#viperslang

Had to force myself to get up again to write this. Funny how the little things derail a moment, a day. I saw a new doctor today and while it was unpleasant to re-visit the majority of events in my life since 18 or so, I’d say it was productive. We/he seemed to drill down on this underlying suicidality/PTSD/joylessness that permeates my existence and operates under this death/pleasure drive function. While I am skeptical of psychometrics, I did appreciate his use of scales to gauge at least a marginally data driven idea of symptomatology. His mainline treatment, to start, is also non-medicinal (DBT) even though we’ll be tweaking medicine slightly. I’ve done some DBT before (mostly group classes in treatment), and the prospect of more extensive work is daunting and exhausting, but his initial hypothesis/plan is completely inline with my own assessments in recent months. DBT is (I believe) the frontline non-medicinal treatment for resistant conditions, especially self-harm / suicidality / borderline pd. While I never considered myself to have such conditions, my actions in recent years metaphorically, if not literally, mirror them. There seems like to be some relevant Jungian / Fruedian psychodynamic interpretation: some death drive funneled through pleasure where pleasure is sometimes pain. Like excessive exercise. Like obsession with body shape. Like an obsessive need for control or “things to be just so”. Inflexibility. Which is strange, that I’ve used exercise and yoga in particular to become more inflexible in my thinking: that only through great pain and restraint and control can I become more perfect/lovable/acceptable. I took a yoga class today at the gym I just signed up for. It is strange to go back to a practice you took for granted, and was so very helpful, but then possibly used eventually for bad purposes (as everything seems to be, for me). The Americanization of yoga is interesting... competitive asanas. I don’t know. I got caught up in that, which shapes I could make, who was “better” than me. Ridiculous. But that’s my mind making into capital/object every action, every routine, every individual instead of creating experience and enjoying that experience for what it is. One part of my mind is fully late capitalism, masculine heteronormative (maybe?), white chalk that judges and hates. And then another part of me, the repressed feminine aspect (perhaps), watches and sighs and dies a thousand deaths. The observer in me is fully identified with this hypermasculine, anger driven ethos. Or at least, most times. The other part of me is resigned to endless suffering. The artist, the fool. No agency. The question is how to merge the two in a healthy, nondestructive way. DBT could help with that, I suppose. Scheherazade - how does one write a letter? is that a thing people do still? Thanks for reading.

A wonderful article by the ever-amazing Scherezade Siobhan: @viperslang. 

Feel free to recommend further additions to this list! I will be adding more as I buy them, discretionary income permitting. Now go BUY ALL THE POETRY!

Forugh Farrokhzad , Another Birth

- Scherezade siobhan is an Indo-rroma Jungian scarab moonlighting as a clinical psychologist. Her work has been translated globally, has been nominated for awards and has appeared in print and digital spaces including poetry magazines, anthologies, art galleries, rehab centers and the bios of okcupid users. She wrote Bone Tongue (Thought Catalog Books) and Father, Husband (Salopress). She is the creator and curator-in-chief for #themiraproject - a cross cultural conversation about gendered violence and neurodivergence. She can be found squeeing about militant bunnies at @zaharaesque or www.viperslang.tumblr.com