don't you know by now {you can't turn back}

Random fantastic post of whining that was originally a tweet but I kept typing and hahahaha.

Laptop managed to get trojans that deleted its ability to network and I may have screwed it up more trying to fix it before I knew it was malware-caused (because stupid AVG said everything was fine like a moron) and there are somehow no system restore points on the laptop so no easy fix. It theoretically works totally fine minus the inability to network, but I HAVE SPENT THE LAST WEEK fucking with all the computers to set the server back up so this is Not Okay.

And I need to print off my resume so I can finally turn in this application but I can't print it from the laptop because aforementioned deleted ability to network and I haven't installed Word on the desktop computer yet. (Doing right now, but it takes a long time.)

And I need to go to the gym because that makes things better when things = wanting to put my fist through computers and the universe, but my stomach hurts and I'm too fat to leave the house and I don't want to go to the gym without this goddamned job application again I've been holding on to it for like a week.

And apparently my mom wants me to come home but I don't want to leave without turning this job application in because Important which is why I leave for home yesterday like I should have. Theoretically job more important but let's not kid ourselves I won't get called back for it I was ridiculously qualified for the last two jobs I applied for and got excited about and n o p e not even an email to say they'd filled the position nothing.

So by not turning in this goddamned application like last week and going home days ago when I could have I'm probably fucking up whatever plans she has but that's okay because I would hate them anyway because I am horrible and rotten and ungrateful.

So, um, don't consider this sound medical advice at all or anything, but just fyi:

• If you have teeth coming in and they're at the point that they're stretching and rubbing little holes in your gums until they split


• And especially if one of them is halfway in but there's still just a stupid band of gum covering the back half that food likes to get caught under


• And all of this hurts like fuck


• And you think "I bet I could just slit the gum right across the top of the hidden tooth and free it up a bit instead of enduring all this slow flesh-splitting misery"


• And you have access to scalpels/really sharp microscissors/something you can sterilize


• This is actually


• A really good plan.

No seriously, I'd been thinking about doing it forever, and the pain finally got bad enough last night after I managed to wedge food under my gums though the tiny hole the tooth had worn away (this happens all the time with the one that was halfway in, but another just recently decided to start making an appearance so the gum was way more stretched and thus getting something under it was excruciating) that I just went for it, and it feels so much better now. Even immediately, while still spitting out gobs of blood, I was in 293487230 times less pain. Morning after, there's kind of mild achyness, but not even enough to bother taking an aspirin for and still less bothersome than the usual flesh-splitting misery; it feels more like I just bruised it a bit while messing around back there. Totally not kidding when I say that I wish I'd done it ages ago.

Only downside is that there is rather a lot of blood involved. If I'd had a 12-blade scalpel, it would have been a lot easier because I could have just stuck the curvy tip into the hole in my gums and slit straight upwards, but I only had 10-blades, so I ended up trying both sticking it in the hole and pushing laterally with the blade upwards and just pressing straight down through the gum on top of the tooth. The former method worked much better, as with the latter, you'd feel the crunch of some of the tissue splitting but not actually be making it the full thickness to the tooth (and then have to wait until the bleeding slowed down so you could see the field and try again).

/fuck yeah home surgery

A sort-of response to "An Issue in Sherlock That Annoys Me and Why", which is an essay about gifted persons and emotion, with specific reference to the eponymous character in the BBC drama "Sherlock".

This is mostly just YES THIS with a large dose of WOW MY CHILDHOOD LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT encased in a few giant, run-on paragraphs. 

Also, let me just get modesty and such out of the way: labeling yourself as intelligent is such a Not Done thing (made even worse by societal expectations of women, but that's another rant), and I hate comparing/being compared to other people because I will always zoom in on the way(s) that I fall short, so this entire thing is extremely uncomfortable to write.  But if I keep apologizing every time I refer to the fact that I consider myself part of this group of Super Screwed-Up Super Gifted Super Freaks, it will be even more uncomfortable to read.  So.  Blanket "blah blah, I don't mean that other people are dumb, blah blah my self-worth on good days approaches that of a rock covered in toothpaste blah blah".

( Read more... )

And okay, this has gotten too long and I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore because I'm kind of upset now, but blah.  There it is.  I'm not sure there's any meaning or even relevance in any of this wordvomit, but have some stories about me.

Sometimes, taking my ADD meds makes things even worse.

They make it so I can only concentrate on one thing at once, somehow, which would be okay if I hadn’t spent 20+ years training myself to live with horrible, horrible ADD by OMG MULTITASKING ALL THE TIME.

Also, Ritalin is kind of a fantastic (if temporary) antidepressant, and one of the side effects of that is this IMMA DO THIS AND FIX THIS AND KNIT A HAT AND STUDY FOR THIS TEST AND PLAY THIS GAME AND ALSO DO THIS THING I’VE BEEN PUTTING OFF AND THAT ONE AND GO TO THE GYM AND SAVE THE WORLD mentality. So I try to multitask like normal on a highly increased number of tasks and nothing gets done.

Basically, I’m normally a 2.2ghz hyperthreading, quad-core processor, and Ritalin turns me into a 4.6ghz single-core processor. Because of the extra speed, you feel like you can open more programs at once, but this is not the case.

I think the only reason I didn't cry at Harry Potter was because of my anti-depressants. And while it's nice that I'm not, you know, seriously contemplating suicide because now I have nothing else to live for, I sort of feel . . . cheated. I've been upset/anxious/wary/sad/excited about this for months now, and then nothing. It was sad, but the only part where tears even threatened to spill down was the moment the credits began to roll. During the actual film, my favorite characters were dying left and right and I was just like "oh."

Basically, I cried much much much harder at the book. I'm not sure whether that's a flaw in the translation of the book to the screen or a flaw in my personal emotional response, but judging by how much everybody else seemed to find the movie appropriately upsetting, I think it has to be the latter.

Dream where there was some big, apocalyptic crisis going on and I am totally gay for River Song.

Olivia Wilde and Benedict Cumberbatch had to pretend (for god knows what reason) to be my parents to get us out of some sticky situation and that wasn't fair because EPIC SEXUAL FRUSTRATION. Unconscious brain was then just like "oh, that's true; here, have another awesome person for yourself". So I meet up with River Song (who was the fourth part of my Saving The World Team -- I think I might have sort of been The Doctor, because Olivia was Amy and Benedict was Rory, for sure), and there's like this instant sparky thing of attraction/recognition, because we've worked together in the past, but there was some kind of amnesia thing around that mission, so it's all fuzzy.

So then River and I were running around trying to get where we needed to go to escape it and then fix things. While holding hands and sort of flirting a lot. We were running across/out of what looked like an old military fort (I think Fort de Chartres, actually, though I've only been there once when I was 12, so I could be making that up), and just as we got out the front and were going toward the street, I turned to her and was like "do you remember the last time we did this?" (meaning run all escapy from somewhere while holding hands) and she didn't, because of that amnesia thing in that ~mission, but she was like "I wondered why this felt so right." LOLOLOLOL, PMSing Alexandria's brain is soppily romantic.

There were these cars we had to get to to take us to our next location that were sort of arriving on a cycle like a shuttle, and at one point we were walking with a bunch of people to get there, including Melissa, one of my friends from elementary/middle/high school who's really conservative (but super nice). River and I sort of fell back a step so we could hold hands again, and she turned around and looked, and I was kind of worried what she would think for a minute, but then was like "Pshh, but I am le happy, so who cares." And then Melissa sort of half-smiled and then faced front again and it was nice. COOL STORY BRO.

And then it got much less impressive because the fact that I had to pee IRL bled into the dream, so I was trying to find a bathroom but there was this like, idk, Diva Cup seminar going on in front of the bathroom in the craft store building I ducked into, and they were like "I know why you're here; have one!" and I was like "I already do, but thanks," and ended up answering some of the gathered women's questions about it first, and then I woke up because I did really have to pee. EVEN COOLER OF A STORY, BRO.

Unanswered questions:

• Why do I never get to have sex in my EPIC SEXUAL FRUSTRATION DREAMS.










• Why.

Some thoughts on gender. Also sex. So, umm, vaguely graphic things you probably don't want to know about me? ETA: This got SUPER tl;dr, so you can treat the bolded bits like a summary and just read those, if you're interested.



Over the past couple of years, I've begun to sort of question my gender identification, but I always end up feeling . . . idk, inadequate. I have long hair and I wear skirts literally all the time, I must be like the femalest female who ever femaled, right? When I go bra shopping, I look for things that push them up rather than push them down. I can tick absolutely zero of the standard outward-appearance indicator boxes for other-than-cis-genderism.

But I was looking through an old notebook a few months (maybe a year?) back, and something in there triggered a memory of being very young (7-8 ish) and in the shower and sort of daydreaming that I was pregnant because I was both male and female, and had managed to inseminate myself internally. (Weird, I know.) And that was a running thing, the feeling that I was both male and female. I mean, I knew it was biologically impossible, but that ~fantasy stuck with me for years.

Beyond that, you had your standard tomboy stuff -- I spent every day at the gifted program in elementary school playing kickball with the boys during recess; I remember one of my friends moving back in with her aunt for the summer across the street from my house and saying "Okay, let's start on your tomboy-ification" because she'd spent the year getting her hair brushed and wearing fancy clothes and I wanted a friend to climb trees with; I thought makeup was a fun toy back in third and fourth grade, but in middle school when girls started wearing it to actually wear it, I wasn't interested (save a bit of the black eyeliner goth stuff for a while, but even that got given up on all but special occasions). Those by itself, obviously, indicate nothing about a person's gender identity, but I feel like it's sort of a record of my never feeling female. On the other hand, I never felt male either. I never pressured my mom to let me buzz my hair, or pitched any more fits than the usual kid being forced into a dress for Easter church; I even chose to go by Alexandria instead of Alex in middle school (though that was more because I wanted to be unique than anything else).

As I got older, I spent late middle and most of high school pretty sure I was a lesbian, but I think that's because I wasn't interested in penetrative, penis-in-my-vagina sex, and thought that automatically, logically meant I was a lesbian. It was also a role to play, an identity that I could have -- I still call myself a homo all the time, even though it's not 100% accurate, just because I want to claim that experience, to be a part of that identity that as an other-than-mainstream-branch queer I sometimes feel I'm pushed to the side of. (That gets into a whole other long thing that there have been plenty of diatribes about by people much less tired than I am, so have some keywords like biphobia and erasure and Google it yourself.)

But still, I remember somewhere in earlyish high school (I was probably 15 or 16) watching an Oprah about women with huge clitorises with my Dad omg it was awkward at the time, and it being mentioned that they were pretty much just like little penises, and wondering aloud why that would be a bad thing. He said it was probably just image, or being worried the people they're with will think they're not female, but I didn't really get it. You still have all the female bits, you don't have to deal with the stigma of outwardly presenting as other-than-cis-gendered, and you get a mini penis that could be used (as one of the women's anecdotes related) for penetration; what's not to like?

Late high school/early college, I started to wake up to my boy attraction (thank you, David Tennant), but realized that I still wasn't interested in PIV sex. I get sex dreams pretty much never (maybe two or three a year, idk) but the few times I did, it was always oral/handjob, frot, or me as the penetrative partner (with a strong slant toward the latter two). Okay, dreams, I figured, we'll see if there's anything to this. It's very rare that I would fantasize as myself with someone else (I always masturbated to fanfiction without putting myself in either player's place really, *shrugs*), but I sort of tried it a bit, and holy shit does imagining fucking Olivia Wilde with my invisible dick get me off. Imagining jerking off said invisible dick is also surprisingly helpful. Frot (with both males and females) is pretty much Number One and has turned into my hugest fic kink ever. So, um, okay then. Apparently, my subconscious had a point, and I kind of want a dick.


But I don't want to be male. Not particularly. Not consistently. I've expressed a desire to be male when doing things like going to the Adam Lambert concerts, because I wish that things like painting my nails and putting on tons of makeup and glitter were expressed to other people as the alternative gender performance that they really are for me, rather than it just being something that girls are expected to do. I'd get a hysterectomy simply because I have such severe premenstrual dysphoric disorder and it's the cause of much misery and suicidal ideation, but I don't think I'd ever get top surgery because my breasts don't really bother me. I'd love to magically have a penis, not gonna lie, but I don't know if I could stomach ever doing something so drastically radical and unchangeable to my body, and definitely not at the sorry state of technology that bottom surgery is now (for those who haven't spent ages looking this up and thinking about it -- probably another sign that I wasn't just investigating for Roommate and Scientific Curiosity -- a huge huge percentage of FTMs don't get it because it's like $200,000, and even then comes with severe risk of losing sensation and has only mechanically-assisted function and isn't even always able to pass, like most good MTF bottom surgery is).

Speaking of Roommate, I spent quite a while not talking about this (or even really thinking about it) because I was sort of worried that maybe I was just feeling this way because she had been exploring her FTM-ness and I just wanted to . . . be special like her? But now that I'm thinking about it, it goes back so far that I think it just took Rachel to make me realize that maybe this was a thing and not just that my body issues were just standard low level eating disorder and the fantasizing about having a penis thing was a minor and probably-should-be-suppressed-if-you-ever-want-a-working-relationship quirk. Would I ever have expressed it anywhere but my own fantasies if she hadn't been around? Doubtful. But I don't think that makes it any less real, I guess?



I think there's a lot of weight to be put on my attraction map. (I'm not sure if that's a thing, but that's how I've been thinking about it for some time now.) Somewhere along the line, my concept of beauty got set with a skew sort of towards the feminine, as this ideal with a feminine face and (generally) androgynous body, and that's more or less my ideal image for myself. One of them, I guess. I'm attracted to people who are more or less that andro-chic look, but I also find a strong aesthetic appreciation for people with more feminine bodies (i.e. curves), and therefore sometimes I'm okay with looking like that, too. Sometimes. The ~feminine me still doesn't like to do her makeup and hair every day, or make a sandwich for her boyfriend because she's supposed to, or stay home and watch the kids, and is definitely still more of the power female, but she's more okay with her curves even to the point of sometimes feeling sexy in a clingy dress or something. It's like I'm bigendered, with the two sides being genderqueer and female. Which is super weird.

I know that most of my gender performance is because it's just easier. The constant skirts is a body image thing, because I have, um, probably some kind of serious body dysmorphic disorder when it comes to my thighs and have a hard time handling looking at them, so it's easier to just wear skirts. The hair is vanity, given, but it fits in with my sort of feminine facial ideal. I'm not sure if I'd rather be flat chested or curvy (the andro or the feminine), but I've got tits. (Pretty easily bindable ones, much to Roommate's consternation, but all the same.) And so I work what I've got; I buy the push-up bras, because I at least want what I have to be perfect. (Hallo, perfectionism/control issues/the root of much misery.)

It tends to mean I attract "the wrong kind of person" for me; I think, because of the typology of people I'm attracted to and my slash hobbies and all of this stuff, etc. etc., if I ever were interested in a relationship, even with a man, it would probably have to be someone out of the queer community. I'm read pretty much as straight, or on very rare occasions, hit on by more butch girls, when I want to be the sort of dominant one or at least equal in a relationship (not that relationships require any kind of dom/sub -- and I do not mean this in the BDSM way, but just in general dynamics; the leader and the follower -- or male/female traditional binary roles, but often they sort of happen, even in friendships sometimes, I find). I'm the toppiest top who ever hasn't actually sexually topped, as we say. Which is why I think I'm not hit on by gay girls more often; idk, maybe I put off dominance vibes, so no one comes to me, but then I don't go out and go after anyone? I mean, I'm not interested in a relationship, really, which is why I have no particular drive to change anything about how I present, but it doesn't mean I'm not super jealous when Roommate gets hit on all. the. time. by lesbians and nobody ever looks twice at me.

I'm not sure if I'm attracted to males (almost exclusively gay males in real life, or celebs with more feminine features/presentation) more often when I'm feeling genderqueer/andro and females more often when I'm feeling feminine, or if it's the other way around. I think genderqueer me is attracted to both/pan, and feminine me is more attracted to the women side of the spectrum, maybe? I notice periods of time when I'm much more likely to look pretty much exclusively at women and periods when I look at both or more men (but I don't think ever exclusively), with androgynous types being somewhere in the middle of both, but I'm not sure if that correlates to periods of feeling one way or the other. (I also couldn't tell you how often I feel one way or the other, because it's not really a line that I jump across or anything.) I know I've never had a sexual dream/fantasy where I was explicitly female with a man (a lot of the time, I'm sort of . . . non-gender specific?), but I've been female-bodied in lesbian dreams.

And when I say attracted, I really just mean aesthetic appreciation. I'm pretty sure I'm pretty asexual. I can look at people and think they are ridiculously attractive, and I can look at people and think I want to spend time with them, and I can look at people and think both, but never do I look at someone and think "I want to have sex with you." That's just not something that goes through my mind ever. The biggest, longest running crush on a Real Life Boy I've ever had, I don't think I've ever had a sexual thought about him, and only fleeting ones for my Real Life Woman crush (but that didn't really count, because she wasn't really a Real Life person because it was literally impossible to have a relationship with her being, um, my teacher) -- I'll on occasion have sexual fantasies about celebs or something, but I know if I ever, for instance, had the opportunity to do whatever I wanted with Olivia Wilde for one night in real life, we'd have dinner and talk politics and maybe cuddle. I remember realizing, at a Halloween party last year, that I hadn't gotten off in a while, and there was a guy there who was kind of cute (in that lighting, at least; turns out not so much, but still), and that I could totally make out with, possibly do him if I wanted to, but I didn't. Not at all. Not even "oh, that'd be nice but I don't really know him so that's dumb"; there was just no desire whatsoever, even when I tried to mentally put someone else (including women) I knew better in his place.

But then again, I think I would have no problem, if I broke past some barriers and was in a relationship, having sex. I enjoy orgasms. (Or, um, I did. Fucking anti-depressants.) But I don't . . . go out and look for it? I have no particular desire to have sex with another person, save maybe for scientific curiosity, but if you were here and I was here and we were really good friends/in a relationship and were bored or (idk if I ever actually get this way, but) horny or whatever, sure; as is an occasional catchphrase in our house, "Here, have some orgasms." I've told Roommate before (I think I was probably drunk, but still) that I would totally do her if she ever wanted to fool around, just because I love her (platonically) and if I can do something that makes her feel good, why not? That puts me more on the aromantic side of the spectrum and would disqualify me from "true" asexuality in some people's narrow views, but whatever.


COOL STORY BRO. Just some things I've been thinking about. I kind of tend to just go "agh, fuck labels" because I am so confusing, but at the same time, I feel . . . idk, like I said above in regard to my lesbianism in high school, like I don't want to get left out of this group that I belong to? I don't generally stress about them, but they helped in this case to sort of ~express my feelings. Of all the things I angst about, though, this isn't one of them. The fact that I'm Ace doesn't disturb me (even though I have the probably unpopular opinion that most asexuals probably could be diagnosed with some kind of attachment or arousal disorder; just because it's a thing -- like Roommate's Gender Identity Disorder, or my redheadedness -- doesn't mean you have to do anything about it if it's not distressful or an impediment to functioning). I imagine the gender thing might be more disturbing if I was desiring of a standard, heterosexual relationship (or any relationship at all), but because of the asexuality, it's just not an issue. I wish that my gender performance could be more in line with how I actually feel I'm performing (see above Adam Lambert example), but that's life.

Sometimes, Roommate and I say we're 200% gay. It's crazy; we're like fucking SuperQueer over here or something. Fuck yeah, house of fabulousness.

I keep reading over this and wanting to add more/change things to make sure it all makes sense, but I think exactly two people are going to read even this much, so we'll just hit post.

Also, Dad came down (surprise!) yesterday, which I didn't actually know about until he was already on his way, so we spent two hours frantically cleaning. Basically, he gave me a hug and then took me shopping for groceries and then made sure I'd made an appointment to actually go talk with my teachers rather than just blowing it off because I was too scared (his actual purpose of coming down was to pretty much march me in there if I hadn't; he was going to go in and sit in the hallway and wait for me today as moral support or something, but he wasn't feeling well, so ended up going home early this afternoon instead).

I don't like how . . . idk, old he is all of a sudden. I mean, he's 56 and people read him as my grandfather sometimes. I know it's just the cancer and then the lung infection thing and the billion surgeries (also, the anti-fungal meds are like mini!chemo; he's nauseated a lot still and is going to have to take the stuff for more than a year, so that's going to be fun), but he's tired a lot and he's weak and he's always sick and it upsets me. Dad's supposed to be the strongest person I know, you know? That's how fathers work. And he's not right now, even though he's not "actively" sick, and it's upsetting something substantial in my worldview, I think.

Obviously, there's nothing anyone can do about that and it's not his fault, etc. etc. etc., I just had some ~feelings.

Re: my final tomorrow. I'm just going to tell my professor that I can't take it yet; I've missed all but maybe 3 lectures for it, so it's going to take me a little while to catch up.

That sounds much more confident than I actually am.

I'm still terrified she's going to say no, and tell me to either take it now or get a zero. (I'd probably not get much above a zero were I to take it, so it's not much of a choice.) I should have emailed her and made an appointment to come in, because she did eventually pretty much offer to work out an arrangement to give me an Incomplete, but . . . yeah, I have no excuse for that except that talking to teachers triggers every bit of social anxiety and panic disorder in my body.

Fuck.

I really should start studying now anyway so I can take the test ~eventually (I'd like to get it done this week), but I'm freaking out too much about having to talk to my teachers. I know if I look at even just how much material I have to learn, I'll flip straight into panic attack mode.

The cure for this is mindless TV and knitting, and just taking it one stressful thing at a time. Talking to them now, test sometime in the future.

But at some point, I'm going to have to pussy up and stop coping with things that way, because hell, I'm putting off making arrangements to put things off, and that's obviously Really Quite Wrong.