I’ve been triggering myself a little lately, getting introspective about life and the meaning. Nothing weird I guess, but in my dreams I found myself missing things I don’t actually miss, missing rituals and set answers – things I consciously don’t actually value.
I’m not particularly sentimental, and I don’t really care about tradition for tradition’s sake – in fact, I’ve found more freedom and healing in abandoning tradition as much as possible lately.
So, anyway, when I’ve been finding myself in these introspective loops – at least after outing myself as an agnostic, none of the pat answers that I used to have are there anymore (for good reason), but it’s like I’ve taken another step into the unknown and I don’t know why I exist again, or why I make things, or why I feel the way I do, I just know that I do, and the bit of fundamentalism that’s still clacking around in my brain jumps on it.
They were right all along, it says. You need religion to matter, it tells me. All these things I know are false – at least, for me – because religion (christianity specifically) is an unsafe place for me, and is the place I can trace back to when I want to find out why I feel worthless to start with.
I know it’s wrong, because I never found the answers I needed in religion – the pat answers and just don’t think about it too much cliches aren’t useful to me. So it’s weird when I suddenly find myself feeling depressed and reaching for those non-existent platitudes.
And it’s taken me all of this week to figure out what I’ve known all along.
I don’t need to have a reason for everything all the time. Unknowns are perfectly okay and legitimate. I don’t live in an environment anymore where I need to have an answer for everything.
And that’s gloriously freeing.
Monthly Archives: September 2014
7 posts
Watch Playing Through the Capitol Building While Tipsy from kierygeek on www.twitch.tv
In which I finally get out of the motherfucking capitol building while insanely tipsy. Sorry about the no audio, apparently it’s a thing :-\
/tipsykiery out
Sometimes I have these weird time-based memories, and it makes some months (like this month) weirdly difficult, and I don’t really have a good reason for it, except it probably has something to do with being like “okay, don’t think about X too much during Y” and then…yay depression because of COURSE I’m thinking about X during Y and generally feeling shitty and sad and overwhelmed.
September 21, 2001 – the day the first stillborn was…stillborn. I’ve written about it before, I don’t know why this one hurts more than the other one. Maybe because the second one is in February and February has more generally happy memories and I’m usually distracted by my birthday anyway, and maybe it’s because I selfishly didn’t want to share a birth-month, but mostly, it’s probably just because, I was able to grieve for her.
Mikiah Faith would have been 10 on Valentines Day this year. But I let myself cry at her funeral, and I held her, and I didn’t pray for her to come back.
I think the biggest difference is, I never really got to grieve Elijah’s…not existing. On one hand, it still feels silly to me to – because it’s not like I ever knew either of them…But at the same time, both of their pregnancies meant 9 months of misery, and then sudden mourning, and then sudden spiritualization and evangelism. So even though I never knew them, I still experienced……..the whole thing.
I don’t even know if it makes sense.
I raised my siblings during those pregnancies, as I had all the others…
My life ended as our family prepared for another one to enter, and then it didn’t.
I never grieved Elijah because he was never really dead to me…
When I was still a christian I believed I’d see both my siblings again when I died…after I prayed really hard and there were no screams from the casket.
I feel like maybe I’m just having delayed grief phases.
Elijah’s death was the catalyst for so many personal changes, not the least of which was my deconversion.
It’s been over a decade, but I’m still confused by it, it still affects me, it still…weirdly, hurts. And maybe it’s just taken so long because I spent so long not feeling. Not crying. Not grieving. Not coping….
So now as I evolve and change, and his stillbirth was the string that unraveled everything else, I’m hit with new grief and I have to start processing it…over and over, because I never had the chance to before.
And somehow this makes me miss my siblings who do exist (and currently live at home – the one who is an adult I’ve been talking with and it’s been so so good <3) so much more. And I just want to hug them and hold them and find out who they are and what they like and know them as people, and I’m experiencing a similar loss – though (hopefully) temporary, because I can’t…talk to them.
Because parents.
Because my sanity is important and my family is unhealthy.
September is hard, and all the feels feed into eachother and I don’t really know what to do.
It’s weird not knowing so many of my siblings, when I used to be their caretaker.
So I pre-ordered The Sims 4 because, reasons, and I thought, hey, I should write about here, also because reasons!
So first of all, the sims themselves and the graphics are dramatically improved and I’m not even running at the highest settings.
Overall, I’m really happy with it – I can tell EA put a lot of effort into making the sims super interesting to play and create – they even made the build tool better, which is great. They also changed a bit how skills work – the skill log is a pop out section of the UI that you can scroll down, with progress bars on where your skill is within the level, and the level number on the side. It’s harder to tell what level your sim is at when you’re looking at skill books – in fact, they can read books above or below their skill level, but they’ll get grumpy.
Some of the controls are different and take a little getting used to, but that’s not anything super new. The sims themselves are more interesting to play, but there are some things from the Sims 3 that I really miss.
In order to leave your house/immediate lot area, you have to travel, and in the Sims3 this meant you biked, walk, took a taxi, or drove…
But in the Sims 4, you use your phone and then you are literally taken out of the game and to a loading screen just to get to the library. If you want to get to the library to the park, same thing, and the same thing for the park to home.
On one hand, from a work level, I understand why it takes you out of the world, to a loading screen, back to the new location (so much less to render). But, the rest of everything else is lovely and immersive and being taken out of it is jarring just to switch locations. It kinda ruins the illusion.
I also miss being able to follow my sim to their work building. The towns in the Sims4 starter are a lot smaller than in the Sims3, which is fine, but you don’t go to the science center to get the science career – only one of the towns has a library, there’s a restaurant/night club/lounge in town, and you don’t go there to work in the culinary career…
I feel like there’s a bit of lost opportunity because the careers are so much more interesting, and you have to train your sim in their career to advance, that I wish we could follow them to their building and see what that was like, and be in a location where some or all their careers are visually accessible.
I’d like to see where my comedian goes to do stand up, and where my mixologist goes to practice, it would be so much more interesting than watching them walk out the front door and disappear on the sidewalk, while I stare at a dark house for 3 minutes.
I also miss pets.
But, the environment in The Sims 4, so long as you don’t leave the location, is a lot more immersive, the sims a lot more interesting with being able to see how their emotions work, and I can have the sound on without driving myself crazy. I also love that they have a programming career and geek traits mean you have to play games….
There are a lot of little things that really make the game, and I suspect that all the things I miss will be addressed with future expansions (not unlike The Sims 3, tbh).
Ever have one of those unshakable moments – but the kind of moment that lasts for days, and then weeks, and hopefully not longer than that?
When you just feel like everything you touch turns to ashes? even if it’s not objectively bad? it just feels like everything about you is burning everything you’re trying to create?
Lately, despite some cool accomplishments, I feel like I can’t do anything right, or like I’m letting people down, or like I’m behind, or stupid.
Because I haven’t learned javascript yet, because I haven’t used git, because terminal still makes me a little uncomfortable, because I haven’t finished the codeacademy ruby course, because my websites aren’t perfect, because I miss things, because I don’t know everything about servers and I’m probably the worst tech person ever, because I spend more time creating than working on SEO, because my (awkwardly sized) book on drawing people depresses me, because I don’t “draw through” enough, because I haven’t gotten to the point where under-layers work for me, because my drawings still look like scribbles compared to other people’s art, because as soon as I make something and release it into the void I feel almost lost, because because because…
Because I’m not good enough.
I need to do bug fixing on E.R.A. and I’m sad because it worked when I tested it locally. I feel like any progress I’ve made on the web-development and creative fronts have just vanished and I’m the worst who ever existed.
sigh.
I found our last two bibles in the closet the other day, one of which is KJV (of course). I spent this evening trying to do art with/deface it, and I got up to leviticus before getting bored/having it in my face started getting to me. It’s weird how triggering objects can be – bibles, dental floss, strollers, big vans…
I’ve felt weirdly out of it this week, kinda listless and unfocused, but antsy. So I’ve been puttering. Puttering is a weird word, it’s really fun to say, but it was also a word my parents used a lot, but it’s also a word I don’t know how to replace. Puttering: doing random busy work/cleaning that doesn’t require too much thought or result in much stress energy. I putter around on the sites I manage – make tweaks and updates, I’ve been de-cluttering random stuff IRL (actually only have two reachable surfaces left)…puttering. The phrase is like a low grade trigger.
And maybe it’s that, and a run-in with general triggery things this weekend that’s been making the phrase my dad repeated ad-nauseam stuck in my head all day.
Being a girl is just better
I don’t know what made him think that – maybe a little bit of jealousy because my mom got to stay home and sit in a recliner in a state almost-constant pregnancy, or maybe because in their sexist complimentarian marriage, he had to carry all the weight?
What wasn’t said at the end of the phrase was strongly implied:
Being a girl is just better:
- because you don’t have to worry about responsibility
- you don’t have to make hard decisions
- you don’t have to fight or stand up for yourself or your family
- you always have a man to protect you
- you don’t have to get a job or do anything but homemaking (fun?)
- you don’t have to think about anything
- you don’t need to be smart or have thoughts of your own
- you get to be served by men (by staying home and doing what they want you to do in exchange for dates and some of their income?)
Being a girl is just better because who needs autonomy anyway?
Being a girl meant:
I didn’t get to decide anything (and that was better because decisions are hard)
I always had someone to take the fall (which was better than me having responsibility for myself)
I didn’t need to learn “male” skills – like basic building, or how to pump gas or change a tire (I could just have a guy do it for me)
If I could cook, hold my tongue, and produce children, I would be a success (because women don’t need their own thoughts)
My dad/husband/brother could/would get me out of any situation and defend me (because I couldn’t defend myself)
In exchange for my autonomy I get a pre-defined life of luxury (if luxury = breeder, chef, teacher, house keeper, and sex toy)
Even though no one has told me that phrase in years, sometimes, with conversations with people, it’s still a really strong undertone.
Because even though other people never phrased it quite like my dad did, this insidious patriarchal brain worm, this line they tell people-born-with-uteri: Life is better for you, great for you even, just stay in line, and you’ll never want for anything.
I think being reminded that I’m not what any of the parent-figures in my life had planned for me to be, is just another version of the same line.
Being a girl is just better: just stay in line, and everything will be perfect*.
But even when I was a little kid, and I was told that my lot in life was just better… I knew it was a lie.
Maybe some people can happily trade their autonomy and agency for being “taken care of”, but that deal never seemed sweet to me, it seemed wrong and unfair, though I didn’t have any words for it or any way to express it.
Being a human adult may be more work, require more effort, and mean I have to own my decisions, but I lived without autonomy for my whole childhood, and I’d much rather own my decisions than be denied my agency.
I don’t care if that means I’m not who I was planned to be.
Fuck the patriarchy.
KieryGeek for the summer and putting a lot of energy into getting other projects (like my patreon and the humorotica patreon, for instance) off the ground. Also, trying to slowly prepare for a cross country move in March/April which takes up more mental space than anything else, but come mid-season, there will be more noticeable moving things happening. And then there’s the whole thing with youtube which left me this close to building my own platform (something I may still do for kicks and giggles). Anyway, this is all leading somewhere that does not result in the end of KieryGeek I promise. My thought for Season 4 is turning it into a weekly-ish twitch stream. Streaming is fun – and super easy for me to do with the PS4, and is a lot more low-key than planning and writing and framing a vlog, which, if I’m being truly honest, is more the pace I need right now. If I’m doing a weekly-esque live stream I will also feel less bad about taking a break to move and stuff (because, in theory, I will already have a stockpile of content, so a few weeks won’t be tooooo horribly missed). This will also maybe encourage me to finish The Last of Us before two years pass. No promises on that though, because I need to take extended mental health breaks from it for reasons.
Anyway, in order for Season 4 to happen I need to acquire a PS4 camera, so look for more on that in the next month or so…when I can convince myself to save and drop $60 on it.