kiya

Because I did not lay out this story for livejournal.

The reason I am all about the bitching about my health right now boils down to: I had to change medications. The new one doesn't work right.

( Story behind the cut. )

I have gone back and tagged a couple of relevant posts with the shiny new 'Hashimoto's' tag. Whee.

they all just nod and sigh, but I made a run at something real and they never even tried.

("Spectators", the Crüxshadows.)

( I wonder why ... )

A little bit ago, someone posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated a bit of Christian net.kipple that I got from my late aunt a bit more than a year ago (may she ascend). Only they went through and swapped out all the 'God' references for 'the Goddess' and changed 'Christian' to 'Pagan'.

I wish . . .

I wish that people would stop using 'pagan' interchangeably with 'Wiccanesque goddess-centric duotheism'. I can't help but think of what sort of lobotomy and light Sekhmet might give to some of these pumpkins.

I wish that the contentless bunnies-and-marshmallow generic denominationless Christianity wasn't so indistinguishable from contentless bunnies-and-marshmallow generic denominationless neopaganism that all it takes is a swap of the gendering to produce glurge for all seasons.

And what sort of neopagan metaphor is carving a pumpkin and throwing away the pulp and seeds? Where's the circle of life imagery and the new growth? Can't we at least, in vague remembrance of solipsistnation's wonderful rant when I posted about this thing first I saw it, have pie, and take some nourishment from the natural world rather than shaping it to our purposes and leaving it to rot?

Pap. It's all pap. Not enough nutrition even to be nourishing babyfood, so it's not even useful pap.

I could have dealt with the children throwing nuts at me from across the street as I was pacing on the bus stop, especially as at the time I was buried deep in "I Had a Good Time" (still my favorite beautifully catty and chipper breakup song) with decent headphones set to stereo and thus feeling no pain whatsoever.

I could even have dealt with the dirty old man on the motorcycle shouting at me on his way by.

What I cannot deal with . . .

. . . is a complete lack of any fucking bus. And I know the route is running today, I saw one go by not an hour ago. By the time I got to "Turn it Off" I called teinedreugan to inform him of my lack of happy campitude.

At this point, taking the bus downtown to meet teinedreugan and erispope for dinner has lost its efficiency advantage, and also I am not feeling serene and calm while Alabama has the bomb.

I will sink deep into my headphones now and rattle my brains with good guitar until I feel less like gnawing upon the stripped, marrowless bones of my enemies.

One of these days I'll learn how to recognise when people aren't actually going to hear what I'm trying to say and stop trying to argue with them. Sometimes I can do this ahead of time -- I failed to post something to alt.callahans earlier today because I could tell that the person I would have responded to wouldn't hear me, and it would just embroil me in another pointless argument. (And polyamory is giving me enough pointless arguments right now.)

And I can do it with particular people. I can not wind up in a fight with a Certain Someone when that favorite old chestnut "Those wicked polyfolk who keep saying that it's not about sex are just pandering to a sex-negative culture!" gets trotted out yet again. I've had that argument before, with that person as well as with others, several times.

Bleh.

Polyamory isn't about sex. It's not about having one's needs met. It's not about outgrowing swingings. It's not about enlightenment. It's not about sacred sex. It's not about world change. It's not about a lack of commitment. It's not about a superfluity of commitment. It's not about kink. Individual polyfolk may have practices that have to do with any of those things. But none of them are what polyamory is "about".

For me, polyamory isn't "about" anything.

. . . though it seems to be a source of endless argument with someone who is quite bound to tell me that I'm either lying or deluded about myself.

Clearly, my wisdom isn't mature enough, because I'm not too tired to argue.

Today I am feeling very dwojwierny.

I find myself very, very uncomfortable when I see other pagans expressing hatred or contempt for Christianity and/or Christians. It leaves me feeling like . . . like I'm in a room full of people telling Polack jokes.
( Cut for people who don't want to read this sort of thing and possibly length. )

(While the current tune as mentioned is, in fact, something I consider a hymn, it is not stalking me; it is a large part of why I am writing this entry.

No more turning away from the weak and the weary
No more turning away from the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
Not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there will be
No more turning away?

)

I should not be craving ginger-snap molasses ice cream at quarter past eleven when I'm nowhere near a Tosci's and thus able to go get some. (How does one identify an ice cream joint that operates near MIT? Look at its website and see that it has a periodic table of flavors. That includes a reference to the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.) (Their history includes "4.2 Billion BCE: First existence of ice".) Okay, enough divertedness.

Questions so general as to be completely unanswerable.

Sequels to things that oughtn't have generated sequels.

Not having the effort I put into something very difficult for me acknowledged.

The phrase "face it", especially when used in the context of claiming that A is obviously Q.

And feeling stuck in a place where I have no good options left.

So I was reading this post in dot_cattiness (it's a locked post, so don't bother if you're not on the community).

Yeah, I suppose it's fair to say catty things about someone who's not dealing with their depression well, if that person is attached to their disorders -- gods know I did that back with the crazy ex, who I strongly suspect of being bipolar, who also refused to consider that he might have a problem and had an apparent phobia of psychological or psychiatric treatment.

I can't deal well with seeing it called a "disability", and that's with the scare quotes there. I don't know how to explain to someone who does it the stuff that comes with this shit. I can't see the "disability" snark as being anything other than contempt, possibly for the whole range of people who have disabling psychological disorders. Certainly for those who actually gasp admit that they have a problem that gets in the way of having their lives.

I started to write a reply to the post -- well, not to the post, but to the comment that had the "disability" line in it. Link to the alt.support.depression FAQ, point out that depression is a real disability that affects real people and this sort of insinuation about the moral rectitude of those people who have days when they just can't get out of the fucking cycle is counterproductive. . . .

Couldn't do it. I'm too depressed these days -- I don't have the emotional fortitude to expose myself to that sort of contempt, that sort of ignorance, that cavalier dismissal of what can be a serious problem -- certainly there are plenty of people who are worse off than I. If I had the strength, I would argue, I would point out this ignorance, I would say that this is the sort of attitude that prevents people from getting help, because they have evidence that nobody will think that their problem is real rather than a moral failing.

I can't do it. Not today. Not this month. I don't have the strength to start an argument, and I know that it'll come down to an argument if I try.

I just got sent this link by cheshyre, who told me that hitting the third paragraph made her think of me. I feel warm and fuzzy and possessed of well-known buttons or something.

It's a nice change from dealing with someone apparently possessed of the delusion that my age is a better basis upon which to judge my life than my actual life. (I asked Scott if he thought it would be fair to characterise me as being in a period of "experimentation", and after a "Huh?" and a brief commentary, he settled on "Short answer: No." I figure he's known me for nearly ten years and is enough older than I am that any presumed "You're just saying that because you're young, stupid, and ignorant" sort of founders.) This is the second time I've hit this sort of bigotry in the polyamory community, too. It's the sort of bullshit that led to the founding of the poly-under30 mailing list . . . yaaah, five or six years ago now, is it? Good fuckin' grief.

It was so tempting to say, "So, how old were you by the point that you'd figured out how to have a relationship that could last, let's see, say, eight years?" An open one at that. Reminds me of the people who've dismissed my input about poly situations because, of course, I hadn't yet gone through the mistakes they learned from that I was never fucking moronic enough to make, or because being monogamous for thirty years and then deciding to open a relationship provides more information about how to be successfully poly than actually having been poly without huge amounts of stupid explosion for one's entire relationship life, just because one's talking about thirty years and one's talking about five.

Grumple.