askygoneonfire: Red and orange sunset over Hove (Default)
2020-10-11 12:50 pm

41/52 - Nothing Left

It's been a hard week. I have a foggy brain and an intimidating to do list.

Instead of spending energy I don't think I have left on scraping something together I will instead link you to my two most recent blog entries on my other blog. The first provides reasonable explanation of why I've got nothing in the tank to populate an entry here;

"...this higher dose has been unrelenting. I am at worst completely non-functional, slogging through thoughts, slurring words, and battling a bone deep fatigue every moment. At best, I am foggy-brained and slow to process...I have spent a week unable to work and found myself uncharacteristically prone to bursting into tears.

At day 7 I am calling it. This cannot continue."

'Can't stand the heat'

And from August...

"The big problems I experience – or emotional collapses – seemingly arrive fully formed and entirely without warning. But these big breakdowns do not arrive without warning; it is just that I don’t have access to those warnings."

Suprise! Emotions

askygoneonfire: Red and orange sunset over Hove (Default)
2020-09-24 01:54 pm

38/52 - Me

 The 12 letter prompt of 'housewarming' today brings me to 'm'. After hesitating for half a week I've decided to go for 'me' and essentially update my 'intro' post from 3 years ago.

I am [about to turn] 36. I work in a 'prestigious' university in the south of England. I put prestigious in inverted commas because I am deeply critical of the system of university rankings, and things like 'Russell Group' which ensure money and resources flow around a ring fenced group of already over-funded institutions who select students from selective schools and...it's a pyramid scheme. I have worked at less prestigious universities which do better, more exciting research with less money, and make an objectively bigger impact in the lives of their non-elite students than this one does. I work here because they hired me for a permanent role and the lookout for careers in academia right now is terrible. I like my colleagues, I like many of my students, I work hard (sometimes too hard) for the community I am part of but I am never going to toe the party line on being 'world-leading' simply because of what some dodgy metrics say about the institution as a whole.

I am a cis woman. I think gender is a trap. I have always, as long as I can remember asking questions, been baffled by binary conceptualisations of gender and I have never easily fit either 'girl' or 'woman'. Woman, right now, is a word I choose. But more often I like to roll my descriptors of gender and sexuality into one and use 'queer'. I like the indeterminacy of queer. I like the history of that word and how it still needles at the norm, how it says 'I am against and across and strange and uncomfortable and making you uncomfortable'. I find it fascinating how and when I get misgendered and I find it fascinating when I get called "lady". The latter makes me more unhappy than the former.

I also use bisexual to describe my sexuality. A word which I painfully tore out of me and presented to the world when I was about 15 and which I clung to in the face of all the horribleness that can attend coming out. For a number of years I dropped bisexual because I had internalised too many negative stereotypes and associations with that word. Recently, after an inspiring keynote address entitled 'lesbian nation' by Campbell X at a conference, I claimed 'lesbian' as a word I had a right to. I mix my words all the time. Did I mention I like indeterminacy? I don't owe anyone a box to put me in. The words I use are expression, not definition.

My work mixes my life. I do research about LGBTQ people, families, childhood, gender, relationships. I don't write about that in much detail as I try to maintain some division of my professional and personal online existence.

One of the roles I have in my job involves supporting students who encounter a range of difficulties during their studies; I am determined to do all I can to kick open the door to Higher Education and use my entire body to stop it slamming shut on people. On some occasions this is harder to acheive than at others. I am continually learning about doors I didn't even know existed and how they exclude people.

I have a long term mental health issue. I write about it in more detail on my wordpress blog. I write about it here too, but typically in less detail. It's a useful background piece of information to have if you're coming to read. I am, as mentioned above, hitting my late 30s. I've been told that this stage of life often includes a worsening of bipolar spectrum disorders, that's something I've been wrestling for a while now. I've also been told that it kind of shakes out by the time you're 40 and you can just get on with it - whatever level you end up at. I hope that's true. I work hard to be well. My success on this front is, predictably, variable.

I am fortunate to have a huge range of people in my life. I have a biological family who live far away and who I have limited contact with, this includes three brothers, and two parents. I have a chosen family of friends who live much closer and who fill me up with love and kindess and sometimes beer. I am [recently] poly after being single for a decade. I got to poly through a lot of reflection on what I can and can't do in relationships and how I want to be able to build relationships with people. I am finding the space, communication, and conscious choice of commitment which poly centres incredibly positive and freeing. At the time of writing, I am in one relationship of note and that's with 'Teddy'. They are on dreamwidth as well and next-to-no-sleuthing will reveal their dw username to anyone who wishes to put together such a puzzle.

I am a nerd for pop culture and a deep love of sci-fi (especially Star Trek) has been a constant in my life. I am a lifer fan of Manic Street Preachers, even though I haven't liked any music they've released for nearly a decade. I have a soul deep love for David Bowie and our bond will never be broken. 

I read the journal of everyone I subscribe to but I am an inconsistent commenter. 
askygoneonfire: Red and orange sunset over Hove (Default)
2020-08-16 05:43 pm

33/52 - Rage

This week my twelve letter prompt of housewarming brings me to 'r'. After a frustrating week I am going with 'rage'.

Growing up, the consensus in my house was that I had a ferocious temper. I don't remember ever screaming at anyone outside of my immediate family, it was never uncontrolled, but it was fast, and hot.

I don't let my anger loose at people now. Sometimes it starts to bleed out and I walk away from a situation. But people do often mistake my incandescent rage at myself for something directed to them. And I find that difficult to fix or even see happening. 

This week I struggled to move forward on what is objectively a very simple writing task at work. Teddy offered to prod me about it on Friday as I tried to salvage my week's work in a single day, and that was incredibly helpful to just have someone external check in a few times in the day. But it didn't change the hideous spiral into fury with myself at my inadequacy.

I apologised to Teddy at the end of the day for being furious, fortunately they understood who it was directed at. Not many people do recognise that. Fewer still are willing to remain in range of the explosive blast of self-directed rage the next time round.

It doesn't matter that I got, more or less, there in the end. I haven't learnt a lesson - it's not as though I've proved anything to myself. I will go through this all again on Monday when I return to it. 

I need to learn how to not go to white hot rage. But I think achieving that might involve a fundamental shift in how I regard myself - and that's a mess of stuff I don't want/can't/wouldn't know how to begin unpicking.

I don't like my rage. Which is a perfect bloody spiral because hating myself for doing something wrong leads to rage, and rage leads to hating myself for being so explosive...It's a really deplorable part of my character.