#journal type post

[narcissisticmedusa]

Having spent enough time talking with my dear girlfriend about HDG; I now know the story that could work as a good criticism of the setting. Unfortunately I don't have the Whatever to write it. It is especially frustrating because if I ever need to look something up about the setting I get upset so so fast.

Heres the deal: during the colonization of humanity/human space, some humans got on ships and ran as far and as fast as possible, avoiding domestication. They settled on a new planet and grew from there. They remember those who conquered their kin, and know to watch for and fear them. So when some humans manage to catch an affini and bring it back to Second Homeworld, they have to domesticated it for living among humans.

It is the perfect way to turn the setting on it's head without utterly disrespecting the source materials and setting. I just can't quite bring it home.

[mbrainspaz]

I've always needed different moral codes for different situations, which I think is the source of a lot of my internal contradictions, but it's also helped me survive. I'm a totally honest and honorable person to a fault, and that tends to get me in trouble among the scammers and criminals running corporate america. The moral adjustment I made in response to that situation is that it's right and good to slack off as much as I can possibly get away with. I still think of myself as a hard-working person, since I'm not responsible for the external context that demands that I slack off to survive.

I first caught myself doing this in high school when I told some friends that I believed it was wrong to lie, but morally ok to lie to teachers. Why? I couldn't explain it back then. It was because teachers wielded unjust power in an authoritarian system and on some level I sensed that their system was designed to destroy an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid like me. To this day I maintain I was morally right to cheat on my homework as often as possible. I still learned plenty, I just suffered a little less than the authorities thought I should, and kept my grades just high enough to get by.

[mbrainspaz]

hats off to all the other homies who survived pre-social media times.

"I really wish someone would come in and find me writeing this because then I could slam this book closed and act like it was something privit, which would ofcourse make them ciorios and then I would make them read it!!"

-my childhood journal 10.11.03

[mbrainspaz]

March 30 2023 thought I'd go gather berries down by the creek and went feral. We're just hungry creatures.

why do we have desk jobs

[mbrainspaz]

I should not have a horse right now. I know that. It's the biggest universal fluke. I ended up with him because during a year when I was sick and depressed and had 8$ to my name I found some boomers' email addresses on google maps and they thought I looked trustworthy enough to babysit their ranch. 3 years later I spent every last cent in my bank account to buy a horse they'd been taking care of for a boarder who hadn't visited in 5+ years. I was still boondocking in a leaky trailer at the time. It was an insane thing to do, and I only did it to secure my place in the local horse industry (so I told myself). Did I mention this horse is a semi-retired Grand Prix trained Friesian. I didn't ask for that. I thought if I ever got a horse it would be a $1 thoroughbred or a quarter horse nobody wanted. What's even wilder is that owning a horse did get me another job. When I needed it the ever-mysterious Rich Horse Lady Network landed me a 2 year gig with free board where I was able to recoup and make more connections that dropped me back in the art/tech industry just as the last ranch job collapsed beneath me. I still can't afford a horse but for the next day, week, month, year... however long this fever dream lasts, there's not a thing I would've done differently just to have another heartbeat of this alternate timeline I hijacked where I got to live my dream—even though I can barely afford a place to live.

The way my life has been going I might never have a horse again, but I tell myself that's alright. I already had one more than I should have had.

He was born when I was 5 years old, and it could've been the same night I remember holding my black horse plushie at a sleepover and wishing with every fiber of my being that it would come to life. The magic worked. It just took me 20 years to find him.

[mbrainspaz]

Very long convo with gran today that was basically me just rehashing points I'd made before but all at once. I think I got her to see how her situation where she wrote and burned a letter to her deceased abusive mom is not the same as me not wanting to make small talk with my aggressively evangelical mother who doesn't respect my autonomy and reports on me to my abusive dad. I don't think gran's accepted that this isn't a problem she can 'fix.' She knows I've given my mom some assigned reading to try and get us to a point where we can actually have an informed conversation about gender and maybe politics. But the fact is that while she adheres to biblical fundamentalist beliefs my mom will never be able to respect me, and those beliefs mean more to her than I do. Nothing anybody can do to change that.

Gran still wants to ramble on about the 'grudges' and 'hate' I'm 'holding on to,' so that probably won't be the last I hear of that. She can't grasp that I don't have any anger toward them. Just a feeling of disappointment. She can't understand that all I did was recognize these people in my life who were acting in a way that was unhealthy toward me, ask them to stop, and when they didn't, I removed myself. Of course, gran doesn't respect me very much either, not enough to care about my name or pronouns or any of the things I'm really passionate about, so it's weird having these talks over and over again.

She tried several times to convince me that my relationship with my mom would be solved if we just agreed to never talk politics or religion again. I don't understand how anyone could think that would work in any kind of meaningful relationship. I asked her what the point of pretending to get along with my mom would be and she didn't really have an answer. I smiled and pretended to be civil in my dad's company for two years and what did that solve? Now I had to block his number and he's been sending me sinister vague emails. A relationship without mutual trust and respect is one you're better off without.

Most interesting part of the convo was when I asked her what the best case scenario looks like for her. I asked her what she thinks having a loving family means. All I could get out of her was 'I wish you could go to the lake with us again,' by which I'm gonna assume she means Quality Time. All she wants is to be surrounded by family and friends at the lake. That's probably doable, honestly. I'd still go to the lake and drink all my uncle's whisky while I write my book in the corner with my headphones on so that I don't have to listen to all the latest morally depraved conservative talking points. It's not like my dad will ever go to the lake because he's too homophobic to visit a house owned by my gay uncle (who is also a conservative yeah). The only barriers to me visiting are usually my latest peasant labor situation or my uncle's partner deciding he doesn't want dogs on the designer carpets. I've offered to camp in my car with the dogs. C'mon, that would be objectively funny on their fountain rotunda driveway. Me? I still want a family that cares enough to go to a protest or a rally with me. Hell, I'd settle for a family that clicked 'like' on my comic posts or showed up once a year to watch me ride a horse. I feel like that's not a huge ask but it would make me feel loved. They don't do those things because they haven't taken time to understand or care about me in a decade. There have been times when they showed up for me in the past. There were times when I felt loved. That was a long time ago. I don't think enough people ask themselves what a loving family looks like.

Then we went shopping at a decor store and I bought a pumpkin with a cute little snake on it. Gran gave me a hug goodbye and her perfume still smells like home. I love her for caring enough to meet up and talk to me even if we didn't 'fix' anything.

[mbrainspaz]

It’s funny how every friend I ran my new name past initially had something negative to say about it… until I asked a trans friend. At the time I didn’t even associate the name change with gender. I just wanted a name I liked. And in the end all I needed was for one person to believe that I knew myself.

[mbrainspaz]

I experienced some strange things as the only ‘English’ kid in my elementary school but one of the strangest has to be the time a teacher I’d never seen before asked to borrow me in the middle of class. My 3rd grade teacher excused me and I followed this strange teacher downstairs to an unfamiliar corner of the school. She stopped outside a classroom, crouched down to my level, and pointed at a device on the wall, unshed hysteric tears making her eyes bright.

*translated from German*

“‘wHat is the English word for THAT?” she asked me.

Oh, she was the School’s English teacher. No wonder we’d never met. I looked at the device in the wall while my brain made panicked screeching sounds. I did not know what the English word for that was. I did not know if I was forgetting it under pressure or if nobody had ever, in my short life, told me the name of that device.

“It’s not coming to me,” I said, embarrassed.

The teacher very seriously held up an electric cord and said, “I know this is a ‘plug,’ but what is this called?” She pointed again at the little white panel on the wall with four holes in it. No matter how much I wanted to help her I couldn’t.

“‘Plug’ is the only word I can think of. I don’t know...”

Her head hung in defeat. I felt so bad for her. I had failed her.

But like a responsible adult her frustration broke with laughter. She thanked me for my help—unhelpful as I’d been—and sent me back to class.

I don’t know if I went home to my mom and shouted “WHAT ARE THOSE?!” while pointing dramatically at the nearest one but that seems like something I would do. I learned the word at some point, but every time I reach for it I still get echoes of that poor English teacher who went to a 3rd grader for help and didn’t get it.

Outlet. That is an outlet.