MOOP!

Content Warning: non-detailed allusions to my shitty abusive ex and the shitty relationship we had

I have been working on the Inbox0 project, which sorta has two modalities:

First, the banality of daily life. Unsubscribing from things I don't care about, and mass deleting the bulks they have sent in the past. Meeting notes and invitations and preperatory emails that can safely be labeled ("highland ball" got a workout today, from when I ran it in 2017) and archived. Going through the 50 most recent emails in the inbox and trying to at least first pass all of what's happened lately.

Second, the weight of history. I have had the same email address since 2005, so that sure is, uh, twenty years since January 15th. It's not everything I've ever gotten (see above about bulk-deleting bullshit) and I do have like, a more professionally wallet-named account, but even that sends its email into the main box.

And the weight of history can be _exhausting_. That's part of what makes this game difficult, trying to motivate myself to be exposed fully to some of my worst ADHD sins, or the parts of my personal history where the Big D went on the word depression. Have I mentioned lately I went through an abusive relationship for most of the year 2007? Yeah, uh. That still has bits and pieces lying around it sure does.

But mannnnn one of the benefits of hindsight and being an actual friggin' grown-up and stuff is the ability to look at some of those bits and pieces and see just how much I have grown and improved and gotten better. I can have a lot of grace for myself (I do genuinely like myself, regardless of how much I whine I am a really spectacularly awesome person) and part of the reason is that recognition of the work I have done to reach better and better heights as time goes on.

Or, like, to read an email in which this guy I was totally into was basically breaking up with me, in part because he was not interested in being in a polycule with my shitty boyfriend. Boo hiss, this should be real sad. But it's _not_ because it's been twenty freaking years, that guy I was totally into has developed a lovely sounding life for himself on the other side of the world and I've made a polycule that has an absolute dearth of shitty boyfriends anywhere in it. And so I can read stuff like this...

However, I talked to ksatyr....he is *way* over-reacting. You think you're not ready for a relationship? I'm sorry, but this is a demonstration of not being ready for a relationship.

...and scream lovely modern "YASS QUEEN SLAY¹" because BOY HOWDY it is good to remember that there were people who were willing to say to my face "yeah, your boyfriend ain't shit because shit at least provides fertilizer and causes growth²". I mean, I didn't listen sufficiently at the time, but it turns out it never gets old to listen to folks drag my shitty partners, even if I didn't necessarily realize it at the time.

So yeah. The history is rough but it's also nice to see the growth that goes alongside it. And it's nice to get reminders that however fucked up current-right-now Kat is, they're not (correctly) getting dragged by a twenty year old for acting like a sixteen year old³.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: This is almost certainly ironic as it's not language that has actually gotten into my lexicon yet.

2: Okay sure, I suppose you could argue that kSatyr caused growth _in me_. As a different shitty ex once said "-99 points for everything, +1 for making a better Kat for the rest of us". But just because it causes growth doesn't mean I particularly want to be covered in shit. :P

3: September party! I will finally be the age my abusive ex was when he dated me! WOOO!

I reread God is an Iron (CW: rape, drug use, suicide), after someone from LB linked a different Robinson story, and fuck, I love Spider's work so so so much.

God is an Iron is a very specific short story for me, because I read it first...my memory says on the flight to London with my girl scout troop, but would mom've let me drag her copy of Time Travelers Strictly Cash across the ocean? Who knows. Anyways, in 2006. I remembered it being dark and funny but completely shut out any details. And then in 2015, I was working tech at Worldcon and wound up helping out with lights for a stageplay rendition of it.

There is a pretty fuckin' significant piece of Kat-lore that happened between those two events, and it meant encountering the story the second go-round fuckin' _shattered_ me. Haaaaa, going back and rereading words for then --because it's one of the times in my life where I was doing words before the longtime, bless-- shows that jegus fuck shit there was a lot of other stuff going on that weekend too, but dang and blast, it is hard to read.

But the really _really_ good thing about Robinson is that he is the most human motherfucker in all of science fiction. Does he have flaws? Yeah, absolutely. Will I defend the central conceits of Callahan's to the death? Yes. Yes I will.

(Am I gonna wind up rereading the first three books tonight? That would be a terrible choice, since I need sleep. That's not the same as a no.)

And God is an Iron has a theme of a just horrific amount of pain, pain that I recognize --not the same, but similar. But it has a core of love, and joy, and us taking care of each other, best we can. I've been using it as a mantra in the back of my mind a few months now, my new uber-simplified political stance: community is good.

Community is good.

~Sor
MOOP!

Sometimes it hits me lighter. Some years it hits me harder. This year it's been circling since friggen September, rearing it's head in reminder. Probably some of that is the increased stress about everything else in the world, and some of that is starting a new relationship and feeling like a lot of this stuff is relevant to me again (because it always is when I do).

But let's look at it the positive way:

I've heard it said that every seven years, your skin cells have all replaced themself and it's like you're in an entirely new body. By that metric, this body has never been raped, times two. It's fourteen years credit to my worst anniversary, happy celebrations to me.

~Sor
MOOP!

Trigger Warning for rape, emotional abuse, mostly mentioned with dark humour and obliquely but some more direct

( Having finished writing, it doesn't get that bad, but have a cut regardless )

Anyways, that's apparently where I'm at. Raise a glass in December for thirteen long years. Another half-decade until I reach the age he was, and yeah, I know how that sounds.

Be good to the ones you love. We are all fragile this year.

~Sor
MOOP!

(PostScript, for those who may be new: In 2007 (the year I was 17/18), I dated a man eighteen years my senior. Perhaps predictably, it did not go well. You can find more information in the very punny "therapy" tags (therapyfilter and therapyblatant being the most common)

Edited to Add: I just spent the last hour doing just that, and look, if you like the way I write and can handle some depressing shit, I think the therapyblatant tag has some of my consistently sharpest writing that I've ever done. This is a fucking horrible thing that happened to me but damn do the scars look amazing.

And as I lamented at one point, how much other writing could I have accomplished if I didn't have to spend literal thousands of words on this?

So today was...a lot.

It started off with a bang, as I woke up at 5:49 with my laptop open on my lap and only 500-odd words in the file. My 750words day is already set to 6AM. No, I did not break my streak, but it is only by the skin of my fucking teeth.

Then, like an idiot, I lay back down rather than properly get up, and so I hit the snooze alarm four times and did not manage to get to school as early as I wanted to, le fucking sigh.

School was...really mellow for me. I didn't have to do any lesson planning, because today was end-of-the-quarter catch-up day, so all I did for my classes was circulate and help students one-on-one with their missing work or their extra credit projects or what-have-you. Paired with a moment of panic in the middle when my boss came in to observe a class and I had to be like "we are literally not doing anything today" but at the very least, I was actively sitting next to a student and working through a problem with her, and I was able to hand boss lady the extra credit assignment to look at, and so I think it was okay.

After classes were over, I did...not really anything constructive. I mean, I went to NEST-team and talked about stuff, and that was good. But my proper prep was just...me...drawing, mostly? Which was *incredible* for my mental health and did nothing for my stack of grading.

Post-school was the LBGTQ+ forum, where about forty people showed up to sit in a big circle on the stage of the auditorium and talk queer stuff. It was pretty evenly split between students and teachers, and a *really* awesome discussion. I have so much hope for the next gen.

(I did not talk about Sunday night to them. I am not that kind of out at work. It was _very interesting_ talking around that fact in front of the one teacher who explicitly knows I'm agender, and really gratifying to have her mention the "I know we're thrilled with the idea of role models, but it's okay to not be out if it doesn't seem safe to you right now." Subtext may just be buttsex in a different order, but it's nice to hear the messages that are meant just for you sometimes.)

Then therapy, where I talked a lot about Sunday and school and how _badly_ I want to be out as agender, and talked with Jenn about a (purely academic) problem I have that could literally be unique in the world, and the usual...other stuff. Post-therapy quiet dinner and off to MIT for fairly unsatisfying squares.

Content Warning: My mood at squares was *definitely* not helped by the fact that it's April, and MIT celebrates April with brightly coloured shirts about rape strung up all over the staircase! I could probably have more thoughts, but I'd rather go to bed. Mostly I'm just really...angry. Angry at myself, for hurting, angry at kSatyr, for hurting.

I don't really want to go more into it just now, so have a post from 2010 that goes into why The Clothesline Project in particular is such a _thing_ for me. Trigger warnings like whoa.

Anyways, I'm off to bed. Cheers.

~Sor
MOOP!

Trigger Warning: Rape and emotional abuse. Excerpts from an 18 year old's diary (it's cool, I got their consent to post 'em)

I said to a friend "November is a crazy month for me" and haha, we're all crazy with work and politics and Arisia nonsense¹ and trying to get our lives in order, but no. That's not it at all.

November is quite literally crazy-making for me. It is by _far_ my worst mental health month in the year, every year, and it has been getting harder the last few (or maybe I've just been paying better attention.)

Part of that is straight up seasonal. The light goes away, the weather gets cold, and it's before the soft joy of December lights shining out from every house². It's often the first time in the year it snows. This year there's been multiple days of bitter-cold rain, which is awful to bike in.

Most of it is anniversary effect --there's a lot of really fucking bad things³ that have happened to me in Novembers. Obviously two years ago was shit for everyone, but there's other little sense-triggers that hit me "oh, it's the month where _that_ happened, of course." and so many of them are just _shit_. I still mourn the lost hard drive from my first semester of college.

And part of why I mourn that missing hard drive, even eleven years on, is because I desperately wish I still had access to the Behind the Walls file from August-November 2007. BtW is my version of a diary, an unfiltered, utterly private text file where I can say what I need and know that no one else is going to read it. It's been largely supplanted in my modern life by my use of 750words, but gods, from February 2005 to March 2010, it was a _critical tool_ for keeping my brain on straight⁴.

And from August to November, 2007, it was a detailed account of the sorts of things I was experiencing in my first semester away from home. Including the dissolution of the relationship I was in for most of 2007, which was a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship with a man eighteen years my senior. I call(ed) him kSatyr⁵, and it took me nearly four years⁶ to be able to say in public "I am a survivor of emotional and sexual abuse".

BUT, and here's a crucial thing. Right after my hard drive died, practically the very first thing I did on the replacement was start up BtW 2.1⁷ and start writing again, because I'm not a complete idiot.

Which means when kSatyr raped me in a new and irrevocable way on the morning of December second, and we _finally_ fucking broke up, I was able to record some thoughts about it. And a few tumultuous weeks later, riding the confusion of two breakups⁸ in three weeks, I was able to make the post I'm going to excerpt from below.

( This post is the first time I ever said 'aloud' that I had been raped. Obviously, hella trigger warnings. Also, this is an excerpt of the diary of a pretentious eighteen year old. You're reading the public-facing diary of a pretentious twenty-nine year old, but still...be warned. )

This entry got way longer than I was necessarily expecting, which is _completely normal_ for me when writing about anything, and double-normal when writing about my rapist. If you wanna have more dark-humour coping-mechanism funtimes you can peep TherapyFilter for everything I've ever posted publicly on the subject¹¹.

I feel better right now than I did an hour ago, which is important --writing is good for me.

But seriously, by far the most important takeaway from going back eleven years into my diary and reading the ramblings of an 18 year old madwoman, is that...it was rape. It was definitely rape, I said so with absolute conviction then because I knew it from the moment it happened. I didn't use the r-word again after that for almost eighteen months, until I saw the pretty coloured shirts on a clothesline and it broke back into my heart.

It drives me _fucking bonkers_ that this is still something that affects me. It's been over a decade! I have healthy [sexual] relationships with wonderful people! Why can't I get over it?! But then I remember that it was a big deal, and it was a _huge_ affect on my introduction to my own sexuality.

And the dying shards of a control-freak who couldn't stand the existence of my own independence are always going to echo at me hard at certain times of year. February 22nd is bad. December 2nd is bad. I do what I can to survive.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Absolutely do not comment about Arisia in this post. Thank you.

2: I like Christmas Lights more than nearly any other holiday _thing_. It is so good and necessary for us to drive back the dark.

3: I don't have time to find it now, but I remember posting one year about how the last week of November/first week of December is a huge up-and-down of good and bad memories, which makes it even harder. I can't just shut the whole time out of my mind if I am also celebrating 11 years of dancing and the memory of the first time the city ever sang into my heart "you are home".

4: Hell, even this modern computer has a version (the first two lines read "Welcome, little child. Be not afraid." which I think is lovely.) I've got about six entries this time around, the most recent from mid-2017. It's a little strange what gets put _there_ specifically, but I'm glad I have it for when I need. (Lots of things that end with the line "I'm not actually going to post this" --dreamwidth entries that weren't.)

5: The k is silent. It's a pile of stupid in-jokes. The funniest (the darkest) one to me is that in retrospect, naming your partner after a particularly rapey kind of mythological figure means it shouldn't be a surprise...

6: It took me _much_ longer to name him --I think the first public post to do so was the ten year anniversary of us starting to date, so like, only a year and a half ago. I was protecting him or something? And eventually I just didn't care anymore? If he didn't want a narrative where I call him a rapist, he shouldn't have fucking raped me.

7: BtW 1.0 was on Dmitri, my teenage-years desktop. 2.0 was on Seren, my college laptop, 2.1 was on Vera, the replacement harddrive for aforementioned computer which lasted me until like 2013 before being replaced by my new and current box, Kela. Dang, the girl's been working for five years now, she's a good box.

8: Magus broke up with me before we started dating. No really! I got the "we're just friends" talk like...six weeks before I got the "so I keep finding moments where I want to kiss you" talk, and I think that's brilliant and hilarious. But it was...a weird emotional thing at the time. Don't be eighteen, kids. It's not good for anyone.

9: Technically speaking, kSatyr was my second sexual relationship. The first took place over the internet, and when things started to get too hot'n'heavy for me (somewhere around text-descriptions of touching each other's genitals) and I said "can we step back?" the answer was "of course, and I really hope you haven't been dwelling on this because holy shit yes." and they did and we did and it was great.

I am consider *that* person to be a friend. They were the second person in the world I ever told about what happened, after Magus.

10: "Your Kink Is Not My Kink" (Usually followed with "But Your Kink Is Okay")

11: Why is it called a filter when it's public posts? Because it started in August 2009 (about a year and a half after I broke up with kSatyr) with only four people allowed to see the posts. I've not bothered to un-filter the posts, but I've gotten a *lot* more liberal about putting people onto the filter --if you wanna see them and can't, go ahead and ask me.

If you're new here, you might not know that trigger warnings go both ways! The entry above has references to rape and emotional abuse, and the occasionally not-so-enlightened words of my 18 year old self.

Trigger Warning: Rape and emotional abuse talk. Happy anniversary! :p

So I guess I should talk about it.

Ten years ago today, I started dating kSatyr. Officially like, with the whole "will you be my boyfriend/girlfriend" conversation. Things were...already not good in some ways. I don't have good notes from that far back. (I don't have any notes from late August to early December, because that was the hard drive that died and the diary that disappeared and oh I miss it I miss it so.)

I don't think he'd raped me yet, at that point. I know I was already dealing with his whinging, demanding, broken-brained manipulation and emotional abuse. I have no excuse for it, I never have really, except that he had a desperate all-encompassing clinging need which only I could fill, and I was too young to know that's not attractive.

It was years after we broke up before I ever heard the line "don't set yourself on fire to keep other people warm".

I hope he's figured out how to fix himself, in the time since. Goddess knows how much effort I've put into the trick. I'd be surprised if he wasn't willing to put in the same, except this was a man twice my age who acted decades younger than me, so actually, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

I wonder sometimes what narrative he tells himself about how it all went down. I wonder if he knows he raped me --I know it would kill him to hear me say it. Good. Let my truth choke him. I haven't even tried looking at his livejournal since I got Kela --and that's been, gosh, more'n three years.

(After we broke up, he told me I had to defriend him, and that I had to make all my posts friends-locked. I told him I wanted to keep writing publicly, that sometimes I have people reading my journal without accounts of their own (Hi Tailsteak!). He told me if I wouldn't acquiesce, he'd tell my mom how far we'd gotten, you know, sexually.

I called his fucking bluff. And eventually, I did unfriend him. I don't know when he stopped reading my journal. The last time I ever talked to him was in 2011. The last time I ever _will_ talk to him was in 2011.)

A lot of this has already been gone over, exhaustively, in TherapyFilter. Or more exhaustively in BehindtheWalls versions 2.0 and 2.1, and in thousands and thousands of my 750words. I have written _a lot_ about kSatyr, and the damages he left behind.

I don't really feel damaged today. Just tired.

In nine months and ten days, it will be December 2nd. It will be the ten year anniversary of being free from him. (Nevermind the hooks that took another year and more to pull out. Nevermind the four years before I could again hold Emily in my arms. Nevermind the scars on my mind that will never totally go away, because this is always going to be a part of me.). I am planning to celebrate that day. I will let my friends know if they can be a part of it.

Be good to each other. We're all we have in this world.

~Sor
MOOP!

Trigger Warning: Rape and emotional abuse talk. Happy anniversary! :p

Thin air's as sweet as water when your body begs to breathe
And so I leave when I must leave, don't weep for love I couldn't save
And all of us who dare to live are brave.
(Neptune, SJ Tucker)

followed by

I want to witness the beauty of your repair
The shape you've grown
For you are made of nebulas and novas and night sky
You're made of memories you bury and live by
(Never Look Away, Vienna Teng)

followed by

We are never ever ever getting back together
(Erm, aforementioned song, Taylor Swift)

And it's a weirdly good night. All three, sung along to as I bike home, nice and loud. Later, I'll listen to to Oasis by Amanda Palmer (And it isn't my fault that the barbarian raped me) and Lisa Carew from Jekyll and Hyde (I am not the weak young thing you're seeking, kSatyr. Someone 17, obedient, and sweet. I am not the protogee to waste your time on, I'm complete.)

Last year was sad and angry. It involved a lot of tears, and making it almost the whole day without remembering. This year, I remembered just after midnight¹, and again when I woke up, and while I was too busy most of the day, there was time to think about it a bit on the commute home. While singing along loudly to the music in my ears.

It's been nine years. The Kat who started that relationship was over a third of my life ago. She's a faraway persona now.²

I'm feeling pretty happy tonight. Stable, occupied. Hang on, little spider from nine years ago. It gets worse before it gets better. But it does get better.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Technically, this is s00j's fault. It's her birthday! Last year, the tipping point was her posting something about her birthday that reminded me of the date and I hadn't really thought of it until then. This year, she posted on twitter just after midnight and YEP, ASSOCIATIONS! But you know, happy birthday SJ and happy birthday Miss Marsha, YAY FOR AWESOME PEOPLE!!!!)

2: SUPER FASCINATING PRONOUN USAGE HERE. I am deeply intrigued, but no, I'm pretty sure I was cis at 17. Mostly cis. cisish. At any rate, I didn't get serious about the agender thing until I was like 23 or 24 and yes, I need to make a serious post about that sometime.

Trigger warning: You know, the usual mix of depression and ferocity that I display when I talk about being a survivor of rape and emotional abuse

I spent much of yesterday trying to eloquent the relationship between s00j's music and my rape scarring¹ process. I...didn't really get anywhere. In October of 2009 or so, I wrote briefly that I had to figure out the words to say to thank her for "Go Away Godboy". It's been six years, and I don't think I'm any closer in the process.

If anything, it's worse now. Because now I have Neptune to croon too, and that does seem to be the next logical part of the musical path I've been taking (Oasis and Godboy and Are You Out There and Lucky and Lisa Carew and...²) as I fight my way through this mental mire.

I mean, goddess above, have you read the lyrics?

Time I lost, just fussing over
every little thing you asked for
let myself keep fading,
silver fishes through my skin.
Somewhere I stopped breathing
but I missed the kiss of air
I cut the waves and left you there
and ne'er returned again.

ffff.

Because that was always the problem, wasn't it? The whole point was that I was to do whatever he asked and make him happy and at least one of us would live happily ever after. But then I had to fucking go and ruin it with my petty need for air.

("Thin air's as sweet as water when your body begs to breathe.")

It doesn't really matter what we're using air as a metaphor for here. Independence, respect, freedom, the ability to live my own life and make my own decisions, just a world larger than the place I hated.

(He was so devastatingly upset that I wanted to go to Boston for college. He couldn't see that it wasn't about leaving him, it wasn't about leaving anyone, or anything, or anywhere. It was about flying to a city that feels like Home. And of course, his sadness was always my most pressing problem, gods I try so hard not to succumb to hate, but sometimes I hate that man.)

(Mom never accused me of leaving her.)

***

I believe in multiverses and I am terrified of the one where I never got into Lesley and had to stay in Maryland and he just worked his hooks deeper and deeper into me until I drowned. There is no good path where we are still together. Maybe the best case is that we have children and we just don't fight about how to raise them any more because it's not like my input was ever right.

(Maybe the best case there is the one where I've just left the world, because I know how hurt and damaged I am as me, having escaped, and the idea of being trapped for so much longer in his web of bullshit and pain and accusations is just...I can't. I couldn't. Endurance only sustains so long.)

***

And of course, s00j has to be a clever essayist as well as lyricist. In her liner notes, she says:

"Neptune" is the story of what can happen after you've drowned yourself willingly in someone else's hopes and dreams, and you find that saltwater and shadows no longer sustain you.

hahhahahahhlolsob.

It is a dangerous thing, wanting to make someone happy, and I cannot turn it off. Most people seem to recognize the potential poison and do not ask more of me than I can give. Most people give back enough that it isn't just saltwater and shadows, its proof my energy has created something real, and live, and good.

But damnit, it's been over four years since the Last Time and I have a small purple elephant patterned with jungle animals who says I never have to see him again. The process is treacle-slow, but I am getting him out of my life, piece by fucking damaged piece.

I am back where I belong.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Here's a thing I don't think I've ever made explicit: I don't generally refer to this process as "healing". To me, "healing" in the present tense implies that I will someday reach the past tense of the word. I won't. I will never be healed of this. Tears I cry and words I write can help, but they can't erase the toll trauma has taken on my mind.

Besides, the crescent mark that curves under my left shoulderblade is far and away one of my favourite features. Why should my mental scars be thought of any less fondly than the physical?

2: Oasis, Amanda Palmer, "And it isn't my fault that the barbarian raped me".
Go Away Godboy, SJ Tucker, "Hail Mary^2.1 wise and free, save me from this freak".
Are You Out There, Dar Williams, "And I will write this down and then I will not be alone again".
Lucky^2.2, Bif Naked, "How can I ever get over you, when I'd give my life for yours"
Lisa Carew, Jekyll and Hyde, "I am not the sweet young thing you're seeking Simon^2.1. Someone seventeen, obedient, and sweet. I am not the protégée to waste your time on, I'm complete."

Neptune, SJ Tucker, "And all of us who dare to lovelive are brave.

2.1: These names are struck through because they are not the names I use. If you want to know, you'll have to convince me to sing for you. Both my replacements scan, of course.

2.2: This is not a song that is about rape or abuse or trauma or anything, at least, not according to the lyrics. But o gods, the ache in it makes my heart sing. Something about it has always seemed broken to me.

Doesn't everyone read their friends page bottoms up? TW for rape and emotional abuse.