For the first 2 decades of my life, my guiding light was the Christian god, as understood through the Bible. I thought of the Bible as a way to understand God, and I thought of God as the reason for being alive. I didn't have to find a purpose for life because it was handed to me: obedience to God. I didn't have to figure out what was the best choice to make because in most things the church or some elder in it was happy to tell me.

I worked hard to fulfill this purpose: I read the Bible cover to cover multiple times, attended church with great interest and took notes, often talking with the pastor after a sermon about something I was especially interested in.

Then my pastor said something in church that contradicted the Bible. He said that our greatest purpose was to "spread the gospel" -- so I went up after the sermon and asked "how do you reconcile this with Jesus saying that the greatest purpose is to love God, self, and others?"

He did not have an answer, so he attacked me verbally and told me that I wasn't really part of the church, that I hadn't done this or that and so I did not belong. He attacked me to the point where I cried (which I almost never did at that age), and when his wife came up and tried to stop him, he told her to shut up.

At that point I was done with that church, and I began to question the validity of many of the things I had accepted as true. I spent several years looking for a better church and evolving my understanding of God to include other religions. I still held that "love" was the greatest purpose, the one all humans share, and I tried to find others who believed that and tried to practice it in their daily lives.

I slowly came to realize that most people who would claim that love was their highest value were wrong. Most of the time they would choose to do things that were not the most loving action available to them, but instead would choose actions that made them feel good or made them look good to other people.

When I became educated about how systemic inequality works, I also came to realize that love without justice is worthless. So many well-meaning privileged people are against hatred or overt bigotry, yet because they are unwilling to do the work it takes to create justice, they reinforce oppression.

They want to express their sadness about injustice and give out hugs, but if you ask them to advocate for equal pay, to elect people of color to positions of power, to resist oppressive policies in their cities and organizations, or to consider the words they use or the assumptions they make that end up hurting people, they will be offended that you even asked. They will claim that "love conquers all" as a way to avoid the responsibility to create justice, which is the only thing that actually conquers injustice.

So I rejected "love" as the greatest purpose and embraced "justice" instead. Now, when I come to a decision point and have to make a choice, I consider everything I know about the effects my actions will have on others and I choose based on what is most likely to lead to a more just world.

This does not work without constant self-education on the effects of my choices. For example, I cannot make the most just choice about how to host an event without understanding how to provide access for the greatest variety of people. If I just tried to make a choice based on what felt right, I would be very likely to unintentionally harm or exclude some of the most vulnerable people in my community. I know that my own access needs are not the same as others' needs. So I must self-educate, and my greatest tool for that is the internet.

My guiding light now is justice, as understood through as many stories as I can find. If I had a holy book, it would consist of people discussing injustice through both statistics and through personal stories about racism, sexism, anti-trans and anti-queer attitudes, anti-intersex attitudes, ableism, classism, ageism, sizeism, capitalism, and any other form of systemic oppression. It is through reading these stories and learning about the overall societal impact of injustice that I learn how to aim my choices to create the greatest amount of justice that I can.

The other day I was waiting in line at a store when a stranger attempted to strike up a conversation with me:

Stranger, abruptly: "what does the button on your purse mean?"
Me: "oh, it is a symbol for trans pride*"
Kindly stranger, smiling: "oh cool, my daughter is trans!"
Me: *smiles awkwardly*
Kindly stranger: "that's really cool, I like that."
Me: *smiles wider and nods* "thank you" *hastily buries self in phone*

I wanted to say more. The stranger had two elementary-age kids with them and I felt glad that the kids could be themselves. Wish I could have thought faster and said something meaningful like, "thank you for being an accepting parent. It makes a world of difference." But in that moment, it was all I could do to engage as much as I did.

There was a time about a decade ago when I would have responded by making eye contact, asking questions, and offering resources including my contact information. I would have been thinking about what that trans kid might need and what the parent might not have access to. I would have felt in my element and found the conversation easy.

But now, what I felt was just extreme overwhelm, as if lights were flashing and sirens were going off and I was being pulled in one direction and pushed in another. Part of it was from standing with my back to most of the store, part of it was feeling stressed about being next in line and not wanting to annoy the cashier, part was the overhead noise, and part was a piece of me saying "wow you have zero self-preservation instincts -- what if they hated trans people" and then the other part of me arguing back.

I feel such a sense of loss at current me's feckless response to this opportunity to offer potentially life-saving resources to a trans kid. I was just so thrown by how unexpected it was that in such a sensory-overload environment, I couldn't even process what was happening. I replied on auto-pilot and had to delay my emotional and mental response to the meaning of what the person was saying in order to simply absorb the literal words. I didn't make a conscious choice to say either of the two things I said -- they just popped out.

I couldn't really cope in the moment with an unexpected, completely novel experience in a loud, busy environment. But now that I have had that experience, I will be prepared for it to happen again. I will make up a sheet of local resources and try to let that be my touchstone and conversational foundation if someone says "my [friend/relative] is trans." I can ask how plugged in they are to the community and if they would like some resources. I can hope that something like this happens again and when it does, that I can be effective and useful in my response.

*it is actually a symbol for a gender and sexuality minorities conference which no longer seems to exist, but I used a shorthand without thinking

Solvitur ambulando: when you use a practical experiment to test if something is true

This could be my motto, but is especially true about how I treat my body. I often say that I use my body as my laboratory: it is where I test claims about many things but the most common one is dietary supplements.

About 7 years ago I began to experience severe cognitive decline. I was absurdly distracted and constantly forgetting everything. Focused, continual reasoning went from easy to horribly difficult. I stopped being able to read non-fiction because it was too much work, and even my fiction reading decreased sharply. To put that in context -- I started reading when I was four and have read thousands of books. Reading has always been easy for me. I was at a loss for what was causing the problem.

Then I came across something like this:


[image: a photo of three molecule-shaped pendants, each labeled with the name and function of the molecule. Dopamine: reward and pleasure. Acetylcholine: learning and memory. Serotonin: happiness and satisfaction.]

I thought "there is a memory molecule???" and went on a deep dive into wikipedia, which told me that acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter made from choline. So I looked that up and discovered that choline is primarily available in fatty meats, which I hadn't eaten in many years. At that point I had been a vegetarian for about 3 years, but even before that I ate almost exclusively lean meat because I dislike the taste of other meat.

I was pretty well convinced I had found the cause of my cognitive decline, so I went and ordered choline supplements immediately. I noticed that my dreams got more intense but otherwise didn't notice much change until I ran out -- when my thinking got worse again. Then I thought back over the past month and realized how different it had been! I wasn't half as absent-minded or forgetful! I began ordering them regularly.

I have since learned that almost every currently available dementia medication works by increasing the choline available in the brain, and that supplementing choline can be protective of memory. Conversely, medications that work by decreasing choline can cause dementia-like symptoms. And even in populations without dementia, supplementing choline is beneficial for cognition. I keep an eye on dementia studies for what they reveal about the functioning of choline and memory.

I got super lucky with that first brand, because I tried other brands and they did not help even a quarter as much. Since supplements are not classified as food or medicine, they are not regulated for effectiveness and it is often the case that they do not contain what the bottle says they do. I am glad I didn't get that null result at the beginning because if I had, I would never have known that it was true that lack of choline was causing my cognition problems. Nowadays I check all supplement brands on labdoor.com or at least make sure that they are tested by a third party.

After this first experiment proved my guess correct, I made it a practice that if I have a health symptom that could be explained by a vegetarian-diet-caused deficiency, I'll answer that question by testing it in my body. I started taking b12 because I was getting numbness in my legs: then it went away. I started taking glutamine after learning that it is primarily available in meat and it is the amino acid that allows for quick muscle healing; it makes a HUGE difference in whether or not I ache after working out. My lips and skin were dry, so I supplemented E and evening primrose: now I almost never need chapstick. Small cuts were taking a long time to heal, so I supplemented beta carotene (vitamin A): now they take a shorter time to heal. My hair was thinning, so I supplemented biotin: now it is back to normal. Taking zinc regularly keeps me from catching colds from my coworkers -- and if I stop taking zinc I become susceptible.

I've learned I need amino acids (especially glutamine and lysine), vitamins A, B5, B6, B12, E, Niacin, Biotin, iron, copper, magnesium, zinc, and calcium. Some of these I supplement because if you supplement one you have to supplement the other. For example, if you supplement zinc (primarily available in meat) you must supplement copper in order to prevent deficiency. In order to metabolize iron you need copper also. Calcium and magnesium compete so if you supplement for one you should supplement the other.

Proving any theory with a practical experiment is always my preference, and I enjoy having this organic laboratory to work with.

I am a very passionate person who is loud about their opinions, so I've had a significant number of arguments with friends that were so heated we stopped talking. At that point they may have considered me their enemy, but I always expected that eventually we would talk it out, make up, and be friends again. I didn't really have enemies, I had friendships that were on hiatus -- though sometimes acrimonious hiatus. For all but 2 friends, this has been true.

A few years ago I had an interconnected group of friends. We invested in maintaining our friendships the way many people invest in their romantic partners, and we invested in us as a group. We were intimate, and I approached all these friendships with the goal of lifelong connection. I expected that if someone hurt another person, they would approach that hurt with integrity and a desire to help them heal.

Then one of the friends, Cora*, hurt another in a profound way, and when the hurt person, Alex*, expressed this pain and asked for help, Cora just ghosted for months. I thought this was mega fucked up and I stopped investing in Cora, but did not confront them because Alex didn't want me to.

I talked to another person in the group, Erin*, about it. Since Erin was close to Cora I felt like it was important to explain why I was not going to be investing in them anymore. I got permission from Alex to explain what happened and while we were in person, Erin agreed that Cora behaved unethically and that it was fucked up that Cora flaked out and left Alex in painful limbo for months.

Later, Erin defended Cora's choices and denied that the worst of what Cora had done even happened, despite being given proof. She decided to deny the truth and cut me and Alex out of her life rather than face what Cora had done in an honest way. To me this is a profound betrayal, and I am disgusted by it. After that, Erin was not a friend nor even a friend on acrimonious hiatus, but an enemy.

If you want to be my enemy there is an easy recipe for it: choose maintaining your relationship with an unrepentant abuser** over demanding ethical behavior from them. Or just be an unrepentant abuser.

Still, this status is not necessarily permanent, because I accept people growing and changing over time. But Erin and Cora would each have to put in a huge amount of effort and frankly, I don't ever see that happening, especially given their shitty lack of effort when it was fresh.

I lost one of my best friends over this, because of their ties to Erin. That is the one thing that still hurts, though I understand why they made that choice. Being friends with me was more work, logistically, and less reward, socially, because I didn't have ties to all the cool people.

Nowadays it is really important to me that I only build friendships with people who are willing and able to hold their friends accountable for hurting anyone, even a stranger.

*names have been changed
**abuser of people other than you, that is: I know it can be nearly impossible to leave someone who is abusing YOU.

For most of my life, owning a home was so far outside my realm of possibility that I never even thought about whether or not I wanted to.


When I went to college I did so because I wanted to learn, and I had resigned myself to always being poor and barely scraping by with retail and service jobs.

Then I lucked into my current job, which is in a specialized field -- while money is often still tight, I have enough to cover basic expenses like food, utilities, and health insurance. Still not enough to save up for something like a down payment, though.

This May, my partner of seven years was looking for a new place as their apartment was unlivable, and asked if I would want to buy a house together. I thought about it and said well, yes but I have no money saved, so it's probably out of the question. They then found out that they can borrow from their retirement savings without penalty since it will be their first home. I was going to put my retirement towards it too, but mine was much smaller and I couldn't withdraw without huge penalties, so we just left it.

We decided that they would borrow from their retirement for the down payment, and then I would pay them back for my half over the next two years (as well as paying my half of the mortgage of course). And we started looking for a house.


My partner's mom is in real estate, so we gave her a list of things that were musts and things that were daydreams -- and she found us a perfect house. She was scouring the listings and when she saw this one come up, she and my partner went and saw it and my partner told me about it over the phone. My partner told me they were certain it was what I wanted and since I know they know me and they wouldn't say that unless it was true, I agreed that we should put in a bid.

We signed electronically that night and within 24 hours of the house being posted, we had it under contract. It is amazingly lucky that we did, because they started getting offers over the asking price immediately after, and we couldn't have afforded any higher of a price. My partner's mom even got them to pay closing costs by putting it in that initial contract, which is just mind-boggling. And because of her relationship with the mortgage brokers we used, we got an amazing rate on that as well.

My partner was absolutely right that I wanted this house and that it was perfect. Here were my criteria:

Must: lots of windows in my bedroom (ALL the bedrooms!)
Must: lots of windows in living room or kitchen (both!)
Important: large living room (two of them!)
Important: large, private backyard w flat sunny space
Important: high ceilings or large bedrooms (high ceilings)
Important: 2 toilets (THREE full bathrooms! though one needs repair)
Important: space for washer/dryer (plus cabinets above them!)
Important: no HOA (SO HAPPY)
Big bonus: big old trees nearby (1/2 mile or less, or in yard)
Big bonus: fenced yard
Bonus: pantry
Bonus: 4 bedrooms
Bonus: U-shaped or 2-lane driveway (2 lanes, plus carport!)
Bonus: ceiling fans in 2 bedrooms (three bedrooms!)

I also wanted it to have no stairs and be close to public transit, but at least it is a split level (fewer stairs) and a very short drive to a transit hub that runs until midnight. Honestly that doesn't bother me because on everything else we got so outrageously lucky. So many things I didn't even think to daydream about!

Layout:
First, the layout is almost identical to the place my partner used to rent, which we both had strong nostalgia love about because it was where we first spent lots of time together. Also, there are two entirely separate living spaces, which allows for me to have my cat there and my partner to still have space beyond their bedroom to play or socialize. This is important not just for allergy reasons but because we are very independent people and we need to feel like we can exist in the house separately anytime we want.

Light:
The house is south-facing, which is my favorite orientation for a house because it allows for strong yet mostly indirect light. Light is so important to me. Also, there is a SKYLIGHT in the KITCHEN!!! Natural light is necessary for me to feel like spending any time in a room, so this means I might actually start baking again! And almost all of the rooms have enough windows to be bright, even the ones in the lowest level.

Air:
There are ceiling fans in the bedrooms and in the kitchen! Also, the way the patio outside the kitchen is structured means the windchimes catch the air even when it is not very windy.

Land:
Oh my Godde the backyard. It is mostly a gentle slope of grass, which at first I was a little sad about because the previous owner had cut down some amazing, beautiful trees. But then I realized that this means more room for planting fruit trees and having vegetable gardens, and then I just felt lucky. On all three sides of our backyard are yards with huge, amazing trees that are far enough away that we still get lots of sunlight.

So my partner and I got busy planting immediately, and we already have a peach, a four-variety grafted pear, an Asian pear, and a persimmon tree! Two were clearance and two were gifts. The peach is trying to make babies right now which is adorable if misguided. Also, at the side of our house there is a white mulberry tree which is already well-established! We will have to prune it heavily but hopefully it will give us fruit next year.

If you had asked me in April when I might buy a house, I would have laughed and said "never! Or maybe in 10 years" but now I own one. It is a hard mental transition to make, because I assumed I would be renting for the rest of my life.

Part of me keeps expecting that someone is going to show up and make demands about my space. I have always had to live in fear of being kicked out due to a rent spike, the owners wanting to sell or move in, or just sheer pettiness (when I rented from family). I am still in disbelief that this place is mine, that I can invest in it and love it without fearing it being taken away. (there is still the fear of losing it for lack of money, but that was always there when I rented too)

I've moved in with my body but now I'm waiting for my mind to catch up. I can't wait for it to really sink in that I am now living rent-free. I'm not borrowing and it's not temporary: this is actually my home.

For most people in the U.S., being able to order food and other necessities online is an important part of modern life, where there is never enough time. But for people with visual, cognitive, and/or motor disabilities this can be almost impossible because many merchants design their sites exclusively for non-disabled users. This is true despite the fact that disabled people are a higher percent of internet users than they are in the general population.

It is obvious to anyone in the U.S. that websites which sell goods or services are as much a place of public accommodation as any brick-and-mortar store, so you might think that this sort of discrimination is illegal. But because the Americans with Disabilities Act was written almost 30 years ago, it does not specify any application to online services. So for many years, companies who wanted to exclude people with disabilities were able to get court cases thrown out for "lack of due process" -- that is, they argued that because the government didn't define how to make websites accessible, companies shouldn't be prosecuted for excluding people with disabilities.

Until fall of 2017, this "due process" argument worked, because the federal government was supposedly in the process of developing guidelines. But then the Department of Justice announced that they would not be creating them after all (official notification from the D O J), which put the responsibility for figuring out accessibility back on the people running websites. (cielo24.com has lay-person explanations about the meaning and impact of that notice: readable explanation of D O J notification) Considering that the internet is constantly evolving while laws are comparatively static, it makes far more sense this way.

So finally, people with disabilities began winning lawsuits about website accessibility because the "due process" argument no longer worked. In January of this year, a huge victory came about through a federal circuit court, who ruled that Domino's should in fact have to make their site accessible. (The Viscardi Center offers a good summary of that case) The court said that a lack of federal guidelines is no excuse when there are free, public resources on the topic, and no federal guidelines are forthcoming. The World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative has been publishing up-to-date, highly specific guidelines since 1999: this free resource has been available for 20 years.

Since the circuit court decision on Domino's, there have been a slew of class-action lawsuits against industries (like 75 galleries sued in New York, or 38 wineries sued, also in New York), as well as against individual companies. Many of the owners and leaders of these companies have whined about how they should have been given more time (30 years wasn't enough?), or how they just can't afford to make their sites accessible. Shockingly, none have them seem to have have gone out of business after being forced by the courts to remediate their sites.

In an interesting turn, Kroger was sued for an inaccessible website, but they had already been in the process of making a new, accessible site. By the time the case went to court, all of the claimant's issues had been addressed and the case was dismissed as moot. (Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner law explains that case) A company with all of their thousands of products for each of their thousands of locations listed on their website and their app managed to make their online services accessible within a year, proving just how attainable basic accessibility is.

Right now, Domino's is trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn the federal district court's decision. If they manage to get it accepted as worthy of the Supreme Court's time, this would be a resolution to the question of whether or not the A D A applies to online services. I'm hoping that the Supreme Court decides not to entertain it yet, so that we can offer more concrete evidence that the district court's decision was for the good of the public. Alternatively, I hope they do entertain it and agree with the circuit court. I'm going to be holding my breath a little bit until the Domino's case is resolved.

[Poll #2095723]

Once when I was very young, my grandfather was reading me a book about Madeline, an orphan who sneakily adopts a stray dog. As he read, I would point to the dog in each scene and ask "what's that?" When he got to the most complex page in the book, a park filled with dogs, he preempted my questions and just said "dog dog dog dog dog dog dog."

My dad loved to tell this story, but told it as a story that illustrated my grandfather. I think it illustrated one of my core traits: curiosity. I could tell that the four legged creatures were all probably dogs, but I wanted to be sure I was interpreting it correctly. I didn't want to miss a chance to learn something new. As an adult, I refuse to make assumptions that most people consider "close enough" to the truth, and my habit of suspending judgement makes it easy for me to adjust my thinking whenever I am wrong.

Curiosity is my strongest motivation by far. I don't have much drive for physical pleasures like food or sex, but there hardly exists a non-numeric fact that I don't care to learn. (Numeric facts are their own thing because I have difficulty comprehending them)

I am so incredibly lucky because part of my job involves me reading bits and pieces on literally every subject. I learn about everything from microbiology to astronomy to exercise science to audiology and beyond. (The downside is that my job is very mentally demanding and I often have no energy left for thinking when I get home)

I find people fascinating in direct proportion to how many new thoughts they can evoke in me. This can come from them asking questions about something I said, or from them talking about life experience they have that I don't, or from them talking about their similar life experiences in a thoughtful or analytical way. The most fascinating people to me are the ones that constantly seek to learn and grow, because then they always can evoke new thoughts in me.

My curiosity drive has most often been focused on my own mind and emotions, because they have the largest impact on my life. In my self-examinations, I have learned that I am:

ADHD and otherwise neurodivergent, with CAPD;
a non-binary trans person, with no gender;
queer;
demisexual;
fat and proud;
kinky;
a relationship anarchist;
a Southerner and ATLien;
a tree-hugger;
a social justice activist;
a communalist;
a consent advocate;
a creativity catalyst;
an atheist;
an eco-vegetarian;
an artist;
a coffee clergyperson;
a growth-seeker;
a content creator;
a critical analyst; and
a writer.

I'm gonna do LJ Idol again! Indie has been helping me motivate to write by trading prompts with me that we both write on, but this would be very helpful too!

You can join too if you want, just sign up at the link!

Prompt from Indie: Are you a morning person, a night owl, or both? Explain why and what you enjoy doing in the morning and/or nighttime.

I've never been a morning person. It doesn't matter if I have gotten up at 6am every morning for a week, if I have the chance to sleep in, I will stay in bed until 10:30 a.m. at the *earliest.* My best schedule is waking up at 11 a.m. and going to sleep at 3 a.m..

I have learned that while I am always tempted to stay up later and get up later, getting up any later than 1:30 p.m. or going to bed any later than 3:30 a.m. is a really bad idea for me. If I get up that late, I will miss too much sunlight and it will make me feel wilted and depressed -- especially in the winter. And if I go to bed later than 3:30, any time after that is wasted time. My ADHD goes haywire and I can't get anything done, and even doing brain-rest things stops being restorative because I can't focus.

I think the decreased stimulation at night is why I like being awake then. There is less ambient noise from outside, less mental noise from people doing things, less visual noise because it's darker.

I would enjoy being up early if I ever got enough sleep, but I can't ever go to bed on time because there literally isn't enough time in the day for me to decompress. I'm hoping that I struggle less with this after I move, when I will have a much shorter commute.

Speaking of which, I realized recently that for the past 7 years, I have basically been living in 2 houses -- mine and Topaz'. I have two toothbrushes, pillows, phone chargers, etc, because I have spent at least 2 nights a week at their place for so long. I didn't realize how much back-burner stress this caused me until I started thinking about what a relief it will be once I am moved.

To not have to wonder where my stuff is or pack and carry sets of clothes. To not have to worry every weekend that something terrible may happen to my cat and I wouldn't know until it is too late. To be able to have a smoothie on the weekends! To not have to try to remember which house I actually have food in. To not have that stress of having to remember all the things when I leave in the morning.

To not have to choose between dinner with Topaz or sleeping in my own bed. To not have to choose between spending the weekend with Topaz or by myself, because it will be easy to mix it up. To not have to choose between getting to have friends in my space or getting to spend time with Topaz. To not have to choose between tidying my living space or spending time with Topaz.

Really hoping that the lifting of these stresses will have a noticable effect. I'm certainly less stressed than I was last year, but I still am barely functional in so many ways.

Organization techniques/tools I use and areas I would like to be more organized/organize differently

I prefer everything around me be organized. I love organizing and have tidied other people's closets (with consent of course) and enjoyed it. So you'd think that all of my stuff would be organized, but no.

When I get depressed, I can't motivate to clean or tidy. I will only do what is necessary and things being tidy is not necessary. So right now, the only things of mine that are organized are my clothes and about half of my craft stuff. My books were organized but then I gave a ton away and now they're half disorganized too.

Part of my problem is that I have a huge mental block against throwing things away. Even donating things I find difficult because what if I know someone who wants that thing?

I did a sweep of some stuff to donate but I need to go through again with this question "will I miss it?" And if the answer is no, it needs to go in the donate or the trash. And I have to be willing to put things in the trash that are useable but will not be wanted by people at the thrift store.

Disclaimer: the ideas in this post are just my own philosophical musings, not facts.

For most of my life I felt constantly hungry for love. Even while someone was being loving to me I would feel desperate for more. It wasn't until I was 27 that I even had one moment where I was receiving love and felt satisfied and like I didn't need more -- would enjoy it, but didn't need it. And it wasn't until I was 33 that I ever had that sensation on a regular basis.

I have this theory that until a person reaches a saturation point with loving nourishment, they can never feel relaxed or secure in any of their relationships. This one experience is so pivotal that it is like a stage of development, and a human's life perspective is profoundly changed once they have this experience. Parents are supposed to give this experience to their kids so that their kids can then enter adulthood ready to meet others as equals. Instead most parents don't, and most people enter adulthood still desperate for love, wanting to get without having to give, feeling like there is never enough. Like starved children we snatch at any nourishment offered and many times spill it everywhere.

People who felt fully loved as children often can't relate to feeling insecure or needy without logical cause. These people are put off by the expression of those feelings, thinking of them as irrational or silly, but I think feeling "full" of love is a real human need as powerful as the need for food or air. For me at least, having food in my hand is not comforting when it is not going to fill me and I doubt any more will ever come. We scarf it down as quick as we can so we have our hands free to grab the next scrap. Or we "save" it for when we will need it more, which is a day that almost never comes.

There are so many harms that can spring from this. Perhaps the biggest is that people who have never experienced saturation (I will call them hungry, for lack of a better word) are willing to accept all manner of ill treatment along with love because they are starving. It is ridiculous to expect people who have never had enough food to ever eat slowly or turn down crappy food.

In the same way, it makes no sense to expect people who have never felt fully loved to ever be satisfied with an easy amount of love, and it makes no sense to expect them to be able to say no to people who offer love as an appetizer to abuse. So many hungry people raised by abusive or selfish parents have absolutely no way to tell what is real love and what is bribery.

Many times we choke out our opportunities for real love because we get so desperate and cling so hard. We can delude ourselves, magnifying small kindnesses and minimizing all negatives to try and trick ourselves into feeling nourished; this prevents either person in the relationship from learning and growing. We can lose ourselves, becoming so desperate for the other person to keep loving us and not leave us that we compromise more and more of who we are until we are just a reflection of the other.

The worst part is that often, someone has to have experienced saturation themselves to be able to give it to someone else. A hungry person can't purely focus on nourishing someone else because as you feed them a part of you watches jealously, wishing you were the one getting that care.

I recognize it so easily now and it always makes me ache and feel an urge to throw out my whole life and dedicate it to making this person feel loved. But I can't do that, and it wouldn't be a good way to spend my life, pouring myself out endlessly for people who literally can't give back. That's not remotely sustainable.

Other than meeting one of those lucky ones who got saturated with love in childhood, I think we can only hope to find someone who wants to get love in the way we are inclined to give it, and wants to give love in the way we want to get it. I think other than basic ethics, this is the number 1 most important thing in a relationship.

I'd advise my former self to ask, first and foremost, as a precursor to close friendship and/or romance, "think of the three closest people in your life. What do you think they get out of their relationship with you? how do you bring them nourishment and joy most often? most easily? most happily? and on the other hand, what actions of others make you feel nourished and contented?" and then I'd consider whether I could feel nourished by the same things, and if I could nourish them in the way that works best for them.

How do you view the energies of the world? Do you believe in the healing powers of such things, for example? How do natural energies affect you? How do the energies of people affect you?

I'm interpreting this question as being about the spiritual energies of things rather than their measurable energies. It is an interesting question for me right now because I am sort of transitioning from one view/belief to another, and my answer is very different than it would have been even last year.

I think that emotions are a kind of energy. In the literal sense, adrenaline comes from emotion and can give a body more power than it should logically have. But beyond hormonal surges, emotions have a power over the mind which has power over the body and this can transfer in a way that seems magical and is inexplicable. I think that only creatures which have emotions can be affected by this energy; in my opinion this includes any creature with memory and the ability to make decisions.

I don't think there is magical power outside of emotion. I don't think objects have the power to do anything unless a sentient being gives them that power using emotion. So if natural energies means places in nature, stones, plants, etc, having powers to heal someone without emotion, then I do not believe that.

When it comes to things like prayer for healing, I think it can be a powerful way to focus emotions, and those focused emotions can heal a person. If nothing else, a belief that you will get better will soothe your stress, which makes it easier for your body to heal. Or simply being distracted from your illness by displays of love from people can also soothe stress, even if one doesn't believe in prayer.

I feel that a place in nature which has been left to itself for long enough has an emotional sense of interconnectedness with itself. That feeling makes me feel rested, nourished, and safe, and I am healed by those emotions, so I find protected natural places to be healing. However another person entering that space who finds such places to be unfamiliar and full of danger would not at ALL be healed by it; that interconnectedness might feel like a giant flashing keep out sign. It is my emotional response that heals me, not the place itself.

The same goes for objects like stones. They are not inherently anything, but if someone likes the way a particular stone makes them feel, then it can be healing for them to have it around. Stones are not more capable of healing than plush toy animals -- maybe less.
Emotions are magic, but they only work on beings that have memory and the ability to make decisions, and they only work on the micro scale. So you cannot pray for a better world and expect any kind of result, but you can pray for more confidence and get it.

But I do think sometimes when we pray or do spellwork for things, we actually end up getting them in a round-about way. For example, praying for a new job and because of this focus and hope, becoming more observant to notice opportunities and more courageous to follow through on them, and due to to that observation and courage, getting a new job. I definitely use crafted phrases, repetitively spoken, to help focus my emotions to bring me closer to my goals, and I have had astonishing successes that I would have thought laughably impossible.

The reason that testing things like prayer and magical spells always falls apart is that part of the scientific method is to remove the chance that emotion is swaying the results, but the thing works on emotions, so you can never reproduce it in an emotionless way. The placebo effect is literally the same thing as prayer: emotion causing an effect on the mind and/or body. The placebo effect is real, proven over and over: sometimes people get better just because their mind is convinced that they should. I don't think this is an unimportant fact, though of course it cannot be relied on and is no substitute for verified medical treatment.


As for the emotions of people, affecting each other's emotions is the main power that our emotions have. One can walk near a stranger who is very upset and pick up that emotion without even talking to them; emotions are often contagious. I do small rituals to deliberately remove emotions I picked up from someone else, or to re-align my emotional self with a person who I am trying to connect with.

I consider it a kind of attack to be angry at someone and stay near them physically while feeling and thinking about that anger. I consider it bad consent at best to be around someone and think about them sexually when they have not consented to that. I consider it a kind of attack to be wanting something from someone that they don't want to give and feeling sad about it and stay near them physically while feeling and thinking about it.

I don't broadcast anger or sex or sad at people and I don't allow people to do it to me if I can help it. Affecting people with your emotions is a kind of manipulation and it's not okay. Some aspects are inescapable, but at the very least, when the negative emotion is at its peak you should warn people and give them the choice to avoid you if that is what they need. Choice means that if they avoid you during that peak, they do not have to deal with fall-out afterwards. If one kind of choice gets punished, it is not a real choice.


To try to sum up this jumble: There is no magic but emotion, which is the power in prayer and spellwork. Emotion has power only on emotional creatures, only on the micro level. We have the ability to influence others with our emotions and we have the responsibility to be ethical with that power.

Edited to add, for clarity: I don't believe in or advocate prayer or positive thinking as a method of any kind of problem-solving. I just think that the mind has a lot of power for change within itself, and humans are HIGHLY affected by emotions.

I think this mostly has a chance to hurt us, which is why it's important. Like, there is this idea that for instance, someone saying something that hurts your feelings is no big deal if they didn't do it on purpose, but it IS a big deal and it can cause a ripple effect in your mind and body. And being exposed to trauma has a real impact on the mind and body even if the trauma is not to you or someone you know. Etc.

How has death touched your life, and what lasting impact has it had?

I've been lucky enough that no one who I was very intimate with has died. But the deaths that I have experienced all touched me with this singular feeling: a wish that I had reached out more while they were still here.


Other than relatives who I didn't have any real connection to (biological grandparents), my first loss from death was in March 2012, when Carol died. I knew Carol from the six months I lived at Serendipity, when we often attended the same family dinner. We hadn't been close then or been in touch after I left Serendipity, but Carol had made me feel included and cared about and as a proxy parental figure that meant a lot. I felt sad but grateful to have had the short time to know Carol.



My first lose of a close connection to death was someone I met through livejournal, Laura (musicandmisery). Laura died April 2, 2013, and I found out through facebook, which I was grateful for because there was no way for me to learn about it through livejournal and the idea of just never knowing is horrific. It was a shock to me because Laura was so young and we hadn't been in good contact for a year, so I didn't know what was going on (I think health problems?). Laura's sister friended me on facebook afterwards and we sort of vaguely interact here and there -- I think for both of us it's a kind of connection to Laura.

I had had Laura on my short list of people to meet, but I never had anyone to go with nor the guts to try and plan a trip to New York alone -- and even if I had managed that I wouldn't have had the money before it was too late. I still ache over that missed opportunity because Laura was really special to me. I can't explain why mostly because my memory is terrible, but it feels like we just felt the world in the same way. We both are the kind of person to cry at human kindness, even between two people we don't know and can't really relate to, and twice as much between other animals. And that's not something I have often had in common with people. I think if we had lived near each other we would have spent lots of time together.

We also have the same birthday, so every time our birthday comes around I think of Laura. And there was this mega-adorable little kid on MasterChef Jr season 5 who reminded me SO MUCH of Laura in smile and spirit that I cried. A quote from that kid: “You gotta stay focused, you gotta stay true to yourself and you gotta cook your heart out!”



Then in February 2016, there was Vanessa, someone I met in college who I felt admiration for and wanted to be friends with, but I never got up the courage to really express that, and then she died. I learned this when I went to her facebook with the goal of reaching out and saw the wall filled with "gone too soon" messages. I felt really overwhelmed with "why didn't I reach out sooner" then. Vanessa was also very young, in her early 20s still I think.



Then March 27, 2017, Topaz' Papaw died. (his funeral was actually on the same date that Laura died) He had lived a full life and was in failing health so it wasn't a surprise but he was someone I felt a deep and intuitive connection with and I felt so sad that I had never tried to connect on more than a friendly-stranger level. Shortly after I met Topaz' family I hit the lowest point of my life so it took a while before I could even think about connecting with strangers, and after that I felt it wasn't allowed because I'm used to everyone being bloodist (saying that family isn't yours unless you are related by blood), and by the time I felt like I was allowed, he wasn't able to connect on a mental level due to Papaw's dementia. I feel like there was a sliver of time when I had a chance but I didn't realize it and I hate that I didn't realize it. I felt so grateful to at least be able to connect in our own unspoken way though.



Then November 26th of 2017, Topaz' Memaw died. She was a fierce and accomplished person who fought for an equal rights amendment and wrote a book about her life. I admired her and wished I had had the chance to connect with her more. Her dementia progressed on a similar timespan to Papaw's but was more external and had a lot of emotive aspects to it, so it was harder to handle. But it was so sweet and she was so supportive of me and Topaz.

When I first met Memaw, Topaz told her that we were partners and she was openly and comfortably supportive -- she later forgot, but knew that we were best friends and expressed strong support for that as a valid kind of family, which meant just as much to me honestly. There isn't societal oppression of best friends, but all my life I have felt that my greatest loves were treated as unimportant because they weren't romantic nor blood-linked nor legality-linked, so I have deep personal feelings of being marginalized in that way. I felt like Memaw saw us in a very true way whether she remembered we were romantic or not. I wished I'd had the chance to get to know her before dementia put the possibility out of reach.



On March 28th, 2018, Saleena died. They're someone I saw at least twice a month from summer 2009 to spring 2011. After that we drifted, but I always meant to pick up again. I had wondered about how Saleena was and how their life was going several times in the months before they died and I regret thinking "I'll have plenty of time." Saleena was near my age so I never expected her to die so soon.


At some point during the past decade two of my aunts died, but I saw them only a few times in my life and never really had a chance to connect with them. They never reached out and I didn't either. Last year or maybe the year before, my last biological grandparent died but I never had any connection with her either, so I did not care.

I'm not including deaths of other beings, but trees, cats, and fish have also left little scars on my heart, usually with the same wish that I had made more time for them. You'd think with this constant refrain I'd reach out to people all the time but I still procrastinate constantly.

Doing this prompt has made me realize that of all the deaths that impacted me, most of them occurred in the same calendar week - between March 27th and April 2nd. and two more happened right before that in the same season. I suddenly have more understanding of why late March through April has been hard for me the past few years... I also broke up with Kei-won-tia in 2015, had a hiatus in my most important relationship in 2016, and broke up with Evelyn in 2017 all in that same time period. I'm feeling a little more self-compassion about my lack of productivity in the past 2 months now.

do you consider your own sexuality fluid? If so, how has it changed over time? Regardless, how did you come to discover and embrace your sexual identity(ies)?

I think my sexuality has always been the same, but my experience and understanding of it has evolved. When I was a teenager, I was so restricted from knowledge about sexuality that I identified as straight despite the fact that I had more than twice as many sex dreams about girls as I did about boys (and I didn't know any other kind of person existed). It literally did not occur to me that I could be anything other than straight, because I wasn't lacking in crushes on boys. I don't think I even heard the word bisexual until I was in college.

How is this possible? Well, I was in private christian schools until 4th grade, when I went to public school for one year before being homeschooled 5th to 10th. The internet was still a toddler (google didn't exist until I was in ninth grade and didn't become really useful until a few years later), my house didn't have cable tv, and I wasn't allowed to socialize outside of school, except with people who lived as restrictedly as I did (and even with them, only once or twice a month). I had only books to teach me about relationships, and there were no queer people in them.

I think it was actually Angelina Jolie who taught me the concept of bisexual and the concept of genderfucking, via quotes people shared about Jolie on livejournal. "Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny." Reading that quote was my first time relating to anyone who expressed attraction! and still, there are very few who feel this way, because even among people who don't identify as monosexual, most people don't consider genderfucking people or fat people to be attractive. We look "weird" or "wrong" to the average person due to sexist and cis-sexist assumptions.

It was a few years after I learned what bisexuality was that I came to identify as bisexual, because I was strongly influenced by the popular cultural myth that unless you had experiences with men and women, you couldn't identify as bisexual. I would guess that at about age 21 I learned that bisexual people exist and at 23 I began identifying as bisexual. At about age 25 I learned that non-binary people exist and changed my self-label to queer to make it clear that I liked non-binary people too. This was before bisexual people queered the definition of bisexual to its current meaning of "attracted to people of 1) my own and 2) other genders."

A few years later, age 28 I realized that I was trans and non-binary, which further complicated my sexual identity as most ideas of identity start with who you are -- for instance men who are attracted to men are called gay while women who are attracted to men are called straight. Fortunately, "queer" is an umbrella term that always means "not hetero" and otherwise can mean pretty much anything.

Despite identifying as bisexual and queer since age 23, it took me until age 30 to feel sure that I was right about my identity. Even though I had had a number of romantic and sexual relationships with non-men, there's this attitude among mainstream gays that until you've done certain sex acts or had 'primary' relationships with people who were assigned the same sex as you, you don't 'count' as queer. The sexuality-policing heterocentrism is as common and intense among binary gay people as it is among binary straight people. We should be able to claim our identities without having to perform, just like straight people who have never had sex do. But it is a struggle.

It was a few years after I began identifying as queer when I learned what asexual meant, but like with bisexual, I came across a very restrictive definition and it took a while before I even learned the word demisexual. I had to work up my courage to claiming that label as well, because while it is true that I need to feel emotionally intimate to begin to feel sexual attraction, I had a period in my life where that wasn't always true, so I had to deconstruct a binary to claim my demisexual identity. I was 30 when I finally claimed this part of my identity.

When I was a kid, a teen, and a young adult I didn't know what I was, because I didn't have words for it. Once I learned the words, in every case I had to unlearn the shitty gate-keeping definitions in order to claim my identity. When you think you are cis, straight, and allosexual (having an average or high sex drive), society will never pressure you with "are you SURE?" or "but WHY are you that way?" -- you just get affirmed as who you are. If you are not those things (especially if you are trans), you have to be more sure than you have ever been because people will question you and invalidate you constantly.

As you can tell by the fact that it took me three decades to learn who I am, representation is vital. I have seen trans people on tv now but they're never asexual, rarely non-binary, and usually straight. Maybe two characters that I have seen in my life are queer and non-binary (Vex from Lost Girl and Nomi from Sense8) and that is only a guess as their identity is never mentioned and they use typical gendered pronouns -- and both are shown as highly sexual. If I had ever seen a character like me on screen I would have instantly known "that's me!" but instead I had to fumble in the dark and each time I found a part of my identity it was taken away several times before I got a permanent hold on it. If I had had an example, that would never have happened.

Straight, cis, allosexual people should have their identities questioned at least by their intimate people (parents, best friends, lovers) to help them understand themselves and to increase their empathy with people who are not like them. Queer, trans, and asexual/demisexual people should be questioned less often in general and NEVER by non-intimate people. The same as you wouldn't ask someone who you're not intimate with about what they discuss in therapy or what they like in sex, you don't ask them why they identify the way they do. That is demanding a vulnerability from them that you have not earned the right to ask. If you feel like you need to know their why in order to accept their identity as legitimate, that's due to your ignorance and cis-sexism and you need to do some serious self-examining.

1. being triggered is literal torture, not mere dislike or discomfort.
   
2. your thoughts can get stuck in loops that take outside intervention to fix.
   
3. pressuring someone into a sensory experience (taste touch smell sound sight) may force people to relive trauma. don't.
   
4. The wrong therapist is a waste of time and it will wear you down trying to get help from them. if you don't click, move on as quickly as you can.
   
5. it can look like laziness when people are literally doing their best because people have different amounts of energy.
   
6. falling in love or experiencing lots of joy doesn't cure chemical depression. Not even if it is literally the best thing you have ever experienced.
   
7. after a depression crisis is over, the recovery starts, but it can be long.
   
8. survival stress is cumulative and causes depression. If someone is scrambling to survive, expecting them to be reliable and present at any given point is unrealistic and sometimes cruel.

Anika prompted me to share my experience with mental illness and how it has influenced [my] life or personality.

I don't know exactly when I first became depressed but it developed between age 8 and 12, and by the time I was 13 I was praying almost all day every day for God to kill me. I didn't feel like I had the right to end my life or I would have. It eased up somewhat when I finally got my first real friend at 13, but it was still a fairly constant state for me until after I got out of my parents' house, got married, and went through 2 years of therapy for the sexual abuse I experienced as a child.


--- trigger: fear of unknown men, panic ---
During that 2 years, I was deeply afraid of all male strangers. When the apartment sent men around with leaf-blowers, I hid in the bedroom to put 2 doors between us. I held the axe and my breath and waited until I couldn't hear them any more. I knew, logically, that these people were unlikely to attack me. But logic didn't enter into it because I was in a state of triggered panic. I use the word triggered only very deliberately. Each time I knew men were within 10 feet of my doors or windows I was in a state of utter unthinking panic until they left. Heart pounding panic like you might feel if a bear is that close and staring right at you and growling. I couldn't go out alone. For months even going to the mailbox was too terrifying. (when I finally did go that 200 feet alone, I felt so proud of myself!).
--- end TW about terror of unknown men ---



--- trigger: penetrative sex causing flashback-like thoughts ---
The worst part was the triggers that would happen every time I had sex, starting with the first time I tried to have consensual penetrative sex. My body reacted by closing up. It felt horrible and I felt so guilty for not being able to do it, but I literally could not, no matter how much I wanted to! It got worse from there -- I started having horrible intrusive visions of children being violated whenever I would try to have sex that involved penetration. It was extremely difficult to think of sex as anything other than a source of pain, shame, loneliness, terror, and guilt. And I was so disappointed because with my conscious self, I wanted it! but my subconscious was much stronger.
--- end TW about penetrative sex ---


Relatedly, memories attach to weird things so don't ever insist that someone watch, listen to, smell, or taste things! because maybe that makes them feel a violation again in their mind, and they shouldn't have to tell you about it to get you to stop. Sometimes mental avoidance is an absolutely necessary coping strategy and if someone has to tell you "that makes me remember [traumatic event]" then you may be breaking their ability to stay out of a horrible loop of trauma replay.

The fear and intrusive thoughts were my main issue in that period of mental illness, but the amount of work I had to do on those things was so much that it made me feel hopeless. I felt like I would never get better. I wondered why bother living if every future day was going to involve reliving the worst feelings I had ever experienced. I kept going because I had a supportive partner who treated my healing as an important contribution he was making to the world.

Then about a year in, after three failed therapists and one therapist retiring, I found a therapist that I actually clicked with: one who had experienced worse trauma than I had and was now so free of triggers that they could sit next to their abuser without fear. The fact that they had healed that much made me feel that surely I could too, but it still was a long journey with a lot of pain in it.

Eventually we worked through a lot of previous traumas and I started to feel less scared and I was able to control my thoughts again. I started to feel normal, back to my old self. I still was sensitive to certain words, and movies with realistic (true to the experience of a victim, not glamorized rape myths) sexual abuse or rape would trigger me and make it so that my mind was trapped in a loop feeling that experience over and over, but those instances happened less and less often. I was able to go back to work. I was able to interact with strangers and go places by myself. I was able to perform the minimum required, like I had been before I started therapy.


Then there came a day when I suddenly realized that doing things didn't feel like slogging through cold mud. I even had energy to spare! I could be cheerful in the face of grumpiness! I could be social with strangers for hours and still do stuff when I got home - LOTS of stuff! I suddenly realized that I had never been lazy -- it was actually that I had lacked the energy to do more. All my energy had been going to running coping programs for the abuse that I endured.

When I didn't need to spend energy coping because I had processed enough of it, all that energy welled up and sprang out of me. I was so magical, so loving, so creative. I was outgoing, as I always knew my true self was. I felt able. I was not-depressed from 2006 to 2010, then had 8 months of depression, then was not-depressed again from mid-2011 to mid-2012. I was so, so active and productive in those 6 years, to the point that it boggles my mind now.


So through all that I learned that sometimes a thing you think everyone can do is literally impossible for some people, and that when people say they can't, it's not just an irresponsible way of saying "won't." If you can understand only one thing about mental illness, I want you to understand that you can't tell WHY someone can't do a thing and there isn't always external proof. You just have to trust them.

Later, I went into depression again because I spent more energy than I had, day after day, without getting nourished. It sounds like nothing, but I was more depressed from that than I was about the abuse, because with the abuse at least I got a clear path to healing, I got reassurance that healing was possible, and all kind people were supportive. Even kind people are generally not supportive of healing from depression that has "no real reason" and the acceptable "real" reasons are very limited. The attitude is "get over it already."

Not long after I realized the cause of that depression, I fixed the cause and began the most nourishing and healing connection of my life -- the thing I had always yearned for since I was small. Even though I had this new source of brilliant joy, I couldn't really feel it because the pain had worn such a rut in my brain that I couldn't get out. I could not access the happiness I knew my experiences should be giving me.


Every day I thought surely this is the worst it can get -- and then the next day was worse. It was so bad that I could not access any feelings except despair; I could not even care about the suffering of others, which has always been one of my primary motivations. When I thought about injustice and suffering and had no emotional response, I felt I had died inside and was no longer a person.


Finally I got desperate enough to go to the clinic and get medicine, which formed a protective layer over the bottom of the rut and allowed me to slowly heal, layer by layer, until the rut was gone. But then the protective layer kept me from feeling things deeply which started to make me feel like life was pointless, so I weaned myself off against medical advice. I know my own brain and I knew I no longer needed it because it had started to cause me harm rather than good.

That experience taught me that even with a perfect situation, even in a time that should be your happiest, if the chemicals in your brain are messed up you are not going to be able to be happy. The chemistry of your brain is stronger than the strongest will. Just like you can't will yourself out of mono, you can't will yourself out of depression.

Even though the crisis-level depression was over after 8 months of medication, the depression was not gone. It's like after a long illness when it finally breaks -- the healing is not done because the sickness is over, because your body has to recover from the battle. My mind had to recover, and that process was slowed by the constant and massive amount of energy I had to put into surviving because my job didn't pay enough for me to live on. For a while that process was not just slowed but reversed by the exhaustion of scraping a survival on what I could beg from my biofamily while I tried to convince employers that I was a valuable person and they should hire me and pay me a living wage.


When your ability to feed and shelter yourself is in constant doubt, there is no rest from the emotional and mental drain. Even when you are not actively worrying, it takes so much energy to keep it out of your conscious mind. Daily survival stress is cumulative and from myself and others I have seen, it always creates depression. Extra energy exists in a world of unicorns and dragons, and to think that you can have it while fighting to survive is a laugh.

A year ago I finally found a job that is perfect for me and pays me a living wage. Since then I have begun healing again, very slowly. I have only just now started feeling like I can actually count on this job, despite always doing my best and often getting appreciative comments from coworkers. I have only in the past few months started feeling like I can count on being able to stay in the place where I live.


I also have SAD (seasonal affective depression) but I have mostly learned how to cope with this so that it doesn't affect me too much. The most important part is that I have to get enough sleep on a fairly regular sleep schedule, and I HAVE to get up at LEAST three hours before dark. I have to get outside every day even if it's just 5 min, even if there is no sun. I need to drink lots of hot drinks (coffee, hot chocolate, tea) and try to stay as warm as possible. I need to eat regularly. I need to use my sunlight lamp as close to daily as I can manage.

What are the parts of your identity that you have labels for? (list and then define)

Part 2: my soul parts. These are parts of my identity that relate to my purpose n the world and the way I interact with it.

My soul identites: consent advocate, communalist, social justice activist, polyamorous / relationship anarchist, creativity catalyst, Southern / ATLien, tree-hugger, vegetarian, nudist.

consent advocate

This is a big damn deal to me. Most people are really bad at consent because we live in a rape culture. I try to model good consent at every opportunity and I am very demanding of myself not to ever be careless with consent. Why making it safe & comfortable to say 'no' is as necessary as respecting 'no' I don't separate people into rapists and not-rapists, but rather into a spectrum of good at consent to bad at consent, with rapist as a separate category for people who knowingly make a choice to cross someone else's sexual boundary and people who sexually violate others due to not bothering to check what they want. People who do their best not to be a rapist can still be bad at consent! Everyone has to unlearn rape culture. how to be careful w sexual consent: discuss meaning, risk, safeword, triggers, roles, acts, sobriety, needs

communalist

This is what I call my radical anti-capitalist attitude toward money and other shareable resources. I share my resources; I give a portion of every paycheck to resist inequality and support oppressed people; I speak out against economic inequality; I consider the economic cost within my own relationships and events and do what I can to balance them.

social justice activist

I resist oppression and work to bring justice wherever I can. I call myself an activist rather than ally because to me, ally is passive: someone who will not attack you nor overtly support oppressors. I consider being an activist to be about taking action, first in self-educating, then in doing what you can where you are with what you have. More than anything else, social justice is about considering the meaning and impact of all my choices and trying to create the least harm and the most good.

polyamorous/relationship anarchist

I am polyamorous: for me this means being open to multiple simultaneous romantic relationships. More specifically I identify as a relationship anarchist because I will not make rules or commitments designed to protect the relationship at the cost of the individuals. My relationship anarchy: we each only do what we want / my intentions & desires in all connections

creativity catalyst

I feel that true creativity is sacred, that every human is capable of it (and many other animals are also), and that we need more of it in the world. I try to encourage this both indirectly through my example, (such as by painting on my car and customizing my companion objects) and directly by sharing my creative materials and methods, affirming when people are creative, and resisting when people are derogatory toward art based on its lack of technical skill or for other elitist bullshit reasons. I have catalyzed art in many people even if it was just once or twice, and I want to do it much more. I have needed art catalysts in my life and I want to be that thing that I need to exist in the world.

Southern / ATLien

I love Atlanta deeply. A lot of people from other places have this idea that the South is all anti-queer anti-justice tradition-enforcers, but they are flat wrong, as you can tell if you look at any objective measurement. Atlanta, Georgia's capital, has the second highest percentage of self-identified lgbtqia people in the United States, at about 13%.

The best explanation I have ever heard was from a black queer southern woman who said "southerners are just like everyone else, only more so." Here, the bigots are loud, but so are the activists. I would say the majority of southern people I have known are not fence-sitters. You can pretty easily figure out if we are with you or against you, and I vastly prefer that to completely covert prejudice.

I also consider Atlanta and Georgia to be my responsibility in a "take care of your own house" kind of way. I will not abandon it to go somewhere that might be more friendly to me and people like me; I will stay here and make it better.

And I identify with Georgia specifically because of our trees. No other place I have been has had so many trees, and Atlanta's nickname is the City in a Forest. I treasure and worship trees and love that Georgia has so many.

tree-hugger

I mean this literally and figuratively. Literally, I love trees more than almost anyone I know (I only come in second to a professional tree-lover: a botanist/naturalist who has catalogued hundreds of trees in Atlanta and Georgia). I read about them and practice identifying them for fun, I connect with them on a deep level and almost all my travel desires are about trees I want to meet. Figuratively, I try to create as little waste as possible by reducing the waste I create, reusing as much as possible, and recycling carefully.

vegetarian

I am a vegetarian because it takes much more resources to raise animals than to raise plants. It is also very very expensive to eat ethically raised or wild-caught animals and I just don't like meat enough to try and keep meat-processing microbes alive in my body, but neither do I want to contribute to harm caused to animals by buying from unethical sources. HOWEVER this is not about right/wrong, it is about reduction of harm. Why I am vegetarian but do not recommend it for everyone and why I won't ever go vegan.

I have learned the hard way how to supplement and if someone can't afford $50 a month in supplements as well as healthy proteins, they can't afford to be vegetarian. And being vegan can be bad for the planet in a lot of ways and is not a nutritionally sound choice for the vast majority of people, since you need either a lot of spare time and research skills or to hire a nutritionist to know how to supplement all the needed nutrients.

nudist

Simply put, I hate being forced to wear clothes and if I could get away with it I would be naked all the time except when it was cold or for occasional dress-up. I reject the idea that nudity is sexual; for me, it is simply the default human state.

I'm now trading prompts with my local friend sandracaprice as well. They are new to LJ so hopefully this will help them grow into this space a bit! This first prompt they created:

Have you ever had a spiritual connection with an animal (domesticated or wild)? If yes, explain the circumstances and how the experience changed you.

Yes. With many to various extents, but more than most with my first betta fish, Hyacinthe, and with my current cat companion, Kanika. I had Hyacinthe for about 2 years, and during those years I started having dreams about fish. In some I was rescuing fish from shallow, gasping bits of water and in others, I was walking into rooms filled with water to share space with fish. I feel like Hyacinthe was a dream-traveler with me. Before I knew Hyacinthe I might not have guessed that a tiny fish could have such personality, but when I got to know Hya, I knew that creatures don't need a large brain to have their own personality. Fish became a huge part of my dreamworld due to Hyacinthe mostly.

Kanika has been my companion for 12 years now (13 in January). This cat is the wildest 'domesticated' cat I've ever met. I got Kanika when they were just a few weeks old and when we met, this super-active kitten let me pick them up and hold them, and lay on their back in my hands for a good 10 seconds making eye contact with me -- that was when I knew this was my cat. Such a trusting moment for such a suspicious little being!

Shortly before Kanika came to live with me, I started going through treatment for childhood sexual abuse, and uncovering that was traumatic. As I progressed I got worse before I got better: I became agoraphobic and paranoid about strangers, and Kanika being such an empathetic creature was terrified with me. Kanika still responds to a loud knock at the door with a jump-and-run response whenever it startles me, but now I can just say "it's okay, 'Nika" and make eye contact and they will calm down. When they are anxious I can almost always calm them by making eye contact and radiating calm at them, with or without soothing words.

Kanika has a very powerful spiritual/energetic presence, which has become profoundly clear to several people who were interacting with Kanika in a moment of full awareness. I consider Kanika to be my familiar, and I think they consider me their witch (whatever the cat equivalent of that is). They will check on me when I don't feel good and will tell me when it is time to go to sleep (though I don't often listen). Whenever I meditate/chant they want to be in my lap (which they otherwise don't ever want to be, as they don't like being surrounded) and they will participate in any ritual that I do if they're in the house when I do it. If I am feeling bad they will lay on me and/or knead me, much more than they do when I'm fine.

They are particular about what energy they like to be near -- they will only lay on me if they can lay on my sacral energy center on my back, or my willpower energy center on my front, and if I am on my side they will drape across me with their front paws so that their chest is aligned with the energy center they like rather than sitting on my side. In the past few years, their favorite spot has been to lie just above my head in my crown energy center. They appear in my dreams pretty regularly, especially when they sleep in my crown.

They are very sensitive to energy and I have learned that when Kanika says no, I should listen. Kanika is a better judge of who a person is at that moment, including what they are carrying, than I could ever hope to be. I tend to focus on intentions and possibilities sometimes to the exclusion of actions and realities and that gets me in trouble a lot. They will also bounce back my own energy so they can be snappish because I'm anxious or stressed, which helps me realize that my energy is being drained and then I can take action about it.

I don't know how I have been changed due to these connections. I think I have learned that all animals have feelings, but I learned that as much through reading as through my interactions. Kanika has been my companion for a third of my life! They've been around since I was with my first lover. Having Kanika has changed the course of my life because if I didn't have Kanika, I would probably have moved in with Topaz or into some shared hippie house by now, so in a way Kanika helps enforce my need for a truly solitary place where I can cocoon myself in my own beingness. Also for good or ill, they make it really important that people who direct their anxiety outward and people who are disrespectful of animals' boundaries not come to my house. I appreciate my furry little housemate for being a fierce, powerful guardian. I feel honored to be respected and defended by such a creature.

What attitudes/behaviors have you feared inheriting from your bio family at any point in your life? How did/do you combat that fear?

I've actually never feared inheriting attitudes/behaviors from my bio family. I separated emotionally from them at a pretty young age, when my dad first told me that because they fed, clothed and sheltered me I owed them obedience. After that point I stopped thinking of them as my parents and thought of them as employers (who refused to pay me or allow me any autonomy). I stopped thinking of them as moral authorities at about age 12 because I watched them behave unethically -- and against their stated moral code -- over and over, while I obeyed my own moral code. I stopped thinking of them as any source of comfort when they gave away my cat (who was my best friend), told me to stop crying every night because it was disturbing their sleep, and when I finally made a friend, told me constantly that it wouldn't last and my friend didn't really love me. By the time I was 13, I knew that I was more developed than them in both ethics and relationship skills, and I just did what they told me to do so that I didn't get hit or sulked at. I no longer had any respect for them or thought of them as people I could or should emulate. On the contrary, many of the things I learned NOT to do I learned from my parents.

1) Don't ever try to make someone depend on you as their sole or best source of love.

So even if you think that your love is so big that no one else could ever match it, you do not say this! because if you do, you are threatening that person with never being well-loved if you stop loving them. That is something that an ethical person never threatens, and also something that only an extremely arrogant person could claim. There are plenty of people who are great at loving, and if you care about someone then you want them to be well-loved even if it is not by you. It is frankly abusive to claim that you are the best love someone will ever have.

2) Don't ever reference past gifts to try to get someone to do what you want.

This ruins the gift, crushes any sense of love that went with it, and turns it into a bribe with evil intent. It's manipulative and it reveals that you have no generosity; you are merely investing in future control. Once a gift is given, you should treat it as if it didn't even come from you: that will help keep you from tying strings to it.

3) Don't ever, EVER, reference in anger a fear, insecurity, longing, or other vulnerability that someone has shared with you.

This is a profound emotional violation which not only destroys any trust they had in you, it damages part of their ability to trust other people to hold their sharing in a sacred space.

4) Don't ever destroy someone's things because you are angry at them.

This is a symbolic violence that makes it clear you only are not hitting them because you fear repercussions, not because you actually consider it unacceptable. It is an implied threat of physical violence.

5) Don't try to bond with people without considering who they are and what they want; you cannot connect with a person if you are trying to make them be what they are not.

My dad wanted me to throw a football, play basketball, or play chess, none of which I wanted to do, none of which revealed anything about me. I think he genuinely wanted to connect, but he failed utterly because he was so focused on making me share his special interest. I don't think he ever even considered trying to learn about me in order to connect. If he had, he would have quickly learned that we shared a love of trees which would have easily leant itself to connecting activities.

6) Don't approach relationships as transactions, and don't try to get more than you give.

You cannot build a relationship with someone by trying to get them to give you something. My mom wanted me to tell her "poor baby" over how my dad treated her, to commiserate and console without asking her to make any changes. When I was really young I did pat and console and unintentionally relieve the discomfort that should have built to a breaking point in that relationship. At the age of 11 I started telling her to get a divorce, that it was not fair to force the three children in the house to have to live with a tyrant. I treated her like an adult and told her "yes it's wrong, and you have to defy, say no, take action. It will not get better if you do nothing." She never listened and just stopped talking to me at all. By the time my sister was 6, my mother had started using her for comfort and no longer had any interest in me.

7) Don't call names, and if you can't resist, never EVER use a name that reinforces the insecurities the person has about their self.

My parents had names they liked to call me when they were angry or just wanted to make me feel lesser. Some didn't matter to me because they were so obviously untrue (like when they called me a spoiled brat) but other names were used to deliberately mock the aspect I was most insecure about: my body. I watched them hurt me on purpose and I decided it was wrong and I would not do that to others. I have not been perfect but since I became an adult I have called people names very rarely, and never intentionally called a name that referenced someone's insecurity, if I was aware of it or even suspected it.

8) Do not contradict what other people say is true about their self; do not set yourself as a greater authority on them than they are.

At an early age, I saw something and told my parents about it and they told me it was impossible. That broke my sense of reality and I had to fight very hard to ever trust my own senses over what someone else says is true, if there is any subjectivity to the matter. Telling people that they are not who they say they are undermines their relationship with their self, and even if you are technically correct it is unacceptable to argue with someone about it. I have sometimes taken this aspect to an unhealthy extreme and let others define our shared experiences rather than contradict them, but I think the balance lies in not contradicting others about their emotions, motives, or identity, but still being willing to contradict them about the patterns or effects of their behavior.

Describe something positive you took away from a negative situation. Was the gain worth the pain?

The negative situation that comes to mind is investing in a person who I'll refer to as Kwt. Kwt was someone who I was close friends with for about 6 months in 2014, followed by 3 months of awkward half-friendship, and ending with 2 months of conflict. We have not spoken since and unlike most people I stop talking to, I have no intention of ever speaking to Kwt again.

Our friendship started with me feeling desperate for connection and mentioning this publicly. Kwt reached out and invited me to come visit kittens that were at their apartment, and I did. We had some intense, deep conversations about our core values, our needs, and our goals. I was really excited to have found someone else who wanted to grow in similar ways and to also create community. I distinctly remember thinking "wow, this person is actually even more into openness, honesty, and interconnected social-justice-focused community than I am!"

But as time went by, some of Kwt's actions really bothered me, and the first time I asked them to stop an action (whispering to one person when others are around) they withdrew rather than changing (thus began the 3 months of half-friendship). After that I did something that upset them -- told a mutual friend about an action of theirs that scared me -- and after 6 weeks of discussion they finally said "I need to be able to lie to my friends" and I said, essentially, "hard pass." This "need" to lie and need for me to not talk about them was a complete contradiction to everything they had told me they stood for -- total openness and honesty at all times with everyone. I felt baffled and betrayed. They later went on to repeatedly engage in blatant pressuring of others to do all kinds of things that damaged those people for Kwt's benefit. I can't go into all of it because it isn't my story, but I feel strong regret (a rare emotion for me) for having introduced Kwt to my people and encouraged them to invest in this person, because it caused significant harm.

So that was the negative of it. The positive is that this taught me that taking people at their word is not appropriate unless they have proven that they will never intentionally lie to me AND that they are self-aware enough to know if they are telling the truth. I think I felt truth in what Kwt said because they really believed it when they were saying it, but it wasn't actually true. And if I had looked at their actions for confirmation I would have noticed a pattern of coercion and dishonesty and hiding WAY before the eventual blow-up.

I used to be so insistent on letting people be the ones to give meaning to their behavior that I would erase my experience in order to line up with the meaning they provided. This choice I made was cruel to me, dismissive and disrespectful. I can acknowledge that there are things beyond my ability to guess while also stating firmly that, for example, I will not tolerate being made to feel excluded, or being used to make someone else feel excluded. That is at best inconsiderate and quite likely was a manipulation tactic intended to make everyone want to be the one person being whispered to. I'm kinda mad at myself for not stating out loud what it seemed like to me, because stating a manipulation tactic out loud weakens it so much that it is a good deterrent. And if it wasn't the intent, it shows how negatively it comes across which is also a good deterrent. Note to self: describe manipulations out loud when you see an action that may be one.

I think at least this taught me to put a little more faith in my own observations with people in general because most people aren't very self-aware. So they can tell you what they think is the truth, without any intent to deceive you, but that doesn't make it the truth. Alternatively, if I trust everyone to do their best to always tell the truth, I have no protection whatsoever against deliberate manipulation. A much more sensible choice is to make sure, by observation over time, that they are completely opposed to lying to me BEFORE I trust that they are never going to lie to me.

I think that learning this lesson helped me earlier this year when I wanted to invest in someone whose words told me one thing and actions told me another. Eventually I chose to trust myself and that was definitely the right choice: if I had not I would have spent a much longer time pouring out my energy, and eventually I would have gotten the same result. I hope to get quicker about trusting myself, but the necessary first step was learning that sometimes people are wrong about their own selves (intentionally or not) and if their actions do not line up with their words, that may be what is happening.

It is okay and good to trust my observations and protect myself by refusing to believe someone else above myself, if necessary. The first person I have to trust is me, and when someone makes me feel like shit, I need to fucking take that seriously. I wouldn't tolerate it toward someone else and I need to take as good care of me as I would of someone else.

So bunnika and I are gonna be writing buddies and take turns coming up with prompts that we both write on. I'm surprised that we haven't done this before in our dozen-ish years of LJing together (or if we did, that memory is lost) but I feel hopeful. We're gonna aim for twice a week, and try to comment thoughtfully on each other's posts also. Anika is someone whose posts give me the writing itch in general so if we can really stay on it, this could be so lovely, hopefully for us both. Anyone who wants to also write on these prompts is of course welcome to, and feel free to comment with a link if you do.

The first prompt is things/ qualities /situations /experiences you've had that your lovers have envied, or what you have envied from your lovers..  I came up with this one because I randomly remembered how envious Aurilion was, and then I was curious about Anika's experience with that, if relevant. I'm just using it as a jumping off point for some wild rambles.

Aurilion was so envious of my readership here on LJ. I have never had a huge following, but I have had a steady readership of about 150 unique visits per week for many years now. Most of these readers never interact with me, even though some have been reading for literally years. I'm terribly curious, and fascinated by the fact that some of my regular readers are based in countries where I know no one. Occasionally I find out that someone is a reader because they tell me, after two or three years of silent reading, so I never assume I can get an accurate idea of how many people or who reads my LJ.  In my experience there are usually at least 5 silent readers for every commenter, so I don't take it as 'no one is reading' if I only get one or two comments. (Zero comments/reactions still makes me think maybe nobody read it, though)

I never actually talked about that with Aurilion though -- they based their ideas of my readership off of comments I get. They would get envious and have an attitude of "I deserve more comments than you" though they never said that -- they just exclaimed "how do you have so much!? Why do I have so little??" as if we wrote identical things and people inexplicably liked mine better. I tried to figure out why this happened for me, so that I could explain and help them get what they wanted, but they didn't want to change anything about how they wrote -- they just wanted to magically transfer my readers to them. And honestly back then, always eager to please, I urged everyone who read me to add them.

They weren't the first one to feel miffed that they didn't have as many readers as me. My ex-partner Ben also identified as a writer, and wanted to have people invested in what he wrote. I think he also thought I deserved readers and wanted me to have them as well, though.

Thinking back, it's been many years since I actively tried to find readers.  Back in the day, my LJ was the only way I felt I could change the world for good, so it was important to me that as many people read it as possible. And I think I also needed the validation of people affirming that they did read it through comments. That made me feel noticed and valued.

Now, I mostly affect the world through facebook and resource-sharing, and I write in LJ because it is literally the only way I can really remember my life, and because it is my truest way of connecting with people and with myself. When I write, I learn who I am in that moment, on that day, and when I don't, I can easily go months of intense change and become a new version of myself without realizing it, and by then I have forgotten the old me. Until there are literally brain upgrades, I will need this or something like it to have any sense of who I am and what I want and need.

To bounce back though, I am just guessing what drew people to me because like I said, most of my readers never talk to me. I think the thing that I offer is simply a unique way of looking at things and I think everyone can offer that-- it just takes the effort to really reflect rather than reacting automatically, and the effort to share openly and risk hurt rather than sharing only what isn't scary to share. If it doesn't scare you a little bit, you're probably not sharing anything very close to your heart. People can feel when you're sharing something vulnerable, and it means a lot. At least, it means a lot to me when people share with me like that, and many people have told me the same about when I do it, so I imagine it as broadly true of good (non-abusive) people.

Side note: anyone who uses someone's true vulnerability against them on purpose is not a safe person and not a person I can respect. If someone came to me and shared in a humble and vulnerable way, I would not be willing to use it against them even if it was the person I hate most in the world. If it was that person, I would tell them "I'm glad you're trying to be open but I am not the person for you to talk to this about; find someone else." I would not hold it over them, or use it to manipulate them, or otherwise take advantage of that moment. To me it's just such a heinous violation to accept the gift of that most innocent part of a person and then lock that innocent part in chains, or crush it, etc.

Vulnerability should be honored. But it should also be consensual! No one has to accept that gift and people who are not willing and able to accept the responsibility of holding a kind and respectful space should say so. And when you are sharing something very vulnerable, it is also important to check in and be sure the other person CAN hold that space. I have learned the hard way that if something is super important to me, I can't just blurt it out whenever or I am gonna be hurt! I have to say something like "this is hard to express and important. are you in a space to take it in?" and that is within relationships that are based on an ideal of complete openness and honestly. Outside of those I have to be a lot MORE careful.

Which is part of why I share on LJ. People can easily take whatever time they need to process something I have shared, and if they are not interested, they can just not read. I don't have to worry that my vulnerability is too much, and I don't have to feel bad if the response is tepid, because I can re-read it and give my own self that validation of "wow, yes I expressed this exactly how I meant to and it feels true all over again reading it." There is a set of posts I wrote on two or three different times with no response, and it was SO very important to me but I think people couldn't relate -- I still feel really really glad to have written them because they were about such a major shift in my understanding of my self and the universe. In a lot of ways, LJ lets me be my own best friend in a way I simply couldn't without it.

I feel that my mental experience is as much a part of my life as my physical experience; my dreams, my daydreams, my by-proxy experience through imaginative absorption, all create me as much as my physical experiences do. Since my mental experience is something I have a lot of control over, I am very selective about the media I consume -- especially media that is new to me. I was gonna explain books, movies, music, and tv shows, but this is a much more extensive topic than I thought so I guess I'm doing this as a series, starting with books.

I will not purchase a book written by a default (straight cis nondisabled white man) or read it unless it is really, really exceptional. Out of the books I have chosen to read in the past seven years, I have read no more than one book by a default each year, probably fewer. I read easily hundreds of books by defaults in my childhood and I'm going to balance that out. Also, they just tend to be terrible, full of stuff that is either ethically terrible and/or the imaginative equivalent of a bowl of oatmeal. That criteria rules out probably at least 70% of books published in English.

Also, I will not read a fiction book written with a default main character, or about someone who spends the book pining over a default, or about anyone whose primary yearning is a romantic relationship. I'm including the nominally-different who act exactly like a default because the author hasn't bothered to learn perspective-taking. I will not read any patriarchy-affirming gendered bullshit. There better be at least a little bit of criticism of gender roles, and no rape unless it is approached in a truly honest and meaningful way, with no rape myths in the method or motive. And it must be first-person: do NOT use it to show the empathy in your main character while the victim is a mere cardboard cut-out with no other story. I will not read white savior or "my whole planet just happens to be white" books, or books that have more dark characters in antagonist roles than in protagonist roles. I will not read ableist-trope shit where disabled people are saints or demons. All this stuff is really really common.

My preferences for fiction (none of which are ALL true in a given book but the more it has, the more I like it):
- themes of non-human, non-humanoid sentience, especially plant, fungi, and microbe sentience.
- characters who vary widely in appearance, ways of thinking, emotive patterns, and cultural norms.
- unique worldbuilding that gives me new ways to imagine.
- characters who connect to each other in an unusual way.
- resistance to an oppressive regime (with enough magic/revenge/joy to balance it out).
- magic, if it is a unique system or a system that feels similar to how I experience it.
- extended metaphor and/or satire.
- characters who grow noticeably.
- any gender concept that is not some variant of binary ruler/ruled.
- retold fairy tales & myths, especially if they're sinister and gritty.
- not fat-phobic and doesn't reinforce ableist ideas about cognition or mental illness etc (sadly this one is a preference because some of my favorite writers who fulfill almost all my other criteria fail this one, but at least they do it rarely enough that I can just scribble out the lines on those pages).

As for non-fiction, I am unlikely to read anything about spiritual practice written by a white person, and decidedly will not read it if the practice they're discussing belongs to a non-white culture or was stolen from multiple cultures. We committed so much spiritual genocide (on top of physical genocide) that I think we need to spend at least 12 generations doing nothing but learning, and frankly most white people package up colonialist capitalist attitudes in shiny new phrases and sell them to make a shitton of money. I will not contribute to that and I don't want any of that shit in my head. Further, in any kind of book that gives advice no matter what the topic, it better fucking be concrete actions you can take without needing money, or it's useless. The author better have actually followed the advice and benefited from it.

Non-fiction that claims to be fact is held to my highest standard. I don't check the author status here, I check the references. In science books, I want a FAT section of references and every single one better fucking have decent experimental design. Don't understand statistics? don't write a book about science, because you can't tell a good study from a bad one and your opinion is not reliable enough for other people to approach it as fact. If you're writing about social science and you reference structural functionalism in any way other than as a debunked and ridiculous attempt by defaults to justify and maintain power, you're a fuckin quack.

Preferences for non-fiction:
- in autobiographies, I want to know how things felt and how the author solved problems. I want to feel like I am reading a journal, and like I am vicariously experiencing things I can learn from and apply to my own life.
- in dense matter, I want short chapters with visual space to help me take my time.

I started 2016 with a lot of hope. In January I connected a lot with Kylei, Sande, and Hannah; I had two graduation parties and started making more plans to spend time with people, and I started meditating weekly-ish with Elizabeth. But by the end of January I ended up in a dark crash over how little I felt connected to people. The beginning of February was a little better -- I got to go to Big Trees with some of my favorite people, and Topaz hosted Heather's birthday which was also nourishing and fun. But then I went to a party at Kylei's and had a terrible anxiety crash which ended up leaking into the next day and causing a horrifically painful miscommunication with Topaz. Later that month I went to the activist meet-and-greet for the first time after meaning to go for ages, and met three awesome new people. But just introducing myself made my heart beat painfully hard. At the end of February I asked my psychiatrist to prescribe me anxiety meds and start being medicated for that for the first time.

In March I did a lot of social -- met with four friends as well as with my ex-mother-in-law. I also began a four-week break with Topaz, in an effort to re-set our relationship which had become too central for both of us. In April I had two tinder fails (one flaked and the other I could hardly talk with), made a new friend, hosted a crafty party and a cuddly communion, spent time with Roger and Serenity, and went to Euphoria where I gave a talk on intimacy and made a game with it. (yeah I'd say that the anxiety meds were helping!) In May I spent a lot of time with Serenity and Evelyn, hosted a cuddly communion, spent time with Katie, Allison, Serra, and Indie, and wrote a lot of important posts. In June I spent lots of time with Serenity, presented at APW and SFQP, hung out with Arizona, Sande, Allison, Kylei, Evelyn, and Cass, and had a truth-or-truth videochat with LJ friends, as well as writing a lot of important posts.

In July stuff started getting very stressful -- Topaz went through something really traumatic, Kanika had a medical emergency and I had to take her to the vet, my little sister came in town unexpectedly, and I ran out of money and had to start begging from my bioparents. But also I spent lots of good time with Serenity and had several gathers -- two with my lil sis, also Katie, Allison, Hannah, Kylei, Elliott, Evelyn, Sande, Cass, and even Adi, so that part was positive. But August brought a lot of painful stuff for Topaz, was when I ran out of ADD meds with no access to a doctor, and was the last time I saw Evelyn for months. Roger and Allison were supportive and helpful, and I went to a SONG membership meeting which gave me hope like nothing else except for TBC ever has.

September I got a job at Starbux and finally started getting call backs and interviews for a few of the hundreds of applications I had sent. My awful bioparents also invaded my house and stayed for a month, harassing me about money, rearranging my stuff and throwing some of it away without my permission, invading my bedroom, and being transphobic. October was mostly filled up with my awful bioparents and working at Starbux but at the very end I began doing LJ Idol again. In November things got still worse -- Evelyn officially broke things off with me and Kylei blew up at me and told me we can't be friends. Then later that month Evelyn invited me to a party at their house which ended up being an emotional disaster. I quit Starbux for my new job.

December was a very mixed bag. I started my new job, which was amazing; I got a new psychiatrist and finally got medicated for ADD again; I got to spend time with Arizona, Felix, Felix's people Blaire and Shay, Allison, Jonathan, Heather, Brian, Jessica, and my little sister. But also, my grandmother died and I had to spend time with my awful biofamily, and I was so emotionally drained that I couldn't really enjoy Solstice. It was also a sad reminder of my estrangement from Kylei and Evelyn, because I wanted them at Solstice so much.

( detailed events )