George's battery cycled unexpectedly last night (you were TURNED OFF, dammit, where did 80% of a charge go?), and then just now he lost LJ's login cookie. I got a new computer to reduce my technostress about the possibility of being cast into the Outer Darkness offline without a paddle, man... {sigh}
I realize I whinge about this sort of thing a lot, yes. First World Problems. But... yeah, the prosthetic social life that the internet makes possible for me is basically the only thing that keeps me even as functional as I am, which is to say not very even so, and the prospect of being cut off from it sends me into a tizzy of "you will be left to die and then the wolves will come", which I'm pretty sure is the label on one of those big red buttons somewhere down in the brainweasel pit.
"You will be left to die and then the wolves will come" is, after all, a reasonably accurate description of large swathes of my childhood; at the risk of total TMI, what they generally did with the ADHD kids back in the Seventies when a "normal" classroom couldn't cope with them was to pack them off to Special Ed with the fetal-alcohol-syndrome kids and cross their fingers that nobody would end up dead enough to have to report it by the end of the day. It's not a stretch to say that the chance a charter-school headmaster took on taking me on for eighth grade was the first school year I had that remotely resembled a real education; if you know me well enough to have seen the way I go blank at the prospect of simple math like bills and tips, well, that was one of the subjects that got skipped over. That there's as much left of me as there is is down to having a Mum who recognized that the one thing that was within her power to affect RE the running battle with themilitary-industrial complex Chicago school system was to encourage me to pursue my own interests; I was reading at three and allegedly freaked out babysitters who'd turn up with Little Golden Books by ignoring them in favor of the Trib.
I never bit my shrinks, but I never cooperated with them either, because it was never about making me better, it was about making me not a problem to the system. Which sounds like an impossibly cynical judgement for a child, maybe, but I remember being well enough aware that something was being imposed on me as a result of something that I wasn't actually responsible for, and even a child can read that as being punished for something they didn't do. I'm not at all surprised that Amy Pond is nuts: twelve years of being told at every turn that her experience of reality wasn't valid would drive anyone genuinely insane by the end of it.
...I was going somewhere with that analogy and then a mental ice cream truck went by. Well, anyway. Been meaning to tell this story all these years, and still don't exactly have a handle on it, as you can see; it's not so much a fear of rejection from the Upstanding Citizenry for the flashing neon "peck the different one to death" sign, even, as just the lingering suspicion that it's simply so incomprehensible to someone who's had a more "usual" experience of life that no one will be able to connect with it enough to engage. As abuse-narratives go, it's a weird one: how do you explain that the root of the problem is less active malice than a pattern of unmindfulness? Not out-and-out "the baby is wallowing in filth" neglect, just... that constant sense of, "Oh, you're still here?"
I realize I whinge about this sort of thing a lot, yes. First World Problems. But... yeah, the prosthetic social life that the internet makes possible for me is basically the only thing that keeps me even as functional as I am, which is to say not very even so, and the prospect of being cut off from it sends me into a tizzy of "you will be left to die and then the wolves will come", which I'm pretty sure is the label on one of those big red buttons somewhere down in the brainweasel pit.
"You will be left to die and then the wolves will come" is, after all, a reasonably accurate description of large swathes of my childhood; at the risk of total TMI, what they generally did with the ADHD kids back in the Seventies when a "normal" classroom couldn't cope with them was to pack them off to Special Ed with the fetal-alcohol-syndrome kids and cross their fingers that nobody would end up dead enough to have to report it by the end of the day. It's not a stretch to say that the chance a charter-school headmaster took on taking me on for eighth grade was the first school year I had that remotely resembled a real education; if you know me well enough to have seen the way I go blank at the prospect of simple math like bills and tips, well, that was one of the subjects that got skipped over. That there's as much left of me as there is is down to having a Mum who recognized that the one thing that was within her power to affect RE the running battle with the
I never bit my shrinks, but I never cooperated with them either, because it was never about making me better, it was about making me not a problem to the system. Which sounds like an impossibly cynical judgement for a child, maybe, but I remember being well enough aware that something was being imposed on me as a result of something that I wasn't actually responsible for, and even a child can read that as being punished for something they didn't do. I'm not at all surprised that Amy Pond is nuts: twelve years of being told at every turn that her experience of reality wasn't valid would drive anyone genuinely insane by the end of it.
...I was going somewhere with that analogy and then a mental ice cream truck went by. Well, anyway. Been meaning to tell this story all these years, and still don't exactly have a handle on it, as you can see; it's not so much a fear of rejection from the Upstanding Citizenry for the flashing neon "peck the different one to death" sign, even, as just the lingering suspicion that it's simply so incomprehensible to someone who's had a more "usual" experience of life that no one will be able to connect with it enough to engage. As abuse-narratives go, it's a weird one: how do you explain that the root of the problem is less active malice than a pattern of unmindfulness? Not out-and-out "the baby is wallowing in filth" neglect, just... that constant sense of, "Oh, you're still here?"
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