What Am I Doing With My Life?

It's never done that before so I looked it up and turns out Roku TVs have added all sorts of creepy things in the privacy section since I last checked.

One of which being they take screenshots from what you're watching and send them to third parties to identify it.

Fucking hell! Remember when every fucking device in your life wasn't a spy implanted in your home and working against your interests to try and sell your data? Remember how nice that was??

Remember when the TV was just a tool that would play the things you plugged into it?

I had to work various food service and retail jobs right after I escaped a violently physically abusive relationship, and that mixes together just about as well as having to work a strenuous physical labor job right after having both your arms broken. But it was my only option if I wanted to pay the bills and keep food on the table.

Of course customers would get aggressive and hostile with me, of course customers would scream while their faces were red with rage and slam their fists on the counter or even try to physically threaten me. And of course given my very fresh and very untreated PTSD I'd freeze and/or fawn and break down afterwards. Even just moderate aggression like a raised voice or a forceful attitude could send me into freeze/fawn because my brain had just spent years being taught that even something as moderate as a raised voice or a forceful attitude meant I was in physical danger if I didn't back down.

And when my co-workers would witness me freeze up in front of a screaming hostile customer the reaction would range from anywhere from annoyance at how pathetic that was of me to later bragging to me about how much better they would have handled that because they're so much tougher and more assertive than me and needed to preen about that. Instead of even bothering to think about why I might be reacting the way I was or trying to empathize they could only jump on the opportunity to judge me as weak to make themselves feel better about themselves.

Or a friend of mine who I distanced myself from after I saw how she reacted to her sister's behavior after leaving an abusive relationship. Her sister was of course afraid of her abuser and afraid of confronting him about custody matters, and my friend would always talk about how frustrated she was with her sister for being "so childish and such a scaredy cat". She knew her sister had just been abused, but all she could do was judge her sister for being "weak" and get mad at her sister for her "weakness".

I have spent years in therapy and have regained a lot of my confidence and assertiveness that I'd lost from the abuse. But it still stings in all sorts of ways when I think of how people reacted to my behavior after I'd just escaped the abuse. How everyone's, and I mean everyone's, reaction to seeing me freeze or fawn or break down when I encountered aggression or hostility was to judge me as weak instead of having any understanding at all, and this includes people who knew I was fresh out of an abusive relationship.

If someone had just broken their arm and couldn't carry anything with their freshly broken arm, any normal decent human being's reaction would be to understand why they couldn't carry anything with a freshly broken arm, and any normal decent human being wouldn't expect them to. It's widely understood that if you judged them as pathetic and weak for not being able to carry anything with a freshly broken arm, and if you started preening about how you're so much stronger and better than them because you can carry things with your unbroken arm, that this makes you a colossal fucking asshole and a generally bad person.

It also means wearing things they might not approve of. Using accommodations that they might not think you need. Not falling for their guilt trips. Eating when you’re hungry, not when it suits them and their idea of your weight or health. Making your own friends instead of seeking the stamp of approval from them.

Of course, some parents are stricter than others, and some use abuse to keep you from expressing yourself. But do what you can, even if it seems small.

Otherwise, when your parents are no longer in the picture, you’ll try to find it somewhere else to get validation. A strict boss, an abusive partner, a selfish friend.

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.