my own weird gender shit. "Dating" meant my guy friends might stop treating me as a friend and start treating me as a "girl". I was horrified by that idea. Most of my early grope and tickle was with close male friends, and very much as a rough-housing tomboy. I got to second base and dry-humping about three years before I got to kissing, largely as a result of that. (kissing would've "changed things" in ways that wrestling and riding each other on the bed wouldn't) It was partly about fear of losing my real friendships with these guys, especially Chris (the reason Appetite for Destruction is still a powerhouse libido album for me today). It was also partly about my own discomfort about being pushed into gender roles that never felt comfortable for me, and reactions that I didn't really understand until I encountered the concept of genderqueerness years later. One of the reasons Chad and I fit so well together is that he actively recognizes and appreciates both my masculinity and my femininity. I feel grokked deeply enough to feel free of all that shit in ways that's extremely rare for me with male-identified male-bodied people (genderqueer and female-identified people, regardless of their bits, don't trigger that defensiveness in me. Trans guys feel downright safe to me, because they're more likely to get it than almost anyone else).

Reason the third: My own weird poly shit. I consider myself deeply and inescapably poly. I was long before I had the conceptual framework or emotional maturity to understand that about myself. I have "officially" been contractually monogamous for a total of two weeks and one day in my life; a week with Jordan once, summer after graduation from high school (I freaked out, broke up with him, was so relieved and happy I lost my virginity the next night with him), a week or so with Scott when we dated at the beginning of freshman year in college (an awesome guy, and it mostly ended because it was freaking me out in weird ways I couldn't, at the time, understand), and one day with Mike when we were trying to resolve relationship issues and decided to give monogamy a try (he wasn't even back to Cleveland before I was calling, freaking the fuck out and declaring we needed a different solution or an end to things). That's it. There were times when I wasn't sure whether the situation implied I was "supposed" to be monogamous, and that stressed me the fuck out, but those were the only times I actually officially tried it. Not to say I haven't been de facto monogamous or celibate at plenty of times in my life, but that's worlds different inside my head from committing to it as a indefinite promise. Monogamy isn't just unnecessary for me, it's actively harmful to my psyche. I describe it often as "feeling like someone just built a white picket fence around my sexuality". First I shut off my sexual reactivity to the rest of the world, and then it shuts off to my partner. I start perceiving my own sexuality as a threat, a risk, a potential problem. So I shut it down. This way leads misery. I respect why monogamy suits many people much better than it could ever fit me, I don't equate monogamy with jealousy and possessiveness in any necessary way, and I have no real problem respecting the agreements that others have in their lives or avoiding crossing those boundaries. Now that I get it about myself, now that I have a conceptual framework that makes space for who I am, it's all fine and dandy, and pretty fucking full of joy. In high school and college? It fucking sucked. I'd want intimacy and commitment and connection and all those things beyond furtive FWB involvements, but I couldn't comprehend that it might be possible to "have a relationship" and also not feel the horrible way I always felt when I tried (because I just accepted as fact that if you were in a relationship that of _course_ it was going to be monogamous). So I mostly had FWB involvements, with heaping doses of "I don't know if we're acknowledging this publicly or not" piled on, and then dealt with a lot of pain when those didn't actually assuage my needs, and left me feeling hidden and uncertain about everything. I adore having friends with benefits. Now that I understand the difference, and know how to navigate multiple different sorts of relationships, they have a wonderful place in my life. Now that I'm not using them to replace what I also need emotionally in terms of romantic relationships, that is. Find the poly community in a way in which I was capable of recognizing it and imagining myself in that kind of dynamic, was a Hallelujah light-bulb moment in my life when I was about 20. Life changing. I'd encountered it online prior to that, but it was at a point when I was 16 that I sort of half believed it was just online fantasy, not something people actually and really did. Highly amusingly, this was AFTER my first threesome. I am queen of obliviousness.

Reason the fourth: The parish. Weaponized against my Dad, as I talked about in the other post. They were always looking over my shoulder, and I knew some had hostile intent in doing so. Made me paranoid as fuck. I could go to a silly Davison carnival with a friend (can't recall whether it was Brian or Steve), and have 23 goddamn people ask Mom about it at church on Sunday (we counted). Paranoia? My reality.

Reason the fifth: School bullies. Most of the bullying in my life was psychological; I've always been more capable of defending myself (and others) physically, and only had a few fights or situations where I felt physically unsafe. Thank you, big strong body. The psychological shit, though... Fearing that any expression of interest might be a setup for a prank to humiliate me. Being publicly mocked for my weight, my lack of social or fashion sense, my geekery. Believing because of that that no one would possibly _want_ to be publicly affiliated with me in that way, it could only humiliate them. The bully obsession with the sex life of the american teenage girlgeek, and the joy they had in cornering me and interrogating me about what was happening between me and anyone I was seen with. Alan, the first boy I ever loved, held hands with me once, awkwardly, at our local mall on the way to see Last Temptation of Christ. I was cornered the next day at school and harassed mercilessly for details. Whatever could have been between him and me when we were in high school basically died that day. I was terrified, humiliated, didn't want to expose my precious little connections with people out where they would get us treated like that.

The shit that lasted in my head, long after I'd put all the rest satisfyingly to bed, was Reason the fifth. Oh, I knew people could be sexually attracted to me. I had plenty of hot, hot evidence of that, in corners, surreptitiously, hidden, hidden, hidden. I don't even know how much was my idea to hide and how much any of theirs, but I wasn't capable at that point of believing they could possibly want it any other way, anyway. It took years to get over that. It wasn't helped by continuing that pattern with all the confusing and "maybe secret maybe not" hookups in college, either, especially with Mike, who seemed to loathe his attraction to me 90% of the time (the other 10% was when the chemistry would get too powerful and we'd fall into bed again, and then there's be another moral crisis and declaration from him that it could never happen again. Until the next time it did, usually with at least months between occurrences and all kinds of fucked up awkward-not-quite-friendship dynamics between us in the meantime. That's the first five years of our history, before we ever (quite shockingly) became a real couple for several years (my most serious relationship to date aside from Chad, one of the greatest loves of my life despite being 100% certain that the best thing we ever did for each other was to break up). Unsurprisingly, not being a "dirty little secret" in Mike's life was some of the earliest shit we had to sort out between us when we suddenly got actually and truly involved.

It's a lot of why I will never deny a partner, or my history with them. No one will ever be my dirty little secret. Ever. I don't mind if casual partners don't proclaim me to the world; I get the complexities involved in being publicly affiliated with my life, and it's one of the biggest distinctions between "casual sex" and "relationship" in my life. Again, something I could navigate healthily once I finally understood what I needed, and what I needed to fix in my life. And one of the reasons I've chosen "mostly single" over "bad relationship" time and time again in my life, without compunction.

It is, again, one of those huge things I've found with Chad. When we started developing feelings, we had a number of very serious talks at my instigation to make extraordinarily sure he understood what he was getting into by being publicly seriously involved with me. I am ridiculously open about taboo and generally private topics. It's hugely important to me to be so. It also means, though, that just dating me will "out" people in all sorts of ways. When I talk at length about how I really only connect on a primary partnership level with other queer folk? That says things about my partners. When I say I don't date guys that don't like assplay, and rhapsodize about the joys of pegging? That says things about my partners. My experiences being weaponized against my Dad have left me very leery of connections close and public enough to redound into negative effects in other people's lives. Even after years of intentionally keeping myself and my life as far from any new parishes as possible, I discovered that the moment Dad retired from life as a parish priest, there was a huge weight lifted from me, a sense of freedom that shocked me. I had no idea how much of that I was still carrying around, still worrying some parishioner might stumble on and use against Dad. It's been one of the great struggles in my life as a sexuality activist, how to balance my need to follow my passions with my fear of being used against someone else.


And I may still have more to say about all this, but right now, Katy awaits!

Chad's off volunteering today, and I haven't gone back to sleep since he left, although I probably should so that I've got some energy for our day later. The house is totally empty except me and the critters, which is a rare occurrence, and I don't think I'll sleep again until after I write a bit.

So much going on in my head. I'm going to be shaking words out of my fingers for a while here, I expect. Not sure how much any of it will make coherent sense. Not sure how much it'll make me feel vulnerable, or relieved, or what-have-you.

I've been thinking a lot about distance, time, and history. About how it brings stuff up in my head I thought long-dead, or at least deeply, deeply dormant. Also pondering how different some elements of my life would be if we'd had widespread internet and social networking back in my teens.

FYI, the icon above is deeply personally meaningful to me. It was made for me by my brother, jajy1979, and is a Google aerial shot of my childhood home in Holly, MI. Those dark spaces are all the little spring-fed ponds in "my" woods. It's one of the places in the world (like Kenyon and Roeper) that it's so important to me to show to Chad.

Actually, that's kind of relevant to all the other stuff swirling in my head about what connections I did and didn't maintain over the years. I loved Holly. Davison was only about an hour away from it, but as Mom and Dad have noted many times in the past, the move, when I was 11, hit me extraordinarily hard. I resented it quite literally the entire time I lived in Davison, missed going to Roeper, where I'd been lucky enough to attend for 4th and 5th grade, and never truly connected with Davison on an emotional level as my "home". It didn't help that Dad was coping with the nastiest church dynamics he'd faced; a parish in the middle of a charismatic/mainstream split, where backstabbing felt like it was everywhere (not my imagination, it truly was), and everyone had God on their side, or at least liked to claim so. There is nothing in my life that I've experienced more negatively than toxic church politics, and we walked into that at the same time I was hitting middle school; unarguably the most miserable and hostile social environment in school history for most people, including me. I was tagged immediately with this "priest's-kid-who-skipped-a-grade" identity; it was quite literally how I'd get introduced, all in one breath. Davison was a community where most folks have lived since elementary school, I was the new one, and that's the identity I got saddled with. In the church, I was used against my Dad as a weapon. Dad's ministry has always been about working with broken churches, but Holly had been "broken" in that it was dying, not splitting. While Dad built that parish back up over the years it was a struggle, but not a hostile and venomous one. I felt loved, accepted, supported, sure of my place in my community. It's where my basically small-scale socialist community-centered world-view come from. I was cared for _abundantly_ by everyone in my world. It was the only community I'd really known; we'd moved to Holly from Virginia when I was only three. In Davison I was just struggling to navigate teenagehood, and trying to figure out who I was becoming, and paranoid as fuck over the combination of parishioners and school bullies watching my every move (It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you). All those "positive religious experiences" I had back then? They didn't happen at Davison. I didn't feel safe in the youth group at all; instead I found my safety and connection through the Happenings movement, through EYE, through Gordonwood, the Episcopal summer camp I'd been attending since I was 3. It was part of my escape and safety from that toxic church, too, both socially and spiritually. I strongly suspect it was a huge part of why I was so deeply invested in my spirituality in general. Related to trying to figure out when I 'lost my voice' and developed that phobia about singing? I've put it together, and it makes a world of sense, both when it happened, how deep that fear has been, and how long-lasting. It happened in Davison. I remember still feeling safe and taking joy in singing at Happenings and EYE and Gordonwood, but it was different back "home" in Davison. My summer camp and youth retreat experiences were how I got through, the only times I really felt like I had true freedom to be me, to shake off the stereotypes my peers tossed at me, to feel confident and whole. Part of why I'm such a full-throated supporter of summer camp experiences is that it was sometimes the only way I learned who I had the potential to be, how confident, how happy, how able to make friends. Despite a number of wonderful friendships with particular people (one of the paradoxes in my attempts to understand my own past and emotional history is how I can look back and see so many powerful and deeply trustworthy friendships, and also such unbelievable stress and isolation and gut-churning fear), I never felt safe or at home in Davison, and when time for college came along, I ran, and I basically stayed run. My first priority was getting out of the state, getting someplace I wasn't constantly afraid that my wilder tendencies would be used to hurt my Dad and family. Mom and Dad tried to convince me not to worry about that, but I couldn't not. I couldn't grow into myself without getting out. I never came back. Sure, progressively less frequent weekend visits here and there, but even those tapered off even more once Mom and Dad moved to Flint, and then Alabama (!!). The longest I was ever back home was freshman year christmas break, for 9 days. No other visit ever lasted more than 3, and they generally only happened a few times a year. Kenyon became my home; I'd fallen in love, I'd found my new safe place where I could commence with growing the fuck up and figuring out who I was. I think a good part of my deep passion for Kenyon is the way in which it fed my soul in that regard, the way it rescued me, never more personified than in the Peeps. Going back to visit Davison made my stomach churn, no matter how I cared about and trusted individual people. Grandma was up there for a number of additional years, and I was her primary family contact; the only one who'd managed to rebuild a healthy and safe dynamic with her after her abusive past with us (a whole different and huge story that spans many years), but as it probably sounds from that sentence, this was still difficult stuff to navigate, took a lot of emotional energy, and didn't make it all that likely that I'd generally see folks, especially pre-social-networking, when it was so much easier to just fall out of touch. I sacrificed friendships with some truly wonderful people just to escape, to not have to interact with the world where I'd been so miserable, so insecure.

As a result, getting in touch again with various folks over the years has been truly wonderful, pretty stressful, and deeply head-fucking. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (gratuitous Whitman, another deep touchstone for me, but one I've written about thoroughly in the past)

This post was originally titled "Asynchronous". It was going to be about how losing contact at that point, while everyone else's life went on, and most stayed in much closer contact over the years with each other, creates this weird wall. Being totally out of the loop on decades of shared history means it's hard to even know where to begin, what I don't understand, what I don't know. Making ignorance-based missteps is a shitty experience, and I have more hot-buttons about that than most people (that's a whole 'nother long post of its own). It also means when I see people my brain is likely to shock back right into the middle of the emotions I had about my teenage years, while they've grown up together much more, and I'm quite sure aren't at this point having big meaningful conversations about high school crap. For me, though, Davison history effectively stopped in 1991. I understand it sociologically, but it's still weird as fuck to cope with, brings up old emotions I thought long-dead, reminds me of elements of who I was that I'm so proud not to be today, makes me insecure in ways I don't even want to admit are _possible_ in my brain at this point.

And even aside from all the Davison-specific fuckery, there's always something vulnerable about getting back in touch with people that I'm emotionally invested in in some way. They're some of the only people capable of hurting or rejecting me in deep ways anymore. No one else in my life gets that power; everything about me is pretty much out and clear from the get-go. I don't get emotionally invested in people's opinions until I already know they can cope with who I am. I am fortunate to have an immediate family that accepts and loves me as I am, and almost no extended family to worry about. Seeing childhood chosen family (the Corlesses, the Diehls, the Bonsacks, Godfather Tony, Aunt Terri) has been deeply odd over the years for that reason. They're some of the only people I don't already know, incontrovertably, are fine and dandy with who I am today. And I already love them. And that's scary. (also, it's generally gone just fine; my experiences getting to know Godfather Tony as an adult have been the most spectacular and meaningful in that regard). It's also one of the only times I ever have internal debates about outness in the way that many queer folk experience much more regularly. Because I am so out about everything in my life, because it's so default and habitual, I don't have to waste much emotional energy on it. I haven't really had to much in years and years. Folks who know me as I am today will generally agree that I'm a pretty damned confident and powerful personality, comfortable with myself on a deep level, more unconcerned about coming out about things at the drop of a hat than many folks struggle with. Those are some of my greatest strengths, and it can suddenly feel like they've just vanished when I end up back in these few interactions with people from my deep past.

Other ways Davison fucked me up: hiding my sexuality, hiding my relationships. -- that's such a big huge thing, and also tied into why I'm having moments of body consciousness now the likes of which I haven't experienced in years. It also really needs its own post.

Pic of a bug on FB, and an ensuing conversation about tattoo history

>2:1
Just talking to chad about life philosophies as they relate to Kidlet. This is my basic shorthand for one of my practical approaches to both expressing my philosophy and having a generally happier and more joy-filled life; try to give at least twice as much compliment as critique (or in any given situation generally try to be at least two times as likely to compliment than to critique)

Damn do I love me some Olympic women's weightlifting.

Ah, fuck-a-duck. Just overslept through my first appt today.

*sigh* now I'm freaked about going back to bed and risking sleeping through my gp appt too, even though it's not til 12:35. Insomnia is most annoying in its absence - once I need to be awake is often right when the fatigue catches up.

Baby Grasshopper!

Amusing, but I have to quibble with the implication that the Doctor wasn't present and acknowledged; there was a distinct TARDIS sound during one of the musical interludes. I listened twice to make sure.
Poll: Which Doctor Who Villain Is Mitt?

Book sale AT my doctor's office? Dirty pool! Sneak peek at the goodies! (Fuzzy toe socks for me, all else for kidlet including light up saber and light up magnifying glass!)

Home from the doctor. Love my GP so much. She's totally awesome. Also had a number of really enjoyable interactions with random strangers on the trip home, including getting to share some of Kidlet's new books with a couple kids bored at the bus stop with their mom. Naptime now. So tired.

In terms of things I've done this week that I might not've if I weren't in this mood state:
1. Send the best apology I could to a friend I wronged repeatedly a long time ago. Hard to do, still kind of hard to have done, absolutely no regrets -- it was long overdue.
2. Told another friend something revealing about how he had influenced me. A touch nerve-wracking, but glad I did it.
3. Told a casual friend how glad I was that he existed. Not even the teeniest little regret.
4. Because I've been on OKC more often, made some unexpected and potentially interesting contacts*, including reconnecting with a sexy long-distance friend who is apparently now living substantially less long-distance, and having an excellent conversation with a local couple who may be awesome new friends in the making. We're currently trading sex ed geekery, which means I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. Nothing heading in even casual "new partner" directions at the moment, but new interactions with people are fun, so I'm all psyched.
5. Had a bunch of positive interactions with random folks on the street yesterday, including sharing books with kids and their mom at the bus stop, going out of the way to leave compliments with the manager about my excellent lunch server and hostess, had pleasant casual conversations with probably a half a dozen other folks while I was out and about. I enjoy being chatty and friendly. Cool stuff in my life has happened as a result. Therefore, I like when I'm in a state where I'm more likely to interact with the world, because it's just generally more chances for nifty experience and connection.

*usually the case that I'm more likely to at least read messages there and reply to some of then when I'm feeling more social and interactive, unsurprisingly -- this, of course, means I suddenly show as having recently logged in, and more people therefore message me. It creates and odd sort of progressive and cumulative effect that can get overwhelming quickly, but it can also be fun and interesting and casually flirty.

Downside of mania? Still haven't fucking slept. Argh. Maybe now that I've shaken most of the words out of my fingers I'll finally be able to.

Copying over a bunch of stuff from FB, because one of the many things that drives me up the wall about the interface is how hard it is to keep track of anything over there. One of the other biggest issues is the lack of anything similar to LJ-CUT, to allow a warning and opt-out option for folks who don't want to encounter specific topics or nsfw images and such. Right now it's basically a choice of having my status display on your FB page, or not having it display. I want more granularity! In some ways I use the cross-posting from LJ to mimic that, since folks see the title of the post and can decide whether to click through and read it or not, but it's not easy to do that on the spur of the moment when having a fb-length comment to post about life from my phone. Also, lots of folks on FB don't automatically load Notes posts to display in their main page, so almost never happen to see them. Blarg.

So, demonstration of concept, have an LJ-CUT with smutty bits behind it (which, of course, doesn't actually do anything additional for folks from FB, since it clicks through to the full post automatically):
( Way more back here, some textually not safe for work )