Cause and Infection
CAUSE.AND.INFECTION
Jane Said...4/22/2020 She’s done with Sergio, he treats me like a ragdoll
You said you didn’t want to be a burden to me and I wanted to help you in ways that I could. I found the reciept for the motel room I bought so you could stay with your kids in a room for the night. I wanted to help you. Later on though it you said you saw me as your actual mother and tried to put responsibility on me for you. No I am not going to do traffic school for you. You are the one who got the driving ticket. What happened to not wanting to be a burden to me? I wanted to help you, but I am not responsible for your actions. You are.
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Caring is Creepy4/20/2020 When I think of this song I always think about the time my friend and I were on the drive and we were playing a game where we said a dudes name and pressed shuffle. The particular dude this song came on for made it hilarious. Caring is Creepy when it comes to that guy says my friends shuffled music. The music shuffles would always personally attack ya know?
Today has felt weird. I am on antibiotics for a tooth that I am going to need a root canal for due to a botched cavity filling. I have had a shit ton of dental work done throughout my life. I wasnt born with a full set of teeth. Two of my baby teeth were fused together and when the baby double tooth fell out only one adult tooth grew in its place. My teeth were all shifting to fill the gap and shifting my entire face with it. Luckily I grew up in a middle class family where I could afford to have the orthodontia and periodontal procedures to get me a permanent fake tooth. That process took a long ass time. I couldn’t get my fake tooth until I got my wisdom teeth out after I was 18. So I had braces and retainers with fake teeth glued to them until I was 14? Then they just glued a fake tooth to my other teeth. But they had to grind my teeth down to glue to fake tooth on. When I got my permanent fake tooth they put some filling in the back of the teeth they sanded down, but they didnt put enough. I got a cavity in one of those teeth and now Im gunna have to get a fake tooth for that one too. Its really fucking frustrating. Often I dont feel to strongly about most things other than not harming others. I feel exasperated with life right now. Which could be compounded by the current Stay At Home order situation. I finished Ijeoma Oulo’ “So You Want to Talk About Race”. It is a lot to imbed into my conscious. I have heard much of what she said before, but never quite in such a comprehensive way. I feel like I will be influenced by it, but that I am going to have to continually revisit this book to check myself. Intersectionality and speaking up and out and doing what is right to create a world where people are not systematically harmed. Systemic change to create safety and more equitable opportunities for those that have been oppressed by the culture of our Country. I have been listening to Caring is Creepy on repeat while I write this. I often get stuck on songs and sounds and have to repeat them till I have had my fill. Its compulsions like this that sometimes make me think I am on the spectrum. But since I have ADHD and dyslexia I am already an atypical. That would dictate that my corpus colosseum is thicker and I use both sides of my brain to process things, which is why things go askew sometimes. I have usually appreciated and celebrated my differences. My weird brain, my double tooth. I love the little things that make me different. I wouldn’t give them up for the world. This society does not appreciate these things as much though and I need special treatments and attention to correct these things that are considered deficits. I woulda lived with a hole where the tooth shoulda been if I coulda kept the damn thing open. It makes me feel uncomfortable that I need to rely on a society that benefits from slave labor and the dehumanization of others to live and have my “deficits” taken care of. I wish my brain felt a bit clearer. I wish the way was clearer to me to how I can be most effective helping others and bridging the gap of racial and all the intersectional inequalities. If Caring is Creepy then I don’t care. Imma be a motherfucking squawking bird if that feels like what is morally and ethically just to me. I just need to find my voice. IMMA SQUAWK FOR EQUITY!!! I’m not Lucky I’m Blessed4/18/2020 So a long time ago, back in sophomore or junior year in high school, I was harassed by what seemed to be two latino boys. There was a water polo match at the high school closest to my house. I was the boy’s team manager. After the games were over I decided to walk home rather than take the bus back to my high school down town and wait to be picked up by my mother. While I was walking along the back gate of the high school two boys started following me and as we rounded the corner they started yelling things like “show us your dick” and “hey! Tranny!”. Well I was dressed like a pretty stereotypical high school girl honestly, short shorts and a tshirt. I had also recently watched on tv a special about the murder of Gwen Araujo. She was a beautiful girl who went to a party after graduating high school and was murdered for being mtf. I didn’t really understand or know of the animosity towards transgendered folk before that. I was scared shitless of these two boys following. I started panicking and crying. The boys disappeared. They weren’t behind me anymore and I didn’t know where they went. I sat with my back to the fence of the high school and called my sister two lived about five miles away to come pick me up and drive me back to our parents house which was less than a mile from the high school I was at. She was thoroughly annoyed.
Years later, I am sitting in my rites of passage masters course and we are talking about gender and sexuality. I am mildly frustrated that the person I got paired up to share with does not understand the difference between gender or sexuality. Anyyyywho, we started having these circle times in our class where our professor gave us time to share about things that came up for us. I shared my story about those boys following me in high school and I am sobbing in front of my entire cohort. After class Lia gives me a hug and apologizes that I had to experience those things because I identify as agender. I wish she had stopped before including how I identify. The thing is those boys had no idea that I am nonbinary nor what I am packing in my short shorts. I was dressed like a perfectly average high school girl. I am not heterosexual passing. This amplified by the fact that she had talked about in class how she is heterosexual passing. Another one of our classmates cane up to me and apologized for the same thing at the end of the day. Their assumptions made me feeI pretty miserable. These were the two girls I got naked in a hot tub with for christ sake! But maybe that was part of the reason those were the only two who reached out to me after my sharing that experience. I don’t really experience sexual attraction very often, its not quite what gets my nethers goin. Gender is a construct that I don’t really identify with. I am not really a creature of sexuality to begin with, but people look at my body type and seem to assume I am a lesbian. My father, brother, classmates, and strangers have told me or seemed to have assumed I am sexually interested in females. From what it seems to me it is based mostly on how I look. There was another time I was standing in front of a liquor store with a friend smoking. This liquor store was on a street that is lined with gay bars. A drunk man came up to us and asked which way we were transitioning cause he has always wanted to have sex with a man, he just shipped in because he is in the navy, and has a wife and kid back home. It felt pretty scummy all around. Being heterosexual passing is a privilege in a heterosexual dominated society. It is a strange disquieting feeling to me to know that I am not deemed hetero passing for the structure of my body. I imagine that this like one billionth of a fraction the discomfort that people with darker shades of skin feel with race privileges. I am currently listening to the audio book “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo. It is a wonderfully written book. I feel heartbroken and informed why listening to it. If you are in the mindset to listen to a woman of color talk about race and intersectionality I highly recommend it. If you cannot wrap your head around the concepts I recommend doing more personal work. Privileges and advantages given to people at birth that they are not aware of that others have to struggle to earn are a difficult things to wrap ones head around. Race Ethnicity Class Sex Gender Sexuality Ability Religion Country of Birth Language Where you are I have and have had many advantages in life. I don’t think anyone would benefit from feeling bad about their privileges. I do believe it would behoove us all to use what privileges we have to better the lives who have had less. As always take care of our needs before assisting others, like the flight attendants and everyone else in a health profession says. But! Wallowing in feeling bad about having been born with more than others doesn’t help anyone. It’s counterproductive. I think using our gifts to make the world a less dichotomous place could benefit everyone. Therapy4/10/2020 There are a few things I wish my parents and I had known before I was put in therapy at the age of 17. Therapy is a very abstract, broad term. There is physical therapy, electroshock therapy, gene therapy, and these are all very different than when someone usually says therapy. The general use therapy usually refers to psychotherapy, mental health stuff. There are actually different kinds of psychotherapy and some are meant to treat specific things.
Imma break down my understanding of the different ways people can have therapy. So for starters people. You can have individual, dyadic, couples, family, and group. Dyadic is like when a child sees a therapist and the child had individual sessions, the mom has individual sessions, and then they have sessions together too. Then you can have different evidence based practices kind of treatments such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy(DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy(ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing(EMDR), etc. There is science and they usually target specific diagnosis. Such as EMDR treats PTSD by helping to rewire the brain. There are different treatment theories that all LMFTs are trained in, but I find that as they are humans they stick to what they know. They generally use certain theories they identify with with their clients. Solution Focused, Cognitive Behavioral, Narrative, Systemic, Structural, Experiential, Bowen/Multigenerational Trauma, Object Relational. Licensed Clinical Social Workers are currently being trained to use the Bio-Psychi-Social model. Lastly there are other modalities such as sand tray, art therapy, play therapy, music therapy, expressive arts therapy, etc. 🦑Reminder that these are my perspectives and opinions and I think that researching these things to create your own opinions and perspectives is importante 🦑 https://positivepsychology.com/evidence-based-therapy/ https://www.emdr.com/ I’m not tryin to fool ya4/9/2020 Even though I would like to. I think that you’re really fit. You’re fit, but my god don’t you know it~ I can’t remember who did that song. I know it was a British band. I remember hearing my brother listen to them. Okay! So, bein fit. Healthy. HeaaaaaLthy. Yes. What is that? Omg I am standing in line to get into Trader Joes and I hear White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane playing somewhere, but I can’t tell where. It surely can’t be coming from inside 0o0 No it wasnt. But hey while inside I got me some tasty fruits, veggies, dark chocolate, tea, and proteins. Why? Because when I eat breads, carbs, alcohol, super processed things, sugar, and the such, seem to fuck me up more than other people. I have a delicate chemical ecosystem that is thrown out of whack by the unhealthy things. Mental health, emotional health, physical health. Health health. All those lovely interconnected parts of wellness. Gotta take mental breaks and process the events of our lives, gotta listen and not react to how we are feeling, gotta get that cardio to make sure the chemicals keep running through our bodies and dont stagnate and fuck up everything. And most importantly gotta get the sleep and eat the food to maintain the energy to keep these healthy functions functional. EeeeEEEeeeEeeveeything impacts one another. When your depressed you dont wana eat or get out of bed and exercise and sometimes lie awake all night thinking how poo the world is, but really those are the things you gotta do to make yourself not feel blah anymore. Its so hard to do these healthy thing when mental health is suffering. Then sometimes thats when medication comes in. I know the idea of relying on medication to be a functional human being suck donkey meat; which is why I don’t generally endorse medication. But! I do find medication can be helpful for slowing the brain down so you can have time to process life experiences and make sense of what is going on with you, your body, and the world around you. I don't think I could have made it to where I am today without the help of medication. Albeit it took forever and I tried all of them and more than half of them didn't do anything for me and I gained an unhealthy amount of weight. Finding a medication that works with your body is key. Also finding a psychiatrist that will work with you instead of throwing drugs at you is also very important. I don’t take meds anymore. I found a lifestyle routine of exercising three times a week, carry a 50 oz water bottle with me everywhere, minimize stressors in my life, sleeping 7.5 hours a night, meditate or take a nap for 18 minutes when I come home from work, drinking alcohol once a week, eating more veg and protein, taking a shit ton of vitamins, and socializing regularly that works for me. If something throws off my lifestyle routine the unhelpful mental processes come back. Then I turn into a nightmarish hellfiend. Rawr 😈 Exercise! It gets rid of poo brain toxins, makes your internal organs feel better(if you do it good), and helps you sleep betteeeeeerrr. Sleep! Gets rid of poo brain toxins, helps repair your body, and in my opinion is quite enjoyable. Sooo these poster things I find on pinterest are what I use to reinforce my point and validate my own practices. I generally heard these things about eating, exercising, and routines throughout my life, especially from my parents, but never did them. I was probably 23 when I decided I can’t take it anymore Imma just try the dumb things they are always pushing at me. Oh shit, turns out they work. Whoops. Thanks parents. So as far as emotional health is concerned the maintenance on that isn't quite like physical or mental. The only real thing I can thing of for emotional is meditation. Sitting or laying in a position where all your muscles are relaxed and just observing your feelings both emotional and physical. Observing thoughts and how they make you feel and not reacting. I guess reading and reflecting like when I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Selfcare things too like stream of conscious making music or doodling or creating. Those activities where you can unplug and observe yourself. So its a bit more abstract, but every bit as important as exercising and eating right and sleeping. Oh! Oh! And creating boundaries! After having observed the emotions creating some sort of -yes I will have more of this in my life or -no I will have less of this in my life. Yeaaaah, but that is like a tie in to the mental. Mmmm boundaries my arch-nemesis. Some day I shall tame and master thee. You beautiful bucking bronco that I strive to achieve competence at maintaining. I HAVE OATS AND APPLES COME BAAACK I found all these poster things on pinterest. If you wana look at my my pinterest is linked on my about me. I save these pins in the Sanity Makers board.
Just A Thought4/7/2020 I was looking at Calvin’s story on insta and he was asking for people's worst memories of him. That instantly reminded me of the time Tyler told me he was a psychopath because while Tyler was driving Calvin threw a two liter of soda in his face and tried to kill them both while driving. Le siiiiiigh. I guess I just love me some cute psychopath. I have heard something similar about every guy I really liked. Irredeemable shit, total douchebag, psychopath. But they cute tho.
Before I met him one of the guys I liked pantsed a kid at his friends birthday party then threw the kids pants on the roof of the house. The parents of the birthday boy had to climb onto the roof and get the other kids pants. I heard this was while they were in middle school. Lots of people said he was a total douche. He ended up gaslighting me so I guess maybe he was? I dont remember Calvin being terrible to me? Though there was that one time we were fighting, I think it might have been Christmas, and he had boxing gloves on and he kept punching me till my arms turned black and blue. My arms looked so sexy New Years Eve. I wish I had pictures. It was pretty bad. I had a lot of fun and Tyler commented on the sexual tension between me and Calvin while we were consensually beating each other up. Calvin is the fucking cutest tho. He would fall down to the ground to coo at caterpillars and got excited about every dog. It was fucking amazing. I remember I was crying in the kitchen and Calvin asked who he needed to beat up for me, it was Tyler that made me cry so I didn't tell him. That made me extremely happy though when I was crying and he was offering to protect me. My knight in shining armor who also wasn’t afraid to box and wrestle with me. Sadly he was my best friends brother and my best friend asked I didn’t go that route. My best friend is a world class character. I dont know that I still have the right to call him best friend though after the way I acted around him with one of them. I have issues. I’m working on them. This blog is here for me to process and spread a bit of my knows. I dunno if I will ever stop loving cute psychopaths. I am trying not to get myself murdered. so originally I stopped right here but Imma keep going. There was this one time at Muay thai when we were sparring that me and this cute boy with long blond hair got paired up. It was too fucking cute. Everyone else was probably grossed out, but like after we touched gloves every time we punched or kicked each other and made contact we would giggle. I think he was actually from the mixed martial arts class and was popping in during Muay Thai for an extra workout. But omg 😍 *punch* teeheehee *kick* teeheehee *punch, punch* teeheehee I think our coach actually commented on how we were having too much fun. I don’t think people understand how much I enjoy consensual fighting. I think I need to get back into martial arts. Omg this one time at Muay Thai we had the doors open cause the gym would get really steamy and smelly. Me and one of the better trained guys were sparring in front of the door and a car pulled up to the stop light in front of the door. What I believe to be an African- American dude popped his torso out the car and shout at the dojo ”I DONT KNOW KUNGFU BUT I KNOW CRAAAAAAZY-EH”. Everyone stopped sparring and just stood there laughing for a minute. Life has its beautiful perfect moments. Chchchangeeeees4/6/2020 Turn to face the sTrAnGe chachachangeeees~ I love me some David Bowie Today I would like to talk about trauma. If this may cause you to be triggered please do something to take care of yourself. These are jus some ideas on a poster. Maybe you already have some self sooooothing things ya do. Now! On to the trauma brain stuff So as you can see trauma affects humans physiologically. It can change your brain and DNA. Which can then be subsequently passed down to offspring. When traumas occur is also super impactful. Ya see the human brain has different stages of development and at different times growing up we see the world in certain ways and can only comprehend so much. Human brains usually finish developing around the mid-twenties with the logic and reasoning skills in the prefrontal cortex. So like the brain part behind your forehead. So the younger traumas occur the more it changes the development of the brain. When trauma occurs during childhood it affects the development of the brain a bit differently than trauma that occurs as an adult cause our brains grow more as children. The chemicals and how they transit and receive info and how to process info. So when you see certain behaviors it could mean these things listed in the image above. For all y’all adults. This doesn’t give a free ride to do these things. I mean I know I do them too when I am having difficulty coping with the stresses of life. But no, I offer this list for those witnessing the behaviors that they might understand where it is coming from and help them process the stuff. For those of us who exhibit these behavior, welp, our behaviors are our responsibility and we gotta take the natural consequences that come with them and figure out how we want to change our behaviors. I mean if we wana change that is. I know I do! I dont want to chase people away with actin like a petulant child. All this overwhelming info might be informative and all, but yeah this is pretty heavy stuff. Which is partially why I put that selfcare list up at the top, but I have a bit more for ya today. So there was a bit more focus on childhood post traumatic stress disorder and that is because I am affected by it and so are a large majority of peeps I know. So Imma talk a little about one of my experiences sooo, Another Trigger Warning!!! Go do some selfcare and avoid reading this if ya need to.
When I was between the ages of 3 and 5 my aunts long term boyfriend used to make me sit in his lap. He would rub his thick wirey 90’s mustache against my ear and whisper that I am a pretty girl with his thumb rubbing my inner thigh. Whenever we went to my grandmas I would ask if he would be there. I was always so nervous that he would be there. One time I told my mom I dont like it when he touches me legs. Her only reply was to for me to tell him to stop. It made me frustrated and embarrassed to hear that because I would. He didnt always stop though. He was of a different culture so when I was trying to process this stuff last year I went and looked up if it was culturally acceptable to touch children’s legs. Turns out that is a big no-no in his culture!(according to the internet). He would have me sing and dance for him too, but like all the older male family members had me do that so I didn’t find that as weird?? So this one time my cousin from Japan came to visit and she was going to stay with my aunt and the guy. I wanted to spend more time with my cousin so the man asked my parents if I could sleep over. He was advocating for this pretty hard even after my parents agreed which made me kinda weirded out. I was a very self aware kid. My mom was carrying an extra white shirt for me cause I was a super messy kid. Off I went with them and my one extra tshirt! So we went back to the apartment in downtown LA. He suggested we go to the jacuzzi which was in the middle of the skyscraper thingy. I only had the extra white t-shirt. I ended up going in my panties and extra shirt. I remember feeling extremely uncomfortable as I tried to keep my shirt from floating up with all the bubbles and covering my Disney Princess panties. He kept trying to grab me and I would try to pretend to be flitting and floating around the jacuzzi having fun. I remember how windy it was on that super high up balcony and the freezing ride back down the elevator. After we watched some weird black and white art animation movie about this guy who had his hands cuffed so he couldnt make shadow puppets. I sat on the couch terrified and wanting to go home. I paced in the hallway of my aunts apartment till I was sobbing for her to take me home. I was scared shitless and I didnt know why. I cried all the way as my aunt drove me home. I felt so bad that I made her drive me all the way home from LA. But I was positive something terrible would have happened if I staid. I didnt talk about this till I was in my mid twenties. When the brain settles down growing! Aha! I told my partner and my mom. My mom was sad, but I am super glad I told her. The man was also abusing my aunt and disappeared from my family’s life at the beginning of this year after my aunt was moved to a nursing home because of his neglect and mistreatment of her. all the images came from pinterest and they are not necessarily godgiven truths about anything. Look stuff up for yourself too! Why?4/4/2020 So I wrote this really long post but it vanished?
imma give you the run down. I love him but he did terrible things to me. That gives me hope that I can love myself because I do terrible things to me. Improving through self acceptance so Im not trying to get pressure fractures from fitting in molds I don’t fit in. Bleeding people throw scalpels try to avoid them instead of retaliating. Its hard and we all do it sometimes. Let me validate your pain cause life is pain. Pain hurts and it's not usually fun. Please dont try to purposefully spread the pain to others cause we are all stuck in this goddamn fish bowl and it will reverberate till everyones fish bowl water is full of poo. I’m not sure anyone wants poo in their lungs. Do your best. I love you. also read the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Helpful for reinforcing the whole knowing yourself, what your values are, accepting yourself, and not having a mental break down do to giving to many unimportant fucks. wOOt! Archives
April 2020
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