Review retrospective: The All-American Rejects, part 2

Much of my musical reawakening was related to getting on Twitter, and it just happened that The All-American Rejects -- one of my "before" bands -- dropped a new album, Kids In The Street, about a month after I had been on.

This may be why I initially attracted more Rejects fans than MCR fans, though there was overlap.

If a band never did anything but provided good music, that would be enough, but there are three things about this band that stand out as special to me, specifically related to the on-Twitter and reviving time period of my life.

1. They were my first band review: 

That it was a concert was important, but part of that is that there were four other related bands, and they were not the band that played first. 

I normally review bands for a concert in playing order, but failed attempts showed me that I could not do the other bands until I reviewed them. Then it flowed, and it was more of a gush, ultimately, but really, they needed to be first. That was how it worked, and then I could go on and do the rest of the bands, and keep going with other bands. Maybe breaking in needed love.

2. They revived concerts for me:

I had been to other concerts, even during the gap; I had already made up other missed bands The Presidents of the United States of America and the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. Those shows were both at the Crystal Ballroom, and that's where I got to see the Rejects too. It felt like a nice continuity.

There was something else though. My very first concert was Charlie Sexton at Civic Auditorium in the summer of 1986 (between 8th and 9th grade). Before the concert I had seen Charlie stepping out of a limo and going in the stage door, and then after we chatted with the tour bus driver. There was so much excitement beyond the performance.

So seeing Mike Kennerty, and talking to him briefly, and seeing Nick Wheeler walking Dexter, it felt so much like that magic was back. I have met and talked to many musicians and tour managers and stage crew now, and it doesn't get old, but the Rejects were a perfect start for what has come after.

3. They inspired a book series:

It wasn't just them, but I saw them just before Halloween in the same week that I was seeing Bad Reputation Production's play of The Lost Boys. Putting all of that together gave me the dream that became Family Blood, and then Family Ghost and Family Reunion. 

There are more vampires to fight (in Spruce Cove and in the Philippines and in Romania), and someday I hope to get there, but at the time I had just wrapped up one big project. It had been important to write that one, and I needed it, but it also had no commercial potential. 

Finding something else to write that I could believe had commercial potential (even if it is still unrealized) was important. If the musicians in the book became their own characters (despite starting out looking a lot like this band), that is right and proper, but it still left a deep fondness for the band. I mean, I was already pretty fond anyway.

4. They surprised me:

Yeah, I know I said three things. Sue me. Maybe the other things aren't quite as big.

It wasn't just that suddenly this band that I had liked was on tour and had new music, they also had an album I had completely missed, When the World Comes Down, from December 2008.

As badly as my world was falling down right then, I could have used it then. Finding it later is my reminder that good things can still be happening, even when you aren't aware of it.

5.  I am still learning from them:

I really thought these retrospectives would just be one week for each 100 bands, taking the top five or seven songs. It would not be fair to say every best song from the first 100 was theirs, but only one Rejects song was surely insufficient. 

Then, listening to them again, I had my favorites, but listening to the whole albums again was so good. Some Forbes writer was just saying albums are dead; dude, you are only showing your ignorance.

When I am not listening to new bands, I will usually go with play lists I have on various themes, but it is also important to listen to the bands you love every now and then. Go over the catalog and remind yourself why you love them. So good. 

I got to remember how it had seemed like there were a lot of counting songs on their debut album. Okay, they were "One More Sad Song", "Don't Leave Me", and "Happy Endings". Then there were all of the songs that worked for the 12-21-12 playlist: "It Ends Tonight", "When the World Comes Down", "The Last Song", "and when the sky is falling" on "Change Your Mind"... There are lots of smiles for all the yearning.

I must say, "Dance Inside" is a bit more sexual than I remembered.

I love these guys, but beyond that love, all of the counted points require two posts, and two weeks of songs. 

The first eight daily songs were from the first two albums, so now we wrap up with songs from the last two.

“I Wanna” -- from the surprise record, this was the one that caught my attention first. I remember walking around with this song on repeat in my head. And, it was the first song I sang for karaoke at my birthday party after that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwm7crkV124

“Another Heart Calls” -- So yearning. It may be the track that reminds me most of their earlier work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKUeZBbU4FA

“Heartbeat Slowing Down”-- I generally prefer their faster songs, but this performance and Tyler's talking about it at the concert was heartbreaking, and then re-listening I notice some guitar work that is worthy of Johnny Marr. It may showcase their craft more. Technical prowess is usually not why I fall for a band, but I do still appreciate it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_w6j3sDn5U

“Fast & Slow” -- A very fun song. It could have done well as an official release. See, you miss things like this when you don't listen to entire albums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGP7h5-Y0Kw

“Kids In The Street” -- That year when they had a new album and I didn't know it? Among other things a childhood friend died. When this song came out four years later, in my mind it was just always about him. So even though in that dream that started the books, it was touring bass player Matt Rubano in that hospital bed, I know it was really Josh, and that dictated a lot of how things played out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIw7RAfYgI8

“I For You” -- A very brief acoustic song that is absolutely beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTFf1ZCJA1k

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/12/in-concert-all-american-rejects.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/03/one-year-of-kids-in-street-1yeaarkits.html

If you're angry and you know it...

Humans are tricky, and we are rarely all one thing.

Without ever thinking that the people who hurt me were good people doing good things, I mostly did not let myself get angry or blame others for my hurts. I mostly accepted the pain as my due, and I mostly kept things inside.

Mostly.

I do remember about every six months or so having a really weepy and angry weekend. Family would be irritated because nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but the ordinary was exactly the problem. Sometimes it spilled over. 

I can also remember four times when I seemed to allow myself to get angry, back during the period when I avoided it. It may be productive to go over those now.

Two were essentially cases of self-defense. The other two were cases of making big changes for which I had very logical reasons that were probably not the whole story.

Yesterday I did a disclaimer about common names. For the self-defense stories, there is one common name and one not common one. I guess I will just call her "this jerk".

On the last day of 2nd grade, our bus driver said we could have a water gun fight on the way home. 

(There probably needs to be a post on adult conformity in upholding existing power structures, even when it goes against what their job should be.)

I didn't own a water gun. I was just going to sit it out, until Jason stationed himself in front of me and started shooting at close range. That sucked. 

I used his hair to pull his head down against the seat and held him there until we got to his stop. He got up with a red face and quickly exited the bus.

Mentally I knew it was not a nice thing to do. It probably would be something that needed repentance, because it was most likely at least a little painful and definitely embarrassing for him. I still know that now, along with understanding that him taking the cheap shot was not at all unusual for his age and maturity level.

I was still so proud of it. I loved that I did it. 

I am still not sorry.

Then, in junior high, this jerk makes a crack about my weight. I think it must have been not long after the other junior high incidents, like maybe I was just fed up by that moment that I could not and would not take at.

I looked at her and said -- very smugly, matching the contempt she had shown me --  "I wouldn't talk with that face."

I believe she wanted to kill me. I was kind of looking for a fight, and positive I could take her, but her friend pulled her away. Technically, this jerk had started it and her friend knew that.

My behavior here was more questionable. This jerk wasn't really that ugly. I mean, I didn't think she was particularly pretty, but there was nothing really glaring about her and she was quite slender, which counted most from what I could gather. I didn't think her haircut was very flattering, but it was in style. 

So, I was being dishonest to be mean, both things I considered wrong. I also was supporting patriarchy with the obligations it puts on girls and women to be aesthetically pleasing and potentially damaging the self-esteem of someone who was also an impressionable young women, even if she was kind of a mean one. 

An unarmed girl successfully defending herself against a boy with a (water) gun is arguably feminist; while insulting another girl for petty revenge clearly was not.

Still not really sorry. 

If I had just told her she was a jerk, it would have been true, but it wouldn't have made her as mad. 

Could I have befriended her? Usually, the people who were mean to me were not really people I hung out with. Could I have won her over and helped her be a better person? That didn't seem like an interest of hers, but maybe. 

Still not that sorry.

Whereas being on the playground with Suzy or at the lunch table (or just outside of the school) with Jason, Matt, and Steve left me feeling worthless and were always there as bad memories, the memories of standing up for myself are good ones. Maybe I am worth something!

And, possibly if I'd had more help believing that I was worth something, I wouldn't have needed to be mean to accomplish it.

(A friend remembers me burning someone impressively after a different crack about my weight, but I don't remember it, so that one didn't shatter me, but it didn't fill me with pride either. Maybe that time was too easy.)

I don't know that the important thing about these memories is the anger. The value was treating myself like someone worth standing up for, but anger wasn't the only path to that, and anger was what made that path meaner.

Anger could also make me more unpredictable.

It is more recent that I have made a connection to what happened with Jason, Matt, and Steve to my leaving behind drama, and all of the changes that happened after that. That's more for next week.

Then we will get into my father disowning me (the first time) and those repercussions. 

I now find it interesting that I quit my job McDonald's just a month after that.

I responsibly gave two week's notice and I had logical reasons for quitting, like the schedule and being tired all of the time from closing. Shortly after that I started working at K-Mart, which closed three hours earlier so that was a big help. I had risen as far as I could at McDonald's, unless I waited a year to turn 18 and be eligible to be a manager, whereas there were so many different things you could do at K-Mart that there was a lot to learn, and so it stayed interesting for longer.

I know all of that, but looking back now, and remembering that shortly after the incident my father came through my line at McDonald's, and that a boy from school was right behind him and it was all so awkward and sick...

I am not sure my reasons for leaving were logical. 

Maybe sometimes you change things because you can't change other things that hurt too much and you can't think clearly about, because you have reasons to be angry but you can't let yourself deal with those reasons.

Related post:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-power-of-hate.html

14

Disclaimer: Any names I am using are real, but were also the names of multiple people. If you think it could have been you but don't remember it being you, you're probably safe.

Okay, when I was fourteen some boys teased me at lunch, and then it continued with a minor sexual assault later that day.

It's weird how angry and irritated I feel trying to write some of this. I think it's because I have written about all of these things before, and how am I not done with them yet? But maybe I am more mad that they happened at all.

In the past I had a hard time allowing myself anger. It gets a bad rap as an unproductive emotion, and not righteous and good, so it would have felt weird to indulge it. My confidence in me always being the problem exacerbated that. To admit that something was unjust and unfair to me, therefore that I did not deserve it, was a little more affirmation than I was ready for. 

If you have to go through and grieve all your unprocessed grief, maybe I also have to go back and feel all my un-felt rage. 

That doesn't sound fun at all.

I was eating lunch with friends in the Five Oaks cafeteria. Our regular group consisted of six girls and four boys, even if it wasn't always all of us at the same time. This time none of the boys were there. In retrospect I believe that mattered. 

If they had been there, they would have been expected to do something, fair or not, but their presence may have also been enough to keep anything from starting. 

I don't want to need protection. I do not want protection to come from being someone else's property or territory.

Jason asked me to go with him. By "go" I mean going steady, not going somewhere with him. Neither would have appealed to me.

It was clearly not serious, so I am not even sure that I said "no". I am also not sure that I would have felt right saying "no". I mean, I was not interested in any of the three, but there was a lot of pressure to get a boyfriend, and so refusing would not only be counterintuitive but also would seem rude. Girls are supposed to be the nice ones.

Besides, they always tell you to ignore teasing.

But I might have said "no", or maybe ignoring was enough reason for Matt to sub in and then just keep going. All the way through the lunch period and clearing our table and walking to classes, "Will you go with me? Will you go with me?"

He had stamina; I'll give him that.

Finally I turned and said "Yes!" as I entered my class, because I was afraid he was going to follow me in and that I would get in trouble. 

I think this is why I felt the need to share the math teacher story; I was so sure that adults were not trustworthy.

For the record, we did have cafeteria monitors, because I remember I time when we were laughing too loud and they came to shut that down. Apparently this didn't disturb enough people.

I know I didn't think saying "No" would work. I wish I had tried "Shut up!" or something scathing.

I remember that I was relieved when he left. Technically he won, because he did get a reaction from me, but I also remember feeling unsettled for the rest of the day, like it wasn't over.

It wasn't. 

I almost did make it. I was on my way to the bus. It was the activity bus. It left an hour or so after the end of school buses and had a route with fewer stops, but it was helpful to have the option to stay a little later, and I used it a lot.

The three of them were there, between the school exit and the bus. As I passed them Steve reached out and started opening my shirt. 

See, I think of it as ripping open, but it was snaps. It was probably the most fashionable shirt I owned at the time, though I may not have ever worn it again after that.

Years later I talked to Jason about it; he didn't remember, but he felt bad, kind of.

I have never and probably will never talk to Steve again, but I learned later that the following summer he hit on one of my friends who was also at lunch.

The very next day, though, I talked to Matt. I asked him if we were going together. He said - and he did seem to have enough decency to be ashamed, but he did not apologize -- "What do you think?"

Well, my thoughts were very complex and for a long time I couldn't face many of them openly.  

Regardless, my essential takeaways were...

• No boy can ever love you.
• If he acts like he does, it's a joke.
• You are a big piece of garbage, as evidenced by the way people treat you.
  

This was easy to believe. I had never gotten a lot of male attention, and in first grade I lost the boy that I liked because he found out that I liked him, so that all tracked. 

It also tracked because of me always feeling like there was something wrong with me, going back to my father's constant dissatisfaction with his life, but that I had determined was because I was fat.

Therefore, the reason I was an impossible to love joke was because I was fat.

Arguments against it could be the people who liked me and enjoyed spending time with me, but again, it was not boys asking me to go steady. To be non-objectionable, I would have to take dating off the table.

Unfortunately, dating was what I wanted most of all. 

I thought I wanted it for love and to get a chance to create a happy, nice family. (Naive. I know that now.)

Subconsciously, it probably was a desire to heal the wound that came from my father's dissatisfaction, strongly reinforced by societal messages that feminine worth is tied up in her attractiveness to masculine types. 

And while I did hold on to an oft-dashed hope that someday I would be able to lose weight and that would fix everything, it felt more like what I wanted most was impossible, and would never happen.

That's why I couldn't help but implode.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-sexual-assault.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/10/navigating-hierarchies-in-microcosm.html

Unable to ask

When I was 14 everything exploded. 

Actually, I guess it was more of an implosion. It was largely internal, and even if some of the results were observable, they wouldn't have an obvious meaning to anyone else. I didn't really understand what was going on myself.

By the time I was done reacting to that, I think my identity was pretty much set. When my father disowned me a few days before my 17th birthday, it was traumatic, but it was more that it capped off everything that had already happened, rather than sending me in a new direction.

Later, a few things that happened on my mission (and one right after) reinforced what I already felt, but were also steps toward eventual understanding and healing. At that point we will start the unwinding of the tangled knot. 

A lot of the healing was very painful too. It probably will not all be treated strictly chronologically, just in case anyone is wondering.

I will treat the event that caused the implosion next, but -- like other things -- its impact was largely due to my foundation. 

A key part of that foundation was not believing that I could ask for help.

So I want to tell you about my 8th grade math teacher. 

We were never a great match. She played favorites a lot, more than most. Most teachers liked me, but she didn't. I think it was at least partially because I did not do homework, which we were not graded on or required to turn in for her class.

I was never a big fan of homework. There was usually a book I wanted to read or a show I wanted to watch, or something. I went through multiple periods of reforming and trying to emulate good study habits, and then slipping back, all the way from first grade through college.

Part of that was that most academic things came really easily to me once I learned to read. That started the new habit, but it is also how I picked up a lot of things. 

It is possible that one thing that aggravated Mrs. Darling was that I was still passing the class without doing the homework. It was only passing with a C, but you were supposed to see the value of the homework in how it prepared you for the tests, I guess. 

One test was right before Christmas break. I know because I was wearing a Santa hat, and I had one of those foil-wrapped chocolate ornaments hanging from the hat. I also had a newspaper article on my desk that I had written some notes on, because we were allowed to have some notes during a test. Yes, it would have looked better if I had found a blank piece of notebook paper and copied out what I wanted neatly, but I was probably in a hurry. It was almost Christmas vacation!

During the test, she came over and just started yelling at me. 

It was scarier because I could not understand the source of the rage. At first I thought it was the hat and I took that off but she was still yelling. Apparently she thought the article was a form of cheating, but if cheating was only having the book or looking at someone else's paper, then whatever paper I had there shouldn't have mattered unless it was the answer key or someone else's test.

It was really scary for me, but I don't think I was the only student who was scared; I would have been freaked out about someone else being yelled at that way. 

If I recall correctly, at about the same time I realized she was complaining about the article and I showed her the note writing, she also realized that she was being scarily unprofessional, and kind of backed down. There wasn't an apology or anything, but we could finish taking the test.

It was so unprofessional. 

As sure as I am that if I had complained to my parents about people being mean to me about being fat, that I would have been encouraged to lose weight, it does seem possible now that someone would have cared about a teacher blowing her top in class. 

I am sure my school counselor at the time would only have chuckled and tried to smooth things over. School counselors were useless to harmful more often than I like to think about. 

But maybe someone would have gotten mad about that. Seeing some anger on my behalf instead of at me would have been really good. That was something I had to work out later.

Maybe someone would have wanted to do something about a boy ripping my shirt open on school property.

It's too late to find that out now.

As it was, I finished Algebra with a C, and was still not passed, and had to repeat it the next year. 

The bad part of that is that if I had finished Algebra Trig a year earlier, I could have stayed in Physics instead of dropping down to Intro to Physics, because that was the math I needed there. A few months after the drop, all of those formulas were familiar.

The good part is that if I had gone on to Geometry, Mrs. Darling taught that too. The last thing I needed was another year of her.

Clear pictures, nagging thoughts, and homework

I am going over and reviewing old posts anyway, but I am also looking up previous posts that relate to what I am covering now. 

There are a lot of related posts.

In that process, I keep being reminded of all the assignments that I gave myself. Even birthday celebrations were assignments twice. Many journal sections were based on exercises in different books that later led to blog posts.

That's not surprising because I have a strong tendency toward giving myself assignments. It has a downside, because I often turn things I enjoy into work. I can struggle with that, but I generally end up being glad about the things I have done.

It does feel a little surprising to notice the scope. It hasn't felt like that much for that long.

Knowing that at least some readers are relating is gratifying, but it also gives me a sense of responsibility. A lot of the healing was preceded by great pain, and it isn't always a great idea to do it on your own. 

It will be easy to get ideas from some posts, but I am leery of making recommendations. 

I have learned to trust my own sense for myself, and that has led me pretty well, but it is also a very personal thing. 

If you have a lot of memories blacked out, that may indicate sexual or physical trauma. It may take something like EMDR to even access the memories, which generally only happens in a professional setting, but also it is a good idea to have a professional guiding you through the memories.

Remember the woman who talked with her therapist and discovered that unmourned loss of her mother? If you are going to need to spend three days crying to get through a loss, you may not have the time for that now. She couldn't put it off because it was damaging her relationship with her daughter, but if you are functioning pretty well and this doesn't seem like the time to rock the boat, that's okay.

(And if three days of crying is what you need, and you can do it, put some thought into hydration and electrolyte replacement. It can be brutal, even if it is what you need.)

With all of those caveats, this is a thing that I think is probably safe, and can be a good starting point.

A lot of these events that I am writing about were very sharp memories. Some of them were more obviously significant, but others didn't seem too important until I would keep getting these nagging thoughts. Why did I take that class? Why do I keep remembering that moment?

If you already know you have some memories like that, it probably would not hurt to write about them. Capture the details. Sometimes I know when something happened because of where we were living or who was there.

The ideal thing used to be a loose-leaf notebook, because if you remembered something later that happened earlier, it was still easy to get things laid out in chronological order. With an open text document, computers can make it even easier.

While that can be more free-form than the expressive writing, there are similarities and in general people had very good results with that. 

Then you may start noticing connections, and you can start thinking about where to go from there. 

Related post:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/01/expressive-writing.html

Review retrospective: The All-American Rejects, Part 1

I could not limit myself to one week of songs from The All-American Rejects. Since I have enough thoughts about them two fill two distinct Friday posts, I am going to allow it.

Many years ago there was a question posted on Facebook: if you were in charge of a music festival, which five bands would you book?

This was very easy for me. In no particular order, the line-up would be Gin Blossoms, The Presidents of the United States of America, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Maroon 5, and The All-American Rejects.

This was because they were all bands I had wanted to see, and then not been able to for one reason or another. Getting to see them all would be a concert of great healing.

The first three were all bands that I had wanted to see in college, and had even played Eugene (the Daddies played there all the time). With no money, no transportation, and working a lot of nights, it just didn't seem possible. 

Between graduating college in 1996 and getting onto Twitter in 2012, most of the time current music felt like a vast wasteland. Yes, I did get into The Clash and Ramones around 2000, but that was more discovering that there was older music that I missed, not that there was still new stuff. However, at one point in wondering if there was some new stuff, I started going through my sister Maria's CD collection.

This is where I found The All-American Rejects. I loved them immediately. Then they were going to play in Salem, but I couldn't go, so there was yet another miss.

It was also during this time period (though through a different source) that I heard Songs About Jane by Maroon 5. I loved it, and I did actually have tickets to see them. I got sick, and so Maria went with a date. That was disappointing.

Between then and 2012, it just felt like Maroon 5 was getting more tool-ish, and I don't need that particular healing any more. 

Also, I have gotten to where I have wanted to see and then been able to see many more bands, including all of the other four. The Presidents and Daddies were before I started doing reviews, and it's fine. I am glad I got to see them, and it's okay.

My feelings for the other two go much deeper, and the Gin Blossoms will get their own week, but after I actually write something about the new bands that I encountered through Twitter. 

But first, two weeks on the Rejects. There is a lot to them for me, and a lot of that starts in 2012.

For now I want to say that they are my bridge band. They are tied to what I had liked before, but also tied to all the bands I found later, many of whom had been around for a while.

Perhaps that makes it make sense that they are synonymous with hope for me. 

That is probably more for their music, and for an emotional response that I had early. 

One part of reviewing lots of different bands and studying some types of music more is increased appreciation. This band is a lot more technically solid than I had originally realized.

Before that, there was hearing the lyrics and the pathos in Tyson Ritter's voice, and seeing that they would call themselves "Rejects" but still hearing hope and energy and optimism there. "Change Your Mind" is especially important to me there. 

But the songs are mostly going to go in order, and the first eight are going to be from the first two albums.

“Swing Swing” -- I heard this one before I listened to the CD. There were times when you could randomly catch a music video on television, so that was probably how.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtypSRcwIhA

“My Paper Heart” -- The first track on their first CD and excellent work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Ngbdvj9lc

“Your Star” and “Change Your Mind” -- With these two, especially the second, it feels like they are acknowledging all the hurts and doubts, and then encouraging me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0h0xaj99s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAVoKsr_1SM

"The Last Song" -- This one stands out to me because I caught a glimpse of the video on TV, but then thought it was "Drive Away" (I guess because I saw a part with the car, but the tempos are similar) and could not find it again for a long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DpGuk_fWGQ

“Dance Inside” -- It's mainly because the song is beautiful, but this year the band put out an album of favorites, and this was the first track, which I found extremely validating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fYGpvCe_yM

"Dirty Little Secret" -- Fun song with a touching video, but for me it's really the intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPDcwjJ8pLg

"Straitjacket Feeling" -- This may give a better sense of that "pathos" I referenced, but also, I love it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVe8K5coxJE

Like I love this band.

The fat girl

This is also a frequently visited topic (the links below are only a tiny part of it), but I might be able to come up with some new things to say.

For the title, I am going for the juxtaposition with the mean girl of yesterday's post. (Not that you can't be both mean and fat.)

I like those little touches, but it is also "the" because once I started seeing myself as fat it became the only thing about me. It also felt like I was the only fat one. There were so many times where I just could not accurately judge my body size or the size of the bodies around me; that I was fat was all that mattered.

Continuing with juxtaposition, in the same way that Suzy's bullying was aided by the impression of social approval being on her side, targeting the fat as the problem was also brilliant. There were so many other factors in the world designed to show me that my body was wrong, and that was the specific way my body was wrong, and that being fat was awful and completely worthy of censure.

I believe I was still in junior high when my doctor kindly gave me a 1000 calorie per day diet to follow. That may seem like a bad idea for someone who is still growing, but my mother had the same diet and I had been looking at it and trying to follow it for at least two years at the time.

I remember specifically a Health class during the nutrition segment, so 9th grade. I was starting over again, promising myself to be good, and to avoid burning up all of my calories early, I had an apple and an orange for breakfast. Then the teacher talked about energy and how you need to start the day with grains or proteins; there was no lasting energy in fruit. Somehow I was all wrong again.

What makes it brilliant is that you can't get it right. Not only will the overwhelming majority of diets fail, but they will actually cause your body to store additional fat, making you even more out of order than you were before. 

If we look at bullying as a form of social control, then targeting body size is very effective. Attempting to reduce saps energy from the targets, making them more pliable, and the constant failure will be demoralizing. Best of all, being set in opposition to your body motivates you to stop listening to it (important information comes from there), so it dulls your instincts and diminishes your sense of self.

I could have been worse off. Accepting social rejection probably preserved a lot of my individuality. It was still a struggle to accurately know myself, or what I needed, and especially what I was worth. 

If it hadn't been Suzy, I would have gotten the message that I was fat somewhere else, multiple times. Maybe that's why now my focus is more on the ways that the whole thing was kind of impressive, and less on what it did to me. But again, this is old territory.

There is still new ground to be covered. I have been reading a lot on that, and I am sure I will get back to it. I will go off on many things and I will be angry.

For now, I have mostly accepted myself as I am, and I think I have finished grieving the past loss of my connection with my body. It would have been nice to appreciate what I had then, but getting there now is still pretty cool.

However, I also have to know that I am not completely free. Clothing choices are still limited. I may be judged in job interviews. In fact, lots of people may judge me for my size. I want to not care, but you know those stories about how obese people are in more danger from the virus? It turns out a lot of that is medical bias against obese patients, affecting diagnosis and medication dosage. Once you correct for that, the morbidity factors are about the same.

I get it. Back in the day, everything wrong with me I blamed on that. Dry scalp? It's because I'm fat. 

There is a limit to how much I am allowed to not worry about it.

But I can say that the amount of not caring that I have been able to achieve feels fantastic.

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-message.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/02/losing-touch-with-my-body.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/02/laying-groundwork.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/02/bad-at-sports.html

The mean girl

I've been having a hard time getting to this one -- the formative event that happened when I was 6 -- because it feels so mundane now. I know it happened, I have processed it and most of all I have already written about it.

Well, I went back and checked. I did write a little bit in October, for one new realization, but that one insight where things really became a lot clearer? I wrote about that in 2014.

That might be old enough to be new again.

So let's go back and take another look.

The vivid flash of memory is about being cornered on the playground in first grade. I was sitting by myself on a rock, and Suzy and a pack of girls stood in a group in front of me, facing me, and she started talking about how fat I was.

For a child who had always felt there was something wrong with her, this clicked: it's because I'm fat! All of it!

There will be more on that tomorrow.

The most recent insight (the October 2020 one) was that although it felt like it was every girl in the first grade, it really wasn't more than five or six girls total. The effectiveness of bullying is often more in what it represents than what it is.

The other insight, from December 2014, was that it fit in with two other events. I had started the year playing mostly with boys, acting out Star Wars and Buck Rogers. There was one girl, Laura, that wore modified Leia braids. She got some attention, but she wasn't as interested in reenacting science fiction movies, so that was my spot.

Then Shawna told Casey that I liked him. Suddenly I didn't have my boy friends any more. That is why I was alone that day, and vulnerable. Then I started to bond with another girl, Keena, but she moved. 

It took a while to recover from that socially. An argument could be made that I never did; I have some really good friendships, but I am not great at small talk or picking up on social cues. This is why I sometimes wonder if I am completely neurotypical, but it could be a lack of socialization. 

This may be why it was important to write about abandonment first. If I have abandonment issues, they are not only my father's fault. Also, this may have meant that the boundary change that sent me to a different junior high than all but about four other students hit me harder, as well as some other things that happened with friends and mission companions. Hold that thought for a few posts.

This is actually a fairly new realization, but I think I started using activities as a buffer for socializing. In later grades there were three guys that I played basketball with at recess and sat with in math. That is not an insignificant amount of time together, but I didn't consider them friends; that would have felt really presumptuous. There were just things that we did together. 

I had some really good friends, but in the absence of that kind of trust, I needed to be relevant in some way to feel like I had permission to be in that space.

Realizing that there were so  many things that I missed makes me wonder what else was there.

Is it possible that there was some jealousy that I was friends with boys? Was that a motivator for Shawna and Suzy?

Was the break with Casey really irreparable? I took rejections to heart pretty immediately and permanently, but could we have been friends again if I had tried? That could have been healing.

Mainly what impresses me now (in a horrifying kind of way) is how adept Suzy was at bullying. I mean, talking about me in front of me instead of to me was so much more effective and dehumanizing. If she'd actually spoken to me, I might have found my spine. I have always thought of this being when I was 6 years old, because it was first grade, but we had probably already turned 7 by now, really. Still, so advanced!

I should be shocked at the meanness at so young an age, but I have seen a little girl going on 3 cut another little girl out with just a turn of her shoulder, and she was really pleased with herself about it. I thought it was shocking, but clearly there are things I just don't get, and I don't even know how you get them. 

I cannot stress enough how much I did not like Suzy even before that day. She clearly had some leadership qualities in her own way, and I know at least one boy who thought she was cute, but I disagreed. (It was Adam though; he wasn't very discriminating, at least not then.) I had a childish certainty that she would not be nice to animals, which says a lot about how I evaluated other people.

I mention that not merely to go off on Suzy (though I can't help wondering if she had other victims, and how many, so if this comforts anyone out there, okay) but because it goes with another realization - already written about a long time ago - where I have been bothered by how much I did not like or admire or enjoy the people who had so much influence on my life. 

It makes sense that my family was a big influence, but one bratty girl at school and three random guys in the cafeteria shouldn't have had such a hold. 

It didn't make any sense to listen to her, except that I had always known something was wrong with me, and that felt more clear than ever after losing my recess friends. 

I saw a tweet the other day:

"If you wouldn't go to them and ask for their advice, then their criticism should never matter."

https://twitter.com/WhiteHotJD/status/1358794350038253568

I think he's on to something.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/12/with-little-help-from-my-friends.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/10/navigating-hierarchies-in-microcosm.html

Wild abandon

This is actually the post that I thought I was going to do Thursday, but it feels like that's not quite the right order.

To begin with, I am going to tell you about something that didn't happen, but was only imagined.

What did really happen was that my father took me to the dentist, and to Tryon Creek after. Our family dentist was on Terwilliger at the time, and we had family history related to Tryon Creek, so that made sense.

It is a little more surprising that it was my father taking me instead of my mother. I think I was around four, and my younger sisters were born a month after I turned five, so it could have had something to do with her pregnancy.

Anyway, he had brought a pack of Hostess cupcakes. I got some on my face and he took out a kerchief. 

Recognizing the object and its traditional use, I said that if he needed to sneeze, he could use that. 

He responded, "Or if there was a girl with a dirty face."

I suddenly had the wildest vision of him coming across another, cuter little girl, and going away with her.

He didn't do anything wrong in this moment, but I had so little confidence in him already.

My father would never have left a child alone in a wooded area. He did end up abandoning all of us eventually, with some betrayals only a few years off. I didn't exactly know, but even then I sensed it.

Now I want to talk about some potentially related things.

I cry at movies. Way too easily. Sometimes at trailers. Sometimes remembering a movie a week later. 

It seems to be worse if it is related to parental or pet issues, when relationships are disrupted or affection is not reciprocated. Specific films that have gotten me very badly are Coco, Babe, Up, Lilo & Stitch, Bolt -- which I haven't even seen, just a video from it -- and not a movie, but the Jellaby series has a missing father anyway, and then there's a monster that bonds with a human, gets abandoned, and turns evil, and I just dissolve.

I realize a lot of people have cried at those movies, but for me it feels like it is all out of proportion, like I am broken inside and in those moments I have lost the ability to do damage control.

In one of the books I have read recently, a therapist had a client who had severe fear issues that were damaging her relationship with her daughter. They worked it back to the client's mother having a breakdown when the client was a child, so she was sent to her grandmother, and there were never real explanations for all of the separations. Ultimately, she'd had deep losses that she had never been able to grieve.

Well, the grief hit, and then she just spent hours crying. I had thought that maybe you could know that you had missed grief and acknowledge that without having to actually go back and shed all the tears that you hadn't shed then, but maybe not.

The other thing I read in the past year was some belief - though not consensus - that all addiction is rooted in fear of abandonment.

It doesn't seem right to call any of my compulsive behavior addiction, because they are all for pretty tame things. In fact, I haven't played a single game of Spider Solitaire or Minesweeper this year, and I am not in withdrawal, though sometimes, when restless and not sure what to do, I think about it. 

I am also drinking more pop, and that may not be unrelated.

(I am very grateful that my religious upbringing has kept me away from the usual addictive substances, because I clearly never needed that.)

I nonetheless may have some fear of abandonment. 

It is also possible that I have unprocessed grief. The early indoctrination that no one wanted to hear me cry makes that more likely than not.

I think I have gotten better at recognizing my emotions as valid, and letting myself feel things. I probably do still keep myself too busy. Habits matter, no matter how intellectual you get.

The way I conduct relationships may also be influenced by abandonment issues, because the inability to rely on people staying was reinforced in other ways. Some of my adaptations may be insufficient.

That will come up in other posts, but I think it is similar to when I was trying to learn to trust. It's not that you can trust everyone, or know for sure whom you can trust, but you can learn that you can survive someone letting you down. 

This feels a lot less confident than some of the other things I have written recently, but they are also newer concepts for me. I haven't had as much time to internalize them, or test them.

I don't know the next time I will sit in a darkened theater, or the next time I will do on a date, and there are questions.

But I am better about myself.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/04/anodyne.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/trusting-part-1.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/trusting-part-2.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/learning-to-trust-in-me.html

Failure to communicate

Years ago I started to see three primary events that had influenced my life: one incident of playground bullying in first grade (that we will get into tomorrow), one prolonged incident of junior high harassment, and the first time my father disowned me.

Later, I started to notice other clusters. For example, that playground bullying went along with two other things, making its own triad. It is not a hard and fast rule, but some traumas are worse because of the reinforcement.

Without saying that all three of today's incidents count as trauma, they did still reinforce each other into one clear message.

The first happened when I was about 3. We were heading into K-mart and I was crying. I do not know why I was crying. Frankly, 3-year olds can go off kind of easily, but it was probably something that happened in the car. My father spanked me right as we were going into the doorway.

This is actually pretty unique in that I know why he spanked me. We didn't get spanked a lot, but the common denominator is that while I rarely remember the offense, I consistently remember feeling that I was not understood. My perspective now is that my reasons wouldn't have helped, at older ages when I tried explaining myself more, it was always useless, and just used against me.

(As a side note, I think those little talks about "Do you know what you did wrong? could have really helped me.)

One spanking offense I do remember was a snow day when I was about 7 or 9. My younger sisters and I were playing in the front yard and I was supposed to watch them, but I started talking to the neighbor kid. I think I was still in the driveway, not far but not watching attentively. I got smacked in the behind with a metal clipboard for that.

That was not one of my three "Don't cry!" incidents, but it does go along with my belief that if your child would be too young to babysit the neighbor's kids, that child is too young to watch younger siblings, which leads to the next story.

The common thread in all of these is that I was crying, and I don't remember why I started, but I remember why I stopped.

In this case I was about 4, and Mom needed to do something for just a few minutes, so my older sister who would have been about 9 was watching me. 

While I don't remember why I was crying, I do remember why it was a problem: we were supposed to go to Wildlife Safari that weekend. She was afraid that if Mom came home and found a crying child, the trip would be off. 

She took a knife and threatened to stab me. It worked.

I do not believe now that she would have really stabbed me. I did believe it then. 

One of the other scary moments of my child was a different  time when she was watching me. Our younger sisters were getting into everything, so they were probably 2, and we would have been 7 and 12. Because of the younger ones, we had put a chain on our bedroom door to keep them from coming in and wrecking stuff. For reasons I do not remember, the chain went up while I was in the room.

Well, I was going to outsmart her. I went out the window. Unfortunately, on my way out I accidentally kicked one of her ceramic horses (I think the Clydesdale), and one of the legs broke. That gets horses killed, and I was sure I was going to die. I was out of the room - and house - but I also was barefoot and had nowhere to go.

I think the resolution was that a parent came home, and I just casually strolled in and it was never spoken of again, but still, having your older kids watch your younger kids is not automatically okay.

Here is your third and least interesting of the relevant three stories: when I was about 6 my brother gave me a candy bar to get me to stop crying.

I don't have any other anecdotes about that. If food sometimes became a source of comfort, that goes more into the next two posts.

I only mention it because as part of that theme, the overall message was that no one wants to hear about your problems. The bribery is nicer than the threats or the hitting, but for that child who always felt like I was not understood, and who often could have used an explanation of what was going on with other people, it added up to no one wanting to take the time. 

It is perhaps not surprising that somewhere in this time period I literally went through an anal-retentive phase. I am told that castor oil was involved; I only remember being taken on long walks and maybe one enema. 

I don't think it had anything to do with physical pleasure, Dr. Freud, man whose theories seem weird because you based them on deciding that the social cost of believing women was too high, but did it seem easier to keep gross things inside rather than dealing with them? Perhaps. 

Mainly, it became very hard for me to ask for help.

This is another point of sibling discussion: things that it did not seem worthwhile to ask adults about. We have concluded that in many cases our parents would not have known what to do or would not have wanted to be bothered, depending. I can see where it would help to feel like you could ask for help on difficult things, or at least reassurance.

Sadly, when I did give in and ask an adult for help, it tended to be disappointing. I eventually figured out how multiplying fractions made sense on my own; I never got any helpful tips on upper arm strength so I could successfully do the flexed arm hang or climb the rope.

That was really just reinforcement, because that was asking teachers in grade school, and it had already hammered home that if I came with problems, I was just a nuisance.

The best thing about me may be that I never decided that other people merited the same treatment. I became the helpful child that would assist with homework or if you needed a lunch ticket and was always very responsible about cleaning up work areas and getting group projects completed in a quality fashion.

But when there were times when I really could have used some help, asking never seemed like an option. This may be why sometimes in distress I literally lose the ability to speak.

It affected some things.

Review retrospective - Women Rock

After I finally finished going through all of the comments on Stereogum's list of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitar Songs (say that ten times fast!), I wrote nine posts about it. Actually, there were nine that used that heading, but "What about Bowie" was a direct outgrowth of that project, even though I was very clear at the time that I considered it to be separate.

I am going to list all of those posts at the end, but I am not going to re-examine all of them now. 

I do want to get back to the one about women rocking, though, because women who play guitar wonderfully were so consistently overlooked, by both Rolling Stone magazine and by Stereogum commenters. 

I dove in to women in rock. There were some I knew already, and I found some new ones. Also, because it was guitar, there were some that didn't seem to fit. Some of the tracks that really rocked, I thought did so more on the basis of the percussion, and that's a different thing. 

One thing that was important to me was a growing realization that it is really easy to discount women and automatically defer to men, and I don't want to be a part of that.

The other thing, and maybe the various blog posts are the greatest testament to that, is that this was my first big music project completed, and it was an accomplishment. I learned things. I started hearing things differently, and making connections more quickly. 

I can better recommend bands that you might like now. I like that.

The "Women Rock" playlist is not necessarily the best introduction to women playing guitar, but some of that was shifting goals. Reviewing things now, I can see that I probably need to do a few additional playlists, just for my benefit. 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/04/women-rock-revisited.html

The next week of songs does pull from that, but it also pulls from things that came up later, including this article from last year that I really enjoyed: 

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/best-female-guitarists/

That gives us the first song, "Highly Strung". It feels like a nice transition, because I did have a vague sense that there should have been more Steve Vai the first time around, and Orianthi definitely rocks. 

That could be reason enough to include it, but what I really love is its playfulness. Something I really liked about the Dragonforce video last week was the humor in the middle. 

"I'm just going to drink this while you shred. Oh, it's my turn to shred? That works too."

This is part of what makes it awesome when best friends form bands. (I know some great bands hate each other, and that's a shame. Especially when they're brothers.)

Here are the daily songs for the week:

“Highly Strung” by Orianthi, featuring Steve Vai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7b-_YcACuQ

“Crazy On You” by Heart -- A classic, known before and appreciated last time around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ7inhwScSQ

“One Shot of Poison” by Lita Ford -- Last time I knew Lita Ford but not this song. I was glad to find it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqQ0R7OXYVY

“Divine Hammer” by The Breeders -- I finally got around to listening to The Breeders. It seemed important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUiP5eyx3NM

“Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill -- One of my discoveries from last time. It did make the playlist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0oeqAQ1qE8

“Demolition Boys” by Girlschool -- I found this the last time around, and then kind of forgot about it. My bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQhJSQJOdv8

“I Love Rock N Roll” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts -- I knew this song and artist before, but I can still appreciate. It's a good way to end, because I agree with the song's premise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxsP8ED_cM

I love rock and roll.

Other "Greatest Guitar Songs" posts:

The trouble with internet comments: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-trouble-with.html

What were they thinking?: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-what-were-they.html 

You get a gold star!: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-you-get-gold-star.html

Mission Creep: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-mission-creep.html 

Women rock: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-women-rock.html

History lesson: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-history-lesson.html   

Bridges and Riffs: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-bridges-and-riffs.html

Excuse me, you left out my favorites: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-excuse-me-you.html 

The Sampler: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-sampler.html 

What about Bowie?: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-about-bowie.html

More on Complex PTSD

Based on comments, these recent posts are really resonating, and there is a lot of trauma out there. It seems valuable then to go into my process of self-assessment, and also some resources.

I learned that Complex PTSD existed because of Kai Cole opening up about her divorce from Joss Whedon, followed by Brandon Flowers of The Killers discussing his wife's struggle with it.

https://www.thewrap.com/joss-whedon-feminist-hypocrite-infidelity-affairs-ex-wife-kai-cole-says/

https://www.nme.com/news/music/brandon-flowers-reveal-how-his-wifes-battle-with-mental-health-inspired-the-killers-new-album-2141097 

While these articles are from 2017, I don't think I encountered them until 2019. I know I used "Rut" for the song of the day in September 2019, and it felt familiar. 

I am pretty sure I read Kai Cole's letter first, where the trauma was in an intimate adult relationship that created a lot of self-doubt. Well, maybe the doubt instilled in her entire world and sense of reality was worse than the self-doubt, but it all relates.

(Our first lesson is that Brandon Flowers is a better husband than Joss Whedon.)

Because my relationship with my mother was so significant, and because caring for her was the majority of my existence then, and because so many times she was accusing me of lying when I was telling her the truth, that is why I worried that Complex PTSD could be a possible result for me.

No one was trying to gaslight anyone else. When she didn't believe me, I was telling her the truth. When she was telling me how horrible I was, she was just trying to get home. It felt horrible, and like no amount of time could ever take away that hurt, so I wondered. 

With Tana's story - which is really a more classic case of Complex PTSD - I started to doubt whether that was applicable. I was an adult, so not still forming my personality and patterns. My mother's disconnect from reality was painful, but it was also comprehensible. I might frequently have doubts about whether I was doing the right thing, or doing it well enough, or things like that, but things she said could never make me doubt that I was her daughter, and trying to do right by her, or who was alive or dead or grown or missing.

In retrospect, my recovery period tracks more with recovery from depression and anxiety; pretty straightforward and logical.

If I have any Complex PTSD going on, it is from earlier.

I have read a book on it: Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker, published in 2013.

Honestly, I didn't think it was great. Though he is a therapist, the book is based more on his personal experience. It is not overly technical. If you are wondering if you have Complex PTSD, it might help you figure that out. 

In looking things up for this post, I discovered another book from 1998, and I do intend to read that. I am also still waiting for another key trauma book from the library. Will they arrive before I have finished this blogging section? Will they provide more answers? I'm not sure. It's not that hard to get me to read something.

However, there is a level at which I am not too worried, because I am not sure how much the distinctions matter. For one thing, it is not impossible to have both regular and Complex PTSD. Fortunately, a lot of the same treatments are helpful for both.

I'm not denying that it is helpful to have an idea of what to call your conditions, and to understand their origins. I am a big fan of that. I am saying that you don't need to understand it to seek help; diagnosis is often included in process.

If there are things that you do where it doesn't seem like you are in control and you don't know why, that may be a sign of trauma. If you recognize a harmful pattern on your own and try and correct it but keep failing, it may have deeper roots. 

Those can be reasons to look for a counselor, or to read a book, or to talk to a friend. We start where we are, but we don't have to stay there.

One of the most wonderful things about this is seeing how many different things there are that can help, where it feels like there must be something for everyone, if you can just find the right one for you.

It is harder if you don't feel you deserve to get better, or that it is not possible to get better. 

My biggest message is to have hope.

Childhood's end

I'm skipping around with the order a bit. Yesterday's post focused on my father, and I feel like for balance this is a good time to write about my mother. This will be mainly about something that happened when I was nine, and then next week I will get to some things that happened between ages 3 and 6.

That was a totally different relationship. We had a lot of fun with Mom, and appreciated that she liked our music and our friends and was interested in the things we had to say.

That doesn't mean it was conflict free. Her parenting style focused on the things that needed correction. With my insecurities, I often felt like the only things she cared about were my weight and the messiness of my room. 

I don't know if her being different would have been enough to help me get over that sense of wrongness or not. I do know that my father had a strong influence on all of us about apologizing or acknowledging mistakes, and that limited our ability to get past things sometimes.

Regardless, we mostly got along and enjoyed each others' company, and I was fiercely protective of her.

Does that sound backwards?

In the part about my conception yesterday, I almost didn't add the threat about my father looking elsewhere if my mother did not get pregnant. I mean, there are plenty of things that make him sound like a jerk already; why pile on?

He did end up going elsewhere later, and this became another key point in my development.

It happened when I was nine, More details came later, but my first memory of it was one night when Mom was on the couch crying. I think my younger sisters were in bed, and my older siblings were doing other things, and I can guess where my father was. I only remember the two of us, and being so devastated to see her so sad. I tried crooning a song to her to comfort her, but it was not effective.

Sometimes people talk about the moment their childhood ended. I generally think it is a bad sign if you know exactly.

Maybe if it happens when you are a teenager, like someone looks at you funny for trick-or-treating, and you think "I guess I'm not a kid anymore", that could be a little sad, but still okay. (And teenagers are welcome to trick-or-treat at my house, no judgment.)

Nine was too young.

I know that there are things that Mom didn't handle well about it, but I have a lot of sympathy for that. 

My parents married really young. She was 17 and he was 20, and if it wasn't that unusual back then, by now science has told us that neither of their brains were fully developed. 

Also, being Italian, she came from a different culture, and was far away from her family as this happened.

For the most part, I think she did the best that she could, both in terms of how she tried to handle her relationship with him and in how she tried to raise us.

She did not say anything that night, but certain kinds of pain make me mute too. I don't know what she could have said that would have helped. She eventually did tell us that Dad was having an affair, and that I did not know what that meant, and she did not elaborate. He was spending time with someone else, and it was a hurtful thing. 

Should she have kept it from us? There was so much tension during it, and then there were big changes after it that we couldn't ignore, like him stopping going to church and her getting a night job so she would be less dependent on him, I guess. He gave her all of these reasons that he had strayed, like her cleaning too much and not being creative in her cooking, and maybe concerns about money was a part of that, where her bringing in money was one of the rules so he could love her again.

(Look, if you are confused about why the cheater was the one who got to set the conditions, remember this was forty years ago, that he could never admit he was wrong, and that patriarchy sucks.)

Yes, loving our mother would have been a good thing to do for his children. It just went along with a lot of other stuff.

All of this did two things for me. 

One is that my over-functioning, care-giving personality starts here. The seeds were probably already there, and the lack of value for myself that made it so dangerous was definitely already there, but I consider this the beginning of my chronic need to fix everything and make everyone happy. It has evolved and changed over time, but that wrote the script for a lot of my life.

This is also when I became fiercely protective of my mother, and that also affected many life choices. 

It involved some pain when dementia was something that I could not fix or fight off.

Always somehow wrong

In my church we like to quote that the greatest thing a father can do for his children is love their mother. 

Usually when people take exception to it, it's because they know of a man who had children with a woman who was very hard to love. I know people who have had that problem myself.

I get caught up more on whether the man loves his children, Or himself.

We also say that you can't truly love others unless you love yourself. That isn't quite accurate either, though there are elements of truth to it. It certainly affects how well you love.

My father was never satisfied with any of us. I don't think he was satisfied with himself either, which is its own tragedy, but it was combined with a refusal to ever admit being wrong. This eliminated apologizing and change.

He definitely could have been worse, and I think he has hurt himself more than anyone else. Nonetheless, there was this vague sense going back further than I could ever remember that there was something wrong with me. I was not good enough, and I did not understand why, which made it worse.

So much of who I am comes from that.

This has affected his relationships with all of his children. Reminiscing with my sisters usually ends in "He is such a dick!"

It might have been worse for me, because I was kind of born to fill a gap, and it didn't work.

Not every child in our family was planned, but I was very deliberate. My father told my mother "You WILL get pregnant!" (or he would go elsewhere) and she did. 

That happened a few weeks after both of my father's parents died in a small plane crash. 

In fact, every aunt and uncle who was in a relationship at that time has a child my age. Most of them have names with our grandparents' names in them somewhere, though I don't. On a smaller scale, it was like the baby boom after the war.

That was major trauma for all of them, but it may have been worse for my father because he'd had a fight with them not that long before and was not speaking to them. Well, the fight was more with his father (and his father had indeed been rude). I know his mother was upset about it.

My father did not learn from this. About two years later when one brother died, a dispute about property led to him cutting off ties with his two other brothers. He said that they were the ones who were not speaking to him, which is probably fair; for years they were not in touch with any of their sisters either. However, my father also ended up disowning every child he had over time, and multiple times if they apologized and resumed relations.

The first time he cut me off was pretty big trauma at the time, and I recognized that. Well, probably not right away at least. I mean, there was a level at which I knew it was hard, but there was also some denial where I told myself that this was easier than dealing with him, which also had some truth to it.

It took me a lot longer to figure out that at my base there was this problem where I was always feeling inferior, and somehow wrong.

Not that I would admit to being wrong easily; I did pick that up from him. It seemed like it was the most dangerous thing to do, like that's when other people move in for the kill. The penalties were so high for being wrong, that you could never admit it.

Then, over time you see that it is really obnoxious. Refusing to admit when you are wrong annoys the people who know anyway, pokes at the insecurity of others who may not be sure, and keeps you from learning and growing. Also, not admitting it does not change that you are in fact wrong. I did eventually figure that out.

Over time there were all of these things peeled back -- assumptions about what I was like and how the world worked -- and despite other factors they were largely rooted in my belief in my deficit, but I couldn't identify that until I had been through everything else. 

Getting here was good, but it was not easy.

Trauma

Before I start getting into my individual trauma, I need to deal with my reluctance to identify it as trauma.

Although you can look back historically and see instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) before the '70s, it didn't really become a studied and understood diagnosis until then, mostly because of it occurring with veterans of Vietnam.

That has been long enough that most people have kind of an idea of how it works: maybe you were in a life-threatening situation and you might still have flashbacks where it feels like you are reliving the situation and don't control that. That's a simplification, and there are really interesting things that we could go into about the different parts of the brain, and common factors in when it is likely to happen, but that basic idea is pretty well out there in the public.

In the past few years, I became aware of the term Complex PTSD, mostly because of Joss Whedon's divorce and new songs by The Killers. In both cases, the person who was suffering from Complex PTSD was doing so because their trauma was not from a single dangerous incident, but because of prolonged abuse from someone in a close relationship.

So, still oversimplifying, you might get regular PTSD from a rape, but Complex PTSD from repeated childhood sexual abuse.

It becomes messier, because this is someone you love, or are at least supposed to love, and instead of one clearly defined incident there is a continuing history. 

I remember first hearing the term and wondering if that could apply, and then thinking, no, that would be for bad abuse, and not relate to anything I had gone through.

I started changing my thinking about a year ago, when I first went to hear James S. Gordon speak about his book The Transformation. 

His point was that we all have trauma and that we all have to deal with it.

Well, sure, but some people still have it so much worse, right? I mean, any time I post about anything or start talking to people, the reminders are always there about how much worse things could have been. 

It is really easy to have impostor syndrome about your trauma.

I like that understanding of autism has moved more to thinking about a spectrum, but even thinking that it is a point on the line, where all of the points on the line are identical, does not give an accurate understanding. People are individuals.

For some people, the first time they lose a loved one is sad, and they mourn, but they move on with life and love. Some people have a harder time. That probably isn't just because of the death, but because of other relationships or other questions, but they get stuck in their grief, so it may take longer or hit harder, and they may need help to move on. 

That's just one example; we all face loss and hurt, and we can call it trauma. 

Maybe it would be more accurate to only use trauma for the things we haven't moved on from, but we don't always know right away. 

If there are patterns that played out over time instead of a singular event, it will be less obvious that you are caught up in that pattern. It's not a flashback in the sense that we understand it, but it can still take over your reactions.

Here's the thing: my earliest traumas were the ones I identified last. They affected how I saw the world and myself. When other things affected me later I could see those effects, but the earlier things were the foundation for my reactions. Because they were so early, and so entrenched in the background, I didn't even know that other reactions were possible.

If those of you reading learn things about me and feel compassion for me, great, but I have already done that for myself. That is why it is also fine if you come away thinking I have been overly fragile or dramatic.

I will probably get additional insights as I go through and blog about these things that I have already written about in journals and expressive writing sessions and things like that, and that is a great reason for doing it, and I am good.

But, if you find that some things sound familiar, and you can find ways that they make sense, and ways to understand better and release, forgive, heal, then that's even better.

So this post is for people who have trauma but don't feel worthy of admitting it.

Review retrospective: Greatest Guitar Songs

I am trying to order these chronologically, but that is rarely simple. Start and end dates are often far apart, and often my only clues to when something was happening are in the blog.

However, I know exactly when I got the idea to go over Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitar Songs: April 5th, 2012. That was the day Jim Marshall, inventor of the Marshall stack died, and they were playing songs from that list on the radio to honor him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Marshall_(businessman)

https://marshall.com/live-for-music/history/the-story-behind-the-infamous-marshall-stack 

The reason it intrigued me was that was during the time period when I was memorizing My Chemical Romance, and they did have great guitar. The New Wave music I loved in the '80s was a lot more into synthesizer, and the punk rock that I started to love later did have guitars, but often less skillfully used, compensated for by the energy and attitude. 

I was starting to realize what guitars could do.

The list was very disappointing.

https://www.stereogum.com/10114/rolling_stones_100_greatest_guitar_songs_of_all_ti/lists/ 

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/04/rolling-stones-100-greatest-guitar.html 

Delving into the comments on that was not so disappointing. 

It took a long time. Based on blog posts, I had finished the original list and decided to go through the comments in April 2012, so that was not that long. I was listening to about ten songs a day, if I recall.

I then posted an update in October, and did not finish until the following August. That had gone from 100 songs to 179 notes of songs, albums, musicians and bands, sometimes not well specified.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/10/update-on-my-musical-odyssey.html 

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-trouble-with.html

Let me also point out that I wrote nine full blog posts about the project in August; "The trouble with internet comments" was just the first.

I also created a Spotify playlist, "Guitar Sampler", which tries to build a history, but then crams in my favorite bands at the end, completely legitimately. 

I was introduced to Magazine, Gang of Four, Richard Hell, Wolfmother, and Dinosaur Jr. I gained a greater appreciation of Lindsey Buckingham, David Bowie, and Django Reinhardt. I found some gaps, which I will spend some time on next week.

For this round of songs I wanted to focus on some songs and artists that were previously unknown to me.

Obviously I did already know Run-DMC and David Bowie, but I had not known these songs, and I was glad to find them. They gave me new insights.

I am sure I had heard of Satriani, but I don't think I had heard any of his work, and a song based on comic books? Sweet!

The rest were completely new to me, and pretty good to know.

Daily songs for 1/29/21 through 2/5/21:

“Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jgrCKhxE1s

“Been There All the Time” by Dinosaur Jr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9Npbl9Qrw

“Surfing with the Alien” by Satriani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5t2kDqvoYY

“Rock Box” by Run-DMC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GND7sPNwWko

“Shot By Both Sides” by Magazine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu3R-H5on1s

“Chick Magnet” by MXPX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPcDyl6tCV8

“Jean Genie” by David Bowie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMYg_Ra4cr8

The subtle misogyny of "Smile, Sweetie! You'll look so much prettier."

Saturday night I posted my first week of selfies. 

Like clockwork, a man commented on how I look better when I smile. 

I smacked that down, even though I am confident he meant no harm. My doing so could easily be construed as rude; I mean, it's really a compliment, right? 

I shall now -- for all of the men, not just this one -- explore the issues with that exchange so that there is an internet record that can be used for quick reference on the topic. It will come up again, just as it has happened before.

(I have the strangest urge to start every segment "First of all," but they won't all really be first, so I'm going to fight it.)

There is a lot of gendered socialization that it is easy not to think about. With a little effort you can notice patterns.

If you are not a member of the dominant gender, noticing is significantly easier.

I have noticed over the years that when I disagree with a man, it annoys him a lot more than when a man disagrees with him. Pointing that out is super-offensive.

Once annoyed, if he doesn't really know me so is not constrained by politeness (more often on Twitter), he will make some criticism of my looks, most likely about me being fat. If we have common connections where the rudeness of calling me fat could draw censure (more often on Facebook), he will probably make a dismissive comment about my "little" blog.

I am big, my blog is little. Both are seemingly insults, but also factual. 

My blog serves my purposes, and I am pretty happy with it. I know how to adjust if my goals change.

I have had a harder time being happy with my body, but so much of that has been because of the stigma on how disgusting and wrong fat is. That may be cloaked in concern about health, but that paradigm ignores a lot of other things that are both bad and good for health, focusing on what is considered attractive. Then it comes up more for women, for whom it is important to be attractive for men. 

I have to reject this system; it has caused me nothing but grief. 

I know I look better when I smile. It is worth considering how painful that comment could be for someone who is insecure about her teeth, but we're going to move past that for now to some other questions:

• Why does being pretty matter?
• Why should your opinion on my prettiness matter?
  

Other things that could make me look prettier include weight loss, cosmetics, better clothes, and being able to afford getting to my hair stylist. (I trimmed my own hair in desperation two days ago, and I bought the clearance box of hair dye to save $3.)

Those all (if even possible) have costs of at least time or money; sometimes both! And yet they are expected of women, even though women get paid less for all labor and are expected to do more of the unpaid labor. Then that's not enough, because we still need to look good. 

I reject that, and there are difficulties with that rejection.  

I am currently looking for a job. My appearance will factor into how others perceive me, how much they want to hire me, and what they will pay me.

That's only one potential area of conflict. Rejecting male expectations sometimes gets me unfriended on Facebook and on Twitter sometimes I have to block. 

(I don't worry about a lot of harassment there, because like my blog my Twitter presence is small, and I escape a lot of notice. There are advantages to that, especially without a lot of resources.)

However, it becomes much more dangerous in the real world. If I get that request for a smile and smack it down at a bus stop, I could end up injured, raped, or dead. No, not all men will do it, but the ones who will are not conveniently labeled. Women  have to guess which is which. They do it all they time.

I can't change that, but I don't owe you a smile.

Here's the funny thing with the last comment: I was smiling in 6 of the 7 pictures (masked in two, but I think you can still tell). Then there was one funny face with gritted teeth. 

(This next week will be mainly funny faces too, but that was already planned; it's not a reaction.)

One of the joys of this round of #365feministselfie (my third) is that I look so much happier. The last time I did it, life was grinding me down and I hated seeing it in my face over and over again. It was a relief when that year ended.

So when I got a similar comment the last time, I was indeed looking sad.

That commenter and I had talked about a lot of things; it might not have been unreasonable for him to message me, "Hey, you look sad. Is there anything I can do?"

Of course, that would be emotional labor; that's for chicks.

In fact, the sadness wasn't anything he could have helped with, really, and he may have known that. When someone is going through a hard time, for something that is physically and emotionally exhausting, hmm, what  could be a helpful thing to say?

"I like it better when you smile."

I am so sorry that with all of the other things I have to do, I have forgotten about pleasing you.

In Kate Manne's Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, she finds (I'm paraphrasing) the essence of misogyny to be the expectation of women being at men's disposal. It's not that every woman serves every man, but she should be providing some service to some man, which definitely includes stroking and stoking the ego. 

I assume this is why when men who have been creepily hitting on a woman find out she is married, they apologize to her husband. Her discomfort doesn't matter, but encroaching on his territory does. As long as she belongs to someone, right?

This probably also explains why a Marketing professor with 344K followers is blaming the Reddit/Gamestop thing on young men not having enough sex.

https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1354532507723640835

(A lot of "incels" do get sex, by the way. They just feel that the women they are getting it with are not sufficiently hot.)

There's always a reason it's women's fault.

You may be thinking "It isn't that deep!" but you don't control the depth. That is done by the existing framework. If we accomplish enough structural change to where there is true equality that takes the pressure off of your comments, then we'll see how it feels. Maybe my security will mean I won't mind your comments, and maybe your security will allow you to give better compliments about me as a real person instead of a contestant in a beauty pageant who needs your advice.

I am lucky to be in a place now where I am okay with myself, and I don't have to manage that much danger. Usually my question is not whether it is safe to say something, but whether it is worthwhile.

If I am telling you to do better, it is because I believe that you are capable of doing so.

It's really a compliment.

Genograms

I felt I did the genogram "wrong", but I have to put that in quotes because those terms can be highly subjective. I did benefit from it, and those benefits probably make sense for the activity.

In addition, one of my results feels very important to go into before doing the next section.

I found this activity in The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma by James S. Gordon. This link is from his organization, the Center for Mind-Body Medicine:

https://cmbm.org/jordan/strength-family-past-present/

I did mine in two sessions, because I didn't want to do a bunch of graphing that first night - find paper and all of that - but I thought I could at least get down what I knew about the stories and relationships in my journal. I went back and drew all of the names and lines and things later.

The first thing that was striking was how much I knew about so many people whom I have never knew, often from people who didn't know them. There weren't even deliberate attempts to capture the stories, but just things that came out in conversations about other things. 

The example in the book included a woman who needed to end a long marriage to a prestigious man where she was going to face a lot of resistance from family. In doing her genogram she realized that she had an aunt who would support her, and started there for building up her resources.

I don't think I learned a lot about myself or my relationships from this; maybe that knowledge was already there. That is why I say I may have done it wrong.

What I received instead was more about understanding other people. 

Writing in my journal that first night, I suddenly understood the dynamics of the women in my mother's family better. They all had a tendency to worry. I noticed it more with my mother and her oldest sister, but when I mentioned it to my uncles they assured me that they were all that way. 

As I wrote about them, it became clear that was something from their mother, but that it also made perfect sense. From the death of her mother in childbirth when she was five and the effects that had on her birth family, to the loss of two children and some serious illnesses, to having a late-in-life pregnancy during a war (while one of her sisters who had married a Jewish man was hiding from the Nazis), my grandmother knew too well all of the terrible things that could and often did happen. 

That sometimes comes out in stories that are told humorously, like how she would chase owls away from the house with a broom, because if an owl cries near your house it means someone will die. I heard that and thought, Wouldn't chasing the owl make it more likely to hoot? 

(She was born in Italy in 1896 and raised by nuns after her mother died. Her being superstitious is not a shock.)

You don't have to look too far behind the laughter to find the pain, and it doesn't mean her life was only fear, but it was a real thing. Her children could laugh at it, but they also (especially her daughters) picked up some of it, much like I thought I was not a worrier until I realized that it only in comparison to my mother.

The next time, when I did the charting, my feelings centered more on my father's side. I was struck by how strong my great-grandmother had to have been. 

She had to be strong because of my great-grandfather's severe alcoholism, but I saw that in a different light too. The losses that must have fueled it it all become clear, even though none of the information was new. I just saw it differently.

(It also reinforced strong indicators that alcohol and Harris family do not mix, but that had been clear for a while.)

The overall result for all of it was stronger compassion for my family. Everything makes sense for how I turned out, but it makes sense for them too, strengths and weaknesses.

It doesn't mean that there weren't choices, including wrong and hurtful choices, but I could still offer understanding. 

This was important. It worked out well that I had done the genogram before I started the expressive writing, because a lot of anger did come out. That anger was important, and we will spend more time on it, but then it was also important that I could understand and let go.

I wanted to cover that before I start covering my trauma, because as I go into some of these choices and the impact they had on me, there does not need to be any anger on my behalf. I am better now.

It has been a journey.

Expressive Writing

Twenty-eight books have played a part on this, and I still have one on request from the library. 

There were many where I didn't think the book was that great overall, but there was still something that stuck. Then, there will be other people whom that book helped a lot, so it's very individual.

I was mostly not impressed by David Kessler's Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, but it did have a reference to expressive writing and James W. Pennebaker. That sounded like it was right up my alley. I read Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain.

Here is one pretty approachable article about the process, but you can find instructions in multiple places:

https://www.journaling.com/articles/expressive-writing-a-tool-for-transformation-with-dr-james-pennebaker-ph-d/

At its most basic level, you have multiple sessions of writing about some trauma in your life. It is free-form, unplanned writing for around 15 or 20 minutes.

In Pennebaker's experiments they had people also try writing about other things, some people talked into a tape recorder instead of writing, and they varied the length. I only remember segments of three consecutive days, but this article mentions four-day periods also. It can be very flexible.

I wanted to experiment a little bit too. My first idea was to see if there was a difference between handwriting and typing on a computer. That made a huge difference in that I can't even complete one fifteen minute session writing by hand. I scrapped that immediately and started fresh the next day.

I said it was very individual.

All of my segments were three consecutive days on the same topic, and then moving on to another topic for another three days the following week. I did that twice for three weeks in a row, but had not initially planned on doing the second round; I just came up with more material.

I did not always start on the same day, but I always kept the days consecutive. I did do both fifteen and twenty minute sessions, and did not notice a lot of difference for that. In some ways the twenty minute ones felt like more pressure, but for someone who worries about not getting everything out it could be liberating. 

I also experimented with different times of day, trying before bedtime (my usual writing time), afternoons, and in the mornings right after breakfast. After breakfast completely stressed me out because of the pressure to do other thing. There was not a big difference between afternoons and nights for me. I am sure it makes a difference to feel like you can have the uninterrupted time, varying based on your schedule.

For each week, I kept the session time, length, and method the same. Theoretically it was also always the same topic, but sometimes things come up.

The extreme adaptability is probably something that is very useful. Also, self-expression itself is quite valuable, and it gets discouraged a lot. 

One of the things that makes me feel best about recommending expressive writing is the relative safety. It's not just that it is something anyone can do on their own, but it also seems less likely to pull up things you are not ready to deal with. 

It's not that nothing comes up. Often toward the end of a session I would find myself writing something that did not seem pertinent to the topic, but there were connections and my subconscious knew it. Still, the writing is pulling from conscious thought of remembered things for limited time periods... it should be pretty gentle.

I was worried that it would not be that helpful for me because I have already written about so many of these things so much, but I wrote about them at the level that I was ready for then, and more deliberately, with a pretty clear idea of what I was going to write at those times.

The obvious question is then whether additional journal writing at this time would have gotten me to the same place, or whether just planning a time and a topic but not the words contributed something different. 

I believe the expressive writing was uniquely helpful. Following its format did give me some unexpected thoughts, and bringing those thoughts out is why I ended up having more to write about two months later.

It is also completely possible that it was a better fit for me because writing is so much a part of whom I am. The simplicity of the technique, though, seems like it should be something that can work well for many people. The results in blood pressure for the participating students by itself is enough of a reason to consider trying it.

Worth a shot.

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology/faculty/pennebak