Soph’s Shitty First Drafts

[Content warnings for very brief mentions of self-harm and oppression, but only in passing.]

I posted a tweet thread today. It strongly hints that I’m considering quitting my job. I have an application for another job in the works, and I’m waiting for the results of that first. But if things don’t improve by Christmas, I’m out of my workplace, new job or no job.

And I’ve had a revelation. I think this is all about boundaries.

How tall are you?

“There’s no one who has treated me worse than I’ve treated myself,” Lani said in episode 6 of ‘Big Strong Yes’. I was re-listening the other day, and this hit me hard. Boundaries are so hard for me - with other people, yes, but with myself too. For Lani, this comment was related to dating - she made a ‘you must be this tall to ride’ list, about who deserves to date her. My thinking is more about friends and other people in my life. But it’s the same concept. 

What do I deserve?

I’m stuck on Lani’s comment about how badly she treats herself... together with what Noelle said in Awegasm about how abusively some of us treat ourselves. I think this is the first piece in the ’boundaries’ puzzle. I’m meaner to myself than anyone else in my life. I think I don’t deserve to have me treat myself well.  Why would I deserve boundaries? Why shouldn’t everyone else treat me badly too? 

This link, between how I treat myself and how others treat me, has been a revelation recently. Maybe it should have been obvious, but I can be a bit slow to catch on to these things.

Boundaries I let people walk all over

Here’s an example. I have this thing about conversational boundaries. There are things I don’t want to talk about. A lot of things trigger me. People tend to mock me for this. (I hate that the word ‘trigger’ has become a ‘snowflake’ red flag to people, when it’s an actual mental health term.) But I’m the one who lets people walk all over me, who lets the conversation carry on when I’m not comfortable. I let people keep talking, when I could have said ‘no’ a lot earlier.

I let my work managers walk all over me, too. They agree to do things that will help me do my job, and when later refuse to do those things, I don’t make a fuss. I let them ignore my disability rights - which I could be legally addressing, but I’m way too tired. I let my managers micromanage me to the point that I can’t do my job. I put up with it when managers are so awful that I end up crying in the office. All because I don’t have enough boundaries. I think I deserve this treatment, on some level. But I don’t.

There are other issues around the decision to stay or quit work - but this is a big one.

So here’s a ‘boundaries list’ about how I treat myself, as well as how others treat me. “My friends should not be ableist” also translates to “I should challenge internal ableism in myself, because I deserve better.” And “It’s not acceptable to intentionally hurt me” is something I need to hear. (I know self-harm is complex - god, do I know it - but what I need is to hear that I deserve to treat myself better.)

My list of boundaries

[This list is a work in progress.]

It is not okay to...
...intentionally hurt me, emotionally or physically
...step over my boundaries - e.g. demanding I talk about things that I’ve said trigger me
...agree to do something and then not do it (yes I’m looking at you, toxic workplace)
...show me signs you don’t value me and then expect to stay in my life (repeatedly turning up late to see me, not replying to text messages for months on end then reappearing in my life without explanation, leaving me to be the one to make contact every time...)
...hold values that clash with mine to the point that it’s painful (this is not about staying in a bubble, but it is about not having ableist, transphobic etc friends - I deserve better)
...talk over, dismiss or refuse to listen to my experiences as a disabled/nonbinary/queer person

People in my life must...
...show that they actually care about me and want to spend time with me
...listen to my perspective and take my feelings seriously
...not be ableist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, racist or oppressive of any other marginalised groups (but see below about making occasional mistakes)
...be willing to learn about marginalised perspectives, oppression, justice and rights, if not already aware of them (i.e. at least what I call a ‘type 2’ potential ally)
...show that I matter to them, and not show signs that they think I’m boring or just someone to be dismissed or cast aside whenever they find someone/something they find more interesting
...be willing to adapt to my needs as a disabled, autistic and queer person (i.e. don’t take me to places without thinking about access or dismiss my autistic issues)
...care about the things I care about (we don’t have to share all the same interests, but they mustn’t treat mine as silly or childish)

It should go without saying that I should follow these rules for others too, and learn and respect their boundaries.

And it’s ok to fail at some of these sometimes. We can all mess up on these from time to time, because we’re human. I can be racist and all manner of other things, at times. But I try to learn. And others should try to learn about what I need. I shouldn’t be letting people ignore my boundaries consistently. That’s when it’s clear that people don’t care.

So there’s the draft list. I’ll be working on it. And in the meantime, I’ll be trying to work out when, and how, to quit my job. The decision that I am going to, is at least progress! Year of Being Brave, baby...

And if you want to read a really good blog series on boundaries, Fatigue Fairy has two great ones here and here. Enjoy!

Are you sure you want to stay with a person who’s going to be in a wheelchair for life?

The toughest arena I have to face probably looks like paradise to everyone else.

14 years ago I met a person who would later become my spouse. They were one of the most amazing people I’d ever met. They also had an absolutely terrifying family.

I’m not saying they’re the worst in-laws in the world. They love me, and they’ve done their best to accept me... in their own way. But they might be among the most difficult people I, personally, could have had as in-laws.

Soon after spouse and I got together, I became very ill. I lost a lot of my already-not-great mobility. Spouse was wonderful. In their mind, I was still the person they loved, so why would they consider leaving me? But their family asked them The Question. Are you sure you want to stay with a person who’s going to be in a wheelchair for life? And that was just the beginning.

Every time we tried to be ourselves together, it was a problem for this family. One of their parents, at least, was homophobic, and I represented that issue embodied. Both parents wanted the spouse to have children, and I’m the reason spouse hasn’t given them grandchildren. The list goes on and on.

My in-laws come from a level of privilege that I would have found unimaginable before I met them. They’ve worked for their money, but I find it incredibly intimidating, coming as I do from a middle-class family who really struggled to make ends meet until I was 7 or so.

They’re a family that values appearances. Respectability. Excellence.

I present a challenge to all those things.

For the best part of 14 years, I’ve been rumbling with how this all makes me feel. I feel horribly ashamed of my body around them - for a while I wouldn’t even use my wheelchair around them, and it’s still stressful to use it with them now. I’m ashamed of being autistic and, relatedly, very demonstratively emotional. That’s not respectable. I’m ashamed of my dyslexia, which prevents me from learning their language well, which I *hate* about myself because my spiritual codes of hospitality say I should be learning their language, and they remind me often that I should be, too. But I can’t.

We used to stay in my mother-in-law’s house when we visited the in-laws (they live abroad). We don’t anymore. I put my foot down, and it caused some serious frustration for my spouse, but I couldn’t handle the way I felt about myself *on a minute-by-minute basis* without being able to get a break from them all.

I’m about to go abroad on holiday (vacation) with them for a family celebration. I nearly didn’t agree to go. Most people would think I was an idiot for even contemplating not going - they were offering to pay for me to come to the kind of resort I would never be able to think about affording otherwise. But for months, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I can handle a family holiday in close proximity to all of them, in a place where it might be hard get my own space. But family is important to my in-laws. All of us being together is important to them. This celebration is important to them. It’s actually really sweet that they want me there. It’s just going to be so hard.

I leave to join them at the resort tomorrow. For the 24 hours before, I’ve come to my little retreat - it’s called the House of Prayer. It’s really lovely and quiet, with lots of space to think. I’m trying to sort out my head before I spend 5 days with the in-laws. I plan to write lots of Extra Shitty First Drafts (which have been having a really interesting positive effect for me, ove the past couple of weeks). And meditate. And anything else that helps with what some Pagans call shadow work, which seems to be a theme of my life recently. (I rather annoyingly forgot my colouring books. The one more thing they need here is an art room!)

I expect the coming week to be a serious arena of confronting shame about myself, and attempts to set boundaries so I can minimize that a bit. No clue how that’s going to go. Argh.

[I’ll set this post to friends-only soon, but I wanted a bit of time with it out in the world. Sometimes, owning my own story is about telling it in public - even anonymously - when I’ve kept it inside for a long time.]

[Content warning: extremely brief hint of something that could be taken as suicidal ideation, but isn’t really... and internalised ableism.]

So, despite the title, these are not shitty first drafts. Or if they are, I’m also writing Extra Shitty First Drafts. This blog is more like... reasonable second drafts.

SFD is a term that Brene Brown uses (based on a concept of Anne Lamott’s) to talk about that raw journalling you might need to do, to get the crap out of you. I recently revisited the early podcast episodes, and the hosts talk about how SFDs should be done completely privately, or only shared with someone you really trust (more on that in a moment...). Then I got to that part in Dr Brown’s book, and, yeah, it does look like private works better for the really shitty ones. As I was discussing with the lovely person who’s working through the book with me, we’re both people who’ve blogged in public for a long time and don’t mind hanging out our dirty laundry (anonymously) there. But there’s definitely another level of writing you need to do, with this whole ‘rising strong’ process, that’s more private than even ‘public but anonymous’

For the past few days I’ve been attempting to write Extra Shitty First Drafts, because I’ve needed to yell and scream about things that really shouldn’t be public. I tried using video format. I’m crap at videos and mostly stared at myself on the screen and had trouble finding words. I wrote 750 words of a written ESFD, and it took up all my time and energy for the evening and then I couldn’t share it with anyone so... what’s the point?

I’m sad that I don’t really have anyone I trust enough to share personal writing with. I still think everyone must be looking at me and going “they’re off their rocker” for doing this Project. My spouse is an angel, but I don’t want them to see my ESFDs - it’s not the sort of thing they’d understand.

“You can’t skip day two,” Brene says. She means you can’t skip the second act. The hard stuff. You can’t jump to the happy, successful end. Day two takes forever. Like Chapter 3-5 in the book, which I’m currently struggling through (I think the book is laughing at me while I get pissed off), day two just goes on and on. I really want to skip it, right now. I’ve been really fucking pissed off, this week - at me, at my inability to feel anything properly, at my perfectionism and overworking myself and terrible eating habits, at my stupid coping strategies that hurt me or the people I love (like what Brene calls ‘chandeliering’, where you hit the ceiling because you haven’t - which I did to my spouse after they had gone out and got my wheelchair fixed for me, because I wasn’t dealing well with those old feelings of ‘if I rely on you I must be useless and a waste of oxygen and I should just die to make space for someone who isn’t totally useless’...)

I hate feelings. I hate Chapters 3-5. I hate day two.

Thus, Extra Shitty First Drafts. But I think I hate them too. What’s the point of writing if you can’t share it with anyone?

The Work is too much like hard work for me, at the moment. Sigh. Getting up anyway, if only because ‘facedown in the arena’ is a really shitty place to stay. The mud is cold and wet, and there’s ice cream on sale in the concessions stand once I clean myself up a bit.

So I got to the end of Chapter 2.

I absolutely loved the speedo story. I’m just going to rant a little bit about Lani and Dr Kelly’s response to it - they know I love them, they won’t mind - it’s a bit like them ranting about Brene - no really, they should be honoured... ;)

So on the podcast, Lani said, about the speedo experience, something along the lines of “if that’s the worst thing that ever happened to you, I envy you.”

Oh, really?

For some of us, the things the hurt the most are the little things. The daily things. Are they the worst things that have ever happened to me? Nah. Do they hurt more that those worst things? Yes, often.

I have a condition called alexithymia. It’s common among autistic people. People who have it, can’t feel or understand our feelings very well. Over the past year, in specialist autism therapy, I’ve been working on feeling my emotions. Among other things, this has involved 20 minutes per day of meditation on ‘how I’m feeling now’. And other really, really hard work.

A *year* later, I’ve started to feel things, to be aware of my emotions - for the first time in my life. (I’m 41.) And gods, does it suck. It’s quite the arena.

I did a brave thing yesterday. I sent emails confirming that a women’s group I want to be involved with, is willing to have nonbinary members. Their response was lovely, affirming and welcoming - but for an hour, I sat and reckoned with the feelings that brought up. Everything in my brain (and heart - that fragile heart I’ve forced my way through to start listening to over the past year) was screaming “Feelings are bad. Run away. Send another email and tell them it doesn’t matter because you don’t want to go anyway.”

I didn’t. I sat, and listened to a light, distracting podcast, and played an easy game on my iPad, and let the rest of me feel hurt for all the times I’ve been rejected because of my gender identity, and my disability, and my same-sex relationship, and...

Worst thing that’s ever happened to me? Nah. Almost as painful as? Yup.

That’s one of the things I loved about Chapter 2. Dr Brown says that she originally thought ‘rising strong’ was only applicable to big trauma, to getting back up from the big things. But she learned from her own experience that, when we’re struggling with something that would seem completely ridiculous to other people - like, thinking you don’t look good in a speedo anymore... or having to send a hard email - it’s still a useful process. Read the book, though, because Dr Brown’s storytelling is way better than mine, and it might hit you as hard as it hit me that it’s ok to be hurt, no matter how silly the reason.

To use common parlance of the young’uns, my emotions are valid. My alexithymia is valid. The fact that everything sucks and there’s no reason except that I’m autistic and that fucks up my brain on a regular basis, is valid.

Given that one of my big problems is my invalidation of myself, that really matters. I read Chapter 2 and nearly cried. And that’s valid too.

I love Lani and Kelly’s podcast, so much. I could never have got this much out of the book without it. But, maybe because of their own experiences, they missed something really big here. I’m so glad Dr Brown didn’t miss it. <3

Starting at Samhain (end of October), I’m starting a Year of Being Brave. (My year always starts at Samhain.) I’m thinking of this as the preparation phase. The idea was inspired by CGP Grey, of all people, and his business-y ‘yearly themes’. (When I had the idea recently, I hadn’t realised that I’d start listening to a podcast where one of the books they read is Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. I’m looking forward to reading that.)

I think most of my bravery this year is going to be about very small things. The emails I would never have sent before. The things I never would have said before. I’ve also got a tattoo planned, and maybe some other bigger things. But I’m pretty sure no tattoo, or other big brave act, is ever going to be as hard as that email.

The little things are valid.

So I shared my first Shitty First Draft in a lovely, small discord server I’m in. And my friend said “It can be hard to claim titles like that. In the parlance of a fall, I’d say I didn’t fall, so much as sauntered vaguely downwards.”

Once I’d stopped laughing, it occurred to me that he’s right and this is a useful concept. In their podcast, Lani and Kelly are always talking about reframing concepts so that they work for you. A lot about Brene Brown’s book needs reframing, for me, to be useful.

Here’s the context of the comment. if you don’t know Good Omens (either the book or the TV show - they’re both great)... Crowley is a demon, but he isn’t really a bad demon. The writers say that he’s an angel who didn’t so much fall, as sauntered vaguely downwards. This is a very in-character comment for him. He doesn’t take anything too seriously - until he does.

I know about falling. And sometimes it’s hard to take a fall seriously. I once tumbled off a bus ramp, out of my wheelchair (thankfully, it didn’t end up on top of me), ending up on the pavement. I had almost no choice in what I was going to do next. For a little while, I was terrified, while my carer picked me up off the ground and a doctor visited. And then my spouse came home, and while they were totally sympathetic, we both laughed at the image of me, flat on my face - again. Laughing helped.

And then we started to take it seriously, and together we worked out how to get me back on my feet. We needed a medical care plan to deal with my wonky body being a bit more broken than most people’s might be after that fall. My spouse, who trained as a lawyer, helped me take a legal claim against the bus company (the ramp was broken). Together we helped me work through some fear of public transport that resulted - and while I’ve continued to be affected by that, I can now travel on buses again.

This sort of takes me back to the book. I’m re-reading and working through Chapter 1, where Dr Brown says:



When I was writing the other day and resisting the concept of a fall, I can see that I was working from what Dr Brown calls a scarcity model of suffering. Your suffering is worse than mine because... You are more entitled to concepts like ‘trauma’ and a ‘fall’ because... When we do this, we invalidate our own worthiness. And, as I was trying to explore yesterday, all of this ‘Rising Strong’ work starts from the realisation of our worthiness. From the idea that we are enough.

Hurt is hurt, and honouring our own struggle recognises our own worthiness.

Some people would say that I had a Big Fall. (For example, I became physically disabled and had to retire very early from my teaching job; I couldn’t work for many years; I still deal with pain and illness on a daily basis... and that’s just the beginning.) From another perspective, when compared with other people’s struggles, all that happened to me was that I sauntered vaguely downwards. But I think it doesn’t matter which is the reality. I’m still facedown in the mud after a ‘towering’. I still need to decide what the fuck I’m going to do next.

I can honour my own struggle - even if a big part of what I need to rumble with, in this process, is the need to be heard by others. Maybe they won’t always - or ever - be able to hear or validate my story. (Dr Brown does talk about the loneliness of this process.) But I can do the validation thing for myself. I’m not saying that’s going to be easy... But it’s a choice I can make.

In a fanfic series I’m writing, a character is going through a messy redemption process. In writing it, I’m working through the idea of who we decide we’re going to be. “My choices are my own,” the character says. He’s choosing who he’s going to be.

I want to choose who I’m going to be.

My ‘YES’ for this week* is the same as (I think) Kelly’s was one week: I want to be in the arena. Dr Brown talks about how, after we’ve been brave and it’s been followed by a fall, we end up facedown in the arena. That’s when we have to make the choice to get up, or not. On the podcast, they talk about ‘towering’ (as in, the tarot card The Tower), and how after that kind of experience you can end up facedown in the mud with choices to make. Or, also to draw on an image from the podcast, when the barn has burnt down around you, you have to decide whether to roll over and look up at the stars.

I started this ‘Rising Strong’ process because I’m sick of letting life happen to me, and feeling like I have no choice in how I respond. I might not always like the limited range of choices I get offered, but I always, always have choices. About how I’m going to react, and who I’m going to be.

Now that I’ve sauntered vaguely downwards and ended up facedown, the collapsed Tower in rubble all around me, what am I going to do next?

The answer ‘get back up’ might sound really simple, but I think I need to keep consciously making that choice. It’s not an easy answer, when you’ve been down this long.

I think Crowley might say: Heaven and Hell might not want me back, but there’s still things in the world worth getting up and living for.

*When I say ‘for the week’, I’m following the podcast structure of doing one of these homework things per week. I suspect it’s going to be several weeks on each, honestly. This is heavy, complex and difficult stuff, and I’m disabled and have a job. :D

If I had read ‘Rising Strong’ without listening to Lani and Kelly’s podcast first, there’s no way I would have thought it was for me.

Rising Strong is about getting up after a fall. It’s about serious people who’ve faced serious things and were incredibly brave and got back up again. And that’s not me.

I’m not Humpty Dumpty. I haven’t had a big fall. I’ve barely had a little one. I look around at the falls people around me have had - Lani and Kelly just two examples of many amazing people who have to deal with major falls and get right back up again - and I feel like that’s just not me. I don’t have a reason. And yet, here I am, on the ground. Time after time after time.

This refrain, ‘I don’t have a reason,’ has been how I’ve invalidated my pain - time after time after time.

I’ve been disabled since the age of about 28. I have a genetic condition, but it only fully manifested when I got older. These days, I use a wheelchair or other walking aids. Meanwhile, aged 33, I got a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder. I was half way through a PhD at the time. (I finally finished the PhD seven years later, aged 40.) I’m also queer (bi, demi and nonbinary), which were also things that all occurred to me very late and very slowly,

I survived my whole childhood, and a lot of my adulthood, not understanding how I was different. But, somewhere inside me, I always knew. I knew something was ‘wrong’ with me. It always felt like society - the people around me - were keen to tell me and show me just how ‘wrong’ I was.

In Brene Brown’s words: those people were doing their best, but their best wasn’t good enough.

My parents didn’t mean to hurt me when they punished me for stimming and echolalia and a lot of other autistic coping methods. They thought those behaviours would make life harder for me in society. They were trying to make things better for me.

They were doing their best.

But their best wasn’t good enough.

I could repeat that paragraph, with slightly different details, for a lot of people and groups of people. The doctors who hurt me when I was in psychiatric ‘care’; their colleagues who continue to belittle and dismiss and occasionally mistreat me in appointment after appointment, right up to today. Who’ve taught me that asking for medical help only ever leads to neglect and abuse of power and ‘treatment’ that damages me... and the constant message that I am broken and useless and will never deserve the resources that I take and take and take from society. Who, by extension, have taught me that asking for any kind of help is a bad idea. That I don’t deserve it.

They were doing their best.

But their best wasn’t good enough.

The ‘friends’ who left me feeling like I wasn’t worth their friendship. Or anyone’s. People who, even today, give up talking to me because disabled people are boring - because I have no energy and can’t always keep up social appointments or see my friends regularly ‘enough’ for them.

They were doing their best.

But their best wasn’t good enough.

I could list many more examples of times when I’ve been broken-hearted, and learned (taught myself?) that I deserved it.

But none of that is serious, you know? Even as I write these things down, even as it hurts to write them down and see them in black print on a white page, done-and-can’t-be-undone, there’s a very loud voice at the back of my head screaming attention seeker - freak - broken - bitch - scrounger - drain on the resources of society - all you do is take take take and you’re not even worth what they deign to give you...

The phrase ‘They were doing their best - but their best wasn’t good enough’ is an absolute kicker for me. I’m happy to believe Part 1. Part 2? That I don’t deserve people’s crap? No. I can’t believe that.

It’s all I deserve.

When it comes down to it, I don’t honestly know why I feel this way. Being autistic and disabled in our society is tough, and can lead to difficult experiences. But that doesn’t feel like enough. I feel like I will always hear that voice in my head that says, you don’t even deserve for your experiences to be taken seriously. Look at the people around you - at what they’ve suffered. Stop fucking complaining.

Until recently, I didn’t even believe that I deserved the term ‘trauma’. Trauma is PTSD. It’s a term that people get to use if really terrible things have happened to them. If they’ve had a really bad fall.

I have not had a bad fall. I just won’t get up.

‘Just get the fuck up, Sophia, you broken freak,’ screams the voice in my head.

But I can’t. I just can’t. I’ve been on the ground for a long time. And I don’t know why.

I started to claim the term ‘trauma’ very recently, based on a small number of difficult things that have happened to me, and a large number of very small things that happen on an almost-daily basis. I have a friend who works with disabled and autistic people with trauma - she calls her work trauma-sensitive yoga. She says that, for many disabled and neurodivergent people, the experience of living in society can be traumatic. Maybe I’ll try to explore that more in another entry, another time. All I know is that, as much as it feels like I shouldn’t claim that term, that I don’t deserve it... it’s also been really helpful and empowering to let myself claim it. To say, yes - what’s happening to me, what has happened to me in the past, what continues to happen to me, is traumatic.

I still fear, very strongly, that someone will come along who’s experienced real trauma and say, How dare you claim this term? Nothing has happened to you that deserves that term. You don’t deserve it.

But here’s the thing. The concept of trauma is a framework. In my ‘offline life’, I’m a qualitative researcher. I love frameworks. Names have power, just like in the old fairy tales. (In the Pagan world that I sometimes inhabit, knowing the name of a god or goddess can be empowering - as much as it can also be dangerous. They might want something from you, if you learn who they are.) This name, this framework - trauma - it’s just a way of understanding something. Just like autism and disability, which are concepts that I’ve studied as a social scientist. These frameworks help me to organise the world, and my (autistic) brain really likes the world to be organised. It’s a key to fit a keyhole. There may be many keys that fit it. But if I can use the concept to help me turn the key and walk through the door, then it’s a powerful resource. And gods know I need those. I’ve been stumbling in the dark looking for a way to open the door for a long, long time.

I want to thank Lani and Kelly for ‘Big Strong Yes’. This podcast is an amazing resource - it’s helped me to think that if they can do it, maybe I can. I’m a little bit stuck at the beginning. I don’t even feel like I deserve to talk about having had a fall. But maybe I can still learn to get up, anyway. I’m terrified that I can’t - that I’m just broken, and that after 41 years of being broken, I always will be.

But, broken-hearted or not, I’m going to be brave anyway.

Next entry, I’ll write about my Year of Bravery - and I hope I’ll be able to be a bit more positive!