privilege and you: or, how to stop worrying and love your girlfriend

As you may have noticed, dear readers, I care deeply about social justice. I think an important part of being a Good Person is recognizing and understanding your privilege and how that changes your relationship with your neighborhood, your city, your friends, your colleagues. As many of my friends can attest to, I delight in having long, drawn-out conversations about race, gender, cultural policing, and privilege. I know I'm far from perfect at recognizing my own stuff, but that is neither here nor there.

This is the first time I've really been in a Relationship with a woman. Where we're regularly together in public. Where we go to events together. Where we take the train home after a night out and cuddle all the way to Brooklyn. I know I've never been this happy in my life, and I know I've never loved anyone the way I love her.

This doesn't stop me from being uncomfortable with my sudden and precipitous loss of privilege.

holy crap sorry it has been a million years

I've been truly delinquent about this blog lately - and I realize that that is a terrible thing to do right after telling everyone that I'm changing medications. So, what's been happening lately? Here are the posts that are in the pipeline:

1. The lithium has been going pretty well, but it has made me come to terms, somewhat, with the concept of losing part of myself.

2. My relationship is going gangbusters and is a delight and a wonder - but also, it's led to a loss of perceived privilege in a sense, and I will be discussing that as I begin to wrap my head around it.

3. Combining 1 and 2, the effect my changing drugs have had on my relationship.

Expect these three to roll out in May, since it is practically May already (!). I think I might do this going forward - give you a mini-preview of what I'm planning for the next month at the end of the month, as it will be a good practice in planning and organizing for me and help you decide when to tune in. 

the oscars!

Everyone knows Seth MacFarlane is an idiot and a douche. Let's not pretend he's something he's not. Good. Covered.

MOVING ON.

Daniel Day-Lewis BY FAR won the speeches. Can you win at speeches? It doesn't matter. He won. Not only did he win, he played off of the best fact ever - Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice. Or Lincoln. Also, I'm pretty sure that any time DDL does anything, he should win. Let's be real - you have never seen a Day-Lewis performance that he did not throw his entire being into. To wit, he has not, since 1989, been in any film in which he has not received at least one nomination for his performance. For Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, he got 28 nominations and 20 awards. TWENTY. HE IS A GENIUS. If you disagree, you are wrong. That is just a fact.

Also, if you haven't seen Gangs of New York, you should really do that. Don't watch it casually, though - commit to watching it.

That may be the only thing I actually want to write about. And that Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep walked offstage holding hands. It's a ship I never knew existed in my brain until that exact moment. A FRIENDSHIP. I don't want them to be in love, I just want to know that they play mahjongg sometimes.

Let's see, do I have any other big comments? OH RIGHT OF COURSE I DO.

OH MY GOD CHANNING TATUM AND CHARLIZE THERON.

That is all. Go about your workday.

a brief reflection on tv sexuality

Pop culture often doesn't know how to deal with gays or lesbians in a normal, even-handed way. When you get to bisexuality or other similarly non-binary/normative identities (see also: asexuality; trans* identity being conflated with sexuality; sex work), you're just asking for trouble.

Part of why coming to terms with my sexuality was so difficult for me is that nobody else believed me. I didn't have a problem with having crushes on boys and girls until my friends started saying things like, "So, are you straight now that you're dating Boy?" or, "You haven't mentioned any girls in a while, is that not a thing anymore?" The gay community is just as guilty as the straight community of this - if you start dating someone, suddenly the other parts of your sexuality are null and void. You made a choice! Game over.

Suffice it to say, it is incredibly irritating.

It was actually a pretty big topic in therapy for me for about a year - I kept telling D that she needed to tell me what I was, and she kept being like, well, you know, I can't do that, and also, no. Apparently there is no quiz or diagnostic tool that will help you figure out what labels to use, and every time you start being interested in someone new, you start to question yourself to the point of not even really being able to do anything.

In any event, what I'm saying is that it's a real mess in the not-gay-not-straight place. And since gay men are comedic cannon fodder on a lot of shows, the idea of having a bisexual character on a TV show seems like an incredibly huge risk.

Well, hello there, Nolan Ross.

image from here

Revenge manages not only to pull off about fifteen intersecting intrigues near-flawlessly (here, I am pretending that Jack Porter and fauxManda don't exist because ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ), it also manages to be the only show I can think of with a bisexual man at the center of a racially diverse love triangle between a man and a woman, both of whom he has had actual relationships with, not just brief sexual dalliances. Nolan's out there, working hard for Team Male Bisexuality Visibility, still managing to maintain deep platonic friendships, still being basically my favorite character to exist on TV.

In conclusion, this entire post has just been Nolan Ross appreciation. Four for you, Nolan. Four for you.

no sleep till brooklyn

Quick PSA: Justin Bieber made an acoustic album, featuring this version of Boyfriend. You're welcome.

Further blog settings PSA: there will be some downtime over the weekend while I figure out re-routing this to its new domain name, thisismostly.tv. I have been resting on my nerd laurels for TOO LONG, and now is the time, my friends, yes, now in this age of coupon codes for domain name purchases is the time for me to take this to a different level. Better? Debatable.

And now, to the actual blog post you came here to see:

Yes, my friends, it's true - I'm living in the boro I railed against all through my first six or so years of living here. I started begrudgingly accepting that there were cool parts in Brooklyn once a critical mass of my friends had made the move across the bridge (though no part of me will ever accept that Williamsburg is not somehow inherently icky, because I am a snob).

In any event, I'm now in a space that feels more like Chicago than New York to me, living with two cats, a parrot, and the indomitable Mr. Thackeray Binx. The apartment feels palatial after my long affair with Manhattan, but would still probably be seen as small by anybody coming in from the outside world. My moving day was actually legitimately a lot of fun, and my commute is easy, if longer than before.

My medication situation is way up in the air right now. I was having a lot of negative reactions to the lamictal that I didn't want to attribute to it, because I wanted to be done. I felt guilty about needing more attention to get "fixed." But, thanks to the input of some more level heads, I've come around to the realization that sometimes you have to try multiple things, and maybe it isn't your fault if you are incredibly sensitive to changes in the chemicals in your body. Also, you only need to soberly spill half a glass of wine on yourself in front of your girlfriend's parents once to feel like the level of clumsiness you're experiencing is a bit much.

So, now I'm going to start taking lithium. It freaked me out really badly at first - Dr. F. called me at work as I was missing our appointment and mentioned that she thought that might be a good course of action, and I hurried off the phone and then cried while typing madly on gchat to Abby, saying that now I was really crazy, and that I hadn't really felt like things were this bad.

I don't know if this is a common thing, but my cultural idea of lithium is sort of a 1950s, electro-shock therapy, lobotomy type of care. I've since talked - a lot - to my therapist and psychiatrist about it, and they've both reassured me that though it is one of the earliest drugs, it's still one of the most effective - it's simple, it works for most people on the spectrum, it helps you get balanced. Sure, there is a little bit more to it (I have to get my blood levels checked every so often to make sure nothing weird is happening, and there are potential long-term effects if the dosage isn't monitored correctly), but overall I guess it's actually a good call.

Of course, with me being me, I had to get the mother of all sinusitis this weekend, so I have to wait to start my new meds. I'm taking steroids for the sinusitis, which is making me the manic-iest of all (which Dr. F. warned me about, so I'm trying to counter it with anti-anxiety stuff). That led to a fun revelation last night - I had been assuming that my manic times were all happy-up, but last night, struggling to keep my limbs in check, I realized that my self-destructive impulses were all wrapped up in that same feeling of having too much in my body and needing to get it out. I had always assumed that was a depressive symptom, since it would happen in between times of being very depressed.

Sorry, this is a bit scattered. Hopefully, once I'm actually on the new meds, I'll have a little bit more focus and clarity. And then I'll be able to write things that make sense. I just wanted to make sure I get this part of it down too, because I know that there are a lot of you reading this because you're going through your own diagnostic drama and I'd rather you be able to identify with what you read here than always make sense or say things well.

In conclusion, I'm doing theoretically well, but just need some time to get the rest of the way there.