Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A Kind of Coming Out and a Confession

Well, for those of you who haven't figured it out already, I'm a submissive.

A what?

A submissive. Someone who's foremost desire is to submit and please, who is happiest and healthiest with someone else else in control.

I had a big long post semi-written up where I explained all of this, and then realized what I was doing.

I was trying to justify myself, but there's no justification needed.

I am a submissive. I am not weak, or stupid, I'd just much rather my dom (Chris) be in control.

It's honestly that simple. I don't know why I've been so ashamed of the way I am for so long. So ashamed that I've been writing about it at another site instead of just coming out and saying it.

That is who I am. I am no longer ashamed of being who I am.

More anon.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

God I hate being sick...

Right now my head resembles a mucus-filled brick.

Unfortunately I have 2 posts that I must right, but coherency is eluding me.

Can't wait for the tylenol to kick in.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Inauguration Day Activities

Today, while some people are worshiping at the altar of the Obamessiah, and many are just grumbling, I'm off to do something useful.

In half an hour I will be off to take the Census Workers test. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll be earning some extra cash for the household in the ultimate of fixed-term, flexible contracts.

And, honestly, I consider it somewhat of a patriotic duty to do what I can to ensure an accurate census. It is not lost on me that the census determines electoral votes, and may be a major factor in the next presidential election (not to mention reassigning House seats).

So I'm off to do what I can to land a job in the 2010 Census.

Wish me luck.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

That's something I never hope to do again...

I just finished filling out the third-party report for Chris's mom's disability claim.

That sucked.

I'd never thought of the many ways she's incapacitated at once before and it just reminded me how much her situation sucks, and how she should be dead by now.

But she's not, and if there was a worse way of handling her condition, I don't know what it is.

Goddamn pride. She's full of it.

Despite the gaps in her memory, despite the brain damage, despite her physical difficulties, she's utterly convinced she should be able to handle this all by herself and that if she hands over control, she might as well be dead.

Her pride is her biggest problem at the moment, and unfortunately its not just affecting her. It affects the rest of us too, as we struggle to keep a roof over her head and her pain meds filled despite her either being passive or actively working against us. She doesn't want the help, and it galls her to need it.

It makes taking care of her difficult at the best of times. There's a reason I drive her around; I'm the best at biting my tongue and I bite it a LOT. But at times that doesn't even work; sometimes what I think is completely innocuous small talk will set her off for one reason of another. She has huge gaps in her memory so referencing an old event sometimes upsets her, because she swears it never happened or if it did, that no one told her or invited her. I swear, the paranoia is intense. The only reason I survive as her "aide" is because, for some reason, she likes and trusts me (this would make me a rare creature indeed).

*Sigh*

It's a difficult situation to be in, and if she was anyone else I would have thrown my hands up and said, "fuck it" a long time ago.

But she's Chris's mom. She needs taken care of. If we don't make sure she's taken care of, no one will. And since he can't take care of her, some of this load falls on me. I do it not for her, but because by making sure she's taken care of I'm easing his mind. And because I'm doing it for him, I can put up with just about anything.

*Sigh*

But I do wish this was over, and I do wish she'd give up her goddamned pride and live in the real world with the rest of us.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Most Basic of Differing First Principles

Yesterday during a conversation with Chris's mother, I came to a most unexpected realization.

She rattled on about some reality show she watched that showed real ER doctors in real situations, and how disappointed she was that these doctors didn't "do" more.

Mel: "What do you mean?"
Jane: "All they do is hand off patients to other doctors in other areas."
Mel: "And? That's their job. Take care of emergencies and send patients to the specialists best able to deal with the problem."
Jane: "But I thought they were gods. I thought they could handle everything, and knew everything."
Mel: "That's impossible."
Jane: "But that's the way its supposed to be."
Mel: "No, that's the way you think it's supposed to be."
Jane: "But aren't they supposed to know everything?"
Mel: "No, they can't. It's something of a minor miracle that they know enough to help at all, and there's still huge gaps in scientific knowledge."

And that's when it hit me. She and I were coming from completely differing first principles. She wanted everything to be perfect, where sickness was "something wrong" and if only the doctors put their unlimited knowledge to the problem, they could fix it. I was coming from the first principle that shit happens, the world is chaotic, and when the doctors could do something, it was because of a combination of medical knowledge and medical progress made over thousands of years.

Then I realized Og was having the exact same problem in his anarchy discussions. In fact, Jane's position and Billy Beck's position could be summed up as

The world is perfect. People are perfect. If we could just keep from messing things up, everything would stay perfect.

If we could keep from getting sick, things would be perfect. If we just didn't mess with other people and kept our own boundaries, we wouldn't need government because everything would be perfect.

If only evil man would stop polluting the planet and save the polar bears, everything would be BACK to perfect.

This entire principle assumes that there is such a thing as "perfect".

My position, however, and Og's position could be summed up as

The world is chaotic and shit happens. Nothing is intrinsically perfect. Deal with it.

Humans are prone to sickness, and the only thing that keeps up from dying is concerted effort on our part, and the accumulation of medical progress as applied by those who have studied the work of those before them. People are flawed, and a very few people would make life hell for the vast majority without some sort of outside interference. The world is constantly changing, and adapting, and all life must change with it. All order in this world is a direct consequence of seeing what works (i.e. living and surviving), noticing what doesn't work (death) and diligently replicating what works (i.e. adaptation).

These are the most basic of first principles. One can either assume the world is perfect and everything wrong is due to destruction of the perfect, or can assume that the world is flawed to begin with everything good is due to hard work, observation, and diligence in the War Against Entropy.

Where do you stand?

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Exceptions

I am an exception. It's about time I got used to that fact.

I'm never going to be one of the crowd, I'm never going to be "normal", and stereotypes will never apply.

I am an oddity, and that's not a bad thing.

Unfortunately for most of my life I've thought of being exceptional (in the purely definitional sense) as a bad thing. In fact, for most of my life I've been so obsessed with being "normal" that I've effectively hidden who I am.

I've lost my ability to pretend I'm anything even approaching normal. Not only have I lost the ability, but I've realized I never really fooled anyone.

Thursday night was the school Advent program. I took daughter the younger with me to watch her sister perform.

If daughter the younger attended public school rather than the private Catholic school we have her enrolled in, she would quickly be diagnosed ADD and drugged. She's incredibly intelligent, incredibly spririted, strong-willed, and very easily becomes bored. She has the attention span of a nuclear physicist when she's engaged in something interesting to her, but otherwise getting her to sit still is a challenge. I spent the entire program with squirming 5 year old in my lap.

As I'm sitting there with little miss "oh look they're doing something in the back of the church" I'm looking all around me and realizing something.

I'm sitting alone. Other people are sitting alone. However, everywhere in the church there are identifiable adult "cliques" filling up entire pews.

Yes, adulthood is just like high school.

The cliques are filled with "the norm" of the school, i.e. the 90% of parents and grandparents who share the same social status, tax bracket, white collar jobs, and socialite tendencies.

The rest of us? Not so much. The older blue collar couple who decided to keep their modest house while sending their late-life, only child to the best school they could. The National Guardswoman with the IT husband and 3 kids. The mixed race family, parents recently divorced, with the firefighter dad. And me, quite possibly the youngest mom in the school, an exception myself, holding a lap full of exception.

I've tried to mix in with the normals, yet even in this situation where we at least have the kids and school in common, I'm still outside of the crowd.

About then, I figured out I would always be outside of the norm, with exceptional circumstances, exceptional kids, and exceptional husband, and an exceptional life.

That's not a bad thing. That's just how it is.

After the performance I ran into the National Guardswoman as we went to pick up our daughters from their shared classroom. She was thrilled to see me, and wanted to know how we were doing. She knows Chris used to serve, and that she can talk about her work without me shrinking away in terror at the fact that she really wanted to go to Iraq. I know that I can talk to her about what's really going on, without worrying that I will be rejected for the weirdness of my life.

About then I realized the reason I know the stories of the other exceptions is because exceptions, no matter how different they may be from each other, attract other exceptions. Others may talk about tolerance, but we have to practice the tolerance we preach, otherwise we would be quite alone. Exceptions are so used to be outside of the crowd that whenever we find each other we tend to make almost unbreakable bonds.

It's not so bad being an exception. Now I know I wouldn't have it any other way.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Life

Sometimes life gets in the way.

In my case I've been going through so many internal and life changes that keeping up has been just a little difficult. It's either write a whole lot or practically none at all.

I need to write more, that's for sure.