Half Naked Thursday: The Lies I Tell Myself

Of course by now you've all figured out that I don't have any interest in actually making my Half-Naked Thursday posts on an actual Thursday. This is because I can't get the hang of Thursdays, also, by Thursday I will be in California and possibly not at all willing to be in a mood to make slightly depressing posts. Anyways.

This month has sucked, kindof a lot, brainwise. I feel like all the progress I have inch-by-mental-inch been making has just slipped between my fingers, and I'm right back to being this scared little eleven year old girl who kinda wonders what it's like to not have to exist any longer, only with the added benefit of a decade more to worry about.

It's problematic, especially when it boils down to the fact that I can't really love myself right now, and that exacerbates everything else, meaning I'm having a lot of trouble finding even enough stability to keep going through the days. I don't know, maybe this is all just backlash from starting therapy again¹ and thereby being seriously introspective on a regular basis for the first time in a long time. But this month has been just awful. I feel small and lost and scared, and the world is demanding I be capable.

And so yesterday in math class (when I should have been paying better attention because I am really not good at modular arithmetic.) I made an art:



The bottom, which is the only part you should be able to read, says "These are some of the lies I think of as true." There's a little self-portrait of myself in the lower right. It's not quite my usual style of how I draw myself --indeed, I think it's a little more accurate, both in appearance and mood. And while I don't curl up *quite* that way when something deep inside my brain Hurts, I do curl, wrapping myself around that spot behind my sternum where I think of my Self as existing.

The text at the top says...a lot of things.

A _lot_ of things. I just counted, I think there are 92 things in there. That would be ninety-two things that I can identify as lies that I absolutely believe are true --oh sure, not all the time. Not always. But they are things that my mind says and society says and the world says, and it's often enough that I can't help but think maybe everyone else is right.

(This is, if you saw me at Diesel or squares and was asking, why my wrist says "Stop Lying" right now)

A few of them are silly, most of them are serious, and a couple of them are something close to dangerous. It's okay. Part of the point of making it was to have a specific listing of faulty beliefs, something I could look at and say "ah yes, that is wrong, how foolish of me".

I just wish it weren't so damn hard. I just wish I weren't so damn broken.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I last talked to a therapist in early 2007 --she and I parted ways a little after kSatyr and I started dating, for unrelated reasons. My biggest failing is that I never trusted her, and while she helped with a couple little things (and the getting me diagnosed with ADHD, which was a _huge_ thing) there was not a lot she could do with me. I went into this round with the assumption that I could tell my therapist basically everything, and so I basically have --only exceptions are Hyde (because it is very different to admit to having voices in your head that help you out and to admit to having voices in your head that tell you to kill) and some of the more serious kink stuff (because I don't want to freak her out by being too TMI, and also because I don't know that I can accurately explain some of the power dynamics that I crave.)

Comment Policy: Comments that are just "*hugs*" or any variation will be purged. Sorry, but I'm fucking serious about this, they will not make me feel better, and I do not want to have to deal with them. At all, and if you can't understand that, at least try to respect it.

Fuck you very much, the TSA.2

Hello there! This is your nine AM report that yeah, opting out of the backscatter machines really is as unpleasant as you've been led to believe.

I had the time when I arrived at the airport, and the security lines were blesséd short, so yeah, why wouldn't I choose to opt out? Cause someone else a bit of hassle, and not have naked pictures of me leaked to the internet in a couple weeks. I am quite okay with this plan, and so, at the point where you are meant to be removing your shoes and putting everything on the little moving belt, I smiled oh so cynically at the woman directing things, and asked what procedures one must take to opt-out.

She didn't quite sigh, and directed me to put my things on the belt --make sure there was nothing in my pockets, no paper, no anything, no belt, and of course, no shoes. "We have a female opt-out" she said wearily into her walkie-talkie, which nearly broke me in two right there --I am not female, and I hate being called such, and I know that it is only a hundred times worse for so many more people.

I had to walk through the backscatter machine to get to the area in which they would scan me --directly on the other side of the backscatter machine, causing a slight bottleneck as more compliant people had to squeeze around me. And there I was and there was a young woman who was not the slightest bit comforting as she told me that she was going to have to touch me.

And proceeded to do just that. She, as the one account has been saying, stroked my hair, which felt far more violating than I ever would have expected. She ran her hands down my back, over my ass, down my legs, then came 'round to the front to stroke my chest, down between and under my breasts, my stomach. Waistband search is apparently mandatory --she slid a finger into my waistband, both front and back, and ran it back and forth to make sure I wasn't concealing contraband in the waist of my panties or some such.

Perhaps the part that made it worst for me was the way she kept emphasizing "I'm going to use the back of my hand" when she went to touch the so called "private" parts of my body. I'm sorry, if you are rubbing something against my butt, my breasts, it really does not matter whether it's the front of the hand, the back of the hand, or a six inch rubber dildo. I will still feel violated by the pressure and by the fact that you are stroking my body in a way I do not consent¹ to. Her reassurances that it was "only" the back of her hand felt rather like being told that it's okay, the stabbing you're about to receive is "only" going to be done with a blunt knife.

I waited patiently afterwards, to gather my bag --ohwait, I forgot that I have evil Massachusettsian water in my bag. This simply won't stand! So I had to wait for the agent to dump out my water and send my bag through again (she wanted me to go do it, which would have involved going through the line again...um, fuck no, much? One, it's not my fault you can't tell the difference between a bottle of water and a bottle of EVIl, two, I am so not fucking going through that unpleasantness again.).

Now I am about to go refill my water bottle with more evil Massachusettsian water (somehow MAGICALLY DISTILLED by being from an airport water fountain *after* security instead of an airport water fountain *before* security) and continue to try not to cry about the fact that I feel like I was just molested.

Banner fucking way to start the day, especially after how impossibly shitty last night was.

Fighting the good fight, and all that. Just wish it didn't feel so damn futile.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I do not consent to being photographed naked by the TSA, and I sure as _hell_ do not consent to being molested by a TSA agent. However, apparently if I want to fly in this country, I have to let the people in power molest me, so I'd better just be a good girl and shut my mouth about it. Charming!

2: (from the title) Is anyone else thinking that Eric Idle's song from 2004 could really use an update? It scans and *everything*

(no subject)

To all concerned, I am in California.

There is a cute kitten. Also, a mek. Life is good.

~Sor
MOOP!