Drunk Facebooking. I just realized that I am so guilty of this.
The scarf I was stressing about came out perfectly. My mother was legitimately surprised, and the two veteran knitters at X-mas dinner were impressed with my progress, I think (as you may remember, I only started knitting right before Thanksgiving)!
Tomorrow is my birthday, and I'm planning my usual festivities -- the same restaurant I've been to every year since my twenty-first birthday. And tonight I've got a "classy" Christmas party with my bestest friends in the world. Things are busy, but pretty good. I love this time of year because all my friends come home. I think that's also why I'm planning to get married: all my friends in one place!
So, this is a twenty minute lecture by Sir Ken Robinson concerning the lack of creative programs in schools today. While twenty minutes sounds like a considerable amount of time, he's quite funny (I chuckled a few times at his jokes) and very engaging. I listened to it while I was knitting, and I think I will listen again soon. His thesis here is basically that the arts (music, drawing, painting, dancing, etc.) should be taught with the same emphasis that one would give English or math.
He focuses a lot on public schools, but I must admit I had pretty much the same experience in my six years of private school as well. When I was in elementary school, I was fortunate enough that my teachers realized I was mostly right-brained, so I was thrown into the "gifted program" which I went to once a week instead of "reading comprehension time." I was encouraged to journal and create my own projects about things that inspired me. One year, we were asked to invent something. The next, we were charged with writing and illustrating our own books. My parents also put me in a dance school once a week, but I was frustrated there because none of the other kids took it as seriously as I did.
Then I got thrown into private school (my parents were concerned that I wasn't making friends at public school. Hilariously enough, I didn't really connect with people in private school until about tenth grade). We had art class twice a week in seventh and eighth grade (it was really more like an arts-and-crafts class), and then nothing creative until senior year, when we could take an art class. I spent a lot of time writing fiction when I should've been paying attention in geometry class -- math never really got through to me anyway. It was awfully frustrating for me, because I was just utterly incapable of sitting down in a classroom taking notes during a lecture. I guess this is why I always gravitated towards science as a kid -- I could learn by using my hands and observing.
Sort of towards the end of his lecture, Ken Robinson shares this story of Gillian Lynne, this really famous choreographer and dancer. She wasn't doing so well at her very academic school when she was growing up, and after her teachers insisted that she had a learning disability, her mother took her to a doctor. The doctor requested to speak to the mother alone outside the room, and he had turned the radio on when they left. When the adults left the room, Gillian got up and started dancing. The doctor turned to her mother and observed that Gillian was not having a problem in school, and she was simply a dancer. So her parents enrolled her in a dance school and she obviously flourished. "Somebody else would have put her on medication and told her to calm down." Indeed.
Okay, I'm going to go back to my knitting (bad unproductive me!). I think I will attempt to watch this video during my frenzied knitting marathon today:
I've been reading a book about guided imagery for treating PTSD. I have yet to actually read the exercises, but I've managed to plow through the first part in no time at all. The first section is essentially all about understanding the nature of trauma and what goes on in the body when it happens and even years afterward. It's making a lot of sense.
It's like I've been so confused about who I am and what went wrong with me, and I've been given a textbook about myself. It explains even the stupid little things, like why I am agitated constantly when I'm out and about and when I'm with my family. I was reading the chapter about when acute stress reactions become PTSD, and the entire thing was a checklist for everything wrong that happened in those few months immediately after the incident. I felt helpless; I denied myself any sort of support from friends/family; I put the blame on myself and thought I deserved it; I froze up and felt really helpless.
I ran this all by my therapist on Friday's visit. I explained that I grabbed the book from the library and didn't know if the whole "guided imagery" thing was total bullshit. She insisted that it wasn't, and urged me to dive in. She said it would help me verbalize what I can't get out right now.
After this, I need to work on either moving out of my parents' house or getting my (Vietnam vet who doesn't believe in PTSD) father to believe I have a medical condition that warrants attention. I'd like to get him to stop blaming me for everything that happened, but I don't want to get my hopes up.
In the meantime, I'll continue being extremely envious of my 4-year-old nephew that has absence seizures that my father actually gives a damn about. If only he would believe that my brain problems are real. I am so fucking pathetic.
Is it just me, or is there something wrong and/or creepy about the United States Marine Corps advertisement immediately before this 1951 reading of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"? Maybe the one at the end is a bit creepier.
Well, more like "inappropriate."
In other news, Blair from the Facts of Life is all proud of lil' Spears for keeping the baby because she is being a "good role model in that situation" because she's "taking responsibility for her choices."
Okay, I know Lisa Welchel is only saying that because she's a crazy evangelical Christian, but dude, since when is saying, "I would be a bad mother, so I'm going to have an abortion" NOT a responsible action? I think that's way more responsible than a decision that results in beating your kids because you had to skip out on college and ended up working for minimum wage as a cashier at KFC.
Blair wants me to be punished for having premarital sex! That bitch!
Wherever you are, you need to get on iTunes (or go to your local record shop, whatever) and get a copy of Brian Posehn's "Nerd Rage / The Mattress Story" -- it's on the record Live in: Nerd Rage.
When I saw this bit on his Comedy Central special, I nearly pissed myself laughing. I finally went on a quest to find it again so I could play it for Steve, and there it was for $0.99 on iTunes. Once again, I laughed until I cried and my abs hurt. It is easily the best 99 cents I have ever spent.
If you were a nerd in high school (or a nerd now) you're definitely going to love it. Scout's honor.
This is about depression and I don't feel like I should explain myself. If you don't understand depression and thoughts of death, there was a really good post at Dooce on December 13th. Apparently I have to warn people about these sorts of things because I am too "vocal" about "issues that people are still might trying to get over and or accept." Apparently I am also not the only "rape case" in the world -- very good to know. Comments are turned off for like, forever, because apparently it's wrong for me to defend myself when people attack me.
Addendum: I wrote this when I was incredibly angry about my living and social situation, but the sentiment still stands. I am in an okay place, for the most part. If you lived with my father, you would understand better, I think.
Since I moved back in with my parents, I think about dying on a daily basis. I'm not saying this because I want the attention or I want you to feel sorry for me or I want you to tell me not to commit suicide. I'm just saying this because it's the truth and it is part of my life. I don't want you to send me a concerned email, because as much as I appreciate that you like me enough to not want me dead, it's not like I can stop thinking this way. I mean, if I could stop, don't you think I would? If I really thought I was better than this, wouldn't I snap out of it?
I do not have a plan. I envision myself getting shot when I threaten to slash some guy's tires when we almost have a fender-bender in a parking lot. I envision myself getting run down by an SUV, because I'm short and I think people will actually stop for me in a crosswalk. I envision driving alone underneath the bridge on Route 1 that's currently under construction and the entire thing collapsing on my car.
I like the last option the best, because not only will my parents be rid of their burdensome daughter, but they will be able to buy a new car (and maybe my mother won't smoke in that one) and maybe win a decent amount of money from a liability suit. Enough money to make up for the fact that I have been mooching off them for six months now, and enough for my father to retire immediately. I like that option because maybe, just maybe my father will not think that I could've done something different to prevent it. It's kind of impossible to avoid that bridge, after all.
I would like to die soon after Steve and I get married; I know he would make sure my body gets donated and my tissue could be used by other people, if it's still viable. I know that he would see the rest of me cremated when the appropriate time came.
These daily thoughts of my hopefully-impending death have been fairly recent, really. When I was living in Los Angeles on my own, at least I was living entirely on my own money (and my own credit card debt). For once in my life I was not a burden to my parents, and was not outwardly treated as such. I didn't have to consider living in Boston again, where everything happened and where there will be people who hurt me in the past. I didn't have to live with my own father who thinks I was at fault for my assault (okay, who thinks I could have done something different to not put myself in that situation -- which is essentially the same goddamn thing, despite what he says). I hate it when my mother comes home in the morning and finds me crying on the kitchen floor and feels helpless because she doesn't know what to do with me.
I know the right thing to do right now is to apply for disability, head to my local vocational rehabilitation center (which, ironically, is in a busy area of Boston right near Emerson College), and print this all out for my clinically licensed social worker (after all, this week she wants me to talk about my relationship with my father). I know I should be doing these things, but I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and get the relief I need, so why waste my time when I could be sleeping? Why burden people and make them do work for me when I'm a lost cause? Or even worse, make them continue working even though I may have been dead for a couple of days?
I know my fiance is going to read this at some point and try to comfort me and I'm going to try to tell him to not waste his time on me without it coming out like I'm rejecting him.
I give up. To quote the first sentence in Moe's writeup,
I'm sorta cynical, but the allegations of the all these U.S. American victims of sex crimes in Iraq have gotten so incomprehensibly heinous, it's starting to sound, like a lawyer here points out, like "a bad joke."
If I feel particularly masochistic, I might check out the 20/20 episode linked. I guess I can be optimistic and think that they might promote a victims' rights group. I mean, seriously, how am I supposed to feel better about going to work when women are treated like this all the goddamn time? I think I really am going to jump through the hoops to be classified as disabled in Massachusetts.
In other more fabulous news, one of my favorite photographerswas featured in Spain's FHM. Oddly enough, I was introduced to her work through the breast reduction LiveJournal community (which I am not linking to, because it kind of sucks now).
Speaking of breast reductions, my two-year Boobversary is coming up, and I might just throw that celebration right in with my birthday celebration on the 27th. After all, my birthday was the day I officially got my approval from my insurance company to cover the surgery. I gotta say, my tits look fabulous, and I am considering sending flowers to my surgeon if I ever have expendable cash again. I think I might also bake some boob cupcakes.
Okay, I don't live in the backwoods of nowhere, and that means I'm technically not snowed in. I went to the grocery store for a few things and driving was as tolerable as ever (that is to say, not made horrible by the snow, but horrible because it is driving with other humans on the road). However, another storm is headed in my general direction, and apparently up to another eight inches of precipitation is supposed to fall. I say "precipitation" because while there will be snow, there are threats of freezing rain as well. Normally a snowed-in weekend would be fabulous, but:
I was supposed to drive two miles west to my future sister-in-law's housewarming party (her roommates have kitties!). Obviously now we won't be able to go.
After watching a fireplace in action at a friends' place in Maine, I wish we could use the fireplace in the house -- but we have no firewood! And,
My knitting productivity has gone downhill considerably, because I cannot knit my mother's present anywhere except in my own room, where she will definitely not see it.
The latter is bumming me out a considerable amount. I know my mother knows I'm making her a scarf (I threatened everyone with Christmas Scarves when the family was over for Thanksgiving), but I would like there to be some sort of surprise. Knitting in my room is not a big deal, but Steve just bought Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, and it's fun to help him solve puzzles. And I love watching Wiki be cute.
In other news, I just baked up a batch of Dark Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies, substituting old fashioned oats for the steel cut oats. They needed about three fewer minutes on the bake time, but were otherwise delicious. They were intensely chocolately without being overly sweet (i.e.: a perfect "grown up" cookie). I managed to get fifteen cookies out of the small amount of dough and two days later, they're all gone.
So now I'm sitting in bed watching Thank You for Smoking (for a second time) and catching up on my knitting. I wish I had been smart enough to pick up ingredients for a test batch of Biscotti with Cranberries and Pistachios, but I suppose I will be content enough to peek out the window now and again to see if the snow has started.
I definitely have one more scarf to go before I'm done with my holiday knitting, and that one scarf is my mother's. I'd kind of like to make one for myself for my own birthday, but I'm also anxious to progress on to non-scarf, non-rectangular items. I still have yet to learn how to add or drop a stitch (intentionally, I mean).
I love my new hobby a lot. I really wish I could make money by knitting scarves (it's a fairly mindless activity, even for me) but I have no idea how I could possibly do that. An Etsy search for "scarf" yields over a thousand results, and my work is nowhere near remarkable enough to stand out. Besides, how would I make money in the summer?
Something that has recently come to my attention: considering the United States' shortage of doctors and other health care personnel, as well as the lack of quality care, what sort of sorry state is mental health care in this country?
I wonder this because I just recently went through a fairly hellish situation to find a good therapist. To prove that I'm not entirely cynical I will make two points right now: 1) my search could have been worse and 2) I just mentioned I found a good therapist (and I was telling the truth!).
After spending a couple of arguably cushy months in my parents house, I figured I should probably go ahead and start working on social rehab. I don't have a trust fund or anything (and if I do, my parents sure haven't told me about it), so I need to go back to work eventually. I called my behavioral health group to figure out what therapies would be covered (pretty much everything), how many visits I got per year (twelve, and more if there is medical need) and to get a list of doctors nearby that are covered. I called up the first number on the list, asked if they offered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and then signed up for the earliest appointment they had -- about a month from when I called. I probably should've known that there would be problems because when I spoke with the receptionist, she had no idea what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was.
My insurance company was really sweet and called me back about two weeks later asking if I had made an appointment and if they'd been helpful and whatnot.
A couple more weeks pass and I find myself sitting in a dim waiting room with twenty people all of whom seem to want to be in my personal space. I filled out my paperwork and sat there quietly knitting for some time, but it felt like everyone else's eyes were all over me. For those not as psychotic as I am, remember that scene in Michael Jackson's "Triller" video where all those zombies finally close in on the girl while she's on the couch cowering in fear? Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt, only there were no zombies.
Though they definitely weren't zombies, it did seem like a lot of the patients I was waiting with were court ordered to be there. One guy was very obviously there with his sponsor/probation officer/"responsible adult." Not that I have anything against people who have problems worse than my own, but.. that's just it. It's worrying to be waiting with people for the same service when all those other people are totally different than you are. You wonder, "hey, did I get in the right line? Do you guys even take people that haven't been hospitalized?"
I kept trying to concentrate on my knitting, but I was pretty much in total hell -- I was completely alone in a waiting room with no less than fifteen strangers in there at any one time, all the chairs pushed together with someone's elbow encroaching past my armrest territory and into the space in front of me. Lots of conversation that sounded directed at me and I couldn't figure out if it was, and this one developmentally disabled guy who kept asking me if I was knitting a scarf for him.
About an hour after my appointment was supposed to be, I was still sitting in the waiting room, so I walked up to the receptionist and asked if I'd been forgotten about or something. I tried really hard to not come off as confrontational or otherwise belligerent, because I've played receptionist before and I know those people do not get paid enough to deal with other people's bullshit attitudes. I guess I failed miserably at trying to ask nicely, because the woman behind the desk yelled at me about how the doctor I was seeing "takes time with her patients and listens to them" and all this jazz about how all her patients are special and how the doctor is so attentive and whatnot. It was pretty much said in one of those, "you are a white girl with no problems, why don't you just leave?" voices.
I sat down in my chair and went back to my knitting.
I got called in about forty minutes later. The doctor asked me what my deal was and I mentioned my atypical depression and PTSD. I told her I was there because I wanted to learn coping skills for my anxiety because medication wasn't working out for me. She made me go over the details of the assault twice, which was pretty awful, considering she didn't ask me to tell her, but rather commanded me. I didn't feel comfortable at all with this woman, and I had to tell her about how the puddles of water in the shower stall made my favorite socks damp.
She wasted about five minutes examining my eyes (one of my pupils is larger than the other for no reason; I have no neurological damage, that's just the way I am) and another three minutes asking about my depression and if my antidepressant was working for me. Then she dismissed me, saying a social worker would call me and I could set up an appointment "as early as two weeks from now." The entire visit lasted ten minutes, at the very most. Apparently that's what the receptionist calls, "taking time with [her] patients."
But wait! That's not all!
Three or four days later I get a call from a social worker to set up my first appointment for depression counseling. I said that I was uninterested in making a second appointment, and when asked why, I explained that I felt totally brushed off by the doctor and she was apparently incapable of taking notes about me, because I was there for my uncontrolled anxiety that is currently keeping me from returning to the workforce, rather than my controlled depression. To make a long story short (too late), the social worker called me a liar and I hung up on her.
Maybe a week later, after I stopped feeling miserable about what had happened with the doctor, I called the second number on the list from the insurance company. Surprise! They specialize in anxiety disorders and they can see me the next day.
The waiting room was painted a golden yellow and I sat on a comfortable burgundy couch while I waited all of five minutes for my appointment. There were no other patients in the waiting room. I met with my therapist who asked me about myself and why I was there and what my goals were. The walls were painted blue and she had this bright yellow triangular coffee table and this neat monochromatic lamp and somehow managed to pull off wearing the most hideous of trends - Ugg boots. I felt so comfortable there, just the way we spoke and how she directed my thoughts and asked if I wanted to elaborate on certain ideas. It was a complete 180.
I went back to the office a couple days later to meet with the doctor who would be prescribing my medication and (surprise again!) she was super-nice and totally understood when I said I wanted to work on my anxiety unmedicated (but with therapy) and see how that went. And she had really cute business cards with a tree on them. Fabulous!
But one of the neatest things about this current therapist is something in her building's parking garage:
A speed limit sign that doesn't end in a five or a zero!
In 1937, MGM was the world's most powerful movie studio, with enough money to own the local police and sponsor a District Attorney who was indicted for perjury for a third term. Patricia Douglas, one of 120 young, female dancers answered a casting call which turned out to be a "convention" for over 200 drunken, lecherous men -- essentially a party in celebration of MGM's success. The women were not there to be filmed, but rather to be party favors for MGM's guests. That evening, David Ross literally poured alcohol down her throat and raped her. She received absolutely no justice when she brought the case to court - the studio had its hands in the finances of the hospital where she was examined and the court where she plead her case.
"I just wanted to be vindicated, to hear someone say, 'You can't do that to a woman'."
Vanity Fair covers her case 70 years later in disgusting detail here.
You'd think that seventy years later women would be getting justice and closure from rape trials, but now it has come to the point where some women cannot even get a rape trial, despite having three eyewitnesses to their gang-rape. A guy allegedly present for the rape said "...this is her fault. She got drunk and she did this to herself."
Seventy years later and apparently victim-blaming is still socially acceptable (Patricia Douglas was having "good clean fun"). Witnesses mean nothing. Evidence means nothing.
If you want to know why I never sought any sort of justice for my assault, this is the reason in a nutshell.
After all, I had friends, people who I honestly thought gave a shit, decide that I was a liar when I finally spoke up. Many, many more turned their heads and pretended it wasn't as big a deal as I was making it out to be. To be perfectly honest, I was downplaying it at the time. I suspect this is why a lot of victims of sexual assault don't come forward. Statistics say 80% of attackers are someone the victim has already been acquainted with; why cause more "drama" by telling all your friends that you woke up covered in vomit next to their buddy that always brings weed to the party. If your friends can't believe you, what the fuck do you tell the police?
If someone comes up with a good answer to that question, let me know, okay? 'Cause I just keep hearing "there's no evidence this wasn't consensual."
