It’s hard to express how alienating it can be to be on the fringes at times. Hm. That wasn’t very clear. I am on the fringe in many ways. It’s difficult to tell ‘normies’ how tiring this can be on the daily. This is the basis of privilege, I know, but I’m trying to take it down to the granular level rather than looking at it from a macro point of view. I’m not talking about the biggies–racism, sexism, queerphobia, classism, etc. I’m talking about in the little ways. Here are things that are espoused by society {and/or dearly beloved by many) that I will confess I can’t stand. There may be ten; there may not. I’ll go until I’m done.
1. Traveling. Let me say this straight out. I hate traveling. I hate everything about it. I’m talking about the literal traveling because I have so many issues, it’s really difficult for me to be in a place other than my own home. Let’s start with motion sickness. I get it. Bad. In cars and on planes. Not in trains, oddly enough, but I rarely travel by train, anyway. I can use ginger to mitigate it, but it’s not pleasant. I used to do Dramamine for plane travel, which was even worse.
In addition, I hate heat. A lot. I’m very sensitive to it and walking in anything over 70 F degrees will leave me angry and exhausted. When I was in Malta with no AC and a fan that just moved the hot air around–in the summer, no less–it was not good times. I am my worst self in the heat and it’s not pretty. This is not a delicate snowflake situation (I love snowflakes) in which I’m just whining about how much I hate it; heat enervates me to the point of–it’s like a battery being drained. It’s not a matter of toughing it out–it’s actually dangerous to me. The fact that so many people want to pooh-pooh that is frustrating.
Add to that the fact that I have allergies. So. Many. Allergies. I’m allergic to almost everything outside–and I’ll get to that later–so going to a new place means dealing with new allergens. I have never had allergies as bad as when I lived in the Bay Area for a year. That’s when I gave up on (hard) contacts–my eyes were constantly irritated. I also have food sensitivities that makes it difficult for me to eat. Gluten-free can be found. Dairy-free can be found. Gluten-free/dairy-free is not as easy. There are more vegan/gf products, thankfully, but other countries around the world are not aware of these issues (or don’t care). One pleasant surprise at the monastery in Malta was that they had plant-based milk and gluten-free bread, the same brand I really like (Schar), so at least I had something to eat. The one day I decided to say to hell with it and eat the cheese pasta….that was a bad decision.
Then there’s sleep. I can only sleep under very specific circumstances. Some of them are psychological in reason; some are environmental; some are physical. Right now, I sleep on the couch with a cooling weighted blanket and a personal fan blowing 24/7. I wear an eye mask (can’t find one that actually stays on my face) and earplugs. I get maybe six hours of sleep a night on a good day and I haven’t had many of those lately.
Side Note: One way I can tell that I’m getting sick is when I sleep for more than seven hours. It’s possibly the only benefit of being sick.
I want to go to different places and meet different people, but my meat body keeps getting in the way. I get tired easily so I can’t go to a place for more than a few hours if there’s walking involved. It’s really frustrating.
2. Nature. I just shudder thinking about it. I have outlined in the point above several reasons why I hate nature. I think I come by the hatred honestly because nature is trying to kill me. Always. Let me expand on my allergies. I am allergic to just about every plant in the great outdoors. I like to joke that I’m allergic to the air itself, but it’s not really a joke. Throw in skeeters, other fuzzy creatures, and just about everything else, and maybe you can understand why I detest leaving the comfort of my house. It’s beyond frustrating to hear people push the positives of going outside without pausing to think of those of us who simply cannot.
3. Exercise. For so many years of my life, I was informed of how important exercise was to one’s health. I am not arguing this, by the way. I know that moving is good for you. However, the part that irritates me is how people will rhapsodize about the runner’s high or the exhilaration you’ll experience while participating. For decades, I grimly exercised, hating every minute of it. The only exercise I liked was dancing with weight-lifting being tolerable. Walking/running? I haaaaaaaaaaaated it. HATED. I loathed most aerobic exercise and never understood how people could say that they loved it.
As anyone who knows me knows, I’m a big fan of taiji (tai chi). Even so, I detested the solo stuff for so many years. It was only when my teacher forced a wooden sword into my hand that I began to see a glimmer of what everyone else was always nattering on about when it came to exercising. The Medium Solo Form was more my style than the Long Solo Form because it focuses on the martial arts applications, but I still do not care for the Long Solo Form. I don’t hate it any longer, but I will never choose to do it willingly.
It was only when I picked up the double sabers that I finally understood that whole ‘you’ll feel alive’ bullshit that people kept spewing about exercise in general. My heart fills with joys as I moved them in the air with music flowing in the background (combining my love of dance with my love of bladed weapons). It’s all I want to do and if my body could tolerate it, I’d do it endlessly. As it is, the ten to fifteen minutes a day I can spend on it are by far the best. I feel free as I do the Double Sabre Form and it’s what finally makes me understand that exercise is not a four-letter word.
4. Romcoms. Let me just say I don’t like sitcoms in general and I realized why after reading a thread on Ask A Manager. It was on bad managers on TV and people in the comments said that you couldn’t have normal people in sitcoms because it wouldn’t be funny. They had to be over-the-top and that’s when it hit me. I hate larger-than-life people for many reasons and sitcoms turn that up to a hundred. There is very little emotional development on sitcoms and all the negative traits are magnified.
Romcoms are significantly worse because they rely heavily on stereotypes of men and women. I will fully admit that I haven’t seen many because the premise of them make me cringe. Hard. I remember that Love, Actually was raved about from so many women. I watched it after I fell for Alan Rickman (always. Sigh). All I knew about it was that it was little vignettes about several different couples, had a five-star cast, and it was supposed to be so funny.
It was horrible. I grant the stellar cast, but it was so misogynistic and grotesque, I was actually stunned about how many women gushed about it. Oh, it was racist, too. And just dreadful in general. The Alan Rickman/Emma Thompson part of the movie was the best by far, but they weren’t in the movie nearly enough to make it worth watching. I had a similar reaction to Titanic and a movie about a French courtesan who ‘fell in love’ with one of her customers. My ex was swooning about how it was the most romantic love story ever and I said to him, “Of course it’s romantic! She doesn’t have to pick up his gross underwear from the floor, mop up his messes all over the place, or listening to the same three stories ten times a day. Plus, that’s her goddamn job!” He was not happy with me, but I could not get over the bullshit premise.
Side Note II: This same ex dumped me after he practically forced me to watch Pulp Fiction (many years after it was released), his favorite movie, and then asked what I thought of it. Twenty minutes later, he said he couldn’t be with someone with that world view and dumped me. We tried to stay friends, but that didn’t work, either. See above movies for evidence as to a big reason why.
I have more, but this is running long so I’ll leave it here. More later. Maybe.