This week I have done several rather difficult things and I think my brain might be ready to crap out on me at any minute…so of course I choose to blog.

On Monday, I worked myself to the bone until a meltdown happened and only gave myself permission to myself to stop both working and melting down after both Shaun and Wes had to tell me to stop folding laundry.  There is little more pitiful looking than a scraggly haired girl in a tie dye dress weeping helplessly as she attempts to fold a pair of jeans.  I curled up on the couch for a while and switched back and forth between staring at the ceiling and staring at the dog, who was staring at me and raising her hilarious ears as opportune times.

Indeed, I have been looking the part of the non-functioning depressive lately, putting off showers until late in the day and arriving places with wild hair, a skinny look to my face and a distinct inability to laugh at most things.

Except I can always laugh at the dog’s ears.  They’re amazing.

Yes, she is dressed as turtle.

Yesterday, I fired my therapist before we had even begun because she was completely irresponsible, unprofessional, and patronizing.  Sure, sure, maybe my standards are too high, but you know? Sometimes you just have to take a gamble and hope there’s something better.  Please tell me there’s something better, because seriously I’ve about had it with the profession at this point.

Today I wrote a letter that I have needed to write for years but was too unhealthy and afraid to write it, let alone put it in an envelope and then take a special trip to the post office to physically put it in a mail box before I had a chance to back out.  Family is hard, especially when you have spent 20-25 years not saying how you feel, what you want or what you need.  I feel a bit like a hollow shell of a woman at the moment, but I know that this just means that I can fill it back up with the right things.  I don’t know how the message will be received and I don’t know what will come of it, but at the end of the day I did something incredibly terrifying that needed to be done quite desperately.

And I’m proud of myself because I haven’t gotten any actual successful talk therapy, with the exception of my very competent friends and I have gotten myself to do these things.  This is mostly because I am finally allowing myself to not be alone.  Our problems do not exist in a vacuum.  We must accept support when it is given from an honest, loving place and I have that in spades.  How lucky am I?

As I made the final decision to push the letter into the mail slot, all I could think was:

And that might be true, but I think I am prepared now.  I have plenty of water (especially in hot tub form), delicious food, supportive people, and of course an entire case and a half of homemade red wine.

Ok, yes, I know that’s a terrible philosophy.

But, sometimes it’s pretty fucking true.

Stop judging me.

Oh, you’re not judging me.  You just want me to pour you a glass.  Well, sure!

I mean…GET YOUR OWN.

Alright, I admit it.  This entire post was just an excuse to look for funny illustrative pictures on the internet.  I mean, that’s what the internet is for so I guess I’m approaching normalcy? Sure?  Yes.  I’ll take it.

Tomorrow is Thursday and I am hoping beyond all hope that I will have a mind that is functional beyond handling incredibly difficult and cathartic emotional activities.  I’d say I can’t take much more, but that’s not true.  I can take a lot more, but it would be nice to have a break, you know?

Then it’s Friday.

So, I’ll end with an obligatory Rebecca Black reference.

You’re welcome.  OK.  I think I’m done now.  Can I go home yet?

You know, I’d be laughing if my experience with therapists (other than the nurse practitioner who gives me Zoloft prescriptions) thus far hasn’t been so ridiculously infuriating.  I mean, when I got the latest bit of ridiculousness I DID in fact laugh, but it was more maniacal and tinged with tears and a general desire to claw things.

So, some review of my adventures with therapists.

Attempt 1: I dig around on my insurance website and find various options who are covered.  I make a lot of calls and leave a lot of messages.  One organization calls me back.  I go to an appointment (for which I take off work) and the therapist does not show up.  After being told by another therapist there that there is nothing she can do to help me, I leave in tears.

The therapist calls me later and apologizes profusely, explaining that the people who made the appointment with me got the location wrong or something.  She puts me in touch with someone who has night hours.

Attempt 2: I start going to a relatively useless therapist who not only fails to help me find useful incite, ignores my requests for medication consultation, but also seems to not be able to schedule properly.  Out of the 5 sessions I went to, 3 of them were rescheduled from the original proposed times because she couldn’t keep her DayPlanner straight.  Finally after a final session where she watched as I tore myself apart, she finally agreed that I might be a candidate for medication and gave me a name.

Attempt 3: I call the person that Attempt 2 told me to.  I did not receive a call back for about a month after the initial call (and that was after calling and leaving a few more messages).  This one, however, was ultimately a success because I see her regularly for my Zoloft prescriptions and simple check-ins to see how I’m doing with my dose.

Which brings us to the present.

As I wrote about recently, I went to see a new therapist after realized that I never dealt with a rape from a few years ago and also that I have some really painful and incapacitating believes that are keeping me from living my life happily.  As you might guess, these are not easy or fun things to process and things have been rough.  In short, I need help and I went in search of it.

What I’m trying to say here is that my mental state and emotional well being has been feeling like a disease that needs immediate treatment before it spreads and I have to cut off a leg or something.  Like, I’m not fucking around here.

In my last post, I didn’t go into much detail about the session itself other than the PTSD diagnosis.  But there were several yellow flags about it.  In no particular order:

1. While she was working on the day I called, she did not call me back.
2. Her reason for not calling me back was that she did not have her appointment book with her for some reason.
3. When I went to the session, she once again did not have her appointment book with her, but assumed that the same date and time would be fine for this week.
4. She was intrigued by the concept of polyamory and uncomfortably asked how Wes, Jessie, and I *eyebrow raise, eyes bulge* and I said “What?” More eyebrow raising. “We share a bed.  Privacy isn’t really an issue.”  This woman asked me to talk in relative detail about my sexual assault but consensual bed sharing (whether sexual or not) is super weird to talk about.
5. She called me Interesting and thanked me for sharing my story. NONONONONONO.  I am TIRED of being a speciman.  Yes, I get it.  I’m not like other people you know apparently but I do not go to therapy to feel weird.  I go there to feel better.
6. She said that she was going to get an education talking to me, what with the polyamory and all.  NO, YOU’RE NOT.
7. She asked if I was a spiritual person.  I quickly and unequivocally said “no”.  She then said, “Well, I don’t mean spiritual like religious.  I mean like accessing your ‘higher self’.  You don’t have to be religious to be spiritual.” AHHHHHH! I just told you that I’m not spiritual.  DO NOT try to convince me that spiritual but not religious is a good avenue for me.

Finally, we made an appointment for this Wednesday, but since she didn’t have her book (again) we couldn’t confirm right then.  That was last Wednesday.  She proceeded to text me yesterday (one point in her favor, texts) to say that she had overbooked my appointment on Thursday, could we do Wednesday an hour earlier than we agreed instead.  I was annoyed but willing to work it out.  I proposed solutions and asked that she confirm and also asked that she please bring her appointment book with her to the next appointment so that we can make firm commitments for the future.

For your reading pleasure, here is what was she said:

Gina. I can tell u already that next week my 630 appts are already booked. I was plan.ing to book several 630 appts with u after that however I do this.k at times we need to be flexible le and open to change. I usually do have my book at all times and I remember saying to u I would call u if there was a problem. Sorry this has caused u stress. It was not meant to

I proceeded to get pretty freaking angry.

First of all, this scheduling horse shit is your fault, ma’am.  You are the professional that I am paying to help me with some pretty intense and difficult issues.  The fact that you didn’t have your book at the first time I called you AND you didn’t bring it to my first session with you shows that you do not tend to have your book with you at all times and that you generally disrespect people’s time.  My aggravation with this is not a symptom of my particular set of neuroses.  It is a symptom of being a responsible human adult who has a life to plan.

So, like, just because you are a therapist and I am seeking help doesn’t mean that you get to say that my annoyance and now down right ire is due to my inability to be flexible or open to change.  You do not know me yet.  You asked nothing to find out the fact that I am, in fact, ridiculous committed to flexibility and change.  How dare you text me this as though being pissed off that you were not prepared for my session and that you didn’t consult your book until yesterday (when you had 5 other days you could have looked at it and communicated) is my fault and my problem to solve.

Damn right this has caused me stress! How could it not cause me stress?  I am asking for help with emotional issues and am on medication for depression and anxiety.  Your JOB is to helpfully navigate the choppy waters of neuro atypical people.  It is NOT to make US feel like douchebags (and whack job douchebags at that) when YOU are the one who has caused the problem with your unprofessional behavior!

Breathe.  Breathe.  Ok.

In response, with a lot of help from a wonderful friend, I crafted a short and sweet text of cancellation of this and any further interaction and this same friend sent me some resources to help me find someone who I can work with.

I will keep trying because it’s important and I feel broken and scared.  But seriously, folks, what the fuck?

Therapists: It is hard to not only make the decision to come to you for help, but also to actually make the call and show up at the appointment.  Dealing with issues of the mind is stigmatized and undervalued by our society.  The most common thing I hear from others dealing with a variety of issues is that we feel like we should be stronger, better, smarter than this.  We’re not the sickest we could be, so why should we get help?  So, please, do not treat us like what we’re trying to do here is not important.  Many of us are working full time, demanding jobs, have families, and have lives that we want to live.  We are coming to you so that we can live them in ways that are healthier and happier for us.  Cancelling and changing appointments hurts and takes away some ability to trust you.  Trust is the only thing that matters when fragile people come to you for help.

Right? Yes.  This is fucking obvious and I am sick of people screwing with me when I am brave enough to some to them to fight the good fight.

I am feeling angry and beat up and a little on the hopeless side.  But I know that there is a light at the end of all this.  The light illuminates a happier more self possessed version of me, without the heavy baggage of self loathing and old scar tissue.  I know it will happen because some of it already has happened.  I am strong, good, and smart enough to know when doing something alone isn’t the best way and to ask for help and guidance.  And there is no magic “How Fucked Up Are You” scale that says when you are “allowed” to get therapy.  When you are hurting you get help, plain and simple.

Deep breathes and affirmations. And Dalek Relaxation videos.

“Good lord.  Did I really just weigh my comfort and safety against how good a beer special is?  What the fuck else is wrong with me?!?”

That’s how this all started and, my friends, it has been a bumpy ride.  I am not alright and I find humor and happiness where I can.  I will be alright though, and that’s what matters.

This whole thing has really dredged up some nastiness from deep inside of me and has set off some gladiator style contests between okayness and AHHHHHHHHHHH in the arena that is my brain.  Except it’s not really Russell Crowe style gladiator stuff, but more like American Gladiator with Hulk Hogan as the host.  Instead of lions and cool helmets, there’s a lot of kind of hilarious stunts involving bungee cords and human sized hamster balls and, of course, a bunch of beefed up gladiators with stupid names trying to push me into a pit or something.  We’ll call them Insecurity, Anger, Fear, and…Nitro.

Ok, I don’t know how far I can really take this particular metaphor, but it amuses me greatly and IT SHOULD AMUSE YOU AS WELL, DAMN IT.  Really, it’s that I like the idea of my mental health being a show hosted by Hulk Hogan.

Hulk Hogan: Well, Brother, you took a pretty big fall off of that skybike.  You only managed to get 3 foam balls into the basket!

Me: Heh, yeah, it’s a pretty tough course. *pant pant* Insecurity really got in my way.

Hulk Hogan: Yeah, I know, Brother.  Insecurity is one tough mofo.  But you fought hard.  That’s something to be proud of.

Me: Yeah.  Yeah, I guess.

Hulk Hogan: YEAH! *rips shirt in half and throws a chair at the audience*

So yeah, I’ve been having a tough and somewhat unpredictable time emotionally and at this point I feel depleted and ill and weak.  I’ve been eating really healthy and drinking a lot of water, so I’m doing what I can, but trauma and horse shit take a toll on you.

I started with a new therapist this week and I am looking forward to working with her.  She is a trauma specialist and diagnosed me with PTSD.  We will be doing EMDR therapy and brain spotting.  Look it up.  I don’t really understand yet what we’re going to be doing but it sounds like actual treatment and I hope it’s not bullshit.

I have been describing my current struggles as the Boss Fight of my mental health issues.  I feel like I have dug down to the source of pretty much all my firmly entrenched issues.  As such, my brain is doubling down and torturing me in an effort to save its idiotic and wrong beliefs about why people love me and my worth as a human being.  But thanks to all the work I have done over the last several years, I am finally willing and able to face these things and I am surrounded by a support system of people who will act as healers and melee attackers.

Yes, I have switched my brain metaphor from American Gladiators to Final Fantasy.  Deal with it.

Today the win is that I dragged my ass out of bed, got dressed and didn’t stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for 2 donuts and an iced coffee, and arrived at work on time.  This is how we have to look at things when we are struggling.  Take the wins where you can find them and don’t dwell on the failures.  Crying at my desk is a thing that happens.  Getting Vanilla Ice songs stuck in my head is another thing that happens, apparently, on days like these.

So yes, this is just an update for those of you following my story.  I hope to be more coherent in the coming weeks as the therapy takes shape and effect.  I should understand more about what these particular methods are and how they work and I am hoping beyond all hope that I start to really release the hold I have on myself.  It is time to really start living.

No take-backsies.

I really hate when someone has the core of a good point, but expresses it in such a petty and slapdash way as to almost entirely obscure it. Such is the case with Julie Bindel’s Guardian commentary on polyamory and gender equality. To get my points of agreement out of the way: yes, polyamory needs to be conscious of gendered power dynamics. Yes, it’s not enough to give lip service to equality, but we need to critically consider the way gender impacts our actual relationships. Yes, when we push for legal recognition of multiple partnership, we need to be wary of paving the way for the return of oppressive polygyny in other communities.

But instead of an insightful discussion of the different ways gendered power dynamics actually do play out in polyamorous relationships, Bindel gives us a string of lazy jabs at how rich and white and trendy polyamorous folk are. Instead of inquiring how polyamorous people can advocate for greater acceptance of their lifestyle without bringing in oppressive polygyny as collateral, she throws in a couple of pictures of how much it sucks for women when men get to sleep around with as many partners as they want while the women have to stay home and bicker.

Bindel mentions both at the beginning and the end that she doesn’t care how many partners a person has, which leaves me wondering what exactly she wants polyamorous people to do. As a lesbian, surely she knows how the attitude “I don’t care what you do sexually, but I don’t want to hear about it” is a cover for continually denying rights and recognition to people who are just trying to live and love openly. And yet that’s the best message I can take away from her piece: “Go ahead and have all the partners you want, but don’t go pushing for greater recognition and acceptance, because you’re nothing special.” She objects to polyamory in different places, on the one hand as co-opting and rebranding traditional patriarchal polygamy, and on the other hand as stealing the term “ethical non-monogamy” from the real ethical non-monogamists, lesbian radical feminists of the 70s. She doesn’t leave a lot of semantic space that she’s willing to let modern polyamory occupy, so it seems like she’d rather just have us shut up and not call ourselves anything.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we would be thrilled if our lifestyle was so accepted and boring to the mainstream that nobody paid us any attention. I would never claim that polyamorous people in general face anything like the oppression that gays and lesbians have historically faced (and still do in many countries and communities.) I’ve never heard of anyone being physically assaulted for being polyamorous, just for a start. But that doesn’t mean our lifestyle is accepted or that we don’t have work to do. It may come as a shock to Julie Bindel, but most of US culture (and UK culture as far as I can tell) views honest intentional non-monogamy as perverted, foolish, immoral, or just plain weird. Many of us fear losing our jobs or custody of children if the truth becomes known. Being public about our lifestyle isn’t something we do for kicks, or because it lets us participate in the cool new flavor-of-the-month subversion; we do it because we want more people to understand that this is a perfectly acceptable way to live, that we can love and commit deeply even though it’s not exclusively. We do it so that people can be open about their multiple loves without threatening their jobs and families.

And yes, we do it because we want to criticize mainstream traditional assumptions about love and relationships. Non-monogamy is certainly not anywhere close to a sufficient condition for gender equality… but I would argue that eliminating compulsory monogamy may be a necessary one. Polyamory has its pitfalls, to be sure, but I do think there’s more room for true gender equality in a world where monogamy is incidental, not assumed as the norm. Compulsory monogamy demands of both men and women that they restrict their sexual interests to a single person, which for most people involves a lot of denial and repression and strategic boundaries around cross-sex friendships — friendships which can help shatter gender barriers when they are allowed to grow freely and deeply. Compulsory monogamy legitimizes and often exalts jealousy, which is hugely toxic to gender equality. Compulsory monogamy ratchets up the power stakes in a relationship, making each partner solely dependent on the other for sexual companionship, and for the emotional and economic support that comes from a long-term commitment. That sole dependency leaves room on all sides for coercion and manipulation, which is often viewed as a healthy and normal mode of operation in mainstream monogamous culture.

Of course polyamory isn’t going to singlehandedly solve the problem of sexual inequality. Of course there are strains within polyamory that enshrine gendered power dynamics rather than eroding them (Highlander Penis being one of the most notable.) As far as I’m aware, no one has claimed otherwise. But please, writers everywhere, if you’re going to criticize gender dynamics within polyamory, do it with cogent arguments and insightful observation, rather than suggesting that you’re irritated with us simply for existing.

This week in the blogosphere, we get a little breather from sexual harassment and the conversation is once again about anger and styles of activism. We have the twitter hashtag #fuckcispeople and some discussion about that. We have JT Eberhard’s post scolding Bria Crutchfield for scolding another woman who asked a racist question, and plenty discussion about that too. And that has me thinking about the use of anger in social justice activism.

When this conversation comes up, a few people always speak up to say, “I’m glad people got angry with me when I fucked up. They yelled at me until I got it through my thick head that I was wrong and they were right. I’d never have been convinced otherwise.” Angry activists, clearly, have been effective at getting people to change their minds, to listen, to see where they’re wrong. But that’s not the whole story.

Anger is not a helpful learning tool for me. When someone is angry in my direction, when someone is hostile or declares contempt or enmity for me, I shrink into a little ball of social terror. At those moments, everything in my brain is reacting with panic, with the need to make it stop. And my two default ways of making it stop are 1) to give in, to totally accept and go along with everything they’re saying because it’s the fastest way to end the assault, and 2) to harden myself against them and draw a big sharp line of not-caring between myself and them. Both options are bad. The first one might look like what the angry activist wants, but it’s not an honest change of heart from my perspective: it’s a terrified capitulation, an impulse to go along with what the other person says so that they’ll stop hurting me… and then subsequent rationalizations to convince myself and others that of course I genuinely, sincerely agree and came to that place of agreement through rational thought. Although it comes from a different source, internally it feels very similar to the way I accepted and rationalized my past religion: not from sincere consideration and self-examination, but because I knew the social consequences of not doing so would be too dire to contemplate.

On the other hand, I am eager to understand other people’s perspectives, to consider where I might be wrong and where I might be missing something. If someone sits me down and explains to me why X thing is harmful to Y group, I will listen. I will consider it. If it doesn’t make sense to me, I won’t argue back; I’ll hold onto it, chew on it, observe the world and listen to other people until I understand it. That’s me. That’s how I learn. Anger: very unhelpful and counterproductive. Calm explanation: very helpful and productive.

So from a personal standpoint, I much prefer the Professor X approach. But I also recognize laurelai’s point that I’m not typical, and that for many people the Magneto approach is the only thing that will get them to listen. I’ve heard enough people tell stories of being convinced by angry activists that I’ll accept that it’s effective in many cases, and that just like anger doesn’t work on me, calm explanations don’t work on many others. In light of that, I’m working on developing my own coping tools to be less raw and reactive in the face of anger, and I bow out of discussions when they’re headed toward a shouting match.

But all of that is about anger as a tactic, anger as a tool for change, and that’s only part of the story. The other piece of it is anger as simple self-expression: oppressed people have many, many reasons to be angry, and telling them to curb their anger and express themselves in a way that’s polite and acceptable to those who are profiting from the system that oppresses them — well, many words have been written on how wrong that is, and I agree with them. Anger is only sometimes, and only partly, about creating social change; it’s also about letting the damage be real, and be heard. It’s not about me at all; it’s about letting someone who’s been hurt just fucking react honestly to that hurt.

Now, of course I don’t think that pure, spontaneous emotional response is always and everywhere a good decision. There are plenty of times we need to rein it in because we know expressing ourselves fully will do damage we don’t want to inflict or incur. For many of us, it’s also worth taking a critical look at our overall emotional palette: is anger becoming a crutch, is it masking something, is it controlling my life in ways I don’t want? BUT. It is 100% not my business to go around making these inquiries of other people’s anger, especially people I don’t know, people whose specific source of anger I don’t experience. Balancing emotional expression, personal growth, and social change tactics is a complicated enough equation for me as an individual. I don’t have nearly enough information to weigh in on how someone else with a radically different position in the world should balance the same factors. Conversations about, “Will expressing this anger bring about results that we want? Is the way I’m processing anger damaging to me internally?” should definitely happen, but they’re conversations I only have with people whose anger I profoundly understand, whether because I know them intimately or because I share its specific sources.

So. We need to remember that anger is a useful and necessary tactic for some people. That it’s a harmful and counterproductive tactic for other people. And that much of the time, it’s not about tactics at all, but about expressing pain, and if we’re not part of the pain we need to shut the hell up about how it’s expressed.

Editorial Note: This post was written by Wes Fenza, long before the falling out of our previous quint household and the subsequent illumination of his abusive behavior, sexual assault of several women, and removal from the Polyamory Leadership Network and banning from at least one conference. I have left Wes’ posts  here because I don’t believe it’s meaningful to simply remove them. You cannot remove the truth by hiding it; Wes and I used to collaborate, and his thoughts will remain here, with this notice attached.

—–

So, stop me if you’ve heard this one. Someone (usually a woman) makes a Facebook update, blog post, or forum comment discussing an idea which has something to do with feminism. Next, some Privileged Man make one of the many typical derailing comments in response. The Privileged Man is then derided and dismissed as a mens’ rights activist, or “MRA.”

The mens’ rights movement is a social movement seemingly committed to little more than denying male privilege and opposing feminism. The movement is basically a wasteland of straw men and privilege blinders.

So what’s the problem? It’s the “A” part of MRA. Being a supporter of the mens’ rights movement is shameful, but it doesn’t make you an activist. Activism is a title that is earned through hard work, commitment to a cause, and passion. “Activist” is not an insult. It’s a term of respect. Activism is something I admire. Making privileged comments online is not. It takes a lot more than that to be an activist.