truly, I am most reassured about ~my own human existence~ when engaged in meaningful communication (reading included), so on that very important front the dreamwidth renaissance has measurably improved my life; it does feel somewhat cold that my emotional coping mechanism is "stuff information into my mind" but, you know, work with what you've got. thus: this very comment was up there on possible things that you could have done, thank you. I have been feeling exceedingly emotional and fuzzy about it for days <3
Being on opposing ostensibly-opposite sides of a written piece about loss sounds so hard, for both of you! And the aftermath/situation of talking about something you thought was done—big yikes. (And are you secretly Trista Mateer who published online all of the poems she wrote about a breakup & published them as Honeybee? it was so good and high-key angsty and I cried a bunch at the baking metaphors because I am extremely on brand.)
The responsibilty to generate empathy is hard, and—this has been SO helpful to write, you have no idea because you didn't see the earlier drafts of course—I think it feels so tricky because I have spent a lot of time learning to be comfortable with emotional ambiguity and differing viewpoints, because of the non-monogamy. But that comfort is based on being able to consistently generate empathy for people in hard and sometimes inherently incompatible conflicts. And if I can generate empathy for a friend who's been hurt and also for a friend who is forced to hurt someone else as a self-defense mechanism, then I ought to be able to keep on generating empathy for someone who has hurt me as a self-defense mechanism, and if I can't, then there is an internal inconsistency that must be rooted out and destroyed! (so says logic brain; emotional-competency brain is obviously on the phone with a best friend saying "I've tried everything but they won't listen!").
W/r/t practical concerns: I am pretty sure I could handle it with a minimum of grumbling were it to appear on DW generally, after my first few days of incandescent rage. Altmetrics tragically doesn't cover non-science things, so I'm not sure how likely it is to come into your orbit based on sheer numbers, but it's not in science-sphere, so a bit less likely. In any case, if you DO come across a piece about, hmm, building trans masculinity out of bits and pieces of other people from this past week, then that's the one (probably).
This was all SO nice to read and think about AND helpful, I am going to keep an eye out to return the kindness with interest sometime soon, just you wait.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-01-31 05:55 am (UTC)truly, I am most reassured about ~my own human existence~ when engaged in meaningful communication (reading included), so on that very important front the dreamwidth renaissance has measurably improved my life; it does feel somewhat cold that my emotional coping mechanism is "stuff information into my mind" but, you know, work with what you've got. thus: this very comment was up there on possible things that you could have done, thank you. I have been feeling exceedingly emotional and fuzzy about it for days <3
Being on
opposingostensibly-opposite sides of a written piece about loss sounds so hard, for both of you! And the aftermath/situation of talking about something you thought was done—big yikes. (And are you secretly Trista Mateer who published online all of the poems she wrote about a breakup & published them as Honeybee? it was so good and high-key angsty and I cried a bunch at the baking metaphors because I am extremely on brand.)The responsibilty to generate empathy is hard, and—this has been SO helpful to write, you have no idea because you didn't see the earlier drafts of course—I think it feels so tricky because I have spent a lot of time learning to be comfortable with emotional ambiguity and differing viewpoints, because of the non-monogamy. But that comfort is based on being able to consistently generate empathy for people in hard and sometimes inherently incompatible conflicts. And if I can generate empathy for a friend who's been hurt and also for a friend who is forced to hurt someone else as a self-defense mechanism, then I ought to be able to keep on generating empathy for someone who has hurt me as a self-defense mechanism, and if I can't, then there is an internal inconsistency that must be rooted out and destroyed! (so says logic brain; emotional-competency brain is obviously on the phone with a best friend saying "I've tried everything but they won't listen!").
W/r/t practical concerns: I am pretty sure I could handle it with a minimum of grumbling were it to appear on DW generally, after my first few days of incandescent rage. Altmetrics tragically doesn't cover non-science things, so I'm not sure how likely it is to come into your orbit based on sheer numbers, but it's not in science-sphere, so a bit less likely. In any case, if you DO come across a piece about, hmm, building trans masculinity out of bits and pieces of other people from this past week, then that's the one (probably).
This was all SO nice to read and think about AND helpful, I am going to keep an eye out to return the kindness with interest sometime soon, just you wait.