*muffled cursing from the next room*

8. What are the three most important relationships in your life, and how have they influenced your beliefs about who you are?
Do people really do this? Like, I get the Circle of Trust exercise where you evaluate between people you tell certain things to, or have certain people you trust with some things that you don’t entrust to everyone. But like, ranking people as most important? Which of your limbs is most important?

I learn things about myself from all of my friends, and keep or change behaviors accordingly. It doesn’t matter whether they’re “most important” to me or not. I know that nyyki, genderjumper, and ot_atma have commented on my behavior and personality the most often, bc I’m around them fairly often and few topics are off-limits from me. Does that make them more important than other folks in my network? *shakes head in consternation*

9. What kind of people do you attract around you?
I attract all sorts of people, really, but only some are welcome to stay. I don’t tend to keep mooches/users around me anymore because now when they make those early asks for things bigger than our friendship warrants I will comment on how our relationship isn’t there yet. Just having the most simple verbal boundary is enough to discourage 90% of the goddamn vampires out there. Mooches don’t like to hear people tell the truth about them to their faces, so any signal that I’m going to tell them stuff their inflated sense of entitlement can’t deal with means that they will export themselves from my life.

Now I need to learn meta-communication skills about feeling alienated from someone, since that was one of the problematic things about my relationship with Ghost, my relationship with Xenoix, … lots of my relationships, both “romantic” and platonic. It’s not that I “attract” aloof/avoidant people, I think I just don’t know how to call out the withdrawal behaviors or know how to ask for things I need but can’t identify in the moment. I might have to go back to doing the “5 wants 5 unmet needs” journal entries soon. Not that I’m planning on starting new relationships anytime soon, but … it’s kind of not fair for me to ask what other people need so that I get to help them and then not let them know how to offer help in return. It’s lopsided, imbalanced, unsustainable.

Gotta fix that.

I tried to get into the first Shadow work post Saturday and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working, but I just now realized that it requires you to be aware of your body, a thing at which I am Not Great (often deliberately so, considering the chronic pain). So let’s pick a different question and see how it goes.

What’s something you’re often embarrassed to admit to others?

• That I have chronic pain, which will need accommodations people often feel contempathy towards. I have childhood memories of people rolling their eyes when I try to express my needs, and it’s a shitty, shitty feeling that embarrasses me bc I technically can fix that situation, but I’m tired and have knives where spoons should be a lot of the time. It makes me feel bad to be disabled.
• That I am ““gifted”” - bc it doesn’t mean what people think it means. They think it means that I’m “too smart to make dumb mistakes” and like, neighbor … so are you but here you are mistaking intelligence with wisdom, a mistake any second year D&D player can point out. My procedural memory and visual memory work just fine. It’s the episodic memory where everything goes to shit.
• That they’re wrong about my having a gender, in a way that seems fairly obvious to me but is apparently easy to miss for cis folks. But other enbies can clock me and gravitate my way easily enough, so I guess that part is just as well. I just wish cis people would stop punishing cisn’t folx for not complying with gender norms. It’s tiresome and I have better shit to do.

Okay, that seems to have gotten a little deeper than last time. Limited success!

#2. Think about one time where you’ve felt betrayed. What would you say to the person who broke your trust? ( long, rambling letter to Lily Pond or whatever she’s calling herself now. )