CheerfulNihilism's Quality Suffering

In every subsequent assault, when I was 12, 19, and more than I care to count in an abusive relationship that lasted a decade in my 30s - I learned the same lesson, over and over. I have a strong will. I held onto the belief that justice would prevail for many years past what reason could rationalize. But I learned my lesson, eventually:

1. Justice is fucking expensive, and it's out of my reach

2. When an abuser is assaulting you, you just have to lay still until they're done

3. Abusers are at every level of society, particularly in positions of authority and power, and they protect and center other abusers.

Initially, I was using fake accounts and commenting on any posts that had election content related to the DNC. Then they had me creating the fake accounts, populating them with content and identifying a few personality traits and interests of said fake account.

Eventually the accounts started getting suspended and they moved on to asking us to use our personal accounts. I noped out at that point. I'd had enough. It all felt very "technically legal but morally irresponsible" to me. It made me realize that at least half the accounts I see on any social media platforms at any given time are probably not even real people. Just bots and fake accounts created with the specific intent to sway the public opinion.

Unfortunately, when we came to Oregon I discovered that, unbeknownst to my husband, his dad's side of the family is a raging alcoholic family system. There's alcoholics and there's dry drunks everywhere. Combined with the programming that I grew up with, with regard to filial piety, it's been extremely difficult for me to interact with or associate with his family because of old trauma triggers. Not just old trauma triggers for me, but also for my husband.

But luckily for my husband, he's working as a wildland firefighter so he gets to be away from home for 2 weeks at a time. Being away from home is a struggle, but it's also a way to get respite from unhealthy family dynamics. I have the cultural dictates from how I grew up that demand that I actually in service to my in-laws, and I have the boundaries I learned to implement through years of therapy - frequently those parts of me have been clashing and I viscerally understand the whole "you have two wolves inside you" meme.

I was very upset and destabilized - I was in a tremendously abusive relationship for ten years and share two children with that person. I left in 2016. We don't coparent effectively, he sees the kids randomly and doesn't pay child support.

This year, he ignored the birthday of our older child, Big, but threw a birthday party for our younger child, Mini (at their paternal grandparents house). This caused strife in my household, obviously. How could it not? It's hard to see the kids being treated the same way their dad treated me years ago.

Basically, if it hurts, don't do it. If it feels good - move towards that. We're taught at an early age to not do this, but then we spend a lifetime learning that this is the only sane way forward.

You have to pay to give a TED talk, and it's simply becoming a way for wealthy people to advertise their products and services.

I was bamboozled by a TED talk by a former employer. I didn't know about paying to present at the time. But if you're presenting research that you keep behind a proprietary paywall, I will always look at you with a side eye.

Yes, we need to make a living, but if it's a revolutionary thing that can truly change lives, why are you making people pay a premium for access? Is it only people with money and resources who deserve access to this innovation?

Elizabeth Gilbert talked about grief regarding her partner's death in an IG caption of all places & it really resonated with me.

"I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted,” she explained. “It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.

The only way that I can ‘handle’ Grief, then, is the same way that I ‘handle’ Love — by not ‘handling’ it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility,” she wrote. “…How do you survive the tsunami of Grief? By being willing to experience it, without resistance."

By now the grief is as familiar to me as my Dad used to be. I was in an aggressive self-pitying death spiral when he died. His death from lung cancer was the only thing, in the 12 years that I smoked cigarettes and tried to quit over and over again, that actually led to my quitting nicotine. In the depths of my grief I stopped smoking because I figured if I was already suffering so much, I might as well layer it on.

Anyway here's a picture of my dad in the prime of his life. He wasn't necessarily a classically "good" man. His dad died when he was young and he was raised by his grandparents, he joined the military when he was 16 because he didn't have a birth certificate and lied about his age - things like that were still common in rural areas in the 1920s when he was born. He was deeply flawed, and an alcoholic dependency. But he never raised his voice to me. He internalized all his frustrations and anger. He collected cardiac events and strokes the way some people collect rare coins. He taught me that life is ambivalence. There's Joy and Sadness, and you don't get to feel one without the other, ever. Life is an epic journey, and justice is only available to those with prestige and wealth. If you're in a dark place, keep going - everything is temporary, including joy and grief. All of it belongs.

Everything is temporary, both sadness and happiness, and that gives me great comfort.

I was wracking my brain trying to think of how to do this with my newest student, because she's a tough nut to crack. She's a teenager, and wouldn't even turn her camera on for the first couple of meetings. I let it go after I figured out that it was a psych issue and not a tech support issue.

Then I was like...duh, of course - be vulnerable and authentic.

So I talked at her about how I was so anxious when I was learning to drive that my entire body would hurt from the muscle tension, and I didn't end up getting my license until I was almost 18 because I was anxious (I left out the part where I totalled my parents car haha). I talked to her about how I changed my major three times and ended up being in undergrad for 5 years because I didn't know what to do with my life.

Our session was much less combative and she was actually willing to expand on what had previously been one word monotone responses or just awkward silence.

I ponder the damaging nature of our cultural values in America on a regular basis because I sincerely believe the pathway towards sanity is to deculture yourself as an adult. American values are rooted in the unholy triumvirate of puritanism, the bizarre wealth doctrine that suggests that the Lord shows favor by bestowing "ca$h money, son," and, of course, the worst institution that humans have never been able to give up, slavery.

How do you deculture? Reject the cultural dictates that demand that everyone follow a similar and comprehensible pathway. You don't have to go to college, get a mortgage, get married, have kids. You can opt out of the expected pathways. It's difficult because there's no model, no one to look to to see how to do it - but it also liberating because you get to choose what your life looks like. Instead of a life path that's clearly laid out with no deviations - so that you can see from this moment until the end of your life with a boring clarity, you can embrace groundlessness (as Pema Chodron put it). The amount of criticism you receive will increase exponentially, but you'll also be able to find people who accept you fully for who you are because you become ruthlessly authentic. Then, the only people that want to stick around are the people that really actually do like who you are as a person and not what you do for them or the image or idea that you project that they want to associate with themselves for marketing and branding purposes.

Humans used to be adventurous and now there is a very loud proportion of our population that thinks it's okay to just demand that everyone believes and does only that which we ourselves feel comfortable with. The only thing I can't abide is when someone tries to force me to live and believe as they do. I can't tolerate living with that kind of fear. It's exhausting to think about.

Wealthy people hoard their money like hoarders collect garbage. A healthy system depends of circulation. Stagnation is death. Eternal, unending growth is the definition of cancer. Instead of collecting money, try collecting life experience. When you're dying you leave behind any material wealth you accumulated. The only thing that ever truly belongs to you are the vivid experiences you can string together to tell your life story, and the individuals whose lives you touched in some way.

I made this using the Meitu app. They only do ten second clips with the AI animation tool so I strung together a bunch of scenes.

When you emerge from the underworld, you bring some of the darkness with you - because that contains the new gifts and skills you emerge with. And then your task is to share the gifts and skills with others so they can use them when they eventually go on their own underworld journey of the psyche.

We can't be happy and joyful and growth orientated all the time. That's not natural. Unchecked growth is cancer. There are time when we return to the dark to rest, and grow.

I wish we had a cultural context in the west for the process of journeying underworld. This is when you compost your sorrow and trauma and turn it into rich and fertile soil. Composting requires time, attention, and the right ratio of ingredients.

Pictured below, the ginger that finally sprouted from the root I brought back from Mexico.

I've been a dried out husk of a person for a few months, in survival mode and barely speaking just to those who are closest to me...but still posting memes and chuckling with the audience because it's one of the few things that reminds me that I am connected to a community, even though it's parasocial relationship at best.

I've learned to live with a darkness in my heart. I've contemplated unaliving myself so often that it's not shocking or unnerving anymore. It's an old demon I've befriended. "Hello, darkness, my old friend."

Not everyone has access to this. It's a curse of being overly self-aware and having an internal monologue, I think. The curse of seeing things to clearly. I call it the curse of Cassandra (of Troy). Cursed to speak the truth and never be needed or believed. I recently learned that 50-70% of people do not have an internal monologue and that made sense to me, experientially.

I'm not going to cavalierly recommend that you have tea and cake with your demons. That's a personal underworld journey to undertake, and it's definitely a heroic journey. If you want to take the journey, I have lots of advice but I don't know if I am capable of being anyone's Beatrice to their Dante.

hings I have learned to help me cope:

1. The cascade of neurochemicals that cause emotions take about 90 seconds to travel across the brain. Anything longer than that involves constructing a story around the emotion. Your mind plays tricks on you - you don't have to attach to, blend with, and follow your thoughts. You can learn to observe them.

2. Mindfulness practice sounds like new age hooey, but it has a strong evidence base. Jon Kabat-Zinn used MRI data to demonstrate the brain changes that happen after just 8 weeks of regular practice. It is the only tool I have found that works for me when I have nothing left to give, I found it when I was 18 and I've come back to it relentlessly for 25 years.

I remember taking a class called "the bible as literature" my 9th grade year in an International Baccalaureate high school program. We compared the bible to The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Greek and Roman mythology. I realized that religions are just cultural containers - a holding cell for a constellation of beliefs and traditions that keep a culture connected. When you convert you just publicly declare your intention to integrate into that culture.

I didn't feel a connection to the culture of catholicism - my parents were converts, themselves. My mom is vietnamese and was raised Buddhist. My dad was raised southern Baptist, sort of. His grandma was excommunicated for refusing to give up smoking a pipe and drinking a hot toddy every day.

Anyway, as a kid I felt a connection to something bigger than me. I enjoyed the rituals of catholicism. I prefer the Latin mass because it sounds more ritualistic tbh. I started with a strong faith. As I got older, the cracks began to show. Horrible things happened. There were times I was face down on the floor, begging for someone, anyone, to help me....and no one came. I just eventually got up and put myself back together and limped forward because laying on the floor waiting for help for boring. Years of asking for intercession and receiving none eroded that belief. Now, all that's left is a curiosity.

Every now and then I wonder. I feel around for that belief in god the way you might feel around your mouth with your tongue to feel the empty spot where a tooth used to be. I recognize the empty spot. I miss the feeling that once filled that spot and gave me comfort. But not enough to pick it up again. Asking for help and getting "no" as an answer trains you to stop asking for help.

The Greek and Roman gods make more sense to me. Just inhuman creatures with their own petty desires, who often make mistakes. That makes more sense, objectively, than an omniscient loving god that perpetuates extreme suffering.

"desiring God doesn’t operate in my mind like The God Desire. The desire is real, but I have, I’m afraid, written it off as never leading anywhere. A bit like wanting to win the lottery... I may still feel the desire, but I have long ago given up any sense of a connection between that desire and reality. I am still interested in the desire, and what it tells me, which is — in my opinion — that that desire is what generates God in the human imagination."

sauce:

If you make choices in your life based from a fear of loss, or fear in general, you'll make your world so small. Tour world will become smaller and smaller in an attempt to make everything manageable and under your control. But all that control is an illusion. You can't control everything. And trying to will drive you mad.

When people are struggling in their job, schooling, relationships, etc...I see the advice endlessly: hold on, keep going, don't give up! Rarely does anyone say: let go. Move on. Become something new. Be like a fungus - expand, absorb.

Chamomile is available in these bouquets at most fruit and vegetable stands, and even in the big box stores with a grocery store attached. I've been drinking dried chamomile my entire life and mostly enjoying the mild, grassy and slightly floral taste of the tea.

We got a bundle of fresh chamomile to make tea with. In Spanish, chamomile is called manzanilla, which means "little apple." The name didn't really make sense to me until I had fresh chamomile. It tastes like apples?!?!!

I looked it up, and the name 'Chamomile' comes from the Ancient Greek words kamai (earth) and melon (apple). This made no sense to me until I tasted fresh chamomile.

I'm in Mexico for the month. I feel better when I'm outside of the US. Lighter. Less burdened. The tragic news stories of Uber drivers being gruesomely murdered and mass shootings with AR-15s seem more distant and less destabilizing.

Traveling with neurodivergence is a but different. I think taking longer trips is a must. You can take your time seeing things and if you make sure your home base is not in a busy part of the city, you have a quiet space to retreat to.

Also whenever I go on a long trip the first week is just me decompressing and processing emotions I didn't have the time/space to process in the moment, so I have to build time into my trip to handle that.