MOOP!

[crossposted with Facebook]

So, Facebook did the memory thing and apparently two years ago today I was doing some serious gendertalk on The Internets. It felt like a good time to update and refine that!

So, general reminder for everyone:

I am a person (or spider). I am not a woman/girl/lady/etc (or man/boy/etc)¹. I am neither female nor male, I am agender or genderqueer.

My pronouns are they/them/theirs, unless I am in a work-context (students, coworkers, admin, parents) at which point I use the incorrect "she/her/hers" pronouns. I am sad and frustrated by this, but hope to be able to be out at work once I have professional status (May 2020, if all goes well).

My title is "Mx", not Miss or Ms and definitely not Mrs. Again, work-context means I use "miss" but only for those specific populations. If you can read this post, you should use my correct pronouns and title².

My body has a uterus, a vagina, a vulva(etc), and breasts. I don't have female genitals. On rare occasion³, I shed my uterine lining at which point I use menstruation supplies, not feminine supplies. Please try to use medically accurate language when talking about these things, not just for me, but for everyone.

I prefer that the people I am romantically or sexually entangled with refer to me as "partner", but I accept "girlfriend" from people I have that kind of explicit relationship with.

Please feel free to correct other people (gently, briefly⁴) if they refer to me as woman, or use "she" pronouns for me. I will also try to correct people. Sometimes I don't bother because it's not worth it.

I am the kind of open person that you are welcome to ask questions of pretty much all the time, but you are especially welcome to do so on this post. I will answer any question about my gender, or gender in general so long as it does not feel malicious.

***

[1] I am both a "girl scout" and a "gentleman" though, and will not be the slightest bit bothered if you use those specific words to describe me.

[2] On some airlines, I am "Dr" because they're shitty enough to make titles mandatory and don't have any other genderneutral options.

[3] I have put a lot of effort into making this happen as infrequently as possible, because dysphoria and also mess.

[4] It is...exhausting having to comfort someone making a Big Deal out of having misgendered you. "she-shit-they" is a running joke with some of the SCD crowd as to what my gender is, and that's _perfect_. Everyone does accidental misgenderings sometimes, hell, most of us non-cis seem to do it to ourselves, it's okay, just fix it and move on

Thoughts on other words:

"your majesty" or "their highness" rather than any other royalty titles (I have heard of princex, but I don't like it for myself.) If you want to be incredibly specifically accurate to just me, I am the "Lord High Queen of Everything"

Laura reminded me that I meant to say that "female assigned" is the correct term to use if you are talking about something that directly has to do with, say, my ID or my medical care. Similarly, I will often use "female-socialized" or "female-aligned" to talk about myself culturally and socially --I was raised differently than I would have been if I were the same person with different genitals, not just by my parents, but my every person who interacted with me. Sometimes that is relevant.

"female" by itself is laughably wrong.

Under the cut are some good bits from the comments (which have been mostly REALLY great because it turns out I have Good Friends. I'm so happy and pleased that people are being kind to each other and open and not assuming bad intent.

( frequently asked questions! (where frequently means 'once') )

~Sor
MOOP!

I am extremely service-oriented. This is not just in a kink sense (although that is no small part of my kink orientation), I have known for years and years and years that my existence is based around the idea of Making Other People's Lives Easier.

(In fact, that may be another Truth --I have been considering them, since that post about sex and desirability. This makes five. I will post about the other three sometime soon.)

I just realized that this can be a formidable tool against my stupidbrain, when it is not motivating properly. See, motivation is one of the hardest damn things I have. I can't do things for myself!

But what if I can do things for other people?

I was standing in the kitchen, doing the standard "I should eat cooking is hard food is impossible" thing, and had to go upstairs for a moment to talk to Joseph (moving laundry along). While up there, my brain gave me a sharp kick and I asked if he'd had lunch yet and offered to make something.

Making food for someone else, that's easy to motivate! Joseph is hungry! If I feed him, I will Make His Life Easier! There is almost no trouble at all acting upon those impulses. And if I so happen to accidentally make myself lunch in the process (not to mention do some chat-cleaning¹ of the kitchen while I'm at it...)

Yesssss, good. Stupid brain! I can trick it into doing things for myself by expanding them to be for other people as well! It's the opposite of Infinite Darlene²! MUAHHAHA!

I am pleased by this power over myself.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Is there a better word for this? I do a lot of cleaning when I am standing around talking to people in my house. I don't think of it as nervous or shame based, it's just...I am standing around talking, I like to keep my body in activity, here is an activity I can do. For lack of anything else, I'm gonna call it chatcleaning.

2: Infinite Darlene is from Boy Meets Boy, which is my favourite love story. My favourite quote of her: "She seems very full of herself. Which she is. It's only after you get to know her better that you realize that somehow she's managed to encompass all her friends within her own self-image, so that when she's acting full of herself, she's actually full of her close friends, too."

I've made a couple posts recently about having shatter-level breakdowns. luckylefty asked in a comment what he should do should he encounter one of these. I wrote a 2100+ word comment, and then decided this would probably both not fit in LJs comment limit, and should really just be a post.

Have some ( User Manual )

So yeah.

My user manual is remarkably mutable, this version is based on data collected from 1989-2013, and may not work farther out from that time range.

As always, it is self-aware to write a user manual, but arrogant to expect anyone to read it. More so with this than with other things I write, I will not assume anyone to have seen/read this post until and unless they comment (here, IM, email, offline, wevs) that they have done so.

Also, I apologize that a lot of this information is really useless unless you happen to be in physical proximity to me while this is going on. I scamper when I have negative emotions of most levels, so that people don't have to deal with me. Lots of this does translate to someone in a different location (I have had people online tell me to go eat before) communicating by phone or IM, but they still have to realize I need it.

I wonder if I couldn't come up with a secret passphrase that I could post here or on Twitter or something, that means "I can't reach out and don't want to waste anyone's time, if you truly don't mind and aren't busy, please IM or call me for a talkdown".

I'm thinking something like "the dark toast rides at midnight" or "three fish crumble and the toast has buttered jam" or perhaps "I can't reach out and don't want to waste anyone's time, if you truly don't mind and aren't busy, please IM or call me for a talkdown."⁶

~Sor
MOOP!

1: To expand on this, sometimes I do go into that kind of nonreactive panic when someone touches me initially, and after they pull away I will immediately lean up against them again. If that happens, it means I short-circuited or was startled and I would actually like whatever physical comfort is being offered. People pulling away a second time, or being all hurt and confused at me, make me add body issues and touch neuroses to whatever I was currently freaking out about, and it sucks. You can talk to me about your being hurt when I'm not the most presently damaged person in the room.

2: How old were you when you learned that good girls aren't here?³

3: It feels wrong, so wrong that the first public link to this is buried in here, a brief aside, a flip explanation of what I mean when I say "good girl", in that particular pained tongue. This essay deserves response in kind, and I just can't, I daren't profane it by saying something incomplete.

It is a thing I will whisper quietly as means of explanation. How old were you when you learned that good girls aren't here? 24, and 18, and younger still. The tab with the essay has not closed since Racheline posted it, when I got my new computer, I reopened it in here, so that I may have it, and let it read like armor across my darkened mind.

4: Despite that my name is derived from a sorceress, my magic is priestly. Ritual and religion are entirely entangled, and I'm not sure I have an actual distinction between praying and casting. And music is religious as fuck.

5: The worst thing that possibly happens here is that Alis, a being who lives within the confines of my mind, takes over my body for a short time. This is not actually all that bad as it lets Kat off the hook for being a Real Adult or being in control or responsible or _anything_, and Alis is not strong enough to keep it up perpetually (so no risk of Kat being subsumed). Gabriel would also love to front, but he is not a Guardian Bitch, and so doesn't have a chance of actually being serious enough to wrest control away from me.

6: The toast themology is the fault of my friend Master SoNSo.

Author's Note: This is another entry into the User Manual for your Sorcyress Unit. Like all entries in the User Manual, I think it is useful information about me, but highly egotistical to expect anyone to read it. So more than usual, unless you comment (on or off LJ) that you have read this post, I will assume you didn't. Especially because it's self-centered wanking, and seriously, you don't want to read that.

Also, this post is long, but nyah-nyah, I don't cut things unless I feel like it. Sucks to be you, scrolling past all that text. You should really just unfollow me or something.

So everything is terrible forever.

That's not actually true, but life is treating me hard right now, and I'm basically failing entirely at this grown-up thing, especially the parts that involve finding a job or having money. This is the first time since I moved to Boston that I had to seriously ask mum and da for money or I wouldn't be able to make rent. If it happens again, I'm probably going to have to leave Boston¹, because I just can't sustain begging the parents for money each month, and they certainly (and justifiably) won't put up with it.

Right now I am stressed.

Constantly. stressed, which is unusual (I am generally both mellow and elastic --it does not take much to bring me back to a happy mood) and fucking me up --I have no idea how to deal with being unhappy all of the time. This is not familiar optimist territory. But because I am a REAL ADULT, or at least because I am made entirely of bootstraps and bitter, I am surviving³.

My life right now, and for the foreseeable future (exception: Pinewoods⁴) is therefore full-on survival mode. This means I'm spending as much time as possible doing odd jobs --mostly studies for various Harvard/MIT psych groups, but also babysitting, house repair, housecleaning, gardening, dancing naked on tables, anything you will pay me sufficient funds for. The time not spent actively earning money is being spent in applying for jobs and careers. I joked earlier that my current job is "trying to collect as many awkward silences as possible, where I've applied and they've stubbornly refused to call me back".

My current score is 22.

When I'm not actively earning money, or actively adding to my new collection, I'm usually in a state of desperation and woe, which makes me impressively awful company to have around. I am currently still going to dances, but if my mood at other dances is anywhere remotely similar to where it was at Squares on Tuesday, I'm probably going to stop going for everyone's sakes. Squares cost an unusually high amount of "I will keep the plates all spinning"⁶ and it's just not worth it to run away from the people every time I'm not actively dancing to pump VERY LOUD music into my ears in a half-hearted attempt to keep myself smiling.

So what I am basically saying here is that I am not good offline⁷ company and you should neither expect to spend time with me, or seek it out right now. Interacting with people face-to-face costs energy --which I don't have, as all spoons have currently been diverted to just keep swimming-- and more importantly, time --which I can't justify spending casually right now. I am stuck at the moment, and I can't let that continue.

So, the important part of the post. "Gee Kat! You are hard-up and we are a helpful narrative device! Because you're a stubborn thick-headed prick who refuses the merest idea of asking for help...

...What can we do to help?

• *Little sympathy, no optimism. "Things will get better". "You'll work through this." "I'm sure everything will be good soon". No. I don't want to hear it, because it just reinforces to me the fact that I have fucked up, as clearly evidenced by the fact that things are not good now. Any cheerful proclamations about how the sun is due to come out any day now will make me less interested in interacting with you.
  
  Furthermore "oh, stop beating yourself up about it, it's not your fault" will not help anyone, ever, except the people who receive royalties every time someone says that phrase. I have fucked up. Not because I can't get a job in this crappy ass-economy, but because of all the little decisions I have or haven't made that involved me being a freelance bum rather than actually focusing on my chosen career path. If I do not beat myself up about it, no one else will, and nothing will change. I find self-loathing an exceptional tool for self-betterment, YMMV.
  
  As for sympathy, I mean...hugs will eventually be appreciated, as will "wow, that sucks" or whatever. But I'm not really in a space for it right now. So I won't intentionally be bitter at you, but if your comment is nothing but sympathy, that's probably not great.



• *Be really patient with me. At the best of times, I am a fucked up, neurotic, mess. This is not the best of times. Among other things, if you are going to try to make plans with me, please be prepared for me to come back a day later and say "actually nope, can't do it". If this makes planning horrendous for you, then I don't recommend trying to arrange things with me until I am more reliable.



• *Don't try to lend me money, because that will confuse me and make me sad and failuremode. Don't try to give me money because hahahaha ohgods, I can't even comprehend what that would do to my stubborn refusal to accept presents.



• *Offer to buy me ice cream, if you have the spare cash for it, and the inclination. I might not accept. Definitely make it optional ("may I buy you ice cream" as opposed to "so what do you want, I'm buying"). Don't do this if you don't want to. But it is summer and ice cream is one of my favourite things and I can't afford any and I'd like to.



• *If you have legitimate assorted jobs to be done, by all means, give me a call and offer to exchange cashmoney for them. I clean houses, I sit on children, I organize things, I carry stuff, I smile at people, I'll even (*shudder*) answer phones if I have to. Please don't invent work for me, because that will feel weird, but if you've been looking for an excuse to get [random thing that takes a body] done and would rather pay someone else to do it, I'll happily get paid.
  
  Seriously, if you're not sure if I'm willing to accept money to do something, e-mail me and ask, and the answer is very likely "yes". Sometimes it will be "yes, but I don't know how, so let me do some quick googling and/or you should teach me".



• *Better yet, organize a Work-In-Company with me. Work-In-Company is the Getting Things Done equivalent of parallel play --multiple people hanging out in the same space, on their computers (or notebooks, or homework, or whatever) mutually getting things done. I'm happy to host or travel for such things (especially in the afternoontimes, if I'm around) and it is often a thing that holds me accountable, and therefore leads to more productivity. For *both* of us!
  
  I mean, applying to jobs feels about as productive in the grand scheme of Earn Money Somehow as throwing socks at a dartboard right now. But theoretically, if I send out enough applications, someone *has* to reply to me someday. Right? Right?!



• *Also better yet, if you happen to know of a place that is hiring, let me know. I mean, I'm talking anywhere right now, if they have a help wanted sign in the window, I'm interested. But if you happen to be a teacher, and know of teaching jobs...I will bake you cookies if you lead me to getting a careerjob. And I never offer to bake for people.



• *Similarly, feel free to give me an occasional lecturing poke on IM to gently remind me that I should probably be working on stuff.



• *In general, poke me on IM and provide me with conversation. My current intense prickliness is going to make it difficult for me to acquire sufficient social interaction⁸. Give me social interaction in a way that takes very little mental/emotional energy on my part just to use. Phones? Phones are a miserable device that should be burned. Instant message, where I can read all the words, and am forced to write? Best. Thing. For. My. Brain, you really have no idea.



• *Something something, cheap longterm nutritious food? Like, I'm not really sure how this works, "cook with me" maybe, except that's difficult. Encourage me to cook, but you can't really over IM. Maybe convince me to get on Skype with you, and once there, convince me to get into the kitchen and make myself a batch of 3AM chili, or pasta, or several PB&? sandwiches, since I'm currently keeping a tight and erratic schedule, and don't have any time to cook. Which means I'm living off granola bars, squeeze-packets of applesauce (fuck you, they were on the damaged goods rack, which meant they were actually affordable), and pop-tarts.
  
  If you have collapsed in horror at that last statement, clearly you should invite me over for dinner. I wash dishes! Legit, I'll wash all the dishes in your house if you feed me real food. I'd say within reason, but what the hell, I'm desperate for real-person food.

And that's all I've got for now. If this seems super rude to you, well, I am not very good at being poor, and I keep having people who ask me if there's anything they can do to help, so here are some of those things, for those people, and you can sod off.

If this seems super egotistical to you, I warned you it was a Manual post right in the beginning text up there. Also, um, my livejournal, much? There's no place on the internet I am more entitled to being super egotistical. thanks.

Andyeah. Woo being a broke-ass living off their parent's charity? Huzzah for utterly failing at being a real adult? At any rate, this has made me depressed, so I'm probably going to eat ice cream and maybe make another post about things that are actually going good in my life right now, because it's the sort of post I need to make? Yeah.

Y'all are good people for reading this far. I'm glad you stuck around.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Who is the classy roommate who uses livejournal² to update her roommates about things like this? Oh yeah. Totally this guy.

2: See also any bit of the user manual that talks about communication forms, and about the fact that my non-optimal forms of communication get WAY harder when I am stressed or otherwise in a negmood, and basically if I could communicate entirely through instant message right now, that would be awesome.

3: "I am surviving" is basically my motto right now. There have been enough critical events throughout my life that have boiled down to "my choices are to survive this or not survive this" and every time "not survive" has been the far less appealing outcome. Mild TW: Suicide: There came a day I was absolutely betrayed and miserable, and I am walking past the train tracks near Porter. For half a moment I contemplate flinging myself upon them, before my brain blinks mildly and goes "but this isn't worth killing myself over". That sentence has come to mean a lot to me, terrible things have happened, and I'm sure some of them are that bad, but so far...no, this so isn't worth killing myself over. [/TW]

4: I am not allowed to think about Pinewoods, and once I am there, I am not allowed to think about the real world. Neither of these rules are going to have the slightest ability to stop me feeling horrid. I really should not be gallivanting off to play in the woods for four days when I could be spending that time trying to earn money instead, but I don't have the social capital to refuse it, and I am desperate for the escape. Extended time in Neverland is not a healthy thing to seek, but perhaps once in a great while, I just need to be one of Red-Handed Jill's Lost Girl's⁵.

5: Look, footnote orgies are basically *for* obscure references. That's why I write them.

6: Next to Normal: The musical what keeps my brain ticking when it stops functioning. Also the musical that I sometimes can't listen to because the crazy is too similar to my own and it will break me.

7: Very intentionally worded. When I can't communicate through instant messenger, I can't communicate, and there's nothing to be done but let me wail until I return to stability.

8: Despite being an introvert, I do need social interaction eventually. If I spend too much time all on my own, never talking or seeing anyone else, I get lonely. And then I turn into a bear. True story. Eating people and all. It sucks, bears are really crappy at pas de basque setting.

I have been known to say to various people at various times that I am "bad at silence". This happens most often when there is just me and one other person, and we are in extended close contact --spending a few hours together doing whatever. What I mean by this is that I don't like long periods where neither of us are talking. This happens frequently when out walking through the world with people, at restaurants, on transit...basically any situation where it would be considered rude to pull out a book and read for a while.

The biggest thing for me is that, if there is no conversation to focus on, I will instead focus on my own thoughts. My thoughts move very quickly, and unless you distract me, I spend a lot of time focusing on subtleties. I overanalyze things. It is a flaw of mine that I read too much into every little gesture, word, movement, touch between us (and a huge part of why I am intentionally so focused on being explicit in my relationships. I overcommunicate because I don't trust the analysis my mind creates, and I want to know what you actually mean.)

And of course, one of the things I will immediately start overanalyzing --unless I have something else to distract me¹-- is the silence. "Why are you being silent, what was last said, do I need to respond to it, or elaborate on it, fuck what is going on, we're holding hands but is that good? Should I let go? Oh hey I want to go walk on that wall instead of the sidewalk, but maybe that'd be weird, oh god do I look okay right now, is my hair behaving? Oh look a backhoe, okay I'm squeeing about the backhoe and...no response. Shit. Shit! Do they not like me because I get stupid overenthusiastic over backhoes? Oh god this isn't going to work out say something say something say something!"

1: This is why I do not typically say on IM that I am bad at silence. There is a whole wealth of internet I can be doing in between receiving your messages, and it makes it very easy not to dwell.

My response, often, is to babble. But that's just not optimal. Not just because I am at my least impressive when forced to communicate solely through the spoken word (my babbling online is, at the very least, better structured) but also because it tells me nothing, or very little, about you. I *like* learning about you. I like knowing what people are passionate about, what they're into, what they've done, what they want. Those are all really nifty things to me, and if I'm babbling about my hair, I can't be learning them.

Now, there are some people with whom I can have a perfectly comfortable silence, even without other things to distract me. Usually people I've known a long time, and spent much time around. And I do better with silence some days than others, and to be perfectly honest, sometimes I just want the world to shut up for a while so I can think (although that's usually not during times when I've planned to spend time with someone.)

So, when I say that I am bad at silence (which almost always happens after a few minutes of nobody talking) you should take it as an invitation. Tell me something --anything-- about yourself. Tell me what's on your mind. If the conversation we were having wasn't working, well, switch wildly off topic. Just...talk to me.

Save me from the silence. Save me from my own head.

~Sor
MOOP!

There's a whole weekend to talk about at some point. There's a lot of sub-essays from the weekend to get into. There's issues to be written down and slowly sorted.

But I just had a sharp reminder that I communicate best in the written word. You can tell me anything you want, and I will appreciate the sound, and sometimes it will be all that I need. But writing things down? That makes them real.

"Planning"
"2-6 months"

Sometimes everything changes. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it means I'm growing up, or something equally nonsensical.

And it doesn't matter how many times he said the words, or something like them, over the course of the last week. They weren't real until he wrote them down. Remember that about me.

~Sor
MOOP!

((I maintain, since I had another complaint that my livejournal was too depressing¹, that this is a happy entry. Or at the very least, an introspective entry. Shutup, it's my journal, and I will introspect if I want to.))

So, I'm an introvert, yeah? Given an extended amount of time around a lot of people, I will start to get unhappy and offcenter. This results in me being short-tempered, and less able to cope with things than usual. Very bad. Luckily, it's easy to fix --I go spend a couple minutes-hours-days by myself, and bam, I am back to my usual smiling self.

Right, fine, that all makes sense.

Except for the fact that I do *massively* better when I get to regularly interact with whoever's at the top of the list of people I like. Spending every night over at some sweet thing's house may make my brain start to whine a little, but it also means that I don't have panic attacks.

Seriously. To put it more directly, kissing keeps me from freaking out.

...yeah, I don't really know how to feel about this either. Or rather, I do know my usual reaction to things like this --to be uncomfortable with the dependence on others it illustrates. But the thing is...I like kissing. And cuddling, and snuggling and dancing and physical intimacy, and *conversation*, oh gods, I love good conversation with smart people. Hanging out with people I love, really LOVE, calms my brain down and helps me retain my sometimes fragile stability. I've more or less been aware of this fact for a long time now --when did I actually start asking for help when I was breaking down again? Yeah, that.

Of course, I'm still shit at actually seeking the help when I'm in the middle of a breakdown. I don't really think anyone's good at that skill, and if they are...well...they probably need the help a lot less than the rest of us honestly. But it occurs to me that there's a corollary to the skill, and that's keeping whatever ethereal shield protects me from hitting the breaking point in the first place full. Which means talking to people I like (and people I love), and snuggling and hugging and kissing and all the rest of it. Oh. Darn. That'll suck for me.

On second read, this entry doesn't *really* make a lot of sense, which is why this is a journal and not a blag. Blags are for people who can actually write essays to turn into entries, like JoshZed or my math teacher. That's okay, I like journaling an awful lot, so you guys will have to just deal or somesuch. Ta!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I maintain that my livejournal is *not* too depressing. Given twenty public entries, they're about evenly split between positive and negative emotions. You all just don't register the happy entries as often, because happy is boring. So nyah.

Also, wow this is passive aggressive.

P.S: Yes, this is just me talking around the fact that I leave for Origins tomorrow, and it's going to be...heh. Look on the bright side. If I spend less than 24 hours crying, I've already had a better year than last! FUCK YEAH!

...'kay, that was a little depressed. Sorry mom.

This was stolen from kittikattie as well --it's basically just a how-to guide for the Sorcyress.

Congratulations on your new Kat/Sorky/Sor! Here's some basic information to help take care of her, as you people are so wont to do!



1. How can I tell if you are angry?

I go quiet. If I am actually predominantly angry, and not merely emo or melancholic or panic attacking or generally directing the negative emotions towards myself rather than something else in the world, I go very quiet, and start to tend to strength positions --straightening the back, crossing the arms, and trying to stare people down. (yes, little ol' 5'2'' me.) The things that most make me angry are hurting or threatening those I care about, so making me angry tends to make me go into a touch of the mama bear mode. 



2. How should I behave around you while you are angry?

If I am angry at you, apologize immediately, and explain that it was a joke and you did not seriously mean it. If it wasn't a joke, I will probably do my best to cause you grievous bodily harm. (You know, before I get snapped in two). If I'm angry at someone else, let me rant, and offer appropriate noises of sympathy. If I'm angry, I'm not looking for help or answers, I'm looking to blow off steam. Trying to provide me with help or answers, or daring to defend the person/institution I am upset at will redirect my anger towards you, quite quickly. 



3. How do you want me to behave when you are hurting emotionally? (How is best to comfort you?)
If I am crying in front of you and not especially trying to hide it, congratulations. That makes you one of about four people in the last two years. Should that situation occur, you are to immediately, and without my prompting, wrap me up in a hug, pull me into your lap, and whisper sweet lies about how everything is going to be alright. If I want to talk about it, please let me, and feel free to interject with questions, suggestions, or advice as you feel necessary. If I'm crying, It's a problem that needs solutions, even ones as simple as "just wait a week and the status quo will be back to normal and you'll be fine"

If I am not crying, but have gone extrodinarily quiet and distant, and, most notably, if I do not wish to be touched (I will make this clear on the *very* rare occasion that it occurs, and please, with me the rule is always hug unless I've said otherwise. If you are my friend, you never have to ask permission to hug me unless I actively pull away from you) please just leave me be. Being humourous is a good way to pull me out of that sort of funk, but don't push, I will go find people/notebooks necessary to sort myself out.

Above all, if you have asked me once in an evening if I am okay, or any variant, you have used up your allotment for the time being. People repeatedly asking me if I'm really really sure I'm okay just makes me *pissed*.



4. Are there things we should ~not~ discuss?

What, in general?

Like I said, I'm a mama bear. I'm often very good at taking jokes and whatnot, but talking smack about Veronica or Aly is a very fast way to make me Very Angry.

Beyond that, I'm pretty easy with the world. I like people, I like situations, I like relationships, I like rants...if I like you, I will listen to your babble, whatever it's on, unless it's something that confuses me to the point of boredom. Rape jokes make me twitchy, however, and, while the level of freaked I get varies, my neck weirdness does tend to apply to both other people's necks and discussion of necks in general. Having no fucking neck, OTOH, is totally something to be ridiculed.



5. How should I treat you if you are physically ill?

That...doesn't happen a lot, really. I have far more than my fair share of spoons, and I really don't get sick all that often. In the very unlikely event I'm puking sick, putting up with me and running all the little errands (getting me toast, helping me keep my hair out of my eyes while I'm curled up in a little ball of misery on the bathroom floor, washing out buckets) will earn you a million billion points and make me feel really guilty that I can't do it myself. Regardless of what the physical sick is, get me some water to drink. Water is my placebo of choice. It cures everything!

I don't know if anyone actually has read to me when I was sick, but reading books from my childhood to me would probably make me the happiest damn thing ever.



6. What makes you happy? (that may be in my power to grant, as a friend?)

Humour. I laugh like it was going out of style, over the stupidest stuff sometimes.

I...seriously? Pay me attention. I'm far more of an attention whore than I will ever admit, and people noticing me both confuses and pleases me.

Hug, hug, hug, hug, hug, hug, cuddle, hug. Oh, and let me drag you dancing sometime.



7. How would you like for us to recognize your birthday?

WITH A PARADE SPANNING FROM BOSTON TO SAINT JOHN'SSAN FRANSISCO! AND FLAGS! AND PONIES!

Or, you know, by like...saying happy birthday to me. Toss some words or art at me, that'll make me happiest. 



8. Are there any standing categories of presents that would be inappropriate or unwelcome?

Unless you are my parents, expensive presents are pretty much just not allowed. They will make me confused, and somewhat uneasy.

If you really want to give me sex toys, for some unknown reason, give me money and tell me to put it in my Liv fund. It _comes in bright green!_

Beyond that...I don't wear much jewelry, but if you find a good looking, plain ankh in any colour or material, I am all about that. I keep a semi-regularly updated present list in my livejournal. It's linked to in my userinfo, or you can find it by hitting the "permalink" tag, or you can simply click here



9. Are there times of the year that are difficult for you? (please explain if you are comfortable.)

I am a chronic procrastinator, so finals weeks tend to be stressful, and full of all nighters.

I tend to have a substantial panic attack in September/Octoberish, but I don't think that's a time of year thing somuch as situational.

The very end of November/beginning of December sucks. Hopefully this year it will suck less, and the next year less, and on and on until it doesn't suck anymore.

I often have either a severe low point or several small dips in the days immediately leading up to Christmas. I usually have a good Christmas day itself, but I've cried on at least a couple Christmas Eve's, or had to force myself very hard not to.

Any significant date involving my clone is going to be likely to make me sigh wistfully a lot and whinge about how unfair it is that she's on the other side of the country. Same with Veronica.

Also, leaving the people I care about or the city I care about makes me sad, but going to the city I love or seeing the people I adore soon thereafter usually makes up for it.



10. Are there important anniversaries that we should recognize in your life?

I was born 28 August 1989. It is the most damn important anniversary ever!

I usually do some sort of celebration for the day me and The Katters realized we were clones --January 30th.

Other dates that matter to me for one reason or another are 13 July, 20 February, 26 June, 2 December, 3 January, 24 or 25 January (depending on how literal I'm being), 27 or 28 January.

Significant birthdays include the birthdates of Mom, Aly, Veronica, Kat, Magus, and Gabriel. (I'm unsure of Gabe's actual birthdate, so we tend to call it February 28th. Alis's second birthdate is...lemme check...huh. Quite plausibly 30 Jan. Actually, yes, definitely 30 Jan. I don't have a set first birthdate for her.)

And of course, my death day is the 13² day of the year --June 18th, most years. 



11. Who are the most important people in your life to whom we should defer when making plans on your behalf?

Me.

I do badly with planning things in advance, unfortunately. But I generally tend to defer to whichever event I was told about first, with the general rule that my parents have first dibs until I'm independant, you cannot have my Monday nights, they are MINE! *hiss*, and fen > nonfen when trying to get me to hang out with you.

Butyeah, mostly just my parents. And me.

~Sor
MOOP!
(8/12)

Every six months or so, I'll attempt once more to do the Big Paper Sorting Project.

Which, as might be guessed from the name, consists of taking all the papers in my room, sorting them out, and recycling as many as I can bear to part with.

All this really means for this journal is that I start posting weird collections of quotes and one liners and the like --words I want to save, on papers I want to recycle.

No, today is not going to be a big post. I just feel like giving you this:

The Rules:

1) Avoid Stupidity

2) No Wigwams

3) Boys are the stupidest thing to fight over. So are girls. Don't do it.

4) You are the most important person in your life
4a) Your happiness is more important to you than anyone else's

6) No dancing until homework is done
6a) If given the opportunity to shag Randall Munroe, TAKE IT!

Yeah, these are the ones that are pretty much set in stone. I do, in the back of my mind, occasionally mutter about breaking rule three, largely as it's been rule three since...ninth grade? Tenth? Maybe even earlier.

Oh, alright, one more glimpse into my strange and twisted mind:

Stuff I learned this year¹

*Grasshoppers² are *delicious*
*It's okay to cook things from scratch (and awesome)
*Work like a real person
*Bullshit is still the primary component of all essays
*Skirts rule!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Freshman year of college --Aug2007-May2008
2: Not the bug. The drink.

If I try to change the subject, that's because I don't want to talk about it.

One of my coping mechanisms --hell, my most used coping mechanism-- is to write. One line posts, quick rants, strings of curses...whatever. I fire it out, and a lot of the time, I don't bother to proofread or think much about it.

This is what twitter is for, after all. Letting people know the mood of that particular instant.

That particular instant. Moods don't last, and I've had more than a few awkward conversations because I let the walls down too low one night and hadn't found a way to hide that fact the following day.

The second most used coping mechanism is to mask. To find so many distractions, splatter myself across the internet, talk to so many people at once that I can't help but put on a happy face and pretend everything's alright. If I pretend enough, it can't help but become real.

However, masking takes a little bit of energy. It's a fragile goddamn process, and while I'm working on it, it's very very delicate. Trying to undistract me, pointing me back to whatever caused me to need to mask in the first place Just Doesn't Help.

So, why am I crying/upset/frustrated/hiding/etc? Because I'm in this shithole of suburbia. Because I'm sleeping alone at night. Because it's been x days since I've seen him or him and it doesn't fucking matter what number x is, it's too fucking high. Because I'm too introverted for this household, and I can't always have people nearby, and without people, I have to be by myself. Because when I'm by myself, I have to deal with myself, and in case my wildly zaphodic ego wasn't enough of a hint, I do not always or even often get along with who I really am.

Because I hate it here, and I can't escape. There *isn't* an escape here. I can go play on mein Das Nonstop-Programm¹ or climb my tree or do any one of another million things that will unthrill my mother and result in annoyed phone messages.

Because I hate it in my head, and without distraction, I *really* can't escape. Let me find my fucking distractions, okay? Or seriously, GTFO, because it doesn't help. Star-hugs-star only works so well, and it's really just well enough.

No. I don't want to talk about it.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Very obscure reference. Don't feel like explaining, figure out a way to search my journal or something, as I'm relatively sure I've reff'd it before.