Be the change you want to see.

the prompt for day 9 is "Spider Baby" but I looked that up on Wikipedia and reading the entry is plenty enough horror/scary for me. So from me, you get Spider instead, today.

Spider:
I know you,
I know how you move.
That skitter-pause, skitter-pause
Or the swoop-swoop-swoop of the daddy-longlegs.
*
Spider, I know you.
Your webs are annoying
and also beautiful.
Deadly, and a reminder
of how life has rhythms of birth and death,
of feeding and being consumed.
*
You are tiny. Usually.
Why do folks fear you so?
What makes the shudder go down their spines?
*
I mean no shame
to those with a full blown fear
but I trained myself to be kind
when my mother mentioned you eat mosquitoes.
(because MOSQUITOES, ugh)
*
I use the cup and paper to relocate you
I deal with your incursions in my house
and I roll my eyes at the giant fake spiderwebs for Halloween.
*
I am not afraid of you. <3

This weekend Jeff is travelling with our gf Jenn. So not to feel lonely, I set myself up with a lot of social things, in multiple cases things I'd never done before.

Friday night I went to Renee's birthday party.
Saturday I went to a Halloween party that Amy and Bill and Kimberly were invited to, and they included me.
Sunday I went with Luisa to a Sikh temple for what I thought at the start was a Diwali celebration but upon reflection, may have been a regular Sunday service.

I could unpack and tell stories about each of those days, but this morning when I woke up I realized there were two specific things I wanted to write about.

one is: three straight days with extroverting.
two is: two straight days with going out around new people while dressing high femme. Even did makeup and hair. wow

yeaaaaaah. that was kind of a lot of effort, you know? Both those things.

I have tried to convince myself for literally YEARS that I'm an extrovert. I'm actually coming to realize that I'm almost certainly an introvert EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that my default mode when I "introvert" is to HERMIT.
and then I don't see people, I don't touch or get touched, I get depressed, and it sucks.

maybe I just suck at the introverting. Today's a kinda gross brainweasel kinda day already, I'm working on managing my pain and getting some food so I can brain better, and I still have to take my morning meds.

maybe I don't suck at the introverting, but there's something else going on there.
but I'm pretty sure I do suck at the introverting.

also, though, i seem to have hard anxiety at the extroverting. GAH
or maybe it's just that I did three days of being around People I Don't Know and that's stressful.
*sigh*

okay, now it's time to take a moment about the femme thing.
I've been tending to dress butch for several years now. Jeff never expressed that he cared about how I dressed except to say that he didn't really like women wearing makeup and that he didn't do well with lots of perfume. So for several years I dressed practically. I didn't have any kind of expected or cultural dress code to meet, not since graduating waldorf in 2011, so I've been wearing a lot of jeans, cargo shorts, nerdy tee shirts, sandals, and or boots.

this year I decided I was going to try and reclaim some of the femme I used to *think* I knew how to do.

yeaaaaaah.

Briefly, dressing butch /feels/ like blending in, dressing femme /feels/ like "look at me, look at me!" and I have anxiety over being seen. I don't feel like I know how to handle it when I am /seen/.

when i was a kid i was humongous levels of anxious (I was going to say "ridiculous levels of anxious" but this shit ain't ridiculous it's fuckin' SAD because I didn't have any safe place or people growing up. I couldn't even trust my parents). I used to pretend I had some means of being invisible. Because if I couldn't be safe with people, maybe I could make them leave me alone.

I can trust and relax around small groups of people. five or six seems to be the maximum.

Eye contact is hard except when either I don't care or it's low emotional stakes, like with a waiter or a clerk in a store, or when I really trust someone.

I don't know if that makes me odd, "normal" or just me.

I feel a little better just introducing this topic here (these topics? is flavors of anxiety a single topic or a multiple topic?) and also incidentally finally getting my breakfast and caffeine an hour or more after waking.

self care yay!

body still hurts, going to see what I can do about that. I feel like a tightly wound spring, if a tightly wound spring could still have healing soft tissue damage post RSI and post broken bones. UGH

i'm fuckin ridiculous.

I check over the controls of the diving bell yet one more time. Usually I would laugh about how "OCD" I am about checking, double and triple-checking my instruments, but diving to 600 feet is serious business, not something to be at all casual about. I will make no apologies, even in the recesses of my own (admittedly geeky and neurotic) mind.

This is definitely the deepest I've ever been, and I'm an accomplished diver. But it's only the second time I've been down in a diving bell and the first time I've soloed.

Thank God for Mark, up on the surface. Mark's as reliable as the day is long, and knows these seas as well as anyone his age possibly could. He's grown up diving and fishing out here his whole life. Out of a huge family of divers and fishermen, he's the first one of his family to finish college and start working as a marine biologist. I'm so glad we got partnered up by the Institute.

The bell descends further. I'm past 150 feet now, and breathing a little heavier. Vision's slightly blurry. I check my glasses against the fine print on the dials, the bifocals are much more effective. My ears won't pop from the pressure and it is affecting my hearing. I toggle the communications switch, and hear Mark saying something garbled, something about the controls?

I clear my throat. “Philip here. All seals working well. Still having trouble hearing your transmissions. Over.”

More dull crackling noise from the comms. I shake my head. We continue the slow descent and I keep making detailed notes in the paper logs so we can compare with the films and tapes for reference later. Sonar shows some schools of fish, and some interesting large silhouettes at the edge of instrument range. I scan the camera banks in between passes over the dials and displays to make sure everything's okay. Sudden flashback to driver's training, and chuckling, I remember how I aced the driving test. This is nothing like that, of course, a diving bell is both more complicated and more simple than driving a car. Feeling pretty confident today, however. Everything seems to be going splendidly, despite the comms and their glitchiness.

The bell descends even further, and I feel a little dizzy, damn my ears that won't adjust to the pressure! They hurt horribly now, and definitely seem to be affecting my vision too. There's grey fuzziness in my peripheral vision, and I'm still having trouble focusing, even on the sudden flicker of movement on the cameras.

"Are you getting this, Mark? Left edge of the dorsal view. A light keeps shimmering in and out on that side. Over."
I have difficulty hearing the response. The comms crackle. I hear a voice making noises, though it's unclear, then, "Yes. Left ... blue light."

It looks almost like one of those music videos, where a spotlight follows the performer around the stage, only... only it's moving in three dimensions, and I've never seen anything move so FAST. I have trouble tracking the whatever-it-is. The movement style is atypical for any of the big sea creatures I've spent years studying.

"Mark, Mark, please tell me the video feeds are working, and that you see this. Have you ever seen anything like it before? It seems totally unfamiliar to me!"

I frantically check all the video monitors as the comms fill with static and clutter AGAIN. Flick a glance over the dials. We're still descending, and the creature, this new creature, seems to be pacing me, pacing the diving bell as it descends.

"Mark, did you see a tail? Dorsal rear view?"

Mark's reply this time, "Yes ... seeing it. ... blue ... fish ..."

My vision is getting even cloudier, but I'm determined to get a good focus on this fish. This may be a new discovery, a new paper, for Mark and me (and the Institute, of course)... We could really make a name for ourselves! We could...

uh... wait. What? Is this really happening?

Hair is swirling around the face, the human face, of the creature swimming slowly around my diving bell. It definitely appears, well, mammalian, in spite of the blue color to the skin, and the scales that begin mid-torso, right where a human would have a navel.

She's BEAUTIFUL.
I'm yelling.

"Mark, Starboard Center camera! Do you see anything? Check the goddamn Starboard Center Camera!"

Seriously, I'm gonna die if we don't have this on film. This is INCREDIBLE. Myths come to life, proof on camera, everything I've dreamed of since childhood! I'm absolutely euphoric!

“Philip ... big deal ... right there. Right there.”

I'm breathing heavily, and my vision isn't getting any better. I stumble over to check the gases mixture and make sure everything's OK. It's not great, but it's within safe parameters. I think.

Except that my vision's narrowing, and my ears make all the bell's instrument noises sound like I'm underwater (OK, I do know I'm underwater), or in a cavern or something...

... and I feel the back of the dive chair pressing hard at the back of my neck, but I don't have the strength to raise my head
... and the grey at the edges of my vision is turning to black...
... and it's getting kind of hard to breathe...



This has been my LJ Idol entry for week 20, and I intersected my entry with grail76's. You can read his entry HERE . We worked with "intersubjectivity" and "rapture of the deep".

Please feel free to enjoy the work of my talented colleagues, and vote for the entries that you enjoy, HERE.