Mediocre And Predictable

It might take time. More than has already passed, but it will get better.

than has already passed, but

it will get better.

I still have that miserable 14-year-old in me, and I now get to give her the sweetness and kindness and love and encouragement and support that she needed. That I still need.

I still have the burnt-out 24-year-old in me as well, and I now get to give her the care and comfort and rest and fun that she needed. That I still need.

Being a grown-up now, I have the resources and understanding to do that.

There’s a lot of hate on widowers and I saw a woman say “You cannot compete with a dead woman.” which is perhaps a reasonable statement to say if he’s constantly comparing you to his dead partner but that wasn’t what the post was about. And I realized “Oh my God, these people genuinely feel like they’re constantly in competition with their spouse’s exes and the ex being dead makes them feel insecure that they cannot best her.”

1) I am widowed. my Beloved Wife of Blessed Memory(tm) died in 2019

2) I got together with my current partner about 18 months later

3) when I am committing acts of Foolishness my current partner loves to gesture at the sky to my dead wife, like "do you see this shit, my liege" and regularly says to me things like "[wife's name] was right about this" when my Foolishness inevitably comes back to bite me in the ass

4) this happens. all the time

more importantly:

5) my current partner is on tumblr

6) they love to incessantly send me posts

WHICH MEANS:

7) they just sent me this post with this commentary:

I’m sorry but that’s thinking way too small, hear me out:

We need to have Miss Piggy as Odysseus, and Kermit as Penelope.

Think about it… who’s the more fickle, prideful, warlike one in that relationship? Who is absolutely ready to go ham, at a moment’s notice?

If you are scared of something, do it anyway. If you feel anxious, you must do things that make you scared. Get out of your comfort zone. Tell your fears they are wrong. Act as though you are not afraid. Ignore, ignore, ignore, silence, silence, silence.

It hurt me-- it is a horrible psychological weight to carry for a child to be certain that she will suffer unbearably over and over and that she will never deserve sympathy or compassion for it-- but it is also fundamentally incurious and disconnected.

If your body expresses something that is inconvenient or hard to understand, just silence and ignore it, because the things the body wants are wrong and the things the body communicates are false.

Look, I got to thinking about this when reading scientific articles about nutrition.

So much research is conducted about why people eat foods that are Wrong and Bad. But the research is conducted around an already-known truth, like a tree that has grown around a metal fence: people eat wrong and bad food because people like pleasure and avoid discomfort, and "bad" foods are pleasurable whereas healthy foods are not.

I feel a hole big enough for the wind to howl through: the joyful table, the raw ecstasy of staining my fingers with raspberries in the thicket, the peaceful bubbling of soup on the stove, salsa canned from vegetables in our garden. Stir-fried wild mushrooms, pawpaws messily devoured in the woods, the fragrance of soil and green and growing things. Curry powder. Smoked paprika. Ginger. Allspice. Garlic and onions hitting a hot pan. Nourishment. Connection. Caretaking. Safety. Pleasure. Pleasure.

Why does nobody ask, What is the goodness of food? What makes food good? Why does nobody say, Let's explore and study that goodness. Let's understand it deeply. Let's investigate the pleasure we feel, the condition of satisfaction of the things our bodies crave and need, the sense of belonging and interconnectedness that is present when good food is shared among friends. What does it mean to be nourished? To be satisfied? To feel peacefulness and comfort in the act of eating?

Comfort must be one of the least understood things in the world. No one is curious about the secrets it may hold.

Why was I burdened with the obligation to get over my fear and never encouraged to explore what would it mean to feel safe?

The goal of the therapy and medications was clear, to get my fear to a manageable enough level that I could "function" "normally." Safety was not part of it, the feeling or the reality.

The physiological functions and maladaptive thought patterns of fear were exhaustively discussed and explained to me. They only talked to me about the fear. How to ignore it. How to dominate it. How to force the physiological process of it to stop. How to manage it. How to understand and confound its patterns.

No one talked to me about safety. How it unfolded in the body. What it felt like. How to recognize when I was feeling it.

It was an attitude of profound incuriosity. I was never prompted or encouraged to ask, and no one else in the world seemed to ask: What does it mean for a person to feel safe? What does it feel like when I am safe? What things create that condition of safety? What are my safety needs? How is safety felt in my body? What can my body tell me about what I need to feel safe?

It is this flat, dull insistence that forcing oneself into what causes pain and discomfort automatically orients one in the direction of growth, whereas comfort and pleasure provide no information or guidance.

They don't like our rainbows, they don't like cosplay or costumes, they don't like cultural festivals.

Like... fun for them has very strict rules. Like it can't be too outlandish, it has to be about the country or have religion attached to it somehow, there's an itinerary. Like... the Freedom 250 thing has a baptism pool. The fun has to be a specific way or its out of line.

I'm in a picture with my friends, having fun at a parade in our dance costumes (which no one seems to complain about when they're on a stage) and they're like... "freak show," "lunatics," etc... and its like... yes? And?

Its a parade, youre supposed to provide a spectacle or you end up like the Christmas parade we were too queer to be in. (It was a requirement by the organizers to have the float themed around the birth of christ somehow. It was the saddest parade ever and I dont know why i wanted to be in it so bad.)

I bring my colorful flow props to everything. People spit on me, tell me im going to hell, preach at me while im just vibing. Like they see all the fun im having and have a visceral reaction to it. Like... how dare I make my lifestyle look fun and carefree in front of the impressionable youths? (My lifestyle is fun and carefree! I have a life that I love outside of my sexuality, but I also love being out and queer.)

A comment thats going to stick with me for awhile was 'i don't care if they're gay, but why do they have to be weird?'

And like... i am weird, yeah. For sure! But children's media for most of my young years was about embracing weirdness, so i figured it was okay. Plus, performers are often weird.

Im having fun in a way that doesn't fall into the three acceptable categories of fun: faith, country, or family.

I can't tell if this specific image is from an ICE protest or No Kings rally, but just fucking look at the sheer absurdity of what's happening here. There is a single person wearing an inflatable frog costume, standing quietly but confidently, hands on its fat little hips, in the middle of a dark street. And there's countless uniformed militia who are armed to the teeth standing around the lone frog - and the armed militia are the ones clearly on the back foot. They are unsettled, discomfitted, unsure what to do.

This strategy has been called tactical frivolity. It's a great way to puncture and deflate (pun intended) the overblown sense of gravitas and self-important victimhood that authoritarianism requires to survive.

Here's some excerpts of an interview of L.M. Bogard, who first coined the term:

"...authoritarians don't like to be laughed at," Prof Bogad says. This kind of symbolism works because "without even giving a speech, you are undermining the authoritarian script".

As protesters take on a powerful opposition, a silly costume takes control of the optics. "It makes it look worse if you respond with violence," he says.

Authoritarianism is based on the perception that you are both superior to everyone else and under attack from everyone else. This is, of course, Very Serious. So you've built your very serious army with your very serious uniforms and your very serious slogans and tattoos, waving your very serious flag. Because this is, again, Very Very Serious. Everyone Else needs to take this as seriously as you do.

And if the rest of us don't, it completely destroys the illusion. If we respond to all their puffing and posturing by poking fun at them in a silly and harmless way - or, far worse, if we're just having our own fun and living our own lives and it's not about them at all - it feels like an attack.

But when someone's doing the macarena dressed as an inflatable frog, there's really no way to beat the shit out of them without looking like an asshole.

Since the dawn of time, bigots have deflected any appeals for better behavior with "it's just a joke bro", but they get absolutely furious when anyone else does the same.

People with authoritarian beliefs get uncomfortable when they watch people they consider inferior outsiders having a blast without hurting anybody - people they can only vilify by calling them monsters and perverts who are spending every waking second attacking the one true religion and stuff - because our joy just doesn't fit into their paradigm.