On people crawling out of the woodwork…

Eight’s ex, Juneau, resurfaced a few days ago. They broke up a whole bunch of times, most recently in early 2023 after a series of events beginning with what we now call Kiragate and ending with his polycule splitting in half over him dumping his ex, Leigh, and refusing to pick a side in the months-long conflict between his then-partner Sol and best friend at the time, whom we will call Birch. Juneau took the contingent who had bonded with Leigh and Sol in the divorce, as it were. You can read more about that situation here. We call all of this the Great Schism of 2022-23.

He’s popped up a few times since then, but given Eight’s history with him and the fact that they would break up, get back together, and break up again over the years over a variety of things, he ended up blocked on most everything. He reached out via a comment on our old LiveJournal blog that I had honestly half forgotten about since I mostly post here these days.

He didn’t know whether I was alive or not and he wasn’t sure if I was going to even respond. I responded because the fact that he’s popped back up after all this time made me laugh. He also added me on Snapchat. I despise that app, so I ended up giving him my number.

I asked Hawthorne if he’d also reached out to them, and weirdly enough, he had.

I’m wondering what the fuck he wants…

-Allēna

Hey, everyone. This is your ever faithful guide, Lazarus, once more. I was looking through my Facebook memories from last year and Jesus Christ… the system was not okay. I believe they were nearly blackout drunk most of the time to cope with the chaos around them, stoned to fuck, or both, and were entering the thick of the recording process of our fifteenth album, Hardshell. That album was a fucking doozy.

I still have no idea what inspired a good half of those lyrics, one of the songs on the album appears to have predicted someone’s death, and the entire damn record plays like some cursed swamp blues thing where two of my former headmates that later integrated into me tried to out-blues each other the whole way down. In short, around this time last year was not fucking fun for anyone. I can’t say I’m having the best time right now, but I’m more or less rolling with the damned punches and figuring shit out and I can’t really say I’m suffering.

I want to make an important distinction here. When I say “I’m not suffering”, I don’t mean “I’m not in pain” or “shit doesn’t suck and it’s all sunshine and rainbows over here.” I’m still hurting and there’s a lot that’s still objectively bad. However, there’s still a difference between pain and suffering as I understand it as a practicing Stoic.

My ex best friend was a practicing Buddhist and we had a conversation in 2021 that changed my brain chemistry around pain and suffering. He explained it this way: “Pain is when you are hit with an arrow. The arrow can be anything that hurts you, a breakup, debt, your car breaks down, what have you. Suffering is when you shoot yourself with another arrow by resisting the existing pain in your mind by saying ‘oh woe is me, why is this happening to me, this shouldn’t be happening to me’, etc. rather than accepting with the first arrow as it is and treating the pain.”

I had a conversation with my wonderfully cranky and sarcastic therapist a few weeks ago that made me realize that I was fucking suffering rather than just dealing with the pain. I have been seeing him for three years because he is phenomenal at getting me to sit the fuck down and see some goddamn sense when I’m freaking the fuck out and well, suffering, and that was one of Those Sessions. We have a LOT of Those Sessions, and I rely on him heavily for that sort of biting, humbling realism and practical, applicable advice that makes my life far better.

This conversation was about, in essence, radical acceptance, a portion of dialectical behavioral therapy that I finally fucking understood in 2021 after I was pressganged into going into group therapy by Hera and her family after they found out I was suicidal. I did objectively want to get better and get better skills to help me improve my life, I just despised the circumstances in which I had gotten there because they weren’t of my own choosing, so I approached group with an open mind.

This group changed my life, especially the portion about radical acceptance, and eventually led me to my interest in Stoicism and ultimately led me to practice it. Radical acceptance as I understand it holds that other people and often large portions of situations are outside of your control or even your influence. All you can do is choose how you are going to respond to them. It doesn’t mean that you have to go along with everything, it just means you release the need to control everything and instead find ways to protect your peace and master yourself.

We got to talking about this because I was bitching about Emerson being further behind in his inner work than I was, and my therapist cut me off and told me that I should start to instead focus on meeting him where he was and choosing how I was going to respond to him rather than bemoaning the fact that he was so damn far behind and attempting to maintain control of every tiny detail of every situation. He cited radical acceptance as part of this conversation and I desperately needed that reminder.

This got my ass back in gear and I had a big old “remember your training” moment and started working on letting a lot of shit go that was outside of my control and getting back more into the Stoic mindset of “the only thing I can truly control is myself and how I respond to things and people”. This has helped me suffer a lot less. Cue the cinematic hero theme music, I suppose. Sometimes, like all people, I need to be told to sit the fuck down by the people I trust, and this was no exception. I struggle a lot with letting shit go, especially if I hate the aforementioned shit, so this has been a very useful exercise. I’ve missed this. I’m doing a lot better and I’m honestly proud of myself for getting this far.

Well, y’all, I have the remainder of a lunch to demolish, so I’d best wander off. Stay tuned for more magic! Enjoy your day, night, what have you.

-Lazarus

https://opensorceryy.co/would-you-still-be-here-suffering/

#Buddhism #chronicIllness #cptsd #dialecticalBehavioralTherapy #Emerson #exBestFriend #groupTherapy #healing #Hera #introspection #lettingGo #meditation #meetingPeopleWhereTheyAre #myBitinglySarcasticTherapist #onSuffering #pain #postTraumaticGrowth #ptsd #stoicism #suffering #thingsIWasPressgangedInto #vitaminB100Experiment

Hey, everyone! This is Ellie. I hope you all are having a great night. I found this great post on Threads about how people can betray you and drop you when you become disabled. However, I feel the post stands pretty well on its own, so I don’t want to give my two cents on the post directly. Instead, I want to talk about the concept of self betrayal within the context of disability and how important firing ourselves from time to time is and that we live slowly and let others handle things.

So What Even Is “Firing Yourself”? How And When Do You All Do It?

My fellow super-admin, Eight, first heard the term “firing yourself” from his former best friend who’d heard it from a mentor of his. Essentially, firing yourself is when you recognize you need to step back from a project for whatever reason and turn it over to someone else who’s in a better position to take it on. You can fire yourself for any number of reasons – you’re sick, you’re in pain, you’re tired, you’ve got too many things on your plate, you simply need a vacation, you may know someone more qualified and less busy than you. It takes a great deal of self awareness, yet it’s essential for avoiding burnout and can help you build deeper connections with the people you love by achieving something together rather than carrying it all on your own. Their perspective can help make projects richer and get them completed much faster than if you’d done it on your own.

Firing Ourselves From Hyperindependence

Now, we are tragically hyper independent. We actively enjoy doing as much as we can on our own and enjoy staying busy and juggling as much as we can. We call the dopamine hit we get from completing a challenging, complicated project “work emotion”. However, we are very disabled in a number of areas, and have a tendency to push the body and mind far too hard in the pursuit of achieving our goals on our own. We also tend to not ask for help until we are absolutely certain we will not be able to complete what needs to get done in time on our own or if we’ve found ourselves in such a goddamned pickle we’ll never get out of it on our own. This got better after we learned about the concept of firing ourselves, but it is still a struggle.

Our Non-Negotiable Boundaries With Ourselves

That being said, we reliably fire ourselves from a few things. If we are tired enough that a few puffs of nicotine or a bit of caffeine won’t perk us up, it’s bedtime, do not pass go. Unless someone is dying or there is some other emergency, we are firing ourselves from consciousness until the body feels replenished. If there’s a task that needs to be done immediately, we ask for help, secure a willing party to take care of it, and then pass out.

Second, if whomever is in front feels like they will scream at the next person who speaks to or messages them, the system is out of social energy and needs to fire themself from socializing and be alone for a bit until they want to socialize again. Hell, I fired myself from social time with Emerson to write this post and chill out a bit because while I love him, I needed some space to get my thoughts together and catch up on some work. We’ve spent most of the day together and even did some great brainstorming for future collaborative projects! By gently firing ourselves from social time when we need it, we are giving him the space to learn how to define himself as an individual within our marriage and work on his own brilliant endeavors, something he’s never learned how to do.

Third, if the body is in pain, we are firing ourselves from whatever we are doing that is causing the pain, relieving the pain, and taking a break. We don’t push ourselves physically to the point of physical pain or injury unless it it absolutely necessary, like fucking life and death.

Fourth and finally, if someone is better equipped than we are to handle something than we are in that moment, we fire ourselves from that project and give it to them if they’re willing to handle it. For example, Emerson does most of the cooking for the both of us. We can cook and cook really damn well, it simply takes everything out of us to do. Emerson loves to cook, and it energizes him to cook for the people he loves. So he handles the lion’s share of the cooking and meal planning here.

These are hard boundaries we have with ourselves, and everyone who knows us knows they cross them at their peril. We communicate all of them with everyone we talk to regularly. These boundaries come after two decades and then some of repeated self betrayal and attempts to ignore our disabilities and exist to prevent further harm and self sabotage from ever happening again. Viewing the above as non negotiables have massively improved our quality of life.

It’s Taken Years Of Practice To Make Firing Ourselves Look This Easy

What we’re doing may look easy to an observer, but it kills us inside to fire ourselves and involve other people in anything we do. It’s taken a lot of healing to even ask Emerson for help with fuckall! It’s absolutely a practice and you can bet your ass it’s taken years and a fuckload of self awareness. We have to face years of internalized shame, guilt, and terror daily to do this.

So if you’re disabled like us and are learning how to take it easy, fire yourself, and set boundaries, and you’re fucking terrified, please rest assured that you’re not alone. Your friends and partner(s) who genuinely care about you want to help, and they don’t think you’re a burden for asking for support and reassurances. A burden is something a person takes on unwillingly. Your people chose you. Therefore, you are not a burden to your people. And let me let you in on a little secret from psychology: asking for help actually helps people feel closer to you rather than pushing them away. So mind your boundaries, but keep working toward firing yourself and letting your people in! We’ll do the same.

Much love, and as always, stay tuned for more magic!

Your faithful super-admin, Ellie

https://opensorceryy.co/firing-ourselves/

#askingForHelp #boundaries #chronicFatigue #Emerson #exBestFriend #firingOurselves #hyperIndependence #socializingAsADisabledPerson