on Chronic Illness/on Happiness/on Hope/on Neurodivergence/on Queerness/the Pandemic/the Work

this is all about me: I have become older

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a three panel comic of a yellow bird and a purple computer chair. in the first panel, the bird says 'I can finally fix my posture in this new chair'. in the second panel, the bird sits in the chair and says 'ahh so comfy. let's play a bit'. in the third panel, the bird is sitting across the seat with legs in different directions; a caption reads '~40 minutes later~'.

today is my birthday and I am going to talk about myself

HELLO! I am uncomfortable when we are not about me, but also uncomfortable when we are about me, and this paradox at its zenith on my birthday. I love this day. I hate this day! I don’t care what I do today. I care SO MUCH about what I do today. I want to be made the center of the universe, and please do not notice me. Thank you.

since my last birthday

I have had a whole year to be forty-three, and I think it mostly went well. Forty-four is a weird number and I am looking at it with squinty suspicious eyes.

a constant experience of chronic illness

I’ve had fewer bad chronic illness flares. I didn’t go outside nearly as much as used to, partly because of the pandemic but primarily because I share custody of my thirteen-year-old differently that I did before. During this pandemic, I see her for summers, and until the daily death rate average is lower than it has been this entire time, I won’t be seeing her the rest of the year apart from some holiday time, because the quarantine time for a weekend visit would take up more time than a weekend anyway, which is unfair on all of us.

I remember when ‘chronic’ was sort of a ‘this is really cool’ word, but only in certain settings and always said with irony. No, wait, was it about drugs? I am not going to look it up.

As in all things, I have tried to understand and accept the ways my chronic illnesses — my disabilities — shape me, and how they give me clues about ways to approach daily life. I would like to think that I have come closer to acceptance this past year, and have had almost no instances of sadness-induced rage about the things I can and can’t do.

so how is that death doula thing going anyway

I have redone the business branding (as a recovering designer and online marketer, that phrase makes me feel icky) so that it looks and feels, to me, more inclusive and rainbow-y. So far my training has helped me to be with and experience the passing of two of our cats, and the experience of shutting the hell up while my teenagers tell me how absolutely heartbroken they are that a famous and beloved content creator died of cancer.

Whenever it’s Time To Get Started, I am guessing, a person outside my immediate chosen family will need and ask for my help. The best that I can do is to keep my metaphorical house in order so that I am as ready as I can be.

As an aside, death doesn’t usually happen on time and in an expected way, so it feels a little bizarre to try and predict potential scenarios. I’ve had my training, I know how to keep myself occupied in periods of quiet, I know how to reflectively listen, I know how to silently listen, I know how to find words of comfort, I know how to help someone plan for a thing — an upcoming death or really any kind of project, not that death is a project, but my point stands — and I know how to recognize my own urge to fix something so that I can keep from attempting a fix for someone without their need or consent. I’m as ready as I can be, which is to say, how can anyone be ready for death?

therapy is excruciating, thank you for asking

Some of my most effective emotional processing in the past year has been with my therapist. I have a tendency to try and talk myself out of therapy every goddamn time it’s therapy day: I don’t have anything bad happening, or I’m very upset and don’t want to talk about it, or I completely forget that when we aren’t working on what’s happening right now, we work on my complex PTSD and I know that the forgetting is, itself, a coping mechanism that is not helpful in that context.

In terrifying synchronicity, along with the reframing and gentle problem-solving and encouragement I’m receiving in therapy, I have been finding that my mind is almost constantly working out why people do or say the things they do or say, and I’m getting better at tracing the thread of that thing back into a mess of scribbly lines that represents what is likely their underlying trauma or experience. In other words, what brought you to this place? What happened to you? What coping mechanisms do you now have because of your experiences? What trauma has marked you like a tattoo, and what assumptions do you now carry invisibly with you because of that trauma?

Gaining the ability to understand people better in this kind of way is, like I said, terrifying, but also lovely. The better I understand or can surmise, the more helpful and effective my choices can be. And the older I get, the more I see how much trauma is part of everyone’s lived experience. I’ve been told that this kind of introspection and understanding means that I have actually been working on myself, so hooray for me, I guess? Eek.

so, um, politics

Imagine the phrase ‘the world is a trash fire’ sung to the opening lyric of Bullet with Butterfly Wings: ‘the world is a vampire,’ by The Smashing Pumpkins.

despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage

As a trans, non-gender-conforming, queer pagan disabled middle-aged parent, living in a queer and affirming family, almost every single news story has an impact on my lived experience. Staying at home because of a pandemic has had a nice on-effect of keeping me (and us) out of the public eye, for the most part.

I have a conceal carry permit and a very beautiful pistol (she has a name, as all important things do) and based on my firing range practice, I am a very good shot. I do not want to have to EVER use this skill in a real life scenario. Not ever.

games and music — aka, what I am doing to improve my quality of life

I went through a pretty intense period of buying every steeply-discounted game that looked and/or sounded like I would like to play it at some point. The result is a very full Steam library and a very full Switch, but what if I suddenly feel like playing Bioshock? Or one of those indie games about death? What if the experience of having a collection of games gives me the same level of seratonin as playing one?

I have to say, the experience of owning The Witcher 2 is much nicer than the experience of trying to play it.

I am currently enjoying Death Stranding so much that I spent the approximately nine dollars to upgrade it to the director’s cut, and I started a new game with a higher difficulty level and I’m still enjoying the heck out of it.

A couple of months ago, I decided to start new music playlists each month, because I was curious about how long I generally enjoy a song before my ears are done listening to it. Without looking at any data whatsoever, I estimate that I love listening to most songs for approximately two and a half months, after which I never want to hear it again unless it comes up in a shuffle rotation at some point in the future and then I can feel nostalgic about it.

There are songs that outlast that time period, songs that are favorites that stick with me, but most of what I listen to is fairly new in the playlist. I think that is very interesting and even if my attempt at drawing a conclusion that I have no written data to support is completely wrong, I do find that it has helped me not to feel weirdly guilty about being done listening to a song. Also, with a new playlist each month, I don’t have to remove songs from playlists nearly as much when I am tired of them, and this pleases the traumatized part of me that makes me feel like an awful person for removing a song from a playlist.

what else?

I’ve nearly abandoned Facebook altogether, not the least because the newer updates to the user interface finally became too cluttered for my neurodivergent ass to want to look at.

Twitter, for all its faults, has become my new doomscrolling app. I enjoy how I can retweet or say whatever batshit thing happens to my timeline or in my brain.

[edit: Y I K E S]

I do also like the immediacy of the news cycle on Twitter; I get infodumps or at least inklings about important things just by scrolling through the app every day.

I have been writing here on Substack [edit: lol back to personal websites again instead], which I don’t want to call a newsletter because YUCK, and I am enjoying the opportunity to write in just one goddamn place for once. I’ve been paring back my internet presence(s), because it’s silly to spread myself so thin. I’m the only me there is, so expecting myself to do more than I can is absolutely ridiculous. (There, see? I wouldn’t have been able to think of it that way until recently. Therapy works!!)

some parting thoughts, if you will —

If you haven’t, or even if you have, please read the rice saga thread.

And That’s Why We Drink remains my favorite podcast, which is really saying something. I go through phases with podcasts the same as I do with most music.

I discovered that ASMR videos not only give me the electric brain tingles that are so relaxing for me, they work on the toddler too for helping him be sleepy enough to close his eyes. Here’s one of my favorites:

I used an illuminating and enjoyable writing prompt which asked the question, what did your deity feel like before they had a name? (I don’t actually think there is anything that does not have a name, because I believe that everything has a true name, but this was a gorgeous excuse for some short poetic bursts in honor of five specific deities.

(I’ve now deleted Twitter since this is me from the future right now, but I do still have those short poems in my archive somewhere. Maybe one day I will fish them out and put them somewhere else.)

I think that’s it, for now. I could go on and on but at that point, most of you will have forgot what the point of this was to begin with, and close the tab. Which is fair.

I am fond of writing for you. I hope that I get to keep doing it for more and more years.

xoxoxox, Nix

featured image is a webcomic posted by u/yellyvi on r/pengu

on Generational Trauma/on Harm & Reciprocity/on Hope/on Praxis/the Work

I tried so hard and got so far

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a four-panel webcomic featuring a mouse and a bird. in the first panel, the mouse says 'nothing is perfect.' in the second panel, there is a closeup of the bird who says 'what about the beauty of nature?' in the third panel, there is a closeup of the mouse, who says 'I AM nature.' in the fourth panel, the mouse says 'and yeah, I'm beautiful, but I make mistakes.'

cw: the pull toward perfection and the harm I cause myself

In my tradition*, we are held to a very high standard. We weigh potential harm, think through all the contexts and circumstances and options that we can, and we act in the way we believe is the best at the time. We can’t be perfect but we try very hard to get there. This is one of the things I love best about my tradition, and I know that this pull toward perfection comes from not just my innate hope, but the trauma of my childhood and never being able to make a choice about anything that didn’t bring down the delegated wrath of God on my head.

I have struggled my whole life to do everything the right way. Sometimes, this resulted in me getting so close to a shining moment of rightness that it propelled me forward. Usually, it resulted in pain and disappointment and broken things that needed to be fixed. Too much personal responsibility isn’t personal responsibility any more, I don’t think. It’s taking responsibility for things that weren’t yours to begin with.

I’ve been told by someone I deeply respect that perfection is not possible. It is painfully upsetting that this is true. I want to be perfect, I want to attain an existence in which all my choices are correct and none of them are harmful or poorly thought out or a failure simply because I don’t have all the information and I can only do my best with what I know at the time.

Earlier this afternoon I was trying to rest because I’m just so tired today; and without very much thought in that direction, I remembered something I wished I hadn’t: I remember my toddler daughter, waiting in the backseat of the car at the gas station where we were supposed to meet her dad so she could have parenting time with him, and we waited and waited and waited and finally when he didn’t show up she put her little face in her little hands and just quietly cried, and my heart broke. Because there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t control the choices of others then, and I still can’t. And even if I could, that would cross a line I’m not willing to cross. This memory still invokes so much pain in me. For me, there has been nothing worse in my life compared to my inability to protect the people I love from the things that hurt them.

I can do my best but that never means it’s going to have been enough to keep the monster under the bed from escaping so that it can’t eat anyone.

In table-top role-playing game terminology, it seems that I’m a classic paladin character type that hasn’t caught up to the new ruleset:

From 1st through 3rd edition, paladins were required to maintain the Lawful Good alignment. In addition, compared with other classes the paladin class has one of the most restrictive codes of conduct and paladin characters are expected to demonstrate and embody goodness. Failure to maintain a lawful good alignment or adhere to the code of conduct causes paladins to lose their paladin status and many of their special abilities until they are able to atone. With the introduction of the 4th edition of D&D, paladins become champions of a chosen deity instead of just righteous warriors, paladins can be of any alignment, and can no longer fall in disgrace and lose their paladinhood.

My internal compass insists that I must orient myself toward what is right no matter the cost, and oftentimes this urge toward perfection causes actual problems. We are always dealing with things that don’t work perfectly, situations that don’t resolve easily, people who disappoint us. I am trying to be perfect and to remember that I can’t be; to both shoot for the stars and remember that the closest I can probably get is to the moon. Even when I don’t harm someone else, I am at the very least harming myself.

My inner terror of doing wrong translates to a fear of being a wrong person, and it keeps me frozen, not making any choices at all. Or, I throw caution to the wind and react from the other side of things — the part of me that knows I can’t ever actually be perfect — and I make choices that are less thoughtful than I’m capable of.

I’m not saying that I know where the middle ground is, but I am saying that I’m trying to see where it is so that I can stand there and see how it feels.

Our big chosen-family household, our intentional community of people, lives by guidelines inspired by old Celtic tribal societies. We consider how to be in reciprocal relationships with one another, with our gods, with the spirits of our house, with the spirits of the land we live on. We fuck up and we find ways to apologize that take responsibility for what was done and how it harmed the other. We are on the receiving end of a fuck-up and have to take time to consider what harm happened to us and how we can restore our relationship with that person. A good way to describe it is probably the relational-cultural theory, which is frankly fascinating and something that I want to spend more time reading and thinking about.

As you can probably guess after everything I wrote above, I am terrified of being a person that fucks up. It is so upsetting to me that I go through a crisis of self-identity any time there are consequences that go further than that I may have accidentally hurt someone’s feelings (although that is still a thing that deserves restoration of the relationship between us). Right now, I am working on understanding myself as a dichotomous being that can strive for perfection and understand that I will never get there. And unfortunately, I don’t think that I’ll have this figured out and nailed down any time soon, if at all. I have to be okay with the imperfection of that as well.

* ‘my tradition’ refers to the Path of Light tradition that I have been training in; it is rigorous, to say the least. If you’re curious about it, email my elder.

Post title lyric selection from In the End, a Linkin Park song that I often play when I am angry with myself and depressed. On Spotify, it’s their number one most listened to song.

featured image is ‘Perfect’ by Poorly Drawn Lines

on being Exvangelical/on Generational Trauma/on Harm & Reciprocity

born into it

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a black and white photo of me as a baby on my mom's lap. she is looking at me and smiling, and I am laughing.

cw: evangelicalism, verbal abuse

Some years ago, while I was only a few years away from being a self-described Christian, I started writing a sort of memoir about it on my website at the time. I was so close to having just been evangelical that my mom — someone who now pretends that I don’t exist, so far as I’ve been told — was enjoying it and looking forward to what I wrote about.

At the time I wanted to write about it, my reason was to shed light on why the self-styled Church (read: evangelical, fundamentalist denominations; not Catholic or other specific types of Christian religion) was problematic in my life and had led to me abandoning it altogether. I had always thought that my calling in life was to point out with compassion how the church is failing and how it could do better. Now, from a vantage point several years past that, I no longer have as much compassion to draw from. The ruination of lives that evangelicalism has caused and is causing is too much for me to gently draw anyone away toward another path. My only way to do this right now is to shout fire down from the sky about it, which is perhaps helpful to only a handful of people, and only those that are already radicalized and trying to figure out how to build a life out of slivers of the things they used to hold so dear.

So maybe that’s not the best way to start writing about this. I do find that fire from the sky is a comfortable metaphor for me, but that may be more personal than anything else right now. I’m not sure that I have the discipline not to burn everyone with it. I’m not confident in myself not to do harm that I can’t see and therefore can’t rethink ahead of time.

The best way to start this particular kind of memoir writing is to say that I was born into it. Into a Christian household, to parents that wanted to do their own thing but still remained tied to the beliefs that harmed us all. I memorized Bible verses every week for Wednesday’s Awana meeting (that link is a Wikipedia page, not their actual website, because I don’t want to give them any web traffic if I can help it). I grappled with the idea of sin, because it was tied to how my dad disciplined us. If I took his idea of the world as my own worldview, then I was fucking up all the time without meaning to and without any apparent way of understanding HOW I was fucking up.

I can still remember eight or nine-year-old me, asking my dad a question that was heavy on my young heart, hoping for an answer that would help me: why do we do things that are wrong? And he paused, which I thought was an indicator of upcoming thoughtfulness, but instead he screamed: “You want to know why you do bad things? BECAUSE WE’RE ALL SINNERS, THAT’S WHY!!!” I left crying, unable to understand how I’d managed to make him angry again, in fear and anguish without the answer to the question I sincerely needed.

That’s how I’ll end today. Small Nix, trying so hard, swimming in Bible-speak and my father’s rage.

featured image is a photo of my mom and my baby self, probably taken by my dad