It's Ok to Be With Yourself

because in your private life you actually love men. a lot of men are close to you, are your family or your dearest friends or your partner; are symbols of the good ones. and you've met so many good men, really, have so many good memories with them. and if you were genuinely pressed about it, you'd say that all genders have the same capacity for evil, it's just shaped differently depending on societal expectations. after all, your high school bullies were other girls.

but how can you tell other people about the anger. because it isn't the first-burn anger, it isn't the obvious knife-in-the-dark. it is the second anger that does it for you. that when you say i'm scared, the response is not curiosity and gentleness, but instead a desire to reform. that they resent you for being scared, for being unwilling. that you had the gall to say no. that you had the temerity to dare to say - i'm not comfortable with that behavior in my home.

because, yes, isn't the assumption of your guilt? you should have given him a chance or been better-natured or sweeter or less like a nagging bitch. there's always something the woman could have done, and then of course the man wouldn't have attacked her - men are protectors, right, so something you did must have made him broken. (you googled it once. to your knowledge, there is no study that proves that men are instinctually more "protective" than women - in fact, most studies you found suggest that there's no gendered difference there whatsoever).

and that anger is different, and it smells different, and you know it is different, because it tastes like iron. if it had been a bear, for example, and you'd said - there's been a bear sighting on the path, i'm bringing bear spray while i go running - no one would blink an eye. yes, bring the spray! wear a bell! in fact, everyone would call you stupid if you died without doing those things. you know this.

but if you say - i don't walk in that part of town anymore, i got followed once and it scared me - the anger, then. as if you are taking something from someone, rather than deleting freedom from your own life. you have to make sure your friends have your location before a date. you can't just get in the uber, you need to send info about the ride. you can't ride the train in that outfit, you need a specific "between outfit" you throw over everything. you can't lose your phone or your wallet or your keys, what if something happens. you can't leave your drink unattended. you can't even really turn someone down, have mastered the art of doing it delicately.

you have all the tricks and then some. how many times have you (with no boyfriend to speak of) said - i have a boyfriend. or invented a cop dad. or made up some - good!! - man in your life, to sit as a bulwark between you and another man. and be good when you do it. they get angry if it's too obvious that you find this interaction spooky.

and still that anger. how quickly it floods into each of these interactions. in the comments or in the mouths of people who you thought were your friends. and, like, you're aware of the statistics - it wouldn't be a stranger or whatever. you're not that worried about a bear, either. but then the anger comes out, after - and you see it on the lips and tongues of so fucking many. the anger that you even dared to say "i would chose the bear and die happy."

and it's not just this specific moment, because it happens fucking all the time, but it's the amount of hand-holding and gentle explanations and all of it, the placating. while in this silly, milquetoast critique, all you have effectively said is: "i am very scared, and this world feels like it punishes me for having this body." and yet the response was immediately: i hope you die about that. like you, being scared - it's incredibly aggravating. like they find your discomfort - even metaphorical - to be stealing from them. like if they could just force you into understanding, surely you'd find their point of view, underneath.

you recently told a story to a friend; prefacing it with it's actually kind of funny but - and then you accidentally spilled out a whole narrative, one of the bad things that had happened to you. she had looked at you like you were suddenly made of stone. it was horror. what was on her face was abject, heartbreaking horror. you'd laughed - wait was that funny or was that just a traumatic backstory kind of thing.

of course you're aware it's likely a simple equation: if you make fun of it first, nobody else can get the jump on you. it's already a joke, a punchline. you can't be taken by surprise that way.

but it actually hadn't even been that bad of a story. it had been barely a corner of the entire blanket; barely a stitch. you thought it was funny because it was one of the only places that have cooled down enough now that you can hold them up to the light and analyze them. sure, the rest of the weaving was alight. but against the heat of the rest of it, you had felt like: of course this one fraction is so funny. it was just so stupid, so incongruous with reality.

you felt bad about it immediately. started babbling about anything else. tried to shift the conversation to any-other-topic. it wasn't like you meant to "trauma dump" (which, in your case, happens any time you even vaguely refer to your past or to your mental health or to your family or to any of the other one million things you survived quietly). and you did the thing you always do - you made light of it. you made it seem easy to carry. you tried to buoy her mood; worried you upset her just for - for what? telling the truth?

the rest of the picture - of the story - that stuff is obviously traumatic. but there were these times where it felt like clarity would come down and suddenly strike everything into a strange contrast; chiaroscuro that accented the banality of evil. there were places where the simplicity of it - the sheer cruelty, the neglect, the bald-faced and insipid lies and betrayal - it suddenly made the entire painting feel weirdly absurd. these small, precise details where you would just have to laugh to withstand it; to grasp the strange impossible notion that you saw that and you lived through it.

you huffed out a breath and waved it away and tried to people-please and walked it back and tried to fawn and felt bad about the way you'd overstepped and felt bad about ruining the moment. a part of you had quietly whined that it really was funny, when you look at it, when you take in the scope of the thing, really. that there's a good amount of humor in irony.

because what else is there? if you just let the truth be the truth, if that moment isn't funny - then it's all just real. you have no power over that. it will sear through you into the bone. you have no idea how else to get out. and besides, isn't it sort of powerful? you're making a mockery of what hurt you. you're able to still feel glee and joy, which you revel in because fuck 'em. you will be funny and kindhearted and sweet. you are a blade that outshone the fire of your forge. you are a court jester in the face of the king's awful wrath.

felt like drawing rikku again!

lulu // FFX

i am so deeply ashamed i loved you like that; wide and open and honest. i used to feel excited about you; i wrote poems about how perfect we fit - before i knew what you were hiding, i mean. the you that never existed. the worst part is that i can lie to myself so well. that i genuinely tried to believe in it.

before you, anger was my least favorite emotion. i told you - i am very slow to anger, actually. most people called me good natured. i just don't offend very easily. anger reminds me of bad men, of emotional immaturity.

today in therapy we were discussing an argument i still feel guilty about. you had never accepted an apology; you held it over my head for months. i kept talking about how i could have been a better person, a better partner. how i raised my voice, got defensive. how i deserved it. my therapist said, out loud, this was also part of the abuse.

and something about that, how starkly he phrased it. nodding at me. the rain was falling. just like that, this thing that i was never allowed to pronounce - just being said like that. the anger came up again, all around me; somehow light and fast and easy.

somewhere in DC, you are probably already "healed" and over it and figuring out ways to pretend it never happened. you are probably telling everyone who will listen that i'm just your newest crazy ex-girlfriend. you are probably lying to some poor girl; telling her all the same shit you told me, feeding her the same bullshit story. (i hope she figures out who you are faster than i did. i hope she survives you, whoever the next girl is).

and i'm fucking angry. i am angry at the time you stole from me, at the ways you broke me. i once spent hours writing down all the individual ways you abused me, line after line, like some kind of discordant harmony. i am angry i will never get an honest apology. i am angry that you likely feel no remorse, that you will never take accountability. i am angry that even feeling anger makes me feel like you're winning. that some part of me still reacts to you. i want to feel nothing.

anger is a secondary emotion. i don't know these days if the other side of her is fear, or injustice, or something more sinister. i start thinking about something you said or did; and the anger hisses up, flaring against my ribs. all the ways i never lashed out. all the things i left unsaid. all the ways i silenced myself - because i didn't want to hurt you, like a fucking idiot.

and i love her, i think. she hops around in my lap, warm and good and glowing. she nuzzles her nose against my wrist. in my hands she is a swordhilt. in my hands she is an open door. in my hands she is a hellhound.

but empathy and communication are innately a woman's trait, right? at least, that's how they are gendered. isn't that how we explain away all those so-called "biological" differences in roles between men and women. isn't that why so many women take on emotional labor. why we dominate communication-based fields. women are supposed to be talkative, gossipy. women are just better, supposedly, at anything "feelings"-oriented. if it's natural - well, no fault of the system!

i cannot tell you how carefully the average woman watches what she says. not every woman, certainly - there are genuine assholes in every gender. but an angry woman is very quickly labelled bitchy or hysterical. we are supposed to be catty, not outright violent. a scared woman yelling is overreacting. even laughing may be labelled shrill. how many of us have written down our feelings into the notes app first. journaled about it before raising our voices. went to the seminar on conflict resolution.

meanwhile masculinity is recalcitrant. it is restrained. it is stoic. a "real" man rarely speaks. unless it is a violent rage, he holds it all in. (ironically, a man on one of their 3 million podcasts says men take action, we don't speak). within the last 5 hours, my father said that real women don't "overtake" their man. they let the man just "be" a man. and how many times have men made the second joke - well, of course i'm not listening. that the wife babbles in the background, and the man (who is somehow straight?) just tries to tune her out in lieu of the television.

so two things must be true at once, then. women need to be entirely aware of and in control of their own emotions - and consistently capable of accurately expressing them to an unwilling, unhelpful audience. men know they don't listen, they're proud of it. but when that communication fails, it is your problem.

but hope springs into eternal damnation, doesn't it. you have had the same conversation with him six, eight, twenty, a hundred times. about how you're feeling burnt out. about how it bothers you when he ignores you and plays video games instead. about how when he doesn't ask you questions about your day, it makes you feel ignored and rejected. about how you need to be comforted. you have laid it all out for him, tried to make it as simple and executable as a manager's directive - here is what i need and how to get it. short of a powerpoint presentation, you've tried everything.

and then you see the socks on the wet bathroom floor and you've asked him so many times to not leave clothing there, it will get covered in mold, and you hate picking up wet clothes. work was hard and your back is hurting again and you also need to take care of a million more things. you are planning a trip and you have to pick up a friend's birthday present and you need to figure out dinner again. and there are socks on the ground, and you know logically the problem is essentially nonexistent. it is essentially nothing, in the grand scheme of things.

so what are you going to do about it? go into the next room and explode at him? you've done that before, you were labelled crazy for being upset at socks. or you could just pick up the socks and avoid the confrontation, but it will make you fucking angry at him, which will label you cold and a bitch. you could leave the socks to mold (fuck his weaponized incompetence) but you just don't want to be in the same house where mold is. and you could go out there, and again fucking explain to him - i work too. i am fucking exhausted, and this is overwhelming. it is my house too. please don't make me do your chores for you. just for him to mock you. oh socks aren't such a big thing and you were already cleaning.

so you pick up the socks, because of course you do. and you picture the entire fucking conversation, and how you could possibly frame it in a way that actually makes sense. how you could possibly communicate to a being that sometimes appears to only speak to you in a different language. hurr durr, men are just so stupid about these things. they can't help it! it's natural! it's just how their brains function! he will stare at you slack-jawed and blank-faced, and that will make you want to actually fucking punch him. the loneliness that will cause - it could tear you in twain.

but the longer it takes for him to notice your ire, the more it makes you sad and sick and devastated. you're a feminist. you promised yourself you would never love a person who causes you this kind of distress. but he does eventually notice. and he will be strange and kind of already-irritated. he will say why are you upset. he will not use kind, thoughtful language. he will treat it like a game, like something you created. he will imply, however casually, you are being over-sensitive. and you will say i'm fine because honestly you are trying to be fine about it. you want to let it pass. you don't want to be like this. and later he will ask again; and you repeat it. when you finally (if ever) actually admit - you left your socks on the wet floor again - he will laugh, act like you could have always complained about it. and at that point, the rage will have mostly burned off. you will feel a little bit silly too. like maybe you shouldn't have ever been upset about it.

he will not reflect on his actions. he will not worry about why it's happening. he will chalk it up to one of those crazy distances between men and women; like you are some kind of alien robot that functions without clear and present instruction. as if you never talked to him. as if he has never met a woman. as if you are so foreign you might as well be an octopus to him. all those nights you've wept, all those careful conversations - well; who knows the mind of women.

and then he will get up on stage. and he will say - isn't this a funny thing? they know they're upset, but they won't tell you why! you're just supposed to guess!

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat, so i'm not sure if i get half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

the governmental website for covid information is now propaganda. not a joke, not hyperbole, not an exaggeration: it's genuinely the definition of propaganda. this is biased misinformation determined to push a political stance. it is being hosted on a government server. it looks like something you'd find in a "top 10 weird internet conspiracy stories (and their origins)" youtube video.

my brother called me when he saw it. he had me type it into google. for a second i legitimately thought that i had typed something wrong. we have both taught college: we have both said "a .gov site is usually a reliable resource." i just stared at my phone for a long, long time.

i thought about how when i was a kid, conspiracy theories were mostly fun and a little spooky. unserious. i remember reading some long, complicated website about how avril lavigne is dead. how bigfoot is real. it used to be funny-and-a-joke.

over seven million people (globally) have died from covid. america has the highest death rate with over 1.2 million people.

the thing is - every time a person dies from something like a mass shooting or poverty or treatable illness - we are told don't make it political. we are told it's just something that can happen. we are told it's sad but what can you do!

the president of the united states is using a government website to try to erase the very-real deaths that he personally caused due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. the president of the united states is using a government server to host propaganda, undermine science and medicine, and encourage distrust amongst his followers.

nothing is going to happen. nobody's gonna, like, do anything about it. it's a thursday today, and we are just going to move on from this like we have been moving on from everything else.

yesterday my brother was outside walking his dog, mask included. a guy in a truck pulls up and shouts something about covid and whatever the fuck else. my brother has a good sense of humor, described it to me as enthusiastic! i hadn't ever been catcalled before, this was new and therefore thrilling! i do see why you hate it, though. like. i have actual covid, does he want me to cough on him?

my brother doesn't get extra time off work anymore, because the cdc practically doesn't exist. my brother said i'm not exposing 200 students to covid. his boss shrugged and said: who cares? they're going to get it eventually anyway. like it isn't a pandemic.

they will tell you otherwise. they will sob to you about how you're the problem. they will suddenly throw a book of sins at you - how you're manipulative, shouty, or whatever other thing fits their narrative. sometimes this will work, and you'll find yourself apologizing - usually for hours, days, months. i want you to write down when that happens, because it will help you let go when it's time to leave.

they will attack you on every front. they will re-write the entire encounter so that you are the aggressor. they will be horrified if you call it gaslighting, but you will know it's gaslighting because it's a stage beyond lying. genuinely, your world feels impossible and fake; like everything they see is somehow different than what you are seeing. (if it's legal in your state and you can get away with it without being caught, consider recording your arguments and listening back when you're safe).

they will try to imply you have mental health issues, or that you're deeply troubled and just unaware of it. it doesn't matter how kind, serene, and well-adjusted you are - they will make you feel crazy.

and the thing is that it works, because they are why you feel crazy. abusers particularly love targeting neurodivergent or otherwise minoritized populations. they love being able to point to any traumatic history you have. they will cite real things you experienced (panic attacks, depressive episodes) as evidence you're unwell.

they will figure out how to trigger you. if the silent treatment gets you riled enough to apologize, they will ice you out. whatever it is, they will figure out how to make you beg to just talk, and then act like it is a gift they're giving you another chance.

and since most of the time you're a regular guy, it's really hard to ignore the above multi-pronged attack. many of us do feel bad when we lash out or snap. we do feel shame and guilt. we spend our time wondering - was that demon inside me all this time? am i the reason this person usually acts like this?

you will listen to a parent merrily tell you: oh i think spanking is the way to go. sometimes they will even suggest you, the teacher, spank the kid if this infant misbehaves - it makes the hair on your neck stand up. you, meanwhile, have never needed to injure a child to control a classroom of 30 of them.

this is very often the same parent who is mortified about the body. they can handle their child's mortification, but not their own. simple, basic-use plain language for genitals is abhorrent to them. "that dog has a penis" - a neutral statement, just a child making an observation like any other - is usually punished or treated as a swear word. the child (particularly a girl child) is taught to refer to their own body in objectification: "my cookie" "my button" "my ding-dong" or other obfuscations.

this is, according to many conservatives, an effort to "protect the innocence" of children. the implication here is that even an acknowledgement of body parts is tantamount to pornographic depictions of sex. (it additionally implies, of course, that sex or any age-appropriate acknowledgement of sex cannot be innocent or without sin - but we will leave that discussion for a different post). teachers, however, on our ever-dissolving islands of sanity, want you to know that plain language can protect children, as it gives them the ability to discuss their own bodies (and potentially any abuse).

it will not surprise you these fearful parents are very often the same parents who are wild-eyed about the acknowledgement of gay or trans individuals. not even in an in-depth discussion - we aren't allowed to mention that nonbinary people exist.

the parent often wails at me. they cannot conceptualize having that conversation with the child. how will they tell their kid about gay people! any discussion on this matter will encourage their child to be depraved, lose their innocence, "turn gay" or somehow otherwise perverted.

any teacher here will roll their eyes. kids don't actually care, unless you make them care. i wish we could make them care - that there was some magic switch to flip where i could force them to have the same passion for math as they have for pokemon. children do not have the same shame parents have until you teach them to.

the conversations these parents fear so much are incredibly, painfully easy. you say, "yeah, some people have two dads, or a stepdad and another dad. some people have two moms. some people have a mom only. families can look very different, but what's important is that you're loved and safe." you say, "yes, that is a vagina. yes, that is a penis. yes, a penis like on your dog. let's leave our clothes on during school, please, we've talked about this." you say, "thank you for telling us your daddy used to be a girl. that's very special. however, we're talking about math right now."

(i've spoken about this before, but i do believe a large portion of the "protect the children" fear stems from the fact many conservatives see queerness as being solely about sex. while sex is an inherent, important part of our lives; we should be able to talk about our partners with the same neutrality as straight people do. it is so normalized for straight couples to say that they're trying for a baby - to actively admit to raw sex - but a gay person admitting to even having a partner can be very politically or professionally dangerous. and all of us have, at some point, probably met the stranger who says how does that even work about our bodies or sex, as if we owe them a dictionary on our experiences).

we have people in powerful positions in the government defending a parent's right to actively strike an (innocent) child, but horrified by their child being exposed to gay people. in certain states, parents are given almost complete free reign to abuse their child at home. often these are the same states with some of the strictest rules against sex education or queer expression. (we don't have time for the gun conversation, but you can fill in the blanks).

one phrase always ends up haunting me - when a parent defends their right to hurt their child with i lived through it and i'm just fine. isn't the point of being a parent to protect our kids from what we experienced? isn't the point to do better than the generation before us? why even have a child if you're not going to show them a better life than the one you lived?

i don't know. i was hit quite a lot. i was raised in a very strict catholic house. i don't think the hitting ever taught me anything except to lie and hide and sneak around. i was raised thinking gay was a bad word.

well you just need to revamp your resume, here's a paid app subscription that can read it for you. rewrite the cover letter they won't read. google jobs in my area and then scrawl through Monster/Indeed/worbly. did you want to save the search? this was posted 98 days ago. over 1 billion applicants! this position is trending.

jobs i actively like doing and get paid for. your search returned no results. easy-apply with HireSpin! easy apply with SparkFire! easy apply with PenisFlash! with a few short clicks, get your information stolen.

watch out! the first 98 links on google are actually scams! they're false postings. oopsie. that business isn't even hiring. that other one is closed permanently. find one that looks halfway legit, google the company and the word "careers". go to their page. scroll past brightly-lit diversity stock photo JOIN US white sans serif. we are a unique, fresh, client-focused stock value capitalism. we are committed to excellence and selling your soul on ebay. we are DRIVEN with POWER to INNOVATE our greed. yippee! our company has big values of divisive decision making, sucking our dicks, and hating work-life balances. our values are to piss in your mouth. sign here and tell us if you have gender issues so we can get ahead of the sexual harassment claim. are you hispanic although let's be real we threw out the resume when we saw your last name.

sign up to LinkHub to access updates from this company. make a HirePlus account to apply. download the PoundLink app. your account has been created, click the link we sent you in 15 minutes. upload that resume. we didn't read the resume, manually fill in the lines now. what is your expected pay grade. oh actually we want hungry people, not people driven by a salary. cut a zero off that number, buddy, this is about opportunity, and we need to be thrifty. highest level of education. autofill is glitching. here is an AI generated set of questions. what is your favorite part of our sexy, sexy company. how do you resolve conflict. will you get our company logo tattooed on your person. warning: while our CEO is guilty of wage theft, we will absolutely refuse to hire a nonviolent felon.

thank you for your interest at WEEBLIX. we actually already filled this position internally. we actually never had that posting. we actually needed you to have 9 years of experience and since you have 10 years we think it might be too many? we'll be texting you. we'll email you. we'll keep your resume. definitely absolutely we won't just completely ignore you. look at your phone, there's already a spam text from Bethany@stealyouridentity. they're hiring!

wait, did you get an interview? well that's special, aren't you lucky. out of 910 jobs you applied to, one answered, finally. and funny story! actually the position isn't exactly as advertised, we are looking for someone curious and dedicated. it's sort of more managerial. no, the pay doesn't change - you won't have any leadership title. now take this 90 minute assessment. in order to be a dog groomer, we need you to explain cell biology. in order to be a copyeditor, write a tiny dissertation about the dwindling supply of helium on the planet. answer our riddles three. great job! we just need to push this up to Tracy in HR who will send it to Rodney who is actually in charge. and then of course it's jay's decision and then greg will need to see you naked and if you survive you'll be given a drug test and a full anal examination.

and of course you'll be hungry this whole time, aren't you, months and months of the same shit. months of no insurance, no meds, no funding, barely able to afford the internet and the phone and the rent - all things you need in order to even apply for our thing. but do it again! do it again and again and again, until you flip inside out and turn into a being of pure dread!

you're not hired yet because you're lazy. there's over one million AI-generated hallucinated jobs in your area. don't worry. with zipruiter, hiring and firing is easier than ever. sign up. stay on-call.