John

A story of abuse and recovery

johnpalmer — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:12:12 GMT

Imagine if, when you were little, you had to obey a bunch of extra rules that didn’t make sense to you, and if you didn’t, you’d be hurt. You’d also be hurt, and called weird, all the time, for things that seemed natural to you, or that you couldn’t avoid. Eventually, you’d learn to avoid the “weird” looks and behaviors when you’re with people – with effort. Better to expend the effort than to keep getting punished!

You can imagine a person who grew up with such abuse; you’d probably imagine they’d flinch away from social contact, because it takes effort just to look normal, and they don’t want to be hurt again, when they slip. In a perfect world, such a person learns to stop flinching away, because decent grown-ups don’t mind a bit of weirdness in look or behavior, though they might want to understand “when you’re ready and willing, why the weirdness? Only if you don’t mind my asking!” They would stop being hurt, you see? Eventually, their fears would fade, and maybe they’d heal from the effects of the early abuse.

Now, imagine me, where people still hurt me if I’m weird in look or behavior, for things that seem sensible or natural to me, and they still hurt me for violating certain rules. I’m really smart, so, for me, it was trivial to create a public face that met all of the visible, and even many invisible, rules. Regardless, at any time, someone could claim I’d broken the rules, and hurt me deliberately, to punish me, as if I were a naughty child. From their perspective, I was – they don’t feel they caught me in a quick nose-pick, they feel as if they caught me wiping boogers on something not-mine. Why? Because of my neurology, I might moan in pain, or make a face, or mumble something, or show emotion, or… anything. Anything “too weird.”

So I am still living in the same scary childhood that teaches me to flinch away from contact, I’m just much better at playing along and not getting hurt too much, too many times, and, in not flinching away too visibly, because that makes you “passive aggressive”. Fun fact: if you flinch, and say “you hurt me, I’m angry,” you’re an asshole; if you say “fine, I don’t care, hurt me any time you want,” you’re passive aggressive. I’m sure there’s a way to say “wait, I don’t want to hurt you; how can I avoid that, so you stop hurting me?” but I haven’t found it. Obviously, since they are hurting a disabled guy, for something that’s not his fault, I should be able to say “suck it up, buttercup,” but again, that makes me an asshole, because no one understands the whole “can’t help it” thing.

It’s not anyone’s fault, because the reason I’m vulneable is, my neurological pain makes me vulnerable to being hurt. It saps my resources, and makes me less able to manage my emotions (it takes energy and effort!), and it can trigger emotions – negative ones, like anger, frustration, etc. – as well as causes bad memories to surface. It can also, spontaneously, cause me to grimace, flinch, mumble, etc.. See the difficulty? I might look angry, and grimace. It’s got nothing to do with anything but my neuro pain, but, unlike someone with a sore leg that aches when it rains, no one understands that I sometimes just feel pain for no known reason, or that it can produce complex effects.

So I have reason to fear someone being hurtful, as if they’d caught me wiping boogers, and be as sharp as they’d speak to a child who needed more maturity and politness whipped into him by his parents, because I am in pain. And that adds a big helping of extra pain, and, it’s so loneliness inducing, you need to think “lifeboat, no oars, single occupant, that might make it to shore, if the ship sank during the correct tidal timeframe, which it probably did, but you won’t know for a long time.” Or, if you prefer, “it was devastatingly lonely, but includes some hope that it should end… eventually.”

Anyway. That was my life, when I walked into a virtual Callahans Place, and it was the worst mistake I’d ever made for my own survivability. (No offense to anyone I helped – I’m not expressing regret.)
See, people told me they understood my struggle, they loved me, they were my friends, and, when the Big Bad Time came, I wouldn’t have to go through it alone. I’d have friends, like Pat, and Barbara, who would keep me from wanting to blow my brains out.

See, Pat started as someone who I thought was my best friend, and whom I loved. I was still young enough and stupid enough to think that meant she loved me. I made a lot of positive changes in her life. I was trustworthy, loyal, and loving, for one thing, and laughed my way through breaking her “curse of the coast.” But for specifics, I taught her intentionality. When I say I love you, when I kiss, when I caress, when I cuddle, I try to bring my whole self to it. When you look at a woman, like she’s the sexiest centerfold ever, and drink in her beauty, sip by sip, and it shines from your eyes, she can tell. When you whisper love to her, because you want her to be happy, she can tell. Oh, you don’t have to make a big production out of every “I love you” utterance, but, when you do, it means something.

I taught her to mix that into ritual, both high and low, and how to play and have fun, regular and sexytimes fun. I taught her some BDSM-y stuff that, at the time, she swore she enjoyed, and I believed her, since it mixed her theatrical love with sexytimes fun, and, audience participation.

And I tried to be a good boyfriend to her, travelling twice a month, most months, to see her. And right here, we already see why the relationship should have seemed abusive to me. See, she demanded we visit twice a month – I liked her being that eager, so I agreed – and for her, travelling was a “big deal” so I did almost all of the travelling. She knew that it mattered to me – she knew that my doing “almost all of the travelling” was super, super, important to me, yet never guessed why. It’s not like driving four hours is excruciatingly painful… right? Even if your disabled boyfriend describes some special nightmares about driving while disabled… right? If your disabled boyfriend whines, like it’s excruciating to drive four lousy hours (okay, sometimes six, with Portland traffic), she figured, it was because he was whiny, and that should be held over his head.

Because it couldn’t possibly be that it really is excruciating to drive four effing hours down, four effing hours back, even if you’re disabled, because that would require a baseline assumption that you’re a real human being, and if you complain about something, it really matters. And that, boys and girls, is why I describe the relationship as abusive. When one person’s concerns are auto-dismissed, that person is the target of some abuse. Don’t get me wrong: we were fine pals, I suppose, she just never really took any of my problems with any seriousness. Well, that also prevented me from taking my problems with the proper level of seriousness. Remember: when I get tired, my brain shuts down. Her travel schedule meant that I was too dull to recognize how much travel was dulling my brain. She could have noticed that, but, hey, if she had, I wouldn’t be writing this.

Anyway: I tried to be a good boyfriend along with the travel, and tried to do things that were of interest to us both, but, again, I was always exhausted, always struggling for energy, and always struggling with a lot of other issues, that I didn’t yet realize were caused by neurological pain. Pat wasn’t the kind of girlfriend who’d say you’re able to handle emotional issues – she’d just criticize you when you failed, finally remembering that you’re not normally that way, right? So, she’d acknowledge that she was wrong for taking me to task, but only after she’d already hurt me. It took Deborah to realize how emotionally healthy I was – Pat just assumed I was a psych case. Meh, it happens, people die.

Anyway, eventually, 2010 came, and my life started going to hell, and I was the only person who seemed to notice. Pat just assumed I was shrinking, becoming less, and loving less, and caring about her less. I was actually dying. I couldn’t feel pleasure any more; my life was being torn away from me, bit by bit, by pain and exhaustion; I didn’t know how I could live, unless things changed, and no doctor could find anything wrong. She didn’t notice, or care, apparently.

Eventually, shortly after a heart-attack scare gave me cause to hope a cardiologist would find something wrong with me (nope!), Pat and Barbara seemed to have decided they knew what was up, without talking to me. They knew I was a cruel, unfeeling, uncaring, rapist asshole, who did not deserve the companionship Pat had “offered” – remember, she had demanded I come down twice a month, to the bitter end! – because I was such a terrible, terrible person since 2001. Yes, it was 2014ish, but, I’d hidden my evil so, so, deeply it took 12, 13 years to find out, just so they could ream me.

And of course, the people who promised me I’d never have to face my worst nightmares alone were the ones who created my worst nightmare, without ever once asking if I was okay, before their Big Bad Times of Pat reaming me so badly, it would play a starring role in my nightmares for ten or more (still counting) years to come! Man – just think of what they’d have missed, if they’d spoken to me, to get my input! They might have prevented their own attempt to kill me! But they didn’t, because I’d sealed my own doom.

See, the problem was, I’m polyamorous. Pat wanted to have sex with a normal guy, so I said “sure!” She has sex with a normal guy, with my active encouragement, and she loves it. Now, she’s pissed that I’ve deprived her of the very sex I told her to go get. If only they had been to a Polyamory discussion group in the past, they might have realized that NRE in one relationship can highlight problems in another, and set them into stark relief, and, you shouldn’t just flush your old relationship, especially not with a pack of hateful lies. You should evaluate what’s wrong, and COMMUNICATE. Remember, talk to me? But if they’d ever studied anything about how to live with polyamory and in polyamorous relatinships, they’d clearly decided the rules don’t apply to weirdos, like me, which is a thing, that happens, and sometimes, people die as a result.

Near as I can tell, that’s when Pat and Barbara decided that a disabled weirdo isn’t really human, because eeeew, I didn’t fuck like a normal guy, and, I didn’t take her sightseeing in Seattle very often (I never went sightseeing, without bringing Pat – yes, my life really did suck that much, I was not holding back!), I did take her to BDSM activities, so, obviously I only care about myself (because I introduced her to BDSM, see?), and thus, I am an abusive asshole, thank god they found out within the first dozen or so years of the relationship, by examining only the last few years, during which I’d been completely debilitated! Time to make me feel like total scum for ever assuming I was worthwhile to one of the “cool kids.”

Anyway. I couldn’t talk to anyone here, not once Barbara told me it was toxic to share stories of how the breakup was affecting me. I knew she was a stuffed shirt know-it-all who told all kinds of stories that she pretended were about her (when they were often copped from Reader’s Digest – cheap story thief!), but I was astounded she once told me she loved me, and didn’t even think about talking to me, ever, about what was going on. How can any human being use the word “love” one day, and call you an abusive asshole weirdo later, without even checking the basic facts of the story? Obviously, I wasn’t aware that “you are someone that I love” meant “...but you’re still my little butt-monkey! Dance, monkey, dance!”

That’s what hurts, deep down. You have to feel so stupid for believing in people like that, before you can heal from the injury. I was an idiot for believing that meeting those people in a Callahan’s wannabe meant anything other than they enjoyed fiction of a certain type. I was an idiot for believing in professions of friendship and love when I was always a weirdo, that those people didn’t understand.

And that means, the only hope for my life is to try to be a weirdo that people do understand. So my next step is to try to sow some understanding.

A nasty filk song

johnpalmer — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 05:09:50 GMT

If you approve of DJT and the T maladministration, you don't want to see this. If you ignore this warning, it's your bad, not mine, if you get upset.

The Ballad of Don Shitzinpantz:

Music/rhythm/rhyme scheme, Jim Croce.

Words: W. T. Fghost

It was a big, bad, fugly bill

baddest thing from the Capitol Hill

Badder than a disco dance

And mean as Don Shitzinpantz!

On the south side of the Capitol, it's the fugly part of the Hill,

and if you go down there, you better just beware of the big bad fugly bill.

Shitizpants was a liar, see he said he stood six three, oh, cool

Those capitol girls call him shorty toadstool, but the men just call him a fool.

It was a big, bad, fugly bill

baddest thing from the Capitol Hill

Badder than a disco dance

And mean as Don Shitzinpantz!

Now Donnie he a baldie has big combover, crass

And he hates to stand out in the rain, where his skull shows like his ass!

He got some bad boy Secret Service

He got the federal cops, by chance

He needs those boys, as distractory toys, whenever he shits his pants!

It was a big, bad, fugly bill

baddest thing from the Capitol Hill

Badder than a disco dance

And mean as Don Shitzinpantz!

Donnie passed a turd one day, and he sent it on to the Hill

And at the bar was a Johnson and a Thune-y guy and they squished it to a "beautiful bill"

It was dirty and it smelled so bad, it even made you puke up lye

It was cruel and mean and the best you could seen was, we all is gonna die.

It was a big, bad, fugly bill

baddest thing from the Capitol Hill

Badder than a disco dance

And mean as Don Shitzinpantz!

Now bad boys often take a fall, as Jim Croce tells us true

And we all can hope that justice comes for ol' Donnie and his crew!

it hurts to think donnie and his buds will go scot free

'specially when they say all that all good Dems should be hang-ed from a tree!

It was a big, bad, fugly bill

baddest thing from the Capitol Hill

Badder than a disco dance

And mean as Don Shitzinpantz!

It was a big, bad, fugly bill

baddest thing from the Capitol Hill

Badder than a disco dance

And mean as Don Shitzinpantz!

Final note: if someone is killed, by hanging, they are "hanged," not "hung". So hit that second syllable proudly.

So, quick help request - no pressure, seriously.

johnpalmer — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 06:32:41 GMT

Hey, folks.

I've finally had the overall desperation, that I've asked about witness statements we could collect - we, being my attorney and I.

I tried to write a powerful personal statement, saying "doctors, and lawyers, will read this, and each went to school to turn their mind into something special - they were a competent doctor or lawyer. And y'all wouldn't last a year, with what I have to deal with. Think of the humiliation, that I can barely care for myself, after having been a big fish, in my own tiny pool."

So there are things that someone could write about.
"I knew John, before 2010, and after 2010, and he's completely different," is good.
"John has an amazing brain AND
...I can only imagine how bad it is, to have lost that."
OR
...I can attest that he's sometimes just not the John I know."

That's good.

One doctor thought I was having a psychotic break, and cited, as evidence, that I said "Barnstead is a friend of spiders." If you were writing something else for me, and wanted to point out that "John Barnstead is a real person, and so is scifi author Spider Robinson, so saying one is the friend of the other is perfectly reasonable!" that wouldn't be bad.

Um. If I've ever reached out to you, and sounded crazy, but, in a relatively short order (but maybe a day or two), seemed not crazy - or, at least more stable, or more coherent, or whatever, that's good.

If you can say you've seen me have struggles with mental challenges you know I could handle, or, you've heard me talk about them, that's something you can report. If ten people say "he always talked about being so *tired* all the time," that's not proof I was tired, but it does mean I talked about it a whole lot.

If you've seen me have physical struggles, that's fine too. Have you ever seen me break into a huge sweat, like, I'll drench my t-shirt, wring sweat out of it? That's fine. Ever seen me spacy? That's great.

The reason I'm saying I'm disabled is, my neuro pain keeps scrambling my brain so much that I'm not just too tired, I'm no longer even *competent* to do my job, and I'm in too much pain to push a broom. So, any time where you've seen my brain falter badly, and you really wondered "how could he be that *stupid*?" well - if you can make that a fact based thing, "I saw him do X, which he wouldn't do normally, unless, as he says, his brain was misfiring. Because later, he could explain why X was so stupid...."

The timeline is short - my application is going in, in under a week.

Bill Gawne, I wish I could do more than just shout out to you, while I'm under this much stress, but I know you've seen me semi-crazy, then more rational, and, I know you can back me on Barnstead/Spider. I miss the hell out of you; you're one of the reasons the broken brain *hurts*, emotionally speaking (in addition to the neuro pain). Griffen, you too, m'friend. Too many others I can't think to name, or, if I start naming, I'll forget someone.

Thanks for being there if you can't help, and thanks for any help you can give.

johnpalmer — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 20:43:54 GMT

So, I’ve been trying to figure out how to say what I next want to say.

Do I dislike who, and what, I am? Of course not. That’s ludicrous. I know that I’m a good person, even though people have said I’m such a horrible person, I shouldn’t even hang out with people who want to see me, because I’m that toxic. Thanks, Pat and Barbara!, et. al.

Do I despise who I am? Even more ludicrous. I was born to understand love and humanity. Yes, I know, some people will view me with contempt and disdain, because I’m injured – thanks again, y’all! – and don’t think there’s any reason to listen to me, to find out if maybe there’s a good explanation for why I’m acting strangly.

Well – do I feel unwavering contempt for myself, for doing, and acting, strangely, in ways that people will later view as contempt-worthy, and hateful, even though I can see that my actions allowed a hateful person to see me as contempt-worthy and hateful? Dude – I really do not do self-hatred, nor do I hate the disabled and injured. Why are we discussing all of these stupid questions?

Here’s why: Do I feel completely and thoroughly ashamed of being someone, who, on occasion, suffers from extreme fatigue, neurodivergence, infrequent emotional lability too extreme to allow rationality, and, do I further feel totally ashamed and worthless, because I can’t always be a mature, responsible, emotionally-stable grown-up able to hold productive discussions about relationships?

Yes. 100%, and totally. It’s why I can’t write anything these days – everything sounds like the whining of an ugly, faceless, useless hunk of biomass.

There’s a song that’s been ringing through my head – probably Odetta’s version, it sounds like her strong, wise, voice, leading “this little light of mine… I’m gonna let it shine….” One of my gifts, insofar as it’s worthy of the name, is, I see lights that shine, better than many. I could see it in both of my brothers – I later realized it was in me, too, but I wasn’t aware of the signs.

Once I hit maturity, I learned about my own heart’s ability to shine, to see joy, and beauty, love, and, all manner of wonderful things. Even better, I learned to have some control over it. I learned to shine it. I could see the effect it had on people. It made me happy.

One really awful thing about being me – about having my particular set of circumstances – is that parts of me shut down, without warning. Once a person sees this light from me, I understand that it can be painful if it’s gone, so I exert a lot of energy to turn it on, when needed, and to keep it going while I’m with someone. But over the long term, my life has been one where the light is bound to go out, and I’m no longer completely human. That’s how it feels, and not having something all humans have is, in a sense, being “not completely human.” You see what I’m saying? I’m human, but something is missing, just as surely as if it was amputated, except, a light to shine can grow back. Hypothetically, at least.

The worst thing is, due to my disabilities, I sometimes turn ugly, in mood, expression, mannerisms, or appearance. Sometimes, even if I know I’m ugly, I’m too tired to fix it. And people can justifiably freak out because of that, you see? I can’t blame someone for freaking out – it’s not a normal kind of ugly, so people have to adapt. The problem is shame.

Because I’m ashamed of being broken, damaged goods, toxic, etc., I never think through how I’m broken, why people say I’m damaged goods, what specific toxins are present, and how can they be neutralized, etc.. I avoid it – it’s past the door labeled “shameful stuff, do not disturb.” So, when someone freaks the eff out, I’m not ready to explain things to them.

Just out of the blue, I came up with “I’m sorry – sometimes, my emotions express themselves in a weird way, due to my PTSD.” But first, I had to confront the shame enough to recognize that I’m not crucifying myself in front of people, I’m just offering an explanation. Instead, my shame leads me to try to ignore the times I’m damaged goods, or toxic, and hope the other person just forgets. That’s not a terrible strategy, to hope a friend forgets a behavioral outlier – but an explanation makes it easier for them to understand, and not need to forget, the outlier.

I’m ashamed that I need to remind myself to be a good, happy-making, human being – it’s not enough to do nothing wrong, you need to do some things that are right. I’m deeply ashamed of having weaknesses that could be pointed to and mocked, which would hurt when I’m exhausted, or mentally/emotionally injured. And I couldn’t tell you, not if my brain clicked on, and I was no longer damaged goods, and not if I had a million years, could I tell you, how ashamed I am that I can’t turn on “this little light of mine.”

I miss you – all of you out there. But without that light, nothing really seems to make any sense, so, it’s really, really, difficult to engage.

Forgiveness problem

johnpalmer — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 19:42:34 GMT

(This is the first of a series of essays - they aren't posts like a normal "hi, here's how I'm doing, how are y'all doing?" I'm not ready to read, and respond, though I'll try. These are "how do you live when you are (or, how do you live with) a person who's too damaged for ordinary descriptions?)

I have a problem with forgiveness. I do it too easily. The reason for that is simple: people hurt me all the effing time, and I don’t know when I’m entitled to respond.

All my life (I believe) I’ve had me/CFS. Early in life, I was taught not to complain, and to ignore many things that bothered me. That’s part of the “people hurt me all the time” – things that shouldn’t hurt, can hurt me. I have to forgive those minor, unintentional, hurts constantly. I also I learned that no one really cared when I was hurt, and, when they hurt me, if I complained, it was always *my* fault.

I don’t mean, if I complained about getting swatted to a parent, I got another swat. I mean, if someone hurts me in a social situation, and I try to express that I’m hurt, it’s somehow my fault, the whole situation, and not even a bit of fault for the other person. My pain doesn’t matter. My feelings don’t matter. I have to accept any hurt thrown at me, and avoid hurting anyone, in any way, because I’m the ugly weirdo (brutal truth, not self deprecation). That has to change if I’m going to survive. It might not change. Meh, it happens; people die.

What are the limits? I’ve been thinking about that, and “stuff that shouldn’t hurt me, does,” and “basic human behavior”. Well… one day, in a store, near Christmas, I realized the checkout clerk noticed me wincing at the music and so, pretending she was just being jolly, started singing it, loudly, at me. How do I know she was doing this? Folks – especially we neurodivergent people, but all bullying victims – learn when people are doing that. And wow, do folks hate it when we’re right and call it out!

I want to make one thing clear: I don’t mean she was being a horrible person. She was the equivalent of a big sister tweaking her kid brother; this is a perfect example of a “microagression”. She realized she could hurt some poor slob who just wanted to get home and collapse, so she did. Somewhere, I need to learn the courage and anger to look such a person in the eye, and say “you’re doing that to hurt me. Stop it… no, I don’t want to hear it, just stop singing.” No complaining to managers – it was a (relatively) harmless mistake, and it shouldn’t have hurt me as badly as it did.

Then… I have to do something braver. She might feel stabbed in the gut, like, if her kid brother screamed for mom, she’d say “come on, I was just playing! A little!” if mom was angry. I have to ignore that, stay angry, and walk away. My attitude must be: “You hurt my inner child – I’m angry, until my child is safe and comforted, and *you* don’t get comfort – even if you weren’t a terrible ogre, even if you were ‘just playing, a little.’”

I know how it hurts, to be told I was hurtful, especially when I caused pain without realizing it. I want to help her process, and assure her she’s *fine*, now that she stopped, just, some customers *are* very sound-sensitive, etc., etc.. But it’s not my job, and even if I wanted to take it on, *that* is where things go wrong. Friends will have time to talk it out later; those who don’t talk it out are risky people to hang with. Those who aren’t friends have to learn to deal with their own emotions, so long as I try to be gentle.

It’s crazy to say it, but friends shouldn’t need good reasons to care about another friend’s pain. They should just care about avoiding it! But not all of my pains are visible, and some visible pains… shouldn’t be. What I’m doing isn’t working, so I recognize I have to do better. I have to make the right pains visible, and remember that a friend who doesn’t care about your pain (even if your pain is “weird” or your reaction to it is “ugly”), is not your friend at all.

What are *your* obligations, as my friend? Well, some pains need to be ignored, not stared at, and, as best as is possible, forgotten, even though you are shocked that I suddenly looked so hurt. I could almost have this printed on a card:

“Even if it looks like you hurt me, or upset me. I might be having a flashback to an old trauma, of a similar situation – you didn’t hurt me, PTSD did. If you keep hitting a trigger, I’ll let you know what it is, as quickly as I can identify it. I’m sorry my PTSD makes it look like you hurt me, but, gimme time to get to that, while I deal with the PTSD, okay? First, my trauma, then your comfort.”

Um. Did you see how complicated that got? And how accusatory the ending sounds? You say, or do something, and I have a flashback, and you feel hurt – not unreasonably. I want to comfort you. But I have frickin’ PTSD, so I can’t stop to explain that when I’m having a flashback. Later, I’ll tell you it wasn’t your fault, and you better effing trust me, because it’s dirty pool to blame me for your hurt, when I’ve done my due diligence in reassuring you, right? That’s true for any friendship – if you need more reassurance, ask for it, but don’t decide my reassurance wasn’t enough, not ask for more, and blame me!

And don’t tell me it’s hard. I get that it’s hard. But I’m the one with the broken brain, major depression, constant pain, and constant fatigue, and probably more I’m forgetting to mention, and I can’t do it alone. Do you need some hugs, some cuddles, more verbal reassurance, an explanation? I’ll try to do any of those things (cuddles excepted for most guys), but you need to play fair with me and let me report my experiences, my fears, and my traumas.

Okay, and then, if I say something like “when you argued with me, I felt bullied,” you are allowed to *ask*, “did you think I was bullying you?” and if the answer is “no,” you take it as golden. (It might be *wrong*, but it’s my mistake to make – not yours to correct.) If the answer is “maybe” or “yes”, you have a problem. I don’t think you’re a perpetual bully, but I might fear you were in that situation

The problem is, maybe you sang along to a jolly Christmas song, and it hurt, and I felt you were microbullying – I felt bullied, even though it was just the ordinary sorts of – I think in the UK they call it “piss-taking” – friends do. You rib your friends about embarrassing moments, they laugh, and poke at yours. So: maybe you’ll say “if I ever do that again – whack on you for being oversensitive to loud music – you can call me out. I’ll try not to, but, come on, man, I might make a mistake.”

Right there – that’s friendship. We have an issue, we try to avoid it, if we mess up, we try to make right.

But if you say “oh, come on man, you can’t feel bullied every time someone teases you about being sensitive,” I’m gonesville. I have to be. It’s not that I should feel bullied when someone teases me in that way; and I’d rather not be. But I can’t help it – that’s why I asked some hypothetical person to stop, as a friend would, if they cared. I can’t risk friends who don’t care, not any longer.

Reintroduction

johnpalmer — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 19:28:15 GMT

I keep wanting to write some re-introduction post, but there’s not a lot of point. Hi, I’m the blog author, John Palmer. I’m a broken brained gimp who is a terrible friend, and I have depression and PTSD.

You’re going to hurt me. Seriously: you’re going to say things that hurt, sometimes just reading what you write hurts, sometimes, just existing hurts, and you’re on the periphery, and it still hurts that you’re there. You can’t avoid that, unless you don’t interact with me at all. And, I’m going to forgive it all, and try to ignore it, because it’s not your fault. You don’t know better, and I’m not willing to tell you enough so you *do* know better.

Why? Well… there’s something that’s entirely absent in our culture right now: compassion. It’s gone. No one wants to talk about it. Strength and forcefulness and “being a nasty (expletive deleted,)” that’s cool and neat and powerful – caring about others is for losers, right?

Anyway, if I need help, when dealing with people, because they hurt me, and I need to explain the pain they cause? Yeah, I’m not going to do that, not yet, you think I’m stupid enough to set myself up? again? Look: I was the butt of one of the biggest jokes I can imagine: this woman pretended to care about me, and understand that I had a lot of problems and was in constant pain and could just barely hold it together without dying, and, pretended to give a damn for, I dunno, a dozen years? And with that setup, managed to stab and crush and tear every single positive part of our relationship, until there was nothing but carbon and rust, being ground into me for the rest of eternity. PTSD, don’t you know. You can’t just hurt us for “just a moment,” whooo, no.

Friendship is bullshit. Because I came out of that relationship, and every friend I had told me how much they loved both of us, which is codeword for “John, don’t seek help from *me*”. Thankfully, two people talked to me, believed me, loved me, and caused me to continue to live. One of them died, and I can deny I’ve been tempted to follow.

Because I’ve learned there’s nothing I can say that will ever protect me from evil. Compassion is not for weirdos like me. I’m in too much pain, so, I can’t point out the *ONE THING* to do to stop the pain. Who wants to put up with that?

I can’t push back in a relationship, so I’ll always be pushed around. No one will ever have to say “no, John, I care about *your* problems right now, stop worrying about how *I* feel.” Well, a therapist might, but, a therapist is someone you pay a lot of money to, for an hour of listening to you, and if you can’t SPEAK, that’s a big waste of money.

That’s why I get pushed around. When my brain is broken, I can’t speak properly. I can’t put big ideas into words. I can’t have a discussion in which real problems are solved – I can only get yelled at, and told I’m wrong, and meh, it happens, people die.

Well… I’m sorry, but, people *do* die. Mortality is part of our fate. And, meh, it happens. I get yelled at, feel like crap, and decide I’m so desperately lonely I’ll just lick the crap off and go home and mope about it. And, again, I say, meh, it happens, people die. Lots of people die from loneliness each year.

You can argue with a lot of what I say, but, don’t argue with me over “Meh. It happens. People die.” People die from some of the most petty crud imaginable, when it lands on them on the wrong day. And people like me, we have to remember that if we let up our guard, we will be one of the people who die. So, as flippant as it sounds, “meh, it happens, people die.” Remember that if you dare – it’s not one of those “happy thoughts” you use to fly in Neverland.

I don’t dare trust friendship, and I don’t dare trust my broken brain. See, the pain I feel, it’s neurological. If it overloads my brain *slightly*, I’m forced to go through a lot of error-correction, and I find I’m a lot stupider than normal. If it overloads my brain completely, well, it’s like I took a sudden, minor, injury – I’m in real pain, both physical and mental/emotional. This is one of the things Pat took major offense to – me failing to hide my inescapable pain. That’s hilarious: any time you see me acting the least bit cheerful, I’m hiding my pain as best as I can, and it’s not for my sake that I’m hiding it. Still, that’s the problem, right? My broken brain makes me a target to other people. Even people who recognize that I’m having a terrible pain reaction – even when I’ve explained it’s me, only, and not a bit their fault.

The PTSD, well, that just means I can’t talk my problems out. See, I say “I felt like I was being bullied,” gets turned into “HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME?” no matter how carefully you try to explain “I need to say how it felt, so we can try to avoid the same thing happening.” So, I end up just ignoring how it felt. It doesn’t matter, because it only matters to me. It’s invisible, just like my pain.

I have a new pain doc. He doesn’t care that I have a speech impediment, nor that my brain sometimes misfires, nor that I’m in such enormous pain I don’t know how I can survive much longer with it. He does care about me answering questions correctly (even when the questions are not *presented* correctly), in getting me to “stop fighting him” (by trying to answer his questions, note), to telling me he’s plenty empathic and compassionate, so shut up and let him shock me and stick me with needles.

My wife wants him to shiv me in the spine and stuff steroids inside me to kill my blood sugars so I die slowly and painfully, but, only because it would be really inconvenient to wait for a doctor who hasn’t re-traumatized me already. It’s ugly, when you freeze, and immediately go into a toxic form of subspace, where you’re terrified to ask questions, or do anything that might make the bad man hurt you more. But she wasn’t there, so, my pain doesn’t exist. Meh, it happens, more often than I care to count. And if I ream this doctor out properly, maybe I’ll keep him from killing other pain patients. But, hey, PTSD, broken brain, wife doesn’t care (so she doesn’t want me making a fuss).

I really don’t know how to live any more. I’m going to, and going to keep trying to figure it out, but the answer used to be “love” and “compassion” and bullcrap like that. I need a better answer. I wish like heck I had one.

An announcement

johnpalmer — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 05:43:23 GMT

I got my best possible wedding present from my dear departed friend and lover, Deborah Ruppert. One day, she realized I was completely emotionally frazzled, and wanted to help talk me through it - something she was *very* good at, I might add! - and I was once again trying to push her away, though she was one of the people I trusted most, when I was feeling that way. I explained that I knew *all* of the techniques she was discussing, I could do those things in my *sleep* (arguably, I have), and yet....

She suddenly intuited just how hard I work, 24x7x365, keeping my emotions under control. And it was like, "OMG, you have an axe sticking out of your head! I bet it hurts!" And now that someone said it, I could look in the mirror and say "why yes. It's funny - it's a really old pain, but no one, no one ever, ever, ever, mentioned it before." Now, I could have figured out how hard I worked to maintain emotional stability if asked the right questions, by someone who knew the right sorts of questions to ask, but, I had no real guidance on how easily most people managed their emotions.

Instead, she put it all together - the times she's seen me having problems, and what other signs she sees at those times, the signs that my resources are just totally drained. Today, I know why I have so many problems managing my emotions - I'm in constant pain, and I'm having constant other neurological effects, and those both drain resources, as well as impinging on one's emotional awareness. In other words: people can do things that hurt you, just as much as if they given you a hearty, affectionate, slap... over a sunburn. It's normal to feel angry about, or afraid of, being hurt like that, but if your pains are invisible, you can't show any emotional reaction, or people will think you're weird.

So I've gotten really good at managing my emotions, because I've always had these pains that were invisible, so I had to keep them hidden - or so I thought. Still: Deborah might have saved my life by affirming my pain, and my skill at handling it.

Um. To avoid burying the lede - yes, y'all can accuse me of that a bit, already - I did mention a specific type of gift earlier, right? And, anyway, one day, I was explaining to my beloved Mildred Uzoma how a bad encounter had happened. First, she joked about how horribly stinky something was, causing me to have sudden nausea. "NOT her fault," my mind conveniently and immediately supplied - see, that's emotional state control, don't attack Milli. Until I explain I have a tender stomach, she can't account for it. But, I explained, that was what put me in the state Deborah Ruppert had noticed.

And so, I explained, when *Milli* suggested maybe I didn't need a shoe brush if I didn't want to get it from her preferred outlet, I blew up, because I was the one who wanted one, and knew damn well where to *find* one.

Well, at that point, she wanted to explain to me, she didn't mean *that*, and I shushed her. I explained to her, it wasn't *important* what she'd actually said. As if this had anything to do with her at all! Ha ha, no, this is how you handle your husband-to-be who is sometimes out of resources so his embarrassing defects all show up - surprisingly frequently, these days! - and he gets angry for no real reason. I *am* damaged goods, you know.

Something happened. I knew she was empathic, and a hospice nurse, so, she knows emotions are sometimes irrational, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but, when it happened, I realized I hadn't thought it through. I shouldn't have been "not surprised" by her reaction - I should have expected it! Me, apologizing for my behavior in that specific context, had landed with the same dull thud as if the situation were reversed - if *she* had made abject apologies to *me* for being... an ordinary human being with the same irrational batch of emotions we all have. Oh, sure, *sometimes* our emotions are rational - but if they were purely rational, we'd call them "thoughts," not "feelings."

I don't know who said it first but, it was something to the effect of "so what if you're angry for no good reason, once in a while? Emotions aren't always rational, and we can always talk it out later." In my mind, we were married at that point, and not on September 4th, 2024, in Renton City Hall, but, the latter date *was* the date of the actual wedding, and my shoes were still well-enough shined that no shoe brush was needed... but I now have multiple such brushes.

Um. So let's say I indulged in foreshadowing, not burying the lede.

Here's the thing: in the past, appearing angry was equated with being abusive by far to many of my acquaintences, and, every time I tried to understand what they meant, in saying something that seemed so wrongheaded to me, I kept getting frustrated. Well... that's because my perceptions are different, so my language is different. Look: if you look at me, and you think I'm angry, good on you. It's perfectly fine if I display my anger. In fact, I suspect Milli helped me there, too, once.

One day, early in our courtship, I gave her a big hug from behind, and I know she could tell I had a strong erection. I couldn't explain why I knew this wasn't a problem, even though I knew it violated some rules people had suggested for dating. You see, the context was, we were doing some BDSM-y play, I paused to hug her, and then continued our scene. We shared some affectionate cuddles afterward. And this is akin to questions about displaying emotions.

"Should I have demonstrated my erection?" is the wrong question. "Was it okay to demonstrate my erection?" is also the wrong question. "Should I have prevented her from noticing my erection, if she did so incidentally to an innocent hug?" is the right question, and the answer is "no". Of course, even that answer can be abused, by an abuser, but the point is, it's not whether something is *visible* (or palpable/noticeable), but whose "problem" it is. My erection/arousal is my problem. If someone opens their boundaries to making it *our* problem, and consents, now we have a shared problem to solve - lovely life you're leading, if this is your biggest Problem Of The Day, right?

Well, this is the same thing as with emotions. An abuser thinks his erection is his intended victim's problem to deal with; an abuser thinks his anger is his victim's problem to deal with. Me, I think an erection, or anger, is mine to deal with, unless someone offers to help. And that's why it was so hard to discuss things with people in the past - they equated a display of anger with abuse. But it's not - it *can* be, especially to a person who thinks "you made me angry" is a "you" problem, and not a "me" problem. But, fuck, people are angry all the time. It's really pretty surprising, given how much the NTs scold us NDs to keep our emotions in check!

Anyway: emotions are much the same, and, just as fraught and rife with contradictions as early erotic activities. It's not just visibility, it's visibility, and actions, boundaries, and, goddamned it, *communication*, and a lot of other things. The primary takeaway is, if I'm hurt, frustrated, angry, as long as those are *my* problem, that *I* am trying to deal with, well, that's okay - no matter how rotten my poker face is, nor whether or not I choose to try to wear one in the first place. I know, I know, I'm contradicting the advice of probably a dozen of people I thought were friends, but, hey, I've been wrong about that kind of thing plenty of times. I'd rather be wrong about *who* is a friend, than wrong about what *friendship* is.

Anyway: the important part here, is, shortly before the 4th of September, Milli and I had a discussion in which I apologized for being human, and in return, she acknowledged my humanity and proclaimed her love for all of me, something no woman has ever done before in my life. That was the moment I was, in mind, heart, and spirit, married. Corporealy, and legally, that was the September 4, 2024. My birthday's a week later, her's is two weeks later, and the 28th is proposal day, so we have a month full of anniversaries - 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th.

Thoughts on empathy

johnpalmer — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 20:45:45 GMT

I have to admit, there are a lot of times when I don't have any idea why I'm alive. If I had cancer, I'd know I was struggling to get past the chemo/radiation, so I could resume my life, but I never really had a life to resume.

I don't have time or energy to socialize, and I know that socializing will do more harm than good. People are only ever my friends if I sneak in my weirdness under their radar; afterward, I can remain good friends only so long as I'm not a bother. It's just better not to allow myself to be a bother in the first place.

I can't read; I can't write; I can't speak; I can't listen. I remember all those years where I was dumbass enough to try to maintain friendships, for when I'd be better, because I thought there was a chance of things getting better. I learned the hard way that trying to maintain friendships just loses them, with people angry that I fooled them into being my friend.

I know part of the problem. I learned my empathy from cats. Cats love to be touched, if they trust you, and, if you're willing to learn what kinds of touch they like. Well, if you're used to stroking a cat to make a cat happy, you know much of what you need to make a woman happy, from the "don't act entitled to attention, or the cat might scratch you," to learning the spots of purr-stimulation. Well, both cats, and people, expect similar behaviors over time. Once I'm too tired, emotions scorched numb, no sense of happiness in anything, I just kind of forget that I enjoy touching, because it becomes too much work.

It's not just touch, of course - it's everything. I come across as someone I'm not, because my brain and emotions say "do good, happymaking things" and my body says "screw you, *with* the horse you rode in on." Well... my body does know its insults, to go with its injuries.

I like happiness, and I think it's because I know how important it is, just like a person in the desert knows the value of water - even when you might have plenty at the moment, you know it's precious and to be protected. I can't have much of it for me, but that's no reason that others shouldn't.

But I can't help make people happy any more, so there's really no *point*. There's just this stupid hope that the chronic fatigue syndrome, which started in my early childhood will sudden get better, now that I'm in my late 50s. Which, let's be honest: it's not likely to happen.

A few days back, I wrote this:
I did something good today, and I finally understand what it was.

It's hard to exercise when one has CFS. It's twisted - you only know if you did too much, when the price tag reveals itself, hours later, or overnight. And if you always feel like shit, you might not even recognize the price tag when it reveals itself. But I'm officially a full blown diabetic now, and that means I must exercise.

So I was walking. Ten minutes, only as fast as my legs wanted to go, and a nice dose of Vitamin D. That was a good thing, but, I mean, of course it was. Walking helps reduce fluid pooling in the lower body, and has a nice clearing effect on acute blood sugar. It helps protect the heart and kidneys.

If anyone ever reads this, and is afraid of diabetes, don't be too afraid. There are now miracle drugs for early stages of diabetes, and they won't mean you can have a big gooey sundae for dessert each night, but they will mean you can eat a realistic diet, with splurges allowed, and still keep your sugars low enough that you avoid being damaged by your blood sugar levels.

But you'll still need to exercise, and exercise doesn't have to be beastly. It can be a few intense minutes on an exercise bicycle, doing interval training; it can be a nice, slow, supremely gentle exercise you do, in your living room, so you can watch TV, not just your iPad/tablet(/PHONE? Say it isn't so!). That method works well for me; my treadmill is in the living room, facing the good TV, and no one argued because:
1) they love me and understand my needs, and
2) technically, I kinda own the house.

Still: owning the house just meant it was there when they *got* here, see? Now, it means they'd either set me up an enviable exercise room, or, keep the treadmill where it is. And I love the idea of the treadmill, because, so long as you don't need to look at your feet, you can walk as slow as you want - 1 mph, if that's your speed. If you can do that for 10 minutes, but you need the distraction of a good TV show, that's ten minutes of walking you'd never get otherwise.

If you *do* need to look down when walking, treadmills should be considered risky until proven safe. Your eyes and legs can't coordinate easily on a treadmill, because they're getting different messages. If you look at your feet, when on a treadmill, your eyes see no forward motion overall, but some backward motion. That's confusing enough. But the feet are insisting you are moving forward. Trust me on this: your legs (and likely the rest of you) are constantly telling your brain things, like, "we're moving forward". In general, "you" have never needed to know that, becuase "it just works."

PS: as you age, treadmills can become suddenly, unexpectedly, dangerous. USE THE DEADMAN CLIP!!! If you fall, most treadmills can sand the ever-living F out of your skin. You don't want that - what if your skin becomes "loppy"? Plastic surgeon can't cure loppy skin, so, don't get the F sanded out of your skin. If you're too arrogant to use the clip-on "emergency brake", I'd urge you to find a good bicycle (try out a recumbent), or an elliptical, if that's reasonably possible. (Remember: no one needs to know you did it out of arrogance :-).)

Where was I? Right, I saw a woman, seemed elderly, and she was having a lot more trouble walking than me. I passed to her side (I didn't want to startle her) and asked if everything was okay, and when she said yes, I said "glad to hear it." But I did want to be sure. She was going a long distance, for someone struggling as she was.

That said: who the heck am *I* to judge whether someone walking, while struggling, is struggling too much?

I was going to continue on my way, but, damn it, my brain served up the right scenario for me. Once she was getting across the street I was on, I kept my distance, and just asked, "You'd let me know if I could help, right?" and she laughed and said she was fine. Then my brain threw in a bit that would help, if she was like me.

"Okay; I was just worried, it's getting warm, and wow, what a bright sun!" Then I waved and walked away. If she was self conscious about how she walked, I just gave us a face saving out, I was only checking because of extreme circumstances. It was a white lie; it was about 78 degrees at the time, but it lets us both feel confident it was just me being neighborly. I wasn't saying she shouldn't struggle so much, and yet, if the struggle is too much right now, I'll help. Because something something sunny day.

(end quoted)
Twenty-four hours later, I realized the above was composed during a period in which I risked slipping into hypomania, due to poor sleep, due to pain. When I feel really good about stuff like this, it means I could be going crazy, acting with a tinge of irrationality, but not so much irrationality that it seems impossible.

I can't keep it up, and so, sooner or later, I stop being fun, and I might even present a burden, and then my ass gets kicked to the curb, usually with a sense that they're angry I hid the awful truth about myself from them. It's true - I pretended my life wasn't a living hell, because no one wants to deal with that. Then, when my life *being* a living hell interacts with our relationship, well, fuck, you don't think people fight to hold on to me, do you? No, if I want to retain the friendship, I must ignore the pain they've caused, and prepare to swallow more in the future.

Thankfully, I've learned from Pat that I don't need friends, so, no worries. Friendship is far too dangerous for me. It's not that I was an idiot for believing in some of the stuff Spider Robinson talks about - he writes good fiction for normal people. I was just an idiot for believing it would work for me, while I'm still damaged goods.

Maybe someday.

Neuro pain, emotional pain, and my experience with EMDR-like therapy

johnpalmer — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 19:28:33 GMT

Today, I have a good reason to talk about one of complexities of my life, especially since it might help others.

Last post was about how to recognize pain. One crazy part, is, pain can also mimic emotional distress. I long thought that the intense pains I felt were emotionally based; they were often accompanied by memory and emotional memory flashbacks. They aren't. It's the pain that's linked. And in the process of discovering this, I learned a bit about EMDR.

But first: I'm going to talk about "links" here. The brain retrieves memories by what is linked to the memory - the more links you have to a memory, the easier it is to retrieve it. And there's more to it than that. For example, if you were brought up hearing that "greed" was despicable, you might call your toxic ex-partner "a greedy filty SOB... no, make it a greedy, lecherous, elderly pervert!" Well, that's the sort of thing I mean: greedy makes both lists. When you're angry, you think of the things that you think are despicable. So I'm not talking about anything truly strange, here, and there's plenty of science backing it up.

In my experience, when I'm having a lot of neurological pain, it's easy for bad emotions to be triggered. Why? I don't know, and I'm really not a person who can say what is *really* happening. It might be just what I mentioned above - when your brain is experiencing pain, you might remember similar pains, including iconic memories. But I also think, if your brain is receiving a bunch of stop signals that it can't interpret, it might stimulate different types of thoughts and reactions, including memories and emotional states.

Bad memories can become self sustaining, when depressed, or, when PTSD is involved. This isn't exactly controversial, which is why I think neuro-pain can trigger spontaneous flashback-like episodes. That seems to match my own experiences.

That's what brings me to EMDR. When I first heard it described, I thought it was bullshit. As stories came in that it helped, I remained potentially skeptical, but, hey, if it helps, it helps. In the end, you have to cure yourself of PTSD - other folks can only help you understand different tools that might help, but you're the one who is triggered, so only you can learn to handle it. So if EMDR helps you, please understand, I respected your use of it, even when I didn't think it was useful. Yes, even when I thought it was bullshit - after all, I turned out to be wrong. It happens. And when it happens, I sure can't say it was silly for someone else to believe in something that hadn't convinced me yet.

Anyway: if you don't know a lot about me, I'm a "shaman" which just means I am used to operating in different conscious states. Also, while it's none of your business, I don't use consciousness altering drugs for my shamanic work... not even tobacco. I recognized that my conscious states weren't working well, so, I worked with a known method for manipulating thoughts, feelings, and consciousness.

My ability to change my consicousness allows me to pull free of a lot of "traps" that PTSD sets for me - I recognize the trap in my brain, and I'm able to remember that I don't have to be this way, and modify how I'm handling my situation - all of my situation, including my pain, and my RL and emotional memories. (I flashback to bad emotional states, which is worse than remembering a single time when I felt a horrible emotion.)

Shamanism helped me a lot, but it just wasn't enough. And then, one day, I just decided, "I don't remember anything about EMDR, but, I do remember it deals with moving the eyes." Now: the story I'll tell sounds like it worked the first time. It probably didn't. I probably tried "rem-sleep" eye movement - eyes moving behind closed eyes. But my memory sucks - I don't remember how or when I first tried EMDR. I don't have the ability to remember that far back, so, let me present what I did find, and, again, remember, I'm not promising it worked like the proverbial charm.

If I'm in pain, and I'm facing flashbacks, if I open my eyes, it helps center me. "I am no longer there; this is no longer that time," is a good capsule synopsis If that's not enough, a quick eye shimmy will bring me back *here*. Well, once I'm "here" I'm just in pain. Just being in pain, rather than having pain and emotional responses, is a decidedly mixed blessing. Sometimes, it might be more pro-survival to wallow in a bad memory, while neurological pain is causing you a big problem. (No, I'm not kidding - neurological pain is no joke. Sometimes you need a counter-pain you can chew on to feel able to stand up to it.)

The key takeaway from this, for me, is, first, if you have flashbacks, it's not impossible to seize control back. EMDR might help, but more important than the type of therapy is getting you able to ride out any mental/emotional storm you're going through. You can get through it - I don't know precisely how *you* will get through it, but I do know you (general you) can, with the right help and support.

And here's a secret no one is likely to tell you: once you can cope, just a bit, it becomes easier to handle the day to day stresses. If you know you can use EMDR if the pain gets too bad, you might realize you can shandle more pain, without stresing, because you can always find a quiet place for EMDR-coping. If you can force your imagination to modify a flashback scenario, again, you might find you're not as afraid of flashback scenarios, because with some effort, you can seize control. Hell, if you find that you can clear your head by, e.g., sticking your hand/arm into a bucket of ice water, well, keep ice handy, so you're always ready for an emergency, and you might find you need it less frequently as time goes on. Any method you can use to help you cope gives you the ability to cope more, because you'll finally have the ability to find a bit of peace.

The second takeaway is, sometimes, when you think pain is emotional - *especially* if you feel weak, unable to control an emotion - it might be neurological pain manifesting. Taking a good look around might make it easier to control your emotional state. Or, you might do actual EMDR, which, remember, I haven't done. It doesn't matter which; just remember, if it works for you, the way it works for me, it means that you'll switch from emotional pain, to neurological pain. That might be good - it might help you isolate its triggers. It's still a very mixed blessing.

For me, my neurological pain seems to be tied to something that's too complicated to explain, but, the term I use is "the unwinding dance". For me, that means I have a sense of whether or not I have a reasonable chance of feeling better, and, it also means I have an idea of what is triggering the pain, and I have some methods of alleviating it.

I also suspect the way I feel - the sense that my body is tangled up a bit ("Marionette String Syndrome" is what I call it) might someday give us more information about how and why neurological pain occurs. All of these are topics for another day, but, if I'm ever going to do anyone any good, I want to introduce these terms - unwinding, MSS for Marionette String Syndrome, etc. - so I don't have to explain them every time.

Invisible pain, and making sense of it

johnpalmer — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 06:33:55 GMT

Housekeeping note:
I'm still in survival mode - I'm not reading responses, because I don't have the spare bandwidth, not yet, but I have some stuff I want said. When I get a block of writing done, I post it. I care about responses, and hope to read them soon, but I can only say it will happen when it happens.

Start of post:

The most important thing I want written - and to see widely read, of course - is some information about pain. Because, as I mentioned, I have been in pain most of my life, but I didn't even know it. Part of this is because the doctors said I was fine, so my family thought I was fine, and told me nothing was wrong. After a while, I believed it.

Another big chunk of why it took so long to figure out is, most of what I experience, I've experienced to some degree all my life. If you start having weird feelings one day, you can say "this isn't how things used to feel; although I wouldn't call this 'pain' (nb: yet!), it's certainly unpleasant."

It's a lot harder when you don't have a before/after, and, even then, pain is subtle. For example, when I was 13, I realized that, sometimes, when I was reading, the words just didn't transmit - and I wanted to close my eyes, and sleep, the whole time. Well, you can guess what they decided back then: I was bored, right? That sounded okay to me - don't comic strips and such show people yawning when bored?

Well, I can tell you now, it was pain that made it hard to read, and it was pain that made me close my eyes after reading a few words, but it wasn't any kind of pain I could describe. What I can say, just to make sure we're clear, is that I could keep my eyes open, without any pain, if I looked at anything other than words. It wasn't that my eyes hurt - it was that *reading* hurt.

As I said, this first happened when I was 13, and now, with a lot more experience, I realize how the subtlety of pain also made it difficult. There was a before, and an after, but it was "here, for the first time, my ability to read without pain was outstripped by my need to read, by a lot." I felt the same pain before that day, but never to that level of intensity, where I couldn't make myself plow through what I had to finish. So even if I had known that "sometimes, reading hurts my brain," it still would have taken me a good many years to realize how frequently I felt the pain.

Which brings us to the main point of this post, I suppose. Why do I say "reading hurt"? What does that mean?

I have come up with a three part test of pain. Obviously, this works for regular pain - where else could I create a test from? My point is, if you felt anything that you disliked, that met this test, then I'm betting you had pain. And if you weren't having some oddball neurological pain, well... if what you feel is just like pain to this test, then it seems like it really merits attention and study, to learn what it *is*, if it's not pain.

The first part of the test is that, at some point you are definitely in pain. If you get a literal pinprick, we all agree you were, for a moment, "in pain". Not all pain is pinprick-able, so, I think of something like a minor tension headache. If I ask if you have a headache, when you feel tense, you might need to stop, and think - is it just stiff feeling or painful? And if so, you'll agree, you have a headache, and might even remember having noted it earlier.

So it's either something that can bring you up (like a pinprick) or a continuing unpleasant feeling. You might kinda forget the continuing style, but, you can check-in periodically, and recognize it's still there, until it isn't.

The next part, is, can it increase, and become harder to ignore? Because, again, pain can get worse and become much harder to ignore. It becomes something you can compare, like "yesterday was a better day for this unpleasant feeling than today is." And it eventually becomes something you do compare, even if unconsciously.

If you find that you can remain standing, or, sit near someone you don't like, because they'll do that thing that triggers your neurological pain because they think it's funny to see you react, then, you pay a "standing room only" tithe against the expected pain from the bully's interactions. That's what I mean, you compare it. You can't help but compare it, because it's a real pain signal, see? At the least, when it's intense, you wish it was less intense.

Finally, if it happens, can it make a person scream? I say "can it?" because sometimes you can stifle the scream, while acknowledging the essential screamworthiness.

So, when I said "reading hurt," I meant that there was an unpleasant feeling that I can't describe associated with it, and when I was 13, there was a time when that feeling was *way* more intense than I'd experienced until then. I'm saying it was so bad, it was like sticking my hand in too-hot water. I could force myself to do it, but only in small amounts, and, just like with too-hot water, the more I was burned, the longer I needed to rest before I could dip them in again without yanking them right back out.

Could that feeling make me scream? Yes, but not from reading. The other side of neurological pain is, certain types, at certain levels, literally muck with my brain. If I'm in too much pain, I stop being able to read - letters no longer look like anything but markings. So, can reading cause anything past that point? Literally (in all senses of the word), no.

That same feeling can make me scream, if it catches me by surprise, but I learned not to be around *anyone* if I could still be surprised by that pain, for a long time! So if you've ever been with me, and saw me suddenly wince, without any obvious physical pain, that was as likely as not me stifling a scream that I knew/know will just make me look weird... well, weirder.

You know what really sucks, growing up in invisible pain? Every manifestation of your pain is treated badly - at best, you're a whiner, a precious snowflake demanding special treatment.

You know what really sucks about being an adult, afterward? I've been trained not to expect any special treatment, and to apologize anytime my invisible pain manifests, and explain it's not the other person's fault, and so on, and so forth, and, I still get shit on for whatever reason is invented on the spur of the moment, as soon as a manifestation of your pain is sufficiently bothersome to someone.

Don't get me wrong: socialization difficulties are not the worst part of invisible, horrible, pain. The worst part is usually the 'horrible pain' part. Still, think about how twisted life gets, when you're in pain, but can't even say "I hurt," because the horrible feeling you are experiencing isn't one that makes people go "ouch". So a person can be the bad guy - the HORRIBLE guy! - just for letting pain show, unless everyone agrees that it's okay for that person to show pain.

In my humble opinion, these thoughts give new meaning to "treat people with kindness, because you don't know what burdens they might bear." They, also, might not know, and might be in sore need of kindness, even in the face of crankiness. Some days, everything hurts; it's okay to need to struggle with "cranky".

Anyway: this test isn't perfect, by any stretch, but, if you feel something, that passes this test, and you know _something_ about what causes it, it's worth knowing more about it. Is it serving a good purpose? Sometimes it is, just like "ordinary" pain. Sometimes, it isn't, like phantom limb pain.

Anyway: if you have bad feelings, not something you describe as pain, and it varies, and can definitely get really bad, well, it's probably pain. If it's *not* pain, it's still pretty horrible, so it merits attention! Because, for me, one of the things that was surprisingly difficult was giving myself permission to acknowledge that something was intolerable, just because I had a strong, scream-stifling reaction to it.

No one had *told* me it was intolerable... so how did I dare call it intolerable?

johnpalmer — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 01:32:37 GMT

Hey, folks. It's been too long since I posted an update, and things have been unbelievably complicated with my life.

First, I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a nasty neurological disorder that is probably the cause of me being in pain my entire life. Yes, that's right - I was in pain as far back as I can remember. When I was 27, and realized "other people *must* have more energy than I," I was right, but I was also understating my problems to an unbelievable degree.

The biggest reason why I didn't know I was in pain, is, my pain is neurological. Neurological pain can present in a lot of different ways, because it's what you feel when your body is saying "STOP THAT!" but not in any of the normal ways. The other reason I didn't know I was in pain, was, doctors said I was fine, so my family said I was fine, so I eventually stopped saying things weren't fine.

When I'm in pain, my language processing can go offline. I can't read, or write, or speak, or listen, the way I normally can. A lot of other crap can go offline, too - the more pain and fatigue I suffer, the less I'm able to do anything. In fact, that's my fatigue marker: when *everything* is harder than it should be. Which, if you think about it, makes CFS one of the more annoying disabilities to have.

Just this year - after suffering from extremely disabling issues over 4-5 years - I finally realized "if I can't hold a conversation - HOLY CRAP! A disability lawyer can tell me what tests to take, to prove I'm disabled!" Up until that point, I was freaking out about how to apply for disability, when my brainpower was so severely curtailed so much of the time. The idea that the severity of my disability would make my job *easier* once I got the right attorney just didn't occcur to me. That's how constrained my brainpower gets.

Anyway. Most of my life, I didn't want to live. I mean, what was I living *for*? I was constantly in pain and miserable, but I didn't know I was miserable *because* I was in pain, so, I couldn't solve the problem.

Later on, when my ability to be sociable was constrained, because my disability was clearly apparent to any casual observer, I was told I was a terrible friend, a hideous lover, and given the clear message that I should not accept companionship from people who offer it, because they might not enjoy my company any longer.

I knew that I wasn't a great friend or lover at the time, of course; I was just trying my best, as I always had... just like I always do. Oh, I fuck things up, make no mistake, but it's not because I don't care. In many cases, it's because I couldn't explain. But does it matter? There were plenty of unkind facts hurled at me, by a hateful bully who had me helpless.

That there was factual basis to the attacks hurt; it always does. But worse, it showed that doing my absolute best just wasn't good enough to avoid being savagely attacked. If you've known me for a good many years, you've heard me say it: sometimes it's not what is *said* that hurts, so much as that it is said to *hurt* you. That a person who knows your secrets is hitting your vulnerable points.

Anyway: that's when I started wanting to be dead, because what's life without love and friendship? But I couldn't talk about that, because no one understood the situation. And right now, I can only communicate in limited bursts, even if I wanted to. I think I'm healing. Of course, there's the sense of having failed epically at everything I've ever tried to be or do, but I've been dealing with *that* for some 50 years, so I don't think it'll kill me this time either.

And, I am alive. If I get long term disability benefits, I expect I'll stay alive, barring horrible things. See, now that I understand I'm in pain, a lot, I can start working on solving, or reducing, some of the problems, because I know their cause.

I can't fix the most critical problem - the pain and exhaustion that means I'm destined to watch life pass me by, because I'm too damaged to enjoy it, but, once I can devote my life to getting better full time, maybe I can fix a bit of that, too.

I have more to say, later.

I'm sorry I haven't been more communicative, and I'm especially sorry I have to be melodramatic here, but, for the past few years, I've put so much effort into staying alive, I haven't had much else left.

Still aten't dead - PSA

johnpalmer — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 16:43:31 GMT

Hey, folks. It's been too long.

I have a quick PSA: disabled people are entitled to companionship, especially if someone requests, nay, demands, their presence frequently and continually. That happened to me, so I know.

If, after having made those demands, it turns out those demands were unwise, it is outright evil to blame the predictable failures, due to disability, on the disabled person. That happened to me, too. It was evil.

All of this remains true, even if a relationship with the disabled person isn't easy - we're not all sainted martyrs to our disability, some of us facing constant intense pain and soul crushing fatigue can act subotimally once in a while. Relationships are never easy.

If you feel there's something wrong with that assessment, well, I have PTSD, so it took me a few years to be able to come to grips with it. I started off loathing myself for being so toxic. What's your problem? I'll try to help you understand - I'm good at explaining things. I even explained to myself how toxic I'm not, and I believed it, back after I left high school. I had to relearn it, but, hey, PTSD, so I ask, again, what's your problem?

Oh, yeah. And if you end a relationship with a disabled person who burned through all of his resources, trying to be normal, because he cherishes you, and you decide you won't just say he can't keep up, but that he's a vile person? That goes beyond just plain "evil" and goes clear over to malice... the kind of malice often shown by people who made dumbass choices, and regret having made them.

I had to learn not to make dumbass choices - like trusting people - at the age of 5. I was shocked and appalled to realize I had to re-learn that in my middle age, but, hey, I was lied to for a dozen years or so, and I was naive enough to trust.

How crazy is Alan Dershowitz?

johnpalmer — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 21:55:37 GMT

Answer: not crazy at all - acting in bad faith.

(Quick note: Dershowitz advanced a theory that it's not a crime for the President to try to get a foreign country to investigate a political rival, because it's perfectly natural for the President to think his reelection is what's best for America, and that he's therefore serving the national interest by violating the principles in the Constitution.)

Look: Dershowitz isn't stupid. He may play stupid on TV, but he's not stupid.
He is undoubtedly aware that the reason "treason" is defined *extremely* narrowly in the US Constitution is that kings will claim a person who acts against the desires of the king is committing an offense against the crown (i.e.: the state, not just the king).

So: Dershowitz is 100% aware that the founders wanted to create a stark separation between what's partisan/political, and what's nation-affecting, and they decided that crimes of "attacking the state" would be restricted to fighting the US, or giving aid and comfort to its enemies (and not merely it's "adversaries"). It would never, ever, be proper for the US to try to say someone (like a rival candidate) was working against the US, just because you don't like what that rival might do (like, "win the election").

If he were stupid and incompetent, he might not recognize how that plays out in the real world. He might really think something as pathetically stupid as "Trump thinks getting reelected is best for the nation, so it's okay for him to abuse the power of the state to secure that reelection". He's not that stupid.

And it's not like this is a difficult argument. First, there's the preamble to the Constitution. We, the people of the United States, ordained and established that Constitution. The President's service is to the people, not himself. And sure, it's perfectly human for a dolt like Trump to think he's the bestest ever because he's got so many media-fluffers saying he is. Nevertheless, no matter what the right wing media claims, trying to service himself, by attacking a private citizen, is flat out wrong, a violation of his oath of office, and of everything that our founders wanted for the United States.

Second, there's the Fourth Amendment; the government is supposed to keep out of the business of private citizens, unless there is cause to investigate them. The President violated that most sacred of duties, by deliberately trying to set up a fake investigation. Any other President might, just maybe, be able to argue "it's just an investigation, to answer some questions" but old WhinyPants McWitchHunt can't make that claim. He's been complaining about how horrible it is to be investigated, when there's plenty of cause for suspicion. He can't pretend he doesn't realize how serious his crime (requesting a baseless, bogus, investigation) really is.

Third, only the damnedest of fools would ever suggest that a person's personal feelings (like "it's better for the US if I'm reelected")should ever be permitted to override their sense of duty and responsibility. Face it, if a bank robber thinks stealing the bank's money, and putting it in circulation, is better for the local economy, that doesn't make it any less criminal, even though it's *not* an abuse of power granted under the Constitution to rob a bank. Why should personal feelings then excuse an abuse of power that is granted solely to serve the people?

Far down the list, we could note that Dershowitz made one claim in the past, and gave a completely self-serving reason for why he's correct now, claiming that *this* time, he's really thought about the matter. Since a lawyer is not forbidden from presenting a bogus legal argument, when defending a client, why should we pretend to accept that he's right this time, when he's paid to make a different argument? One would be wiser to assume the difference is the client's desires, not the considered legal opinion.

So, how crazy is he? Not very. Nor is he stupid. He is acting to protect the bad guys, he is advancing the most ludicrous of excuses, and he is trying to keep people in power who have shown that they will abuse their power, to the detriment of the United States.

There are a lot of words that might apply, but "crazy" is, alas, not one of them.

The Senate cover-up begins...

johnpalmer — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 19:13:51 GMT

So, folks.

If you live in a red state - one with Republican senators - please call your senator - the Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121.

Tell them anything.

The President abused his powers, in trying to start investigations into two innocent men.
The President tried to get a second foreign power to influence his election.
You don't expect your senator to fulfill their duties, but you do expect them to admit the President committed a terrible crime, and tried to cover it up.

Frankly, I like the last one - it makes the accusation cleanly, while sticking in the shiv quite neatly.

Face it, the Very Serious People have convinced the news media that impeachment isn't just a *political* struggle (which it is) and has instead decided that it's a *partisan* political struggle, as if the 4th Amendment, bribery, extortion, abuse of power, and obstruction of justice were partisan issues.

I know, no one's mentioned the Fourth Amendment yet. No one's pointed out that the chief over all law enforcement in the nation tried to get a pair of innocent people in trouble with a foreign government, falsely claiming that *terrible* things were done. I don't get that. I mean, I know the GOP *CONGRESS* has pulled investigations "to dig up dirt" on political opponents, and the Press has all dutifully pretended they were started, and continued, in good faith (at least, I hope they were pretending - are they really *that* stupid? *Probably* not.). But Congressional investigations leave Congress control of the investigation and scope.

This? This was being handed to another nation, where there would be no control, and, where the other government might just decide they know what the US President really wants - announcement of an indictment, or even of investigation into "serious concerns". And, of course, this assumes the absolute best: that Donald Trump wasn't planning to have Bill Barr open a "parallel investigation, to help the Ukraine investigation." We know he was, right? But we'll all pretend there's no reason to believe that, because when Bill Barr was asked if the President asked for an investigation into a US person, he hemmed and hawed, which proves... uh... heh. See, this is why I couldn't be a right-wing "personality". I keep accidentally slipping, and telling the truth.

The point is, the President of the United States is hopelessly corrupt. To cover for him is also hopelessly corrupt. To cover for him knowingly (as 51 GOP senators have pledged) is aiding and abetting.

Yes, I know, there's a lot of fake propaganda claiming that it's "partisan" to have found he shook down the Zelensky, to have found that Trump withheld military aid to a military ally involved in a war, to have found that lots of people knew about it, and lots of people understood there was a clear price to obtain that aid (which Trump was legally and Constitutionally obligated to send), aka a "quid pro quo". We could believe that propaganda, or we *could* believe the testimony given, under oath, including those who had sudden *remarkable* recovery of memory, that said quite the opposite.

But this country wasn't founded on lies, and no nation can survive based on lies. Every American, even those who gleefully benefit from the corruption of the GOP, need to ask themselves, "if clear corruption, and clear violations of the law, with clear harm to a military ally, and harm to innocent US citizens; if all that isn't enough, what *IS*?"

Still aitn't dead...

johnpalmer — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 17:20:20 GMT

... though, to complete the allusion, I sure do feel like I'm "borrowing", sometimes.

(Granny Weatherwax of the Terry Pratchett Discworld, would "borrow" space in an animal's brain, allowing her to ride along, and control the animal. She would be still for long periods of time, leading to her writing a small sign to alert reasonably-worried visitors. I'm not sure I got the spelling "right" - that is, the correct incorrect spelling - but I think it's close.)

I think, in retrospect, that it's a good thing that I'm so optimistic about how my body is feeling and doing, and expecting things will be better Real Soon Now. If I knew, in July, that I'd still be in survival mode (eat, work, sleep, and otherwise do minimal amounts of life-preserving work) through all of March, I don't know how I would have survived (other than the obvious: not dying).

("How do you survive X? That's easy. Don't die. Now, how do you make your life a bit better, make it a bit more normal, or possibly even flourish, in spite of X - that's the tricky bit. It's not always easy, and rarely painless, and you can't be sure another person's answer will work for you, so you probably have to figure all this out on your own. I wish I could take that away, but I can't - it's a journey that only you can complete. But I'll do my best to support you along the way.")

Things have gotten better and my body is approaching reliability. For example, last weekend, my (local) girlfriend and I did something we hadn't done in a long, long time... we went grocery shopping, and filled the refrigerator and pantry. That I can set out a grocery trip as a big deal kind of gives you the sense of just how deep things get.

I still have hundreds of dreamwidth tabs, because for a long time (remember: July!) I've been trying to tab up two weeks of posts, swearing that once I'm better, I'll read and/or respond to them. It's iconic for me - it's like "yes, I was a total flake for the past 3 quarters, but I still cared! I still wanted to hear from and about you!"

I gave up on that after my last post - just not enough energy, and a subtle realization that no one will be all that impressed with a "me too"/"like" style response to a four month old, just-a-post. But I've been missing you all, and yearning to reconnect when possible. I hope you're all doing well, and finding happiness.

johnpalmer — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 05:08:11 GMT

I was going to return to posting with a bit about this scene and song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr0RSnLn23Q

... but instead I felt moved to talk a bit more about my chronic fatigue and how I kind of lost February.

And then I decided, you know, if I'm going to battle despair in public, let's steal a meme from Last Jedi and fight for what we love, rather than against what we hate.

That scene is from Ant Man and the Wasp, a superhero flick from the Marvel Comics Universe. It's a cute song where Scott Lang (canon: the second Ant-Man who actually did get the costume by stealing it from Hank Pym.) is dealing with house arrest (no, not because he has a mystery malady - that would be House M.D. Arrest) trying to get right with the government so he can be part of his daughter's life more regularly - but he's forced to risk it all, to save a life.

But I also found myself fascinated with a relentlessly cheerful song I remember from the 70s. It had to be the 70s, right? The Reagan era DEA surely classified such songs as Schedule I - high potential for abuse, no known ~~profitability~~ medical value ~~for drug companies~~. One line stuck out for me...

"We had a dream we'd go traveling together,
Spread a little loving, and then moving on..."

What a dream! Go to a place, spread some loving, then find another place, and do it again! Can you imagine a more wonderful dream? I don't mean a better dream *for you*, because dreams are personal (it's very hard to get someone to dream on your behalf, after all!). But for a person who can *have* that dream?

Seriously: can't you picture the world's surliest curmudgeon grudgingly admitting that, okay, for fools that have dreams like *that*, it's a pretty good dream, even if it's totally unrealistic. And that thought would come to them no more than 30 minutes after they harrumphed away the starry eyed idealist's iteration of the dream. Heck - if the curmudgeon's a gift giver, they might even donate some traveling stuff, not to pursue some cockamamie dream, but, you know, ":if you're going to be traveling off on some dumb fantasy, you might as well travel a bit (better/safer/etc.)."

I love how my brain sometimes pulls bits of music out of context to find delight. Today, I can also add the *next* line of the song, and my childhood recollection.

The song continues:
"...Something always happens whenever we're together,
We get a happy feeling when we're singing a song...."

Remember, I was, like, 4, when the Partridge Family came out (the song is the theme to the Partridge Family - and IIRC, the 3rd number 1 hit from a fictional band) but to that child's brain, the two parts to that line were completely independent, and stated
"this is one episode of a TV show, wherein something happened, because we were together" and
"by the way, we get a happy feeling when we sing a song."

Seriously: how many four year olds infer the episodic nature of TV, realizing that *something* must happen to create the episode, and that each episode must show one of those somethings? (I also realized that Snuffleupagus had to be real because *HE MADE DECISIONS*. We'd *see* him decide to wander off before Big Bird's friends came back to see him. A kindergartener was rocking Descartes! ("I think therefore I am" - something/one must be contemplating existence).

("Snuffleupagus?" An elephant/mammoth on the TV show Sesame Street. Initially, he was intended to be Big Bird's imaginary friend. Later, the writers realized that having adults constantly insist to a child that something real and visible didn't exist wasn't exactly *right*, so his existence was revealed. I nevertheless insist they'd already forced the issue by showing independent action and decision making.)

Another beautiful interlude happened when listening to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." Talk about out of context - there's one bit about "since I set you free," and damn if it didn't make me cry. See, overblown "I love you, my sex/romance partner, and would do anything for you!" songs are a dime a dozen - cheaper, if you can find the collections of "almost big hits".

Ah, but songs that say "Hey, you, you *aren't* my sexytimes person, but I still care. If you needed me, there's no mountain I wouldn't climb, no valley I wouldn't cross, no river I would not ford, to help..."- well, they can also be a dime a dozen, especially because they don't tend to sell as well, *but* they're far more precious. Sex and romance are fine and wonderful but there's a deeper love that is more fundamental, and far more powerful (and empowering, IMNSHO).

Which brought me to the final bit of modern movie making I wanted to share, since I'm all over love today. I've come to a deeper appreciation of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. They have the troubled family vibe ("You're not friends! All you do is yell at each other!" "That's right, we're family! We leave NO ONE behind! (pause) Except maybe you." Hands up for those who love a family with lots of yelling, but which knows how to close the circle when necessary!)

See, love isn't always as well appreciated or seen as strong, but in the second movie, there's this wonderful turnaround. It's a minor spoiler (not much worse than "oh, the good guys win, and it starts with...") so I'll put it behind a cut tag (I hope).

The setup is simple - Ego (the bad guy) is telling Peter (sorry, I mean "Star Lord") how to use the power that is his birthright. Peter can't figure it out, and Yondu mentions to him "you think I fly that arrow (Yondu's magical, nigh-invincible weapon) with my head, boy?"

That sets it up perfectly well, right? "Don't use your BRAIN, use something else!" Except...

See, just before the turnaround, we get to see the destruction Ego is causing throughout the galaxy, and we get to see each of Peter's team being trapped and sure to die, just as Yondu calls out that he doesn't fly the arrow with his *head*, he flies it with his *heart*! (this last drowned out as the trap closes on him.)

That's enough, right? Peter can just, you know, try to look serious, but not like he's constipated, and fight back.

No, it's not. He thinks back - to his mom, and all of the friends trapped here, remembering that he loves them. And then, with a lovely, powerful theme song that builds at just the right speed(The Chain - but it's best seen in vivo, so to speak) he strikes back.

I'm not sure if this is canon, but I can't fail to notice that he's now going toe to toe with someone who's used this power for literally *millions* of years longer than he... but a man who has no heart.
(Well, technically, he created a body with a four chambered organ that pumps blood. We also know, due to Drax's curiosity, that his body includes a penis. Ego's also the kind of person who says "It broke my heart to put that tumor in (your mother's) head... okay, now, I know that *sounds* bad!")

For bonus points, Peter also mentioned having a general love of people in general, and as he strikes back, they *also* show that he's stopped the destruction Ego was wreaking through the galaxy. You can totally believe he was fighting on their behalf, too.

We value courage - the ability to do what's right, even when you're scared, because you realize there's something bigger than your fear. We don't always value love, which is one of the strongest motivations for courage.

I'm kind of glad that our stories are starting to talk about, and demonstrate, love a bit more. We need more talk about, thinking about, and use, of love. I don't know if anyone said it better than Jimi Hendrix: When the power of love is greater than the love of power, the world will know peace.

Pondering...

johnpalmer — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 02:45:39 GMT

Am I the only one who's noticed that the two recent "they called Martin Luther King Junior by a racial slur!" both involved potentially blending the K of King with the Oon of Junior?

I know I do that *all* the time when typing - start typing a word or two ahead before I've finished the word I'm thinking of. I would think that there'd even be a scientific name for the issue, where someone reading from prompts squeezes two words together.

I sure hope I'm not the only one who noticed that, if someone had insults hurled their way, it doesn't excuse that person getting in someone's face with a hateful smirk. Oh, and a quick note to the viewing audience: people who care about how they were perceived will apologize first, then explain that wasn't what they wanted. People who protest innocence, With Explanations? In my experience, they can't be trusted.

I also hope I'm not the only person who heard Escape (The Pina Colada Song) and thought "hey, they were just about to walk out on each other, without a word, but now they know they have some interests in common, when they couldn't be arsed to do so before, so I'm SURE they're well set for building a strong, healthy relationship!"

I also think that Brandi (who's a Fine Girl) rather enjoys having a sailor who will *never* settle down, and a locket, that gives her an excuse not to make any commitments with any other interesting sailors she meets, and might even find the sailor who is a bit more poly, and can love both a woman and the sea.

My health and mobility issues are resolving, though slowly and imperfectly. It is amazing how screwed up the body can become and still function. Right now, I have a sore spot on the right of my neck, that connects to my left hip, in part because of a connection between my right shoulder and the right side of my head, and in part because of a connection between my left shoulder, and the left side of my hip. These connections seem to be adhesions between muscles that shouldn't be adhering. But they're unpeeling. Slowly.

My main fear now is that this might not affect my chronic fatigue. It seems like it should, and I think my fatigue *is* getting better, but... well, hope as a beverage is as necessary as water, and sometimes, it's okay to get drunk on it... but false hope has the world's *worst* hangover.

I aitn't dead... and might be starting to live.

johnpalmer — Thu, 08 Nov 2018 17:53:03 GMT

Sometime in the summer, I realized the constant hip issues and constant fatigue from them was killing me - mostly because of the continued uncertainty, day to day, of what I could do.

Healing from a tilted pelvis is not for sissies - and it's like a programming job, it takes longer than you expect, even when you're sure you've accounted for "but it'll be longer than I expect."

But I'm 99.9% sure I've fixed almost all of the cross body issues - issues where the hip hurts because some muscle on the other side of my spine is trying to hold it in place, because the right muscles are engaged.

That's huge - at that point, there's less question about what's wrong.

But damn has it been exhausting. I'm responding to months-old posts sometimes, and I've been trying to keep up on DW, but I think I have two metric expletive-tons of tabs opened, and catching up the past two weeks would make it three.

On the plus side, I have more mental energy, most days if I slept well the night before. On the minus side, I'm less and less likely to sleep well as this thing winds down.

I'm still out there - I still care about you (yeah, you, reading this right now - you're important). And I hope to be engaging more now.

Because it's nice...

johnpalmer — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 21:20:11 GMT

I had to share this twitter link; living in a nation where it's better to be loudly, angrily unjust, than it is to quietly seek justice, we need some nice thoughts, to remind us that the world hasn't gone completely made - just some very important parts of the nation.

https://twitter.com/omgShutUpDon/status/1047466232700526594/photo/1

Further damning evidence against Kavanaugh...

johnpalmer — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 20:58:17 GMT

I had heard he'd made a statement to this effect, but he also made it during his prepared remarks:

"I was not at the party described by Dr. Ford."

That's a fascinating statement. He was not at "the" party described by Dr. Ford. Which party was that? I mean, we know it wasn't "the party at which Ms. (then)Blasey was assaulted," because, remember, he doesn't know _anything_ about her being assaulted. So again, _which_ party?

Life is *not* an Encyclopedia Brown story[1]. And yet someone learned enough in parsing facts that we are considering him for a seat on the Supreme Court, in prepared remarks, made a statement that contains damning knowledge (knowing *which* party he purportedly was not at), with no further explanation.

I wouldn't vote to convict him of perjury, and certainly wouldn't vote to convict him of sexual assault, based upon this statement. But that he makes such a damnfool statement, not off-the-cuff, but after careful consideration; and that he attacks this as a partisan issue (rather than a serious question that merits serious consideration); and the rest of his ridiculous testimony; convinces me he's unfit to hold a gavel at *any* level.

[1] A series of children's books in the US revolved around a character called Encyclopedia Brown - a youthful (12 years old?) detective who spotted flaws in stories told by wrongdoers - one example I remember is someone sees a knife stuck deeply into a watermelon and says it couldn't be *his* knife, his had a longer blade (longer than what? He didn't try to claim it was long enough to stick through of the watermelon).

Just to make it clear...

johnpalmer — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 05:30:38 GMT

Just to make it clear, the statements "I believe Christine Blasey Ford" and "this is ... (well, anything other than "a vital part of evaluating Brett Kavanaugh's fitness for the SCOTUS, but especially "a smear" or "an attempt to derail the nomination" or, especially, *ANYTHING* suggesting that it was late in the game, since Ms. Ford sent the information in with *PLENTY* of time for the Senate to perform its due diligence) are completely incompatible.

So, for example, Lindsey Graham? He's calling Ms. Ford a despicable liar.

(ob-Beetlejuice: "th-these are *not* MY rules!")

Look: if she's telling the truth (whether you believe the doppelganger theory, or something else), she was right to come forward, she did so in a timely manner, and chose to go public as quickly as we can reasonably expect someone to do so, given the (proven!) suspicion that doing so would lead to vile verbal and written attacks, and death threats.

The only way this can be a "smear" or an "attack" or "an (unjustified) attempt to derail the nomination" is if the accusation is not only false, but without merit. Even if you think "well, she thinks that, but she's probably some crazy (female dog) who doesn't realize she's making it all up" then you still have to admit that, given her perceptions, she was still doing the right thing to come forward, and not attempting to "smear", "besmirch", "attack" etc., Kavanaugh.

You see what I'm saying? Even if you think she's *DELUSIONAL*, once you accept that *she* believes, you have to accept she did the right thing.

The only way this is a "smear" is if she's *lying*.

So: everyone you hear saying "smear", "derail," etc., remember what you're *really* hearing.

Woke up with muscle spasms - and that was the good news!

johnpalmer — Thu, 24 May 2018 16:25:45 GMT

There's an old joke about how, if you eat a live frog, first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you that day. Alas, that's probably wishful thinking, as I'm sure some condemned prisoners, kept in damp cells, have learned. The joke was given a sequel, too: if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to *either* of you that day!" and I approve - frogs need love too! It's not easy being green.

My right hip/leg had spasms this morning, and they've now released. It was a rude awakening (but effective!) and it was a good sign. My right hip now has a single set of muscles that aren't working right, and all the rest is fine. The muscles that reach from hip to knee are having problems because of a sore muscle in the back of my knee; because of that, the muscles that manipulate the hip itself can't quite make the flip to normal functioning because I already twanged that muscle, months ago, and it's still sore. No way I'm going to risk that again!

This means, roughly nine months after my birthday, when I thought "life, the universe, and everything, is giving me a birthday present, and unkinking my hip!" I'm almost done.

One thing that seems to have helped - by which I mean, caused more muscle spasms, but also more range of motion recovery - was cold baths (I tried to get the water down to the 50s - 58 is in the 50s! - with ice if it wasn't there already) to reduce inflammation, followed by a not-painfully-hot bath, both to improve circulation and make my legs a bit less friggin' cold. Initially, I was angry that my tub didn't get deep enough to cover my hips and legs. Then I realized a ziplock bag over the tub vent, and a set of magnets, would keep water from draining through the vent, and give me the few extra inches of water I needed. Kind of a shame, though, that I can't save tub water to water my lawn! I feel like a wastrel.

For these past 9 months, my chronic fatigue has been on a hair trigger. "Eat, work (be grateful I'm so productive at work that my boss lets me work from home as much as I need), sleep" has been the order of the day. And if you've ever had me advise you about mental health, I'll caution you that old demons creep back when you're tired/weak/sick. Let me assure you, that's from personal experience!

This isn't want prompted the angsty end-of-weekend/beginning-of-week posts - but it sure didn't help. A dear friend called me out for behavior that I didn't think merited it; add that to the sense that I have had no control over my life (because any day could have nasty muscle spasms, causing the next day to see me wrung out and useless) and it wasn't very happy-making. But it's over and done, and settled. (That doesn't mean we discussed it of course. Ah well.)

So I woke up extra early and the first thought I had was bacon... parboiled and fried. What's parboiling? Well, a likely false etymology is "partial boiling" - partially cooking good with boiling. You see, if you put the bacon in a pan, cover it (just a bit) with water, and boil off the water, you boil off all the water - the water in the pan, and the water trapped in the bacon. When the water boils off, you'll be awfully grateful if you have a non-stick pan - I don't know if I have the courage to try this in stainless steel! - because the water will also pull out some of the grease and such.

But once this is done, you can cook the bacon very quickly, without spattering, because the spatters are caused by small steam explosions in bacon where the water hasn't boiled out.

I don't even need to _tell_ you all that I was out of bacon, do I? :-) But the way I feel today, I don't think I'll be so exhausted tonight that I can't stop by the grocery store

"My" rules....

johnpalmer — Tue, 22 May 2018 01:52:48 GMT

I've survived a long time, and I've come to understand the rules for social interactions.

Here's the first, and all of these rules are spoken to me, in the second person.
1) You're the weird one - everyone else knows how to do this. So don't expect any sympathy when you fuck up.

This is a key rule, because it underlies all of them. If I accidentally hurt someone, that's my fault. And if someone accidentally hurts me, that's also my fault, for causing unpleasantness. It's far, far worse if I cause more fuss than simply the normal parts of being hurt. Dear lord, I'd better not say "if you care about me, you should apologize!" though it's best to remember that a false statement can be said to imply *any* other statement.

(Hah! See what I did there? "If you care about me" is presumed to be universally false! Ha! HAHA! HahahahahahaokayItWasn'tThatFunny. Seriously, I know there are people who care about me. It's the faith that they do that's hard to maintain.)

It's an important rule for me to keep in mind at all times, because when I'm fatigued, I strongly suspect blood flow to my brain is impaired, so my brain isn't firing on all cylinders, and that makes it easier for weird stuff to occur, from bad emotional reactions, to misunderstandings, to just plain looking funny. Did you know an exhausted person can have funny facial expressions? Especially if they're hurt by something?

2) you're not allowed to be happy, unless every other important person is - you're sure not allowed to show any special pride in who or what you are.

I once had a dear friend who I let in on a little joke of mine - trying for a Spencer Tracy vibe, and a self-effacing tone, when I'd done something impressive, I'd said "well, I *am* a genius, you know, I'm allowed to have a good idea once in a while." Well, the genius bit is true; seriously, if you hang with me for a while, and don't realize it, either I'm in a bad fatigue shell, or, we're not doing anything important, or, you're not trying to observe my native intelligence (or you are, but suck at estimating it). But it's a really stupid joke, opening me up to all kinds of pain, so it's kind of fallen by the wayside.

Besides, brilliance is overrated in social circles - popular, and witty is far more important.

Every now and then I get this deep chill from "Behind Blue Eyes" when I hear the bit about "if I smile, tell me some bad news, before I laugh, and act like a fool." You need to be vulnerable to laugh, you know, and someone is sure to find a way to cut you down to size for that crime. (Laughing? Or being vulnerable? To-may-to, to-mah-to.)

3) You're really not welcome here, we both know that, but if you're 'house trained' - what, that makes you sound like a not-quite-human animal? Oh, okay, then - if you're 'house trained', it's okay, so long as you don't make trouble, like annoying someone or being hurt.

Of course, I'm not 'house trained'. I'm weird; my brain works in unusual ways; I think of things other people won't think about, and I like to work on them, think about them talk about them, but of course, sometimes what I think is wrong, which is normal, because, after all, if I'm annoying, I'm wrong and broken. So it's better not to bring up any ideas I find interesting that aren't already being discussed.

Also,
4) there are rules about being right, and being wrong, about being hurt, or offended, or upset. The most important one is, you are to intuit when someone else feels that way about you (even if they're acting politely and like a friendly acquaintance) but you are not to feel that way and act as if it's someone else's fault, responsibility, or that it's even of interest to them.

Finally, and most importantly:
5) Who the fuck are you to think that you *matter*? How have you *earned* your right to decent treatment, without having done anything that allows someone to hurt you with impunity?

I can earn the right to decent treatment by being of use, but I do have to be aware that there are many things that allow a person to hurt me with impunity. Breathing seems to be a good example.

These aren't easy rules to live under, of course, but there's a fascinating thing about most people: we need other people. We need human contact. It's a stupid game, and it's a sucker's game, but what else is there, except fading away, without anyone? And you can't just play it when you're strong enough to handle the pains of hideous failures. You have to try to play it when you're already battered, skinned and broken, because otherwise, there won't be anyone there when you're able to engage happily.

Of course, in the past six months I can't think of a single day when I've been able to engage happily. I'm sure there have been days in the past few years, but none stand out. But I can't assume that there won't be those days; there are three hundred fifty seven reasons not to give up, and that's before you think about how people will be hurt.

These rules are why, when someone I love and trust tells me I'm crap, it's really easy to believe it. It's not that I believe it as an *essential truth*... it's that I believe it's exactly what they see, with good, sound reason. It's exactly why I expect there are more people waiting to say the same thing, who just aren't annoyed enough to do so, yet.

I was working with these rules, trying to figure out how to shed them. It didn't work out that well.

I remember one person, who tried to convince me that it was good to talk about *me*, and when I did, it turned into a public calling out - why did I discuss my interest in shamanism, of all things? (Of course it was dealt with in public! "I can tell you're excited about this, but it's not something I find interesting" is far more trouble than *I* am worth!)

I remember one person who heard an ugly story about me, and told me I was definitely wrong, but, wow, this story was a bit too ugly for all of that. That was loads of fun; how dare I expect people to reserve judgment on my actions unless they know the situation! How dare I be *hurt* and *upset*, other than in some properly sanctioned manner (which I never learned and never will)?

I've had people tell me how *boring* I was and how *upset* they were that I wasn't the person they wished I was. Sure, they consented to participate in activities with me, but geez, I should have realized that their free choices are somehow my problem! For bonus points, I got that talking to when I was realizing that I literally didn't have anything left to live *for*.

I still don't. I have plenty of reasons *not to die*. That's a different thing.

And right now, I have this glimmer of hope. It's like, my hip is healing, and my mental energy is sometimes far, far greater than it's been in years and years. I'm being careful; hope is a lovely drink, but too much of the cheap stuff and you'll have a magnificently miserable hangover! But there's one place where hope is still a sign, "this way to the egress" pointing to the opening of the blast furnace, and that's friendship and love, because I still don't know how to shed these rules, and try to interact like an ordinary person.

Maybe I'm tough, or maybe just too stupid to give up, but I haven't given up. I'm just completely lost.

An announcement...

johnpalmer — Sun, 20 May 2018 19:34:40 GMT

A few years back, I learned that I was broken; damaged goods; and not worthwhile. I learned that every thought I have about friendship and love are outward bound - it's what *I* will do, not what I should trust in. I mean, sure, I have some good friends, but I'll never know *who*, not until it's too late. And when trust is catastrophically broken, after being given in every confidence, it's not something that just comes back. Of course, in retrospect, the thing was my fault - I was fully aware that I was damaged goods, and getting worse: more boring, less engaging, less happy to be around. I should have walked out at the sign things were going south, rather than believing I was fundamentally worthwhile, and that I shouldn't - this is a good joke! - DEPRIVE someone of my companionship if they want it. (My companionship!)

It was a really shitty time in my life because I couldn't talk about it. I had no one to talk about it to, except one person, and that, only because I so desperately needed a sanity check, to convince me that *I* hadn't gone crazy. In the medical sense, of course. In the real world, everyone knows I'm weird, and most even know I'm broken, so I don't worry about that.

Parts of that, of course, are perfectly legitimate. I am broken/damaged. I've got an emotional injury that makes it hard to be human, on top of the rest of the crap that chronic fatigue/depression/ADHD causes. My brain tells me I'm nothing but an economic actor - I make money, I spend money, and that makes the world a bit better, in a way. And my my mind and spirit tells me that I should make connections, that I should *be* more than that, while my brain snickers cynically.

It's fond of telling me I'm boring; I have too little time to be human; I'm wrong, because, hey, of course I am; I'm too much of a pest; and for the past six months, my body has been pretending to be getting better, while causing me more exhaustion, more days when I'm completely worthless and essentially stuck in bed.

Y'all, do what I say, not what I do: believe in your own meaning to the world. Yes, there are people who will hurt you; but you can walk away, and the hurt will fade in time. Yes, there are struggles in life, but always remember the adage "when you're going through hell, *keep going*." Because hell ends - or, if it doesn't, you'll never know if you don't continue, and sometimes, sometimes night really is darkest just before daybreak. Let hope, not despair, be your guide.

Love without fear. Give of yourself - no one else can give *you*, so you're the only one who can. Trust people, cautiously if you must, but remember the times when trust is kept, so you don't remember only the times it's broken. Cherish those who listen to you, care about you, and who want to know *you*. Go out there and live, as best as you can; it might be hard, but no one said it would be easy, and there's great joy to be found, if you can find it and have the capacity to feel it.

Be true to yourself - I don't say "be yourself" because your "self" likely isn't perfect, and may need to change, but realize that who and what you are isn't going to change. Channel the changes so they map to who and what you are, so you can be the best you can be. Some people are made to be gentle; if you're not made to be gentle, find another way to be kind. Some people are made to strong; if you're not made to be strong, find a way to be stalwart. Some people are made to be generous; if you're not made to be generous, be industrious[1] and fair. Almost everyone has strengths and flaws, and finding out how to use those things, to build a life one can be proud of, might well be the purpose of life.

[1] Bill Gawne once countered the notion that "greed is good," in the business sense, with the notion that what might be *good* is being industrious - working for the reward, rather than lusting for it.

Help searching Amazon?

johnpalmer — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 06:13:28 GMT

So, I made a suggestion to a friend that I'd be glad to use my Amazon discount to help stock some handy "grab and go" food. I'd kinda sorta hoped that they'd be able to put together a shopping list, but I realized that wasn't exactly the brightest of thoughts. Does anyone out there have any suggestions?

One thing that was called out was that they weren't looking for protein bars - which, alas, is one of *my* standbys - and, alas-sub-2, my mental, emotional, and physical energy have been low. Does anyone out there have any suggestions?