Taking you on a Tuesday II
A day in the life of a trauma-queen-turned-treat-princess
CW: CSA
Longtime readers will remember when I once took you on a Tuesday, my usually-free day of the week. New readers have the option to revisit that piece now, how fortuitous for them. Here’s another one, which as a challenge to myself I published the very next day in order to be less precious about my writing.
Besides generally being a stickler, as someone with DID, I tend to get nervous about publishing same-day. At the very least you just want to give everything a second-day pass with a different alter-mix to make sure no one veered too far off-message. Don’t want to get too personal on the childhood sexual abuse/food blog.
So that’s where we find ourselves here on Wednesday, if you’re reading this in real time. Fewer editing passes than usual, but maybe you wouldn’t have even noticed. Let us begin following the day.
We awoke to a movie, some hot chocolate and baguette with fancy butter. First treat of the day. You’re going to want to start keeping track.
The movie in question was the second half of the notably long 1974 film Céline and Julie Go Boating directed by Jacques Rivette. It’s about two women being silly and having fun, so I feel like I should have liked it more than I did.
It’s surreal, which, again, usually great for me, but it reminded me of David Lynch a little bit in that I’m not quite sure I follow. Like where is the emotional truth I’m searching for? Perhaps a good candidate for a second watch to gain another perspective. Again, I’m a stickler and also a different person every day, so…
What this movie did provide, though, in addition to mild entertainment, is another movie Venn diagram, which I’d been collecting. Double features? I haven’t watched any of these as double features, so I don’t know how they’d vibe in practice, but they’re thematically similar enough to warrant a Venn diagram. Additionally I believe these to be some really solid movie recommendations in general! Let’s take a look.
Doom Generation shares my top spot for all-time favorite tied with Miranda July’s 2005 Me and You and Everyone We Know. I will also specify that the trio in this film is highly (bi)sexual (my favorite), while Stranger Than Paradise keeps it platonic, a key difference.
I won’t call out the podcast by name, but at one time there was a highbrow/lowbrow movie podcast with two male hosts in the indie comedy scene, seemingly not misogynists by any means, who did an episode on Jeanne Dielman. Despite their very best efforts, they were simply not able to understand the ending of this film, which I admit is quite a complicated scene.
I don’t want to give it away as you should get to draw your own conclusion, but one of the pieces of womanhood I think it touches on is when our bodies betray us. This is a pretty nuanced topic that men probably haven’t heard very much about. Maybe they even need me to spell it out for them that the response of the vagina can differ from the response of the mind/will/consciousness. The same is true of the penis, by the way, which men may only know from ill-timed teenage erections.
Sexual assault survivors of any gender know this unfortunate fact quite well, but it’s a reality that is rarely portrayed in film. When it is, it can understandably cause confusion, especially when layered with the situation presented in Jeanne Dielman specifically.
With Fat Girl I think you need to be an even more fucked up individual to understand that ending, so in both cases I’m placing no blame on and citing no defect with innocent movie watchers entitled to their own opinions!
Both super unique movies, challenging in their own ways.
After the movie and a brief nap with Willow and Ray, we picked up our first espresso spritz of the season at our favorite coffee shop, second treat of the day. We then headed to the park to write down (type) all the stuff you just read, some stuff you’ll read below and some other stuff I deleted.
It took a long time with the sun beating down on me and the usual light fluttering of C-PTSD triggers in a busy public space (groups of children—their cumulative innocence crushes me—, white boys in need of checking). I found myself physically depleted but still mentally energized, and so I made the wild decision to get a sandwich and iced tea from a second coffee shop, marking the day’s third treat (pictured below).
I had also planned to use their bathroom, but they didn’t have one, which was not ideal but gave us an opportunity to use one of our favorite post-Abuse World skills of pee-edging. You see, when you spend your whole life around abusers who follow you to the bathroom and then abuse you, your bladder isn’t really your own. Your body and its natural functions are at the mercy of constant threat.
This creates the need to be meticulous and obsessive about using the bathroom in certain settings, and our body grew used to this. Now, we are free. Choosing when we pee, or don’t pee, is one of the system’s greatest joys, I can’t explain it. It’s a privilege you don’t realize you have until it’s taken away, only I came at it the opposite direction, never having known it until recently.
So when we’re about to take the 30 minute drive back from acupuncture, or in this case about to drink another beverage after already having to pee a medium amount, we triumph in holding our pee. “I know I can pee in safety, now or later.” What an affirmation. Thrilling that the day included some pee-edging, which I can now share with you, because you signed up to learn more about what it’s actually like to have been severely abused.
But again, here we are in the present, everyone, and it’s fucking raining treats, I’m the treat princess. My ice-filled plastic cups overfloweth with privilege. I recently mentioned to Adam that I’m trying to return to the idea of gratefulness. Despite healing culture’s insistence on its importance, I had put a pin in it.
When you find out how long you spent in Abuse World, the blow of that kind of renders gratefulness irrelevant for awhile. Grateful for what? Writer Clementine Morrigan, who shares many of the same life experiences as me, just had a great piece touching on growing up with forced gratefulness amidst abuse, among other topics.
But five years into our healing, okay, gratefulness, maybe it’s time to revisit you. I have a lot. The time, the rest, the luxury, the therapy. Money, money, money. Whiteness. Inherited (middle class) wealth. A partner who works so hard to earn good money while I make a pittance for 16 hours of food service work weekly, the most I can handle.
All this in a world of terror. Palestinian genocide and the lies and apathy that surround it. The erasure of trans people. The squeeze of Capitalism on our every breath. Right now an infinitely-long train carrying coal rests on nearby tracks, bringing us confront that whole ordeal. You know, fossil fuels! That too!
Sadly, even after I wrote the above paragraph, these problems persisted, and thus it was time to walk home, pee(!), shower and wrap this up.
Although I will conclude this timeline before dinner, I do feel obligated to admit that there is yet a fourth treat in my future before the day ends. This would be the nightly treat of a small, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie. You just freeze the dough then bake individually in the toaster oven, it’s so easy, who could blame me?
But okay, four treats in one day is a lot for anyone, even the trauma-queen-turned-treat-princess. Maybe I did it for the ‘stack! I’d say my average is probably 1-2 a day. For novices looking to explore the lifestyle I’d aim for one every 36-48 hours.
Instead of being normal and linking to a “treat yo self” gif, I’ll leave you with an obscure screenshot from Elaine May’s 1987 Ishtar that explains how it feels to be simultaneously drowning in trauma and treats.
Not “that bad” a life. Sign me up for some gratefulness, because that’s pretty lucky! Thanks for taking the time to hear my experience of this free Tuesday.