around me black bats dive up from the dark.

right now, you've got to take care of yourself. you can do more things when you're calmer. you don't have to rush to be calmer and also, it won't work if you do. just take the time you need.

put a podcast on.

good job!

now. play a game. try fallen london. or the nouns game. or alpacas.

if you're not supposed to do exercises that hurt above a 5-6 and you're physically below that but you're in tears and having flashbacks, you have to stop doing the activity. because you are in pain way above a six. just not in your muscles.

it's not safe and it's not kind and it's not reparenting.

it's frustrating when your disabilities make it hard to manage your other disabilities. you still have to stop when it hurts.

food

we have not been doing great on nutrients lately

good job eating cereal!

look at the burrito when you want lunch.

if the burrito doesn't work, heat up both mini quesadillas

dinner is the mini quesadillas (if burrito) or else it's the chicken sausage.

activities (soup)

good news: you don't have to go anywhere today! and nobody is going to come here!

do your PT exercises

text your volunteer supervisor. I know. but text her.

activities (aspirational)

hit your word counts today

tabletop homework counts!

read to page 150 of Sleeping Giants. keep reading if you want.

finish the Fast Heart research. make a list of Spooky Things. figure out how to get the robot feeling without the robot. give the shithead an intermittent reinforcement device.

write some of Fast Heart if you need word count. unless you got really detailed on tabletop.

activities (rest ethic)

organize your files some more. this became a time vortex yesterday so set a strident alarm if you don't want it to again.

(yes, this counts as resting. I put a podcast on and organize things neatly. it's soothing as hell)

alpaca game. nouns game.

my beautiful wife, podcasts.

and he didn't yell at me. he said that a five or a six was a good stopping point and if exercise was ever making the pain worse, I should stop doing it.

and I was doing appeasement behaviors about how when you're a kid in PT they don't say that to you, they tell you to push through it. and he was kind. and.

it wasn't my PT who said that when I was a kid. I remember my elementary school PT. she was calm and kind and sensible and she talked to me like I was a person. I took the school bus with her daughter when I went to private school.

she didn't do that.

that was my parents. whenever I told them that something they were forcing me to do was painful, they said good! it's good for you!

I told my dad that I couldn't get up after the yoga class they made me take, that I had to lie on the floor while the beginner ballet class filtered in and croakily promise I'd leave in a minute because I couldn't move yet.

good! my dad said. that's what exercise is supposed to feel like!

(I don't think he routinely exercises until he cannot physically stand up. he thought I was being hyperbolic)

when I was in fifth grade, which is one of the years I saw the sensible, kind PT, I had lyme disease. my gym teacher, another sensible, kind woman took me aside when I was cleared to go to gym again and told me to sit out as many activities as I wanted and listen to my body because lyme disease is really hard on your joints and I had to be careful.

and like an idiot, like a child, like someone who trusted adults wanted the best for me, I told my parents she had said this. my mom respected this gym teacher. she'd been the one who realized the girl in my brother's grade was having the pediatric stroke and saved her life.

my dad scolded me like I had done something wrong. I hadn't sat out any activities. I'd just considered that I could. I was just telling him someone told me I should.

"don't you use your lyme disease as a crutch! I don't want you to sit out a single activity." lazy again, spoiled, trying to get away with it.

I guess the very smart gym teacher only knew anything when she was talking about other people's kids!

crying in the shower, crying over something that happened twenty-three years ago. crying because I was surrounded by kind adults who did their best and I was doing PT exercises and I know I wasn't self-reporting my pain because I watched myself, a thirty-four year old adult, lie to a physical therapist who had just explicitly told me to tell him if something hurt.

he just told me! and he said "does that hurt?" and it did and I knew what he wanted me to say because we had just discussed this.

and I said "I can't really answer that question" because if I told him how much it hurt, he might tell me to sit down and then I'd be sitting down in PT, which Isn't Allowed.

it wasn't totally conscious. I wasn't having this whole thought. but I knew it hurt and I was scared to tell him it hurt because he might tell me to stop exercising and that would be Bad somehow.

and if I'm doing that now in my thirties, what was happening when I was nine and ten and eleven and I lived in their house and didn't know I had cerebral palsy?

and I feel like I owe that elementary school PT an apology for making her look bad when I was trying to explain myself to my adult PT. that's not fair.

it's a miracle I survived to eighteen and not just because of the medical neglect.

at least they are not present in the oubliette. at least I can buy my own groceries.

and the thing about reparenting yourself is that you have to do it consistently. if you want your body to tell you when you're hungry or in pain, you have to respond when it does.

you have to eat even though they think you eat too much. you have to rest even though they think you rest too much. every time.

sometimes I get frustrated because it feels like I have a lot of needs.

I get hungry several times a day, sometimes only an hour or two after the last time I eat. probably that's normal.

I'm in pain a lot of the time. more often than not. maybe always. I'm very reactive. I get overstimulated and tired very easily and it takes me longer than I want to regulate/re-charge.

I used to not notice/respond to a lot of the things they say/do and now it hurts my feelings every time. probably that's normal, too.

when Zoe first met them, my dad drove us twenty minutes back from the train station and she counted how many times he called me stupid, spoiled, or selfish. he wasn't mad at me, either. he was being affectionate.

I'd registered one or two mean comments but I didn't care and I was surprised by the number just because it seemed like a lot to get through in twenty minutes.

they haven't gotten nicer, although they keep telling me they're "walking on eggshells" now.

"we're trying so hard not to upset you" are you?

anyway. the thing is, I can see why you would train your child not to notice pain or hunger or sensory overload or cruelty. like, as an adult I'm always doing things like objecting to their comments or asking for a snack or saying no.

or telling the truth when my dad asks how my back feels today. he wants me to say "better today!" after two days of PT exercises and one appointment. that's not true, though, so I said "about the same" and he said "maybe a little better?" and I said "it's about the same most days."

it wouldn't offend me that he desperately wants to hear that I'm feeling better if he didn't get what he wanted when I was a kid by teaching me not to notice I was suffering.

and I did notice I was suffering! but in an iceberg way.

anyway. I am committed to responding to my needs when I notice them. as often as possible. treating myself the way I want her to have been treated. consistently. even when it gets me looks or comments or it's tiring.

because the alternative is mean. and also going to kill me. but mostly, it's mean. I wouldn't treat someone I loved that way.