Finally dragged myself around to working on my laptop files. They are a fucking mess. It would be bad enough if I were merely disorganized, but I have multiples of some files. Sometimes five or six copies. I haven’t literally counted out five or six copies of one file, but you know how you can sort of count things without counting? Kind of a subconscious process? Yeah. Like that. I keep running into the same ones over and over. Like, it’s nice I have favorites, but this is a bit extreme.
Part of the problem is that when I get a new phone I filedump from the old one. I have also been known to do that when storage just plain gets too full. If I would just work out a good routine for this, it might not leave me with such a mess. Will I work one out? Probably not.
—
And I have to say this because I am a petty asshole. After the way my ex-mother-in-law Cheryl lost, threw away, or decided to keep all my film negatives from 1987 to 1999, thereby erasing an important backup device for basically all my visual history from adolescence to mid-twenties (not that it’s much to look at but, fuck damn it, it’s MINE), I am so fucking pleased that I have most of Thea’s childhood here. So Thea can’t erase any of it like some of those trans-identifying young people do and, just as important, that piece of rotten fuck serving as her sperm donor can’t have any of it. He will have some photos of his own, but I know for a fact he doesn’t have as many as I do from her formative years. Too bad, so fucking sad, fucking cry about it. There are very limited circumstances under which I would relent and give him the files. And I would ONLY give him files. I’m not paying to print these photos for him. Ever. And if he doesn’t meet those limited circumstances in the first place, he doesn’t get the files either. I’m done playing. He fucked around. He’s finding out.
Like I said. Petty asshole. This is all I can do. I can’t make him be a decent person. He’s never actually been a decent person. He’s been a spender and a consumer. Any moron can spend money and say some words and fool everyone around himself. It takes real brains and effort to actually be a good person if you are not already wired that way. And no one else can make you do it. A lot of that waste of my energy when it came to him was me trying to get him to sort himself out. It was pointless. That’s on me. But it is something I will not do again; even if he meets my conditions to get Thea’s photo files, that doesn’t mean I will believe he’s actually changed, and I fully expect him to ghost me again after he gets them, whereupon I will not even ask him why he’s ghosting, because I already know. Assholes gonna asshole. He has to live with him. I don’t. Hooray.
But he won’t ask in the first place, because he is a fucking chickenshit. Fine by me.
I’ve mentioned this somewhere or another but most of you won’t have seen it: A big part of the problem between me and him was I believed he was basically a decent guy but that it was coming out all wrong and I thought that if I just pointed out where he was fucking up, he would go “oh yeah, my bad” and change his behavior. I thought just the behavior was the problem, not his basic essential self. This mistake is not unique to me; women do this with bad men a lot. But it’s this cognitive error that human beings commit in general and I don’t think there’s a name for it and it goes like this:
“I like you. Therefore you are a good person. If you are not a good person, that makes me bad for liking you. I can’t accept the argument that I am a bad person, therefore you must be a good person.”
I ran into this with Jeremy and his infamous little hard-drive collection. I ran into it with Billiam and his emotional abuse. I ran straight into a metaphorical concrete wall nose-first with Matt and his narcissism and fuck addiction because of this fallacy and I can’t think this way anymore. I paid him out so much rope and he just keeps hanging himself. Fine, then. I can just hear his fucking friends going “you just want him to be bad,” but actually I never wanted him to be bad and none of this shit was my idea. Why I got shitcanned for HIS fuckups, I could not say. Except that the fallacy I just outlined is in play and most people don’t even know they’re doing it.
Always assume someone’s behavior is who they are, kids. And be sure you’re analyzing it correctly for context, of course. But once you’ve done that, if it’s obvious the person’s still being shitty, just assume they’re shitty and walk away. A whole lot of people over the years either didn’t check context or didn’t care about it where I was concerned, so have decided I’m shitty for being furious at his behavior. But that’s pretty typical of how most people treat women, anyway. I could fly into a rage about it or I could just keep talking about it and hoping there are a few sane women out in the world who read this and start seeing the pattern where maybe they hadn’t noticed it before. (I couldn’t care less about you men anymore. I think you like it when other men are shitty to you because you nearly always side with them against us, and I can’t trust men who tell me women are shitty to them anymore, because that’s been used against me.) So don’t assume I am talking about all of this out of rage. I did go through some rage, but that’s not what this is. It’s that I am seeing this problem that we all need to recognize and address, so I’m going to talk about it because that’s what I do. You can learn from me, or you can be a dumbass and go “there she goes again,” roll your eyes, and walk away. Your call. Not my responsibility. I already did my bit. It’s your turn.
—
Speaking of Thea’s photos. I’m never not happy on some level when I see them. I miss my girl. I wish I could tell when she started emotionally collapsing and could go back and fix it. She was such a happy kiddo for most of her childhood. And she’s outgoing and outspoken enough that if that hadn’t been true, she’d have said so. I want to find everyone who ruined her and run over them with a train. It’s entirely possible I should also be on those tracks, but I’d be putting myself out of my misery, so whatever.
I should be very clear here because dumbasses put words in my mouth otherwise: I never expected her to grow up into a pretty little princess. She was always a beautiful child, and that’s not what I mean, but I wanted more for her than for her to be ornamental. I was the one getting offended when Cheryl got her a “sugar and spice” tshirt. I was the one saying oh sure, girls can wear what they want — want tshirts or cargo shorts from the boys’ section? Let’s go get ’em. I was the one saying oh sure, you want to shave your head, let’s do it. I wasn’t good at it, but I would bleach and dye her hair too. I knew she had to figure things out for herself and as long as that was based in reality and did not involve self-harm, I was fully willing to go along.
The problem here isn’t that she’s nOt FeMiNiNe, whatever the fuck that means. The problem is she’s self-harming, because breast-binders and testosterone harm female bodies, and that she may seek extreme surgical intervention at some point even though there’s nothing physically wrong with her to justify it. I’m supposed to accept that a dude in a dress is a “woman” even though he keeps his dick (and he wouldn’t be even if he got it inverted) but somehow, simultaneously, I’m supposed to accept that my daughter “not feeling like a woman” needs to destroy her body as a a result. Make it fucking make sense. I could almost live with her thinking incorrect things about herself if those didn’t lead straight to physical damage. Feelings and thoughts are fully reversible. Though I will never just live with other people around her affirming her incorrect thoughts, either. If I say I’m Cleopatra you wouldn’t agree with me. Fuck.
And it isn’t that I am morally against sex change. It’s that humans can’t change sex. It does not matter what we do to attempt that process, it just isn’t going to happen. The medical industry is misleading a hell of a lot of people and when they wake up and figure out what’s going on, holy shit will they be pissed. Not only at the destruction of their own bodies but at what it’s done to their most important relationships. In fact, that is already happening. This whole thing is a fucking disaster. It’s lobotomies and thalidomide all over again.
Also, I fully believe that my stance on all of this is costing me in terms of being able to get on with my life in a material sense. The assholes pushing this shit are saying that women like me — and it’s usually women, they don’t care as much about targeting men EVEN THOUGH MEN ACTUALLY MURDER TRANS-IDENTIFYING PEOPLE — don’t deserve jobs or family or friends or housing or anything, really. I am old enough to remember the Christian Coalition and similar groups and people in the nineties, and this is just like that but with God left out. And in case you think the lack of God matters, no, it really doesn’t; it’s just a detail. It’s all imaginary shit and I’m supposed to believe I deserve to literally die because I don’t go along with imaginary shit. The one advantage gender identity has over fundamentalist Christianity is that once I do die, I’m done.
Nah. Fuck you. I’m fucking toughing it out. You genderdorks already made public institutions illegitimate so if I have to live on the margins then that’s what I will do and with zero regard to however that affects those institutions. You can’t fire me. I fucking quit. There are ways around most problems if you can’t actually solve them.
You know, like the way you “solved” sexism by pretending sex isn’t real.
—
I finally looked over my old phone. I guess any files I wanted to save were mainly on the micro SD card I had in it which it had lost the ability to read. Problem is I can’t get the new phone to read the micro SD either. So now I have to think about how to acquire a card reader that accommodates micros. I have one, but it’s for my iPad which, as it turns out, can’t use the reader anyway because it’s the original Air and those didn’t have that capability yet. Grump. So I need one for a Windows system. I should have more points balance on my Humana account soon, so one possible solution might be looking at Walmart in their electronics section. If it saves me some driving in Lafayette, I am all for it. I’m not holding my breath, though. I am not sure just how much technological literacy actually goes on around here. I would be a shoo-in for local IT work had I ever bothered getting any certifications. It wouldn’t pay well, but it’d be above average for here, which would be a good start.
Oh well.
I really just want to make sure I have any good photos that might be on that card. I am pretty sure I’ve got all the music files.
It does occur to me, though, that maybe the micro SD has failed. The phone definitely has a swollen battery, but now that I think about it, I can’t see why the SIM card still worked but the SD didn’t if the swollen battery was the cause of that issue. So I may be in for a hell of a lot of disappointment. Well, if that’s it then there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. I’m pretty sure it was used when Matt gave it to me in the first place.
—
I set myself a reminder on New Phone to go to bed early so that I can get up early because I really should give myself a 45-minute lead to get to Crowley tomorrow. I am not looking forward to getting skewered in the tit, but I would like very much to figure out what is going on with said tit, so there’s that.
But that’s not going to be the end of the festivities. I have a followup appointment with my PCP on the 8th, and after all this shit dies down I next have to address the ladybits. AND, I’m well overdue for a dental appointment, so won’t that be fun. I suspect I’m seeing final days on my lower left rear molar (the one right before my now-nonexistent wisdom tooth), but I’m hoping that if that is the case then we can cap it or something so I will still have something resembling a tooth there, unlike its counterpart on the other side which had to be pulled twentysomething years ago. Realistically speaking, however, I think I only have about a $500 allowance on my dental benefits and so it may be a yanking if it comes to that. If I ever win the lottery for any significant amount — at least a few thousand dollars — first thing I’m gonna do is sort my taxes out. Next thing I’m gonna do is get at least one dental implant. Enough with this shit.
—
Dad needed help last night when he got up from his nap because he was so weak he literally couldn’t walk. I had to get his walker and he sat in it (it’s a walker with a seat) and scooted backwards into the living room. That man will notice I am cooking or have recently cooked, ask me if there’s anything left, then say No when I say there isn’t but that I can fix him something if he wants. After he requested a sandwich and ate same, he was able to walk again. But he told me he hadn’t eaten in two days. Dude, no. I am not a mind-reader and you need to start telling me when you need shit. But I have to be nonconfrontational because no one ever gives me any fucking safe space to speak up.
But I’m making spaghetti tonight and maybe he’ll eat some. We’ll see.