Five years to the early finish line

Well, because one has to wait a month for one's first Social Security check, it's actually five years and a month. 

I'm hoping I don't need to retire early, but ... with being in a dying industry and ageism still a deal in America, getting full-time work, or even decent PT work, should something happen to me? It's a concern. I started to type worry, but took it back.

I'd prefer to limp forward further if I can. Especially vis-a-vis a country without national health care, to get to age 65 and the Medicare finish line.

After that, even if I had to start drawing Social Security before 67, let alone 70? I'd be good.

Also, making it five more years means being eligible for senior citizens assistance in rental costs. That means lower overhead. And, any money that I did have from jobs? Getting to 65 would mean an additional tax deduction.

So, five years to the early finish line. Eight years to the middle-level one. Ten to the upper-middle one of "full retirement age." I would hope to have part-time paid work after that, and after that, it wouldn't affect my Sociable Security earnings. I know I can make five. Onward!

Maybe the "dopamine" theory isn't ALL wrong; ditto for serotonin

 For years, starting about the turn of the century, dopamine as "the addiction neurotransmitter" became an ever more peddled idea among simplistic and reductionist ideas of neuroscience — both professional as well as lay.

Given the number of brain receptors for dopamine, that alone made it simplistic. Dopamine does a lot more than trigger desire, or even trigger memories of desire.

Indeed.

It turns out both it and serotonin are ALSO involved in epigenetic controls.

In turn, this means that both depression and anxiety, on the one hand, with serotonin, and addiction with dopamine may have a degree of non-genetic, but rather epigenetic, heritability. That would explain how something like alcohol, with modest-moderate physical addiction potential, but no more, can run in families yet skip around.

PTSD support, but pulled back by Jesus

 My undergraduate Lutheran college has an alumni Facebook page. Someone from a class ahead of me posted recently about having been diagnosed with Complex PTSD four years ago. Said the reasons are vast. Well ... the most likely reason is repeated child sexual abuse. The second most likely is repeated spousal sexual and/or physical abuse.

Anyway, said person mentioned Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score." Highly touted here, and I've personally used some of its ideas, adapted to "solo Gestalt." Said EMDR also helped. All good so far. Said person also noted that talk therapy didn't help — was specific about CBT, which would be correct. (Don't dismiss something like non-CBT group therapy, though!)

But, then comes the takeaway.

"There is no healing outside of Christ."

Even in your small town, there's likely a Hindu or Sikh Indian-American convenience store owner. Maybe a few Muslims.

I don't know if I feel that it's despicable you feel that way, but it is sad.

And, this is why the conservative wing of Lutheranism is a fundamentalism — different fundamentals than "THE fundamentalist" portion of Calvinism. But, still a fundamentalism. I'd say "sorry, sis," but, one of my 2020 goals (not resolutions) has been to stop saying "sorry" for things that aren't my fault. This one is nobody's fault. It's my take on conservative Lutheranism and a take that you don't take, and yes, that you don't like.

It's also, of course, why, even if I ever did leave secularism, I'd never go back to where you, or this person, are at.

To use the magic phrases of interpersonal psychology, if said schoolmate said:

"I believe there is no healing outside of Christ," I'm down with that.

But, not as written.

Maybe everybody assumes that all alums of a fundamentalist Lutheran college still are fundy Lutherans today, I guess. It's like inside talk thinking the mike is off.

If there's a fringe thankfulness? It's that this is a good reminder of what I left behind. Sure, some of my bretheren from seminary days after that may be a bit more open-minded. But, others may not.

Brief update on the layout

 I deleted "Dear Introvert" from the slim blogroll here, for two reasons, both related to its content.

First, "introverts" aren't the same as "highly sensitive people."

Second, "introvert" has one meaning in everyday social psychology and another entirely in Jungianism. The site, as I noticed by its most recent posts, is HEAVY into MMPI 16-type personality, which of course is a repackaged and updated Jungianism. I couldn't in good conscience keep it here.

==

That said, looking at some specific posts on Marc Lewis' recovery blog, I can say: Take a look at it! I'm doing so as I write.

Glad to be single and childless

Should I live to be 80, I might be regretting the childless part then. We'll see.

I'll probably never regret the the single part, other than my hormones for a number of years, if no friends with benefits situations cross the stage of life for me.

But that's it.

I have no desire to be partnered with anyone who might invade my space and want to change me. And, yes, I'll be accused of either sexual or gender stereotypes, but I do think that, among heterosexual relationships, the woman often wants to change the man, and the man often wants the woman not to change. Call it a generalization, not a stereotype. How this plays out in gay and lesbian relationships, I have no idea. But, to build on stereotypes like "butch" and "femme," something similar probably exists there.

Triggering this?

The ad salesperson at my paper. Cute. Boinkable to be blunt.

But, man, there's no way I'd want to actually be with her. I suspect control tendencies run high, and I know that perfectionism does.

Childless?

After seeing ongoing intereactions between my three sibs that have kids, and at least some of their kids, and knowing that, per a secular interpretation of Judaism's first of its ten divarim, this is something that has passed down three or four generations? I'm glad that I'm not involved with passing things down another generation.

Fuck you, Homefries

 This is in part taken from a "journaling letter" to him and in part the background to it.

Homefries, No. 3 of my three older brothers, and No. 2 of my abusing brothers, sent a group text a month ago to me, my sister, the other brothers, and other family and friends. He's been furloughed from his oil and gas industry outdoor sales job for a couple of months now. (I was going to post his actual first name, but eventually decided not to.)

Saying he didn't want to be a "goldbrick" or similar, and talking about all the "other people" he thought were, with expanded unemployment bennies and such, he said he was thinking about taking a courier type driving job, even if at near minimum wage and having to Obamacare on health. (He's still getting bennies, plus unemployment-furlough pay.)

Homefries is the most Trump Train of my three brothers, and the closest to a full-on racist, having called Obama a "blackie" when talking to me, and presumably worse elsewhere.

Well, right after this text, visiting the dentist for the first time in many years, I found out I needed the stump of one tooth pulled, likely another, then a root canal and other things. For a variety of reasons, I don't have dental insurance and haven't. 

I refused to text Homefries back at the time because I didn't even want to cosign his Trump Train virtue signaling bullshit. But, my new medical status led me to the "journaling letter," which is now excerpted.

===

Dear Homefries:

Just fuck you. 

Years and years ago I accepted your non-pology for the abuse, indeed, what was even a non-admission of your sexual abusing me, when you said you regretted not protecting sis and I from Billy Bob (the oldest brother) as an actual covert admission.

No more.

The virtue signaling crossed a line.

First, given your "Blackie" and many other things, I have little doubt who you thing these "other people" are. That's not just because of your words, but because the oilfield industry tilts heavily toward racist white people in its employ.

Second, as far as goldbricking, start iwth Trump and his his family.

So, again, shut the fuck up.

Third, you work in an industry that sucks heavily off the federal and state teats.

Fourth, it's also heavily exploitative of our land and planet, even if you're a climate change denialist.

That leads to the intellectual and personal side.

First, you work for an industry very exploitative of its employees.

Second, you're 61.

It's not easy finding better jobs without a college background.

Related? You've got a bad back already from a driving-heavy job background. And, you want to continue that for less money?

Back to the moral side. 

As I set here staring a boatload of dental work in the face, your virtue signaling also has a degree of personal offensiveness.

I'm still not replying to you, still not co-signing your bullshit.

===

Update, Nov. 4: Turns out Homefries took the job. I don't know for sure if it has O-care or "bennies." I briefly acknowledged his text saying he'd taken it. Didn't realize it, but he is only using his late wife's phone now, so he had to go to "his" phone to get it.

Update, Dec. 3: Also, as far as people "not wanting to work," should I, in a dying industry, ever get downsized or whatever again, and because of age and dying industry, have extra trouble finding work? If I'm eligible for the federal 99-week extended unemployment, and it still exists, I'll take it.

22 years, and I forgot that, too

Just as I forgot that dad would have been 90 this year (although I did not forget mom's 90th a year ago), I forgot my sobriety anniversary for a week or so since it passed.

I don't think there's any big deal to it (although others might think otherwise), but forget I did.

Rather, as I type, I see three other angles.

One is that coronavirus-related additional busyness at work has just burdened my mind in general.

Maybe because it's not a "milestone" anniversary like my 20th, is another reason.

The third is that I'm not the same person I was years ago. I define myself less in terms of being a "sobrietist," per the term many in Lifering use (and also less in terms of being an abuse survivor) and more in terms of someone who, being past a certain age, and counting the clock just from the start of adulthood, is officially in middle age, and has the worries of middle age in general, and some additional ones particular to Merika and to my career at this time.

I also have one other issue, or thought, related to that.

I saw in the latest Johnnie Reporter that Bruce Klassen died. Now, if Bruce still had his Winfield weight problems, he wasn't the healthiest of persons by any means. That still doesn't make it nicer.

I hated college, too

Not as much as grade school, junior high or high school, no.

But, in hindsight, I hated St. John's to some degree.

Not just "had regrets" about the college and career path I was "steered into," which I've had ever since I escaped the fowler's snare.

But hated. More than disliked. Hated.

Just popped into my mind June 5, and I decided to do a journaling-type blog post about it over several days.

What prompted this was looking at Marie's friends lists on Facebook, and the number of St. John's girls who I thought were diffident at best, stuck-up at worst. None of them seemed "relatable" to me because ... I was a runt who had zero relational skills and a life crushed by sexual abuse by brothers, covert sexual abuse by mom, and a few sexual putdowns by dad, along with one instance of sexual competitiveness and other things.

I wasn't bullied by guys as an albino wolf. But, no girls "hit on me." None.

Brenda and Debbie did at Gallup. Cathey in her twisted way at Hobbs. And what's her name, in a sick way, the lesbian manhunter in Mineral Wells.

And that's it.

Maybe, without the outwardly expressed anger — and it wouldn't be at those girls, ladies women — that, in addition to the "be married to the church" idea, or maybe even as a subset of that idea, is why seminary was appealing.

That's not to say that my young adult development might not have been worse yet at a state university of 3,000, let alone 10,000.

On the women, maybe, just as boys saw me as the white wolf to be bullied as a kid, girls, then women, saw me as the white wolf to be rejected. Maybe they recognized that I had some subconscious fears, in part because of mom's covert abuse, plus feeling "dirty" otherwise.

Sidebar: Dad would have been 90 on this date. I totally forgot about it until sis mentioned it to me. It's progress that I didn't even remember it. When he died and I cried, I missed what I wish he could have been. I missed still being afraid enough of him to not make that clearer. And I missed "closure," at least to a degree.

But, I also missed that that past couldn't be undone. I still miss that today. And that's all.

Recovery from religious trauma

The Dallas Observer has an in-depth story about Kathryn Keller, a Metroplex counselor who specializes in recovery from religious trauma.

And, yes, it's real, and as the only one of my siblings to move beyond my fundamentalist Lutheran childhood, it's needed.

As with the sexual, emotional and physical abuse of childhood, I don't think I've totally recovered from this one, either.

Keller rightly notes that religious abuse, like other types, occurs on a continuum. And she's active with her church tradition herself, so she's not an atheist trying to tear down faith.

She says that it can, like other forms of abuse in childhood, if ongoing, cause not just PTSD but complex PTSD. Agreed.

And, if you have a parent who is a religious leader, even if the abusiveness isn't that bad, that increases the ongoing factor.

I rejected my childhood beliefs on both intellectual and emotional-psychological grounds. I probably would have done so anyway, even without seeing the hypocrisy firsthand. But, that did add to the issue.

The year in review

The first big thing was moving to Muenster, and getting out of Sulphur Springs just before Moser bought the paper there. No idea how much he would have held Marlin over my head, but he would have.

It's not been perfect here. Transitions from an old guard team, and mistakes. Add to that Shannon's anxiety and perfectionism levels, and feeling put too much under a microscope by my one column.

At the same time, I overall like it, and overall have less stress than Sulphur Springs. Plus, I make more money, especially with the gamble of not buying Obamacare. That's even more true after a raise.

Off the job, Gainesville's library does ILLs, which puts it ahead of Sulphur Springs for sure.

And Denton? Learning more and more than for most "ritzy" groceries and more, I don't have to go to Dallas. Has an art museum I've not yet been to, an old courthouse museum (ditto), a pretty funky square area, a great quad at TWU and more. And all almost 10 miles closer to Gainesville than Paris was to Sulphur Springs for Kroger, let alone the Metroplex.

Muenster itself is not bad to nice for a small town its size. But, it's cliquish like Rosebud, and even more inbred than most Protestant small towns its size here in Texas.

On the personal growth side? I decided to try a paid membership in a hookup-type website. Never again. Got my credit card hacked via there, and more than ever, the parent company dumps half a dozen chat sites together. Plus, little local selection, and not even decent nibbles beyond the local. And, 98 percent of "nibbles" are clearly fakes.

That said, overall, I've become a bit more detached from such things. A little more often, I feel a bit less like staring at a screen like that.

On the rest of the personal side, I'm becoming more aware of interpersonal dynamics and others' personalities more quickly than in the past. This last year saw definite growth there.

I still dream about work at times. Weirdly, I dream more about things that need to be done that aren't actually part of what I actually do, than I did in Sulphur Springs. I have no idea why. That wasn't the case in Marlin or Center, as best as I can recall.

And that's where we're at on the new year.