Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Family

Why the holidays are so fraught

I have hated most holidays all my life. The only holiday I liked was Halloween, and it’s because black is a featured color. Plus, you can dress up in a costume as an adult and it’s not weird. That’s pretty cool. I did a bait-and-switch yesterday in that I was gonig to talk about holidays, but then ended up talking about bigots. I think it’s pretty clear how I got from one to the other because holidays are when bigots seem unavoidable. Or rather, when people feel pressured to spend time with faaaaaaamily.

I’m not saying bigots and family are the same thing. I am saying that they are often the same thing. I’m also saying it’s when you see the bigots in your family if you have to see them at all. This is one reason I don’t like tradition for the sake of tradition–it makes you do things you don’t want to do and it makes you the problem if you don’t.  I mean, this is a problem with family, too, so it’s no surprise that when you put the two together, it just makes everything worse.

I think one of my issues with holidays/traditions is that they become so hardened over time. And they harken back to a time that people romanticize, but were not better for the majority of people. Any time people talk about the good old days, all I hear is “we don’t like diversity” or “we don’t realize that not everyone is like us”. It’s not surprising that most people who mourn for the good old days are white people. In America, I mean. Anyone being wistful for the sixties and is still alive to talk about it is most likely not a PoC or a queer person. Or, quite frankly, a woman.

Especially in this year, I have no tolerance for this bullshit. It disheartens me that I have to reiterate what I wrote about more than ten years ago when marriage equality was being debated. If someone does not believe that I deserve the same human rights as straight people, we cannot be friends. There is just no debating this.

I hate the framing of ‘this is just politics’. It’s not just politics. The political is, as the saying go, personal. If it didn’t have any impact in the real world, then we wouldn’t care about voting at all. (Not going to get into voting right now; I’m just not.) If it didn’t matter, there wouldn’t have been the Capitol attack. Only people who aren’t disadvantaged would say that politics don’t matter.

I don’t like having hate in my heart, but it’s where I am right now. I am old. I am tired. I went through hell with my medical crisis back in 2021–well, kind of. Not going to expand on that, either. This year has been a really shitty year. A very shitty year. I don’t want to talk about that, either, but it’s been such a downer of a year.


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Have a holly, jolly–oh stop it

I’m in a pensive mood. Not just because of the holidays, but just because of gestures at the world all around. There are people who believe that voting for that man is ‘just politics’ and why would someone end a friendship/family relationship over ‘just politics’? And why are we (those on the left) being soooooooooooooo intolerant? Aren’t we being just as bad/hypocritical/intolerant?!?

In a word: no. In two words: hell fucking no. Ok, that was three, but you know what I mean.

There’s a theory called the Paradox of Tolerance that was coined by Karl Popper in 1945. It’s enjoyed a resurgence in the past several years, probably because of the thing that I want to talk about. Basically, the theory goes that if a society is tolerant of the intolerant, then it erodes the very tolerance it wants to espouse. This is a very gross generalization of the theory, but it’s good enough for my purpose.

Whether someone likes pizza with pineapple or not is a personal opinion. I don’t care if someone likes the same musical groups I do, for another example. Hell. What someone wants or doesn’t want to do in the bedroom is fine by me! (As long as it’s consensual, obviously.) Whether or not someone thinks I am a human being who should be allowed to exist? Yeah, no. That’s not a matter of opinion or something I need to entertain.

That’s the devious part of the whole conversation and has been for as long as I have followed politics. Or rather, the disgusting part. This happened during the debates for marriage equality, too. The bigots were all, “Can’t we be civil about this?” Nope. I am not civil with people who believe I am less of a human being than they are. Also, I resent the narrative that the people who are being oppressed need to present their side in a perfectly calm and, let’s face it, servile manner or be viewed as uncivil. This is the whole ‘tone police’ argument, by the way. “Oh, if you only present your case in an agreeable enough way (i.e., supplicating), then maaaaaaaaaybe we would deign to listen to it.

Again. Fuck that noise. If someone wants to do the work of trying to win over the bigots–more power to them. BLah blah blah win them over to your side whatever the fuck. I ain’t got time for that shit, and I have no patience for begging people to grant me my humanity. Accept me or don’t, but I am not going to try to win anyone over.


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More thoughts on NaNoWriMo

I probably have brain damage. I want to state that outright because I think it has had an impact on how I write. Or not. I’ll get more into that, obviously. In yesterday’s post, I talked a bit about how I write. I don’t do what is commonly thought of as the right way to write. I don’t do it the first thing in the morning. I don’t do an outline (except in my head). I write a lot of garbage. That’s normal, but I write more of it because I’m so prolific. I edit as I go, which is a no-no as well.

This is the story of my life. I don’t do what I’m supposed to do just because I’m supposed to do it. It’s why I don’t identify as a woman any longer. It’s why I give a side eye to ‘but tradition’ or ‘but faaaaamily’. I have never understood why I should accept something is good just because society declares it as good. This is doubly so because as a minority, I have had to endure so many different kinds of isms across my life.

I am a weirdo, yes. This has put me on the fringe of society all my life. This has caused me no end of heartache, but it’s also been a strength. I have a bad tendency of being a people-pleaser–except when it comes to my writing. I mean, I do self-edit, but when it comes to how I write and the things I write about, I just don’t give a shit. I know that there is no way I can write about something that will have mass appeal. I just don’t have that in me. I am not a mass appeal person.  When I allow even a sliver of the real me to slip through, I get in trouble. I don’t like most of all pop culture, and I’ve learned to keep that opinion to myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to say I like Star Wars, for example. I don’t. I saw the first movie when I was eight or nine and absolutely hated it. I cannot tell you why, but I loathed it with every fiber of my being. I have seen the second movie (I’m talking the original trilogy), which I did not like either. That was the last Star Wars movie I’ve seen–oh, except for the horrid Christmas movie that Lucas tries to pretend never existed. I have no interest in the series, and I’m gobsmacked how fans just gobble down any shit Disney throws their way.


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NaNoWriMo in full effect

It’s the first day of November, and I started my NaNoWriMo project at midnight last night. Well, technically, I started before that, but since I did not record my first 2,000+ words until after midnight. It’s totally legit, shut up. I began with a little brainstorming, and I will do more of that throughout the month.

I decided to start with the mystery, Here’s the thing, though. Because it’s set in the hospital, it could be the start of the memoir as well with a few tweaks. Which then makes me think, why not combine both?

Here’s the thing with the memoir. I am not and never going to write a classic memoir because it’s not the way I roll. Plus, as I mentioned before, my life isn’t nearly interesting enough for that. In addition, my brain will not settle down enough to write anything in a straightforward, sequential way. Believe me, I have tried. Several times. I start out a piece telling myself sternly that I am going to write something that starts at Point A, goes directly to Point B, and does not stop at Point C or Point -Z in-between.

I can Start at Point A and be absolutely determined to go right to Point B without turning my head–hey, what’s that over there? Why, it’s Point C!

Believe me, it’s much better for me to be honest with myself. I can sit here and say that I’ll be sequential and tell everything in a nice, neat fashion–and it would be a bald-faced lie. I know it’s not true. I know that I’m messy and bendy and I will always prcefer footnotes over the main story. I have footnoted a footnote before, and I will do it again. Don’t think I won’t.

Here’s the thing about my project. I decided I wanted to do two separate things (a memoir and a murder mystery (sort of)), but now I’m thinking of smashing it together. But would that be possible or even wise?

Side note: I just Googled fictionalized memoir. There are some very strong feelings about this, but there is also a term for it–autofiction. Which, I’m not thrilled about, I don’t mind saying. Why? Because it sounds like I’m writing about a car. Which I’m not. Most emphatically not. Anyway, some people have Very Strong Feelings about fictionalized memoirs, meaning they are very against it. It’s not true to the feelings and the blah-di-blah blah blah. Or rather, it’s not being truthful, which is sacred in memoirs.

Which, come on. No one’s memory is 100% perfect, plus we all have our biases. It’s folly to think that a memoir would be 100% accurate or even 75%. If I were to go the route of writing a fictionalized memoir, I would be honest that it’s not completely real. It’s more about the vibes and the feelings. And me jsut musing about whatever I want to muse about.

This is how I am about, well, everything, really. I use something until it’s no longer useful to me (like a label). Then I let it go and move onto something else. Is this a part of my neurodivergent brain? Maybe? I’m not sure because I’ve never been any different. I don’t like labels (but not in the ‘no labels’ way), but I acknowledge that they’re useful as heuristics.


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NaNoWriMo down to the wire

It’s Halloween, and we have snow. That is not what i’m here to talk about, but I’m excited about it, nonetheless. We were supposed to get a mix of rain/snow overnight, which morphed into 2-4 inches of snow (up to six inches for outer MN). I woke up to nothing, but then the heavy fat flakes started falling. I’d say there’s nearly an inch on the ground. Who knows how long it’ll last? I don’t really care; I’m just happy to have snow at all. It’s been weird, though, the weather, I mean. In the last week or so, it’s been 80 by day and 40 by night. I am not a fan of the wild weather swings and neither is my body.

But snow? I am a fan of that! I love snow. We had a huge blizzard on Halloween back in 1991. I was at college, on campus, and everything was shutdown. Our profs in Minneapolis could not make it down. We got over 2 feet of snow, and it was glorious. We’re not going to get anything close to that today/tonight, but any hint of snow pleases me.

I do feel for the kids trick or treating tonight. It does add to the vibes, but it’s probably not much fun to walk around in the snow. However, I don’t feel sorry enough to turn on the lights and hand out candy. Granted, it’s partly because I don’t have candy, but it’s mostly because I don’t like doing that.

I’m sitting in my house with the lights off and waiting for the night to end. It’s already dark at six-thirty, so the festivities are probably pretty much over. I did hear a bunch of kids about ten minutes ago so there’s that.

In yesterday’s post, I meandered all over, per usual. I talked about what I wanted to write for NaNoWriMo, kind of. It’s coming down to crunch time and I’m setting my goals as basic this year. 50,000 words. No creativity in that area because I have not written fiction for quite some time. I can do 2,000 words a day–or at least, I could before. Let’s see if I can do it again. My perfect writing time is around midnight, so that lines up as well. Meaning I can start at midnight and hopefully be done about three weeks in.

Now. Have I decided if I’m going to write the mystery (one book of the trilogy) or the memoir? Yes, I have, and the answer is yes. Yes to which? Both.


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Gender on my mind redux

Still thinking about gender. I wish I could quit it, but I just can’t. In the last post, I ended by saying that I didn’t know what feeling like a woman meant. I wasn’t being snarky because I really don’t know. I probed my insides quite thoroughly and came up with nothing. Again, I am not railing against being a woman because I don’t feel my body is wrong–at least not for the so-called lady bits. Yes, I hated it for other reasnos, but nothing to do with the perceived gender of it.

Or rather, not for the reason of gender itself. What I mean is that I got flack for being a woman. A lot of it. Very different from men than from women, but it was definitely based on me being perceived as a woman.

In tandem with this, I struggle with the ‘cool girl’ syndrome and if it’s always as toxic as people say it is. If the woman who is  saying, “I’m not like other women.” and “I just don’t get along with any women.” is also saying, “Women are so full of drama!” and “Women are the worst”, then, yes, it’s ‘cool girl’ syndrome.

However. There are women or AFAB (like me) who aren’t very feminine at all. Bull dykes are a thing (even if they no longer go by that. That’s what they called themselves in my heyday), which is not what I am. I just read up on stone butches and stone femmes, and I don’t fit into those categories, either.

Here’s the thing. I n general, I don’t care about categories. I do have a type when it comes to physical looks that I find attractive (kd lang, Alan Rickman (first as Snape and then as himself), and my new favorite, Erika Ishii). Dark hair, androgynous, and wicked smart/into social justice. I have not dated many people with that look, though.

I know how this is going to sound, but I’m going to say it, anyway. I really don’t understand…hm. I don’t know exactly how to say this. Let me muse it out. As I mentioned, I do have a type, but it’s not hard and fast. I am attracted to someone for many different reasons, some of them more healthy than the others. Looks are but one, though, and probably low on the list of traits that I really care about.

That’s not the controversial thing. That comes when we’re talking about sex. I know we weren’t, but I’m going to, anyway. When I was looking up stone butch, I was shocked to read that the definition definitely meant that they did not receive sexual pleasure on their genitalia from their partners. Ever. And a stone femme (which I didn’t know even was a term) does not give sexual pleasure.


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Nanowhatmo? Part four

I’m back at it again to explore more about what I want from my writing. Specifically, if I want to do NaNoWriMo and if so, what I’ll do for it. In the past, writing 50,000 words in a month was not a problem. I made a personal goal to write 2,000 words a day, which I did mostly with ease.

Yesterday I wrote about reality versus what I thought was reality when I was on very heavy drugs. I was 100% convinced that what I experienced was real. My brother asked me months later about one thing I had rambled about whilst heavily drugged. He asked if it had actually happened, and I immediately said no. I had Googled it after I got out of the hospital and found no mention of it. I would have if what I thought happened had really happened.

Once the drugs had cleared my system, I realized that most of what I thought had happened could not have/did not happen. I read up on it and realized that hopsital psychosis (and delusions) was a thing. I didn’t have any truly traumatic delusions, thankfully, but it was such a wild ride. I thought everyone taking care of me weer PoC, which was really nice. In reality, there wasn’t anyone of color on my team (according to my brother and the pictures I saw of the staff a year later).

I want to talk about it because it’s had a deep and lasting impact on me. To put it plainly, I have a week missing from my memory and a week of memories that are a complete lie. Delusions, almost all of them. Well, roughly 90% of them. Let me say not remembering a week is a trip in and of itself. Actually, it’s more like a week-and-a-half. The memory wipe was retroactive and took away a half week leading up to my hospitalization. My heart doc said this was normal and he told me about one of his patients who was on vacation when he had a suddent cardiac arrest. He could not remember any of the vacation leading up to the cardiac arrest.

I remmeber on Tuesday emailing my Taiji teacher to let her know I was not attending the Zoom class that evening. I remember  messaging Ian Thursday morning to talk about Nioh 2 (which we were both playing). That’s it for that week. I had my medical crisis at 3 in the morning Friday night/Saturday morning and have no memory of it. At all. When my brother told me what happened, I was astonished because I had not a whisper of a memory of it happening.

I stayed in a coma until Thursday. My brother set up a CaringBridge journal while I was in the hospital and he noted at a quarter to seven in the evening that just as he was walking to the car to drive to the hospital to see me, the doctor called him to tell him that I had woken up.


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Nanowhatmo? Part three

I have more to say about NaNoWriMo and what I hope to accomplish with it. In yesterday’s post, I talked about my time in the hospital. In part because I wanted to talk about it, but also because I want to write about it. I have toyed with the idea of writing a memoir since my medical crisis.

Side note: In the RKG Discord, there was a spirited debate about whether déjà rêvé was real or not. I did not know what it was when “C” brought it up so I Googled. It’s similar to déjà vu in that it’s the feeling that what you’re experiencing is something you’ve dreamed before. C talked about how he’d experienced it all his life, and a few people immediately dismissed it as not possible and bunk. One in particular, “D” was quite rude about it as was her wont.

I see this happen so often. If someone can’t imagine something, then it can’t be true. I am the opposite because I am so deep in the weeds of being weird, I constantly have to accept that my lived truth is not everyone else’s. I mentioned this about empathy a few posts ago, by the way. People really, really, really don’t like any hint that they are not as empathetic and/or intelligent as other people.

In this case, I easily accepted what C said because I had similar things happen to me. Not in terms of dreaming, but because there are times I can predict what is going to happen. I don’t talk about it because I have nothing to back it up (though my mother firmly believed I could make things happen because I would call them out before they happened.

C made it clear that he would dream things and then they would happen later. D kept saying it wasn’t possible. Someone else insinuated that he (C) just thought it was happening. The way D was so absolute about her belief that it just could not possibly be true was fascinating when viewed from a distance. I know it’s not unusual, but I rarely see it in such a discrete/concrete fashion.

The reason I’m pointing this out is that what happened to me is not possible, either, apparently. Or at least I cannot find someone else it’s happened to. When I tell medical people what happened to me, I inevitably hear that I’m a miracle.

Here’s an example. After I left the hospital, I had a nurse come once a week to check up on me. One time, the nurse could not get the system they use to work. She asked me what happened to me, and I gave her the quick summary (walking non-COVID-related pneumonia, two sudden cardiac arrests, and a stroke). She typed it all in and then went on with the checklist. She quickly read out the symptoms/situations and said no, no, no, and then said heart surgery, yes. I was half-listening, but sat up when I heard that. I said I hadn’t had heart surgery, and she made me repeat that. I said I did not have heart surgery; I just had an angiogram (which turned out fine).


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Nanowhatmo? Part two

I want to write more. I know that’s a very generic and broad statement to make, but it’s where I’m at right now.  I write my one post a day for this blog, but I have given up on my fiction writing completely.I am so frustrated that it’s not as effortless as it used to be. I did try for NaNoWriMo not last year but the year before. I got the 50,000 words done, but it just did not go where I wanted it to go.

I have a fairly detailed idea for a trilogy that I shaped and remodeled in the past few years. Every time I try to write it, though, it just comes out flat. When I write something good, the words sparkle and almost jump off the page. I like to say that I am not creating the stories, but am merely the conduit that allows the stories to flow.

In the last post, I wrote about the dysfunction in my family. How is that related to my writing? Well, if I want to write my memoir (which is one of my ideas), I have to delve into my family dysfunction because otherwise, the reader will not have the right context for when I talk about my medical crisis.

I firmly believe that things are interconnected. What happened to me in my childhood has an effect on how I reacted to my medical crisis. I don’t think this is controversial, but not everyone agrees with me. Or rather, not everyone sees it.

Side note: I just had a really big reminder in the RKG Discord as to how ‘normal’ people are really not into the idea that maybe someone else can have an experience that is outside what they believe is possible. And it reminded me that as accepting and welcoming as the community is in certain ways, in otther ways, they are just as limited as society in general. It’s one reason I rarely talk about my medical crisis to the gen pop. It sounds ludicrous when I say it out loud or type it out.

I am literally the only person I know who has gone through what I did. You know how people say that no one is unique (with individual experiences)? Well, it’s not true. I did so much research, and I could not find anyone else like me. I can’t tell you how many medical people have called me a miracle. In fact, when I was in the hospital, it was the first thing most people I ran into said when they heard my whole story.


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Nanowhatmo?

I have done NaNoWriMo every year for over a decade. Except maybe 2021. I don’t think I did it that year, but I have a handy excuse*. That was a month-and-a-half after I got home from the hospital from a life-threatening medical situation. I think I can be excused for missing that year. I tried the next two years, but could not get the fiction to gel. I have all these great ideas, but the execution is not so good.

I want to emphasize that I consider it a fair trade-off for still being alive. I would like to be able to get back to fiction one day, but if I can’t, well, I can’t. (I will. I just have to find my way back to it.) Fortunately, I’ve been able to write posts with no problem. I have several ideas for posts in my head at all times. I do have ideas for what  Iwant to write, fiction-wise. I just can’t get it from idea to written words.

If I do NaNoWriMo this year, I think I might actually use it to get back on track. In the past years, I did not need the 50,000 word count because I wrote 2,000 words of fiction a day. I haven’t been able to do that in the last year or two. I know it’s because of the medical crisis, which is why I’m not beating myself up over it.

But.

However.

I would like to be able to write fiction again. I have an idea for a trilogy (I always do trilogies), and I think I want to tackle that for NaNoWriMo. However, I want to start with the second book. Or rather, the second story chronologically. I’m not sure that will work, though, because all the pieces need to be set up before I can jump into a story proper. In that case, it would make more sense to start with the first book, but that’s not what I want to do.

I wonder if I could write a novella as the intro, jump to the second book, then go back to the first. Oh, this would be a mystery trilogy, by the way. That’s what I used to write before my medical crisis. I also wrote standalones, but I preferred to write trilogies. Only trilogies because I have the belief that series should not be longer than seven, whether it’s TV, movies, games, or books.

But I digress.

I have two discrete ideas for NaNoWriMo. By the way, that is one of my linguistic pet peeves–mistaking discrete and discreet. Usually people using discrete when they mean discreet.


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