These socks from Sock Dreams are so babely! I love science, and somehow that has led me to eroticize the "knowing your shit and looking professional and competent and intelligent" aesthetic. It's really silly, but I think that I look cute in those lead gowns one wears when taking x-rays, or when I have on surgical gloves and masks, or when I'm bent over a microscope looking at, um, fecal samples (I know, so sexy, right). Maybe there's also an element of wanting to emulate Dana Scully somewhere in there, too. I guess the point of that paragraph is: science is so great and fascinating, and being so interested in learning new procedures and facts makes me feel confident and self-assured and, by extension, pretty darn attractive.

On a more serious note, today I conducted a heartworm antigen test (really the least interesting test I do on a regular basis) that ended up being positive. It's the first time that I've ever actually come across heartworm disease in a dog in this economically wealthy area (my erstwhile foster dog in Carrboro, NC had a low infestation of heartworms, but that was almost to be expected, considering the circumstances of her previous life; she was ostensibly chained up all the time, had recently birthed some puppies that mysteriously disappeared, had a three-inch-wide hairless line down her back, most likely from some cringe-inducing injury that she had endured, and she wound up in a high-kill, rural gassing shelter that had made the news several times in a month for animal cruelty -- luckily, she's totally fine now, with a loving owner). The host is a young dog who is full of life and definitely the sweetest patient we saw today, so I really hope that we can nip it in the bud and help the dog on his merry way. I'll be interested to see how this situation develops over the next few weeks. Right now the next step is to send another blood sample off to the lab for more sensitive testing to make sure that it's not a false positive. We'll go from there, I guess.

Vet-assisting!

On Monday I get to scrub up -- surgical mask and cap and all! -- and hold the bladder while my boss removes a bunch of large bladder stones from a one-year-old dog. I'm excited to be able to gain some literal hands-on experience in assisting with surgery; the more things that I get the opportunity to do in an animal hospital setting, the more I want to go ahead and get certified as a veterinary technician just to keep my options open in the future, because this stuff is so interesting to me. It's nice having skills, but I'm starting to get bored with the routines of fecal exams and heartworm tests; my boss keeps trying to teach me venipuncture on the jugular vein, but it's been pretty impossible for me so far... how do you find the vein with all that fur!?

healin' and wheelin'

I have my clitoral hood pierced. Although not my super-primary motivation behind getting it, I very soon realized the empowering weight behind having this part of my body pierced.

In witnessing and experiencing all of the nasty violence that is nonconsensually perpetrated against vulvas, it is a powerful form of reclamation to be able to tell someone who is professional, supportive, and well-intentioned to stick a needle through my clitoral hood in a safe, female-positive environment. It hurt, but in a much more positive way than other things have.

Not only that, but the very act itself: being in control and having the autonomy to be able to do this to my body is pretty fucking significant. (Being a survivor of incest, may I say even more than I usually would about youth-lib things: fuck parental consent about choices concerning their children’s bodies; fuck that so much!)

Having this piercing is fun, fun, fun. It is the easiest piercing that I’ve ever had in terms of aftercare and lack of recurring infections (hay lip piercing fiascos), because 1.) this area of the body, go figure, is super-vascular, so the influx of blood flow promotes quick healing (about a week), and 2.) despite the lies fed to me through my twenty years of Western conditioning, the more intimate areas of the vulva are more or less self-cleaning (fuck douching), leaving me with little to do in terms of keeping the fresh piercing clean.

And fuck! It feels so good during sex, all the time! How great and empowering and fuck-you-everyone is that!?

Update: I had an orgasm while biking to the grocery store, thanks to that piercing. Yup.

the usual self-prescription and half-promise to myself

Everyday From Now On:

• holy basil & ashwagandha tinctures – once I get money (hopefully) I will add rhodiola to this, as it also helps to reduce stress and stress-related heart problems (eg. nervous tachycardia, which is probably not doing me any favors; heart attack at age 49 like everyone else in my family?)
• oatstraw tea
• B-vitamins (super stress B-complex)
• vitamin D
• maybe something else to help tone the nervous system but I haven’t decided yet
• not St. John’s wort because MAOIs really scare me and I wouldn’t be able to eat yogurt and fuck that
• leafy greens! brain food! raw stuff!

For a while I was considering asking to be put on antidepressants because my mind is whizzing around and my anxiety is overtaking my body to the point where I can’t distinguish whether there is something horribly wrong with me, physical disease-wise, or whether I’m projecting all of this health anxiety into symptoms that have magically appeared with stress and back-breaking faux-self-diagnoses. In any case, I was feeling terrified last week of slipping into some pseudo-psychotic state of hallucinating (like, Ranger Dave was not walking around my hospital room, okay) and being pummeled by a bunch of really fucked-up, neverending thoughts and my brain feeling fuzzy and difficult to muck through. I was also in the hospital for five days, listening incessantly to Off With Their Heads and watching crappy sitcoms and not having much human contact after being told off by an ex-partner who is a terrible person, so that probably wasn’t really helping, either.

I’ve realized that the well-known anti-anxiety drugs out there are generally sedative, habit-forming acute treatments like benzodiazepines, which I honestly wouldn’t term as “mood stabilizers” because they don’t work to change brain chemistry in a sustainable way; they work by slowing down brain activity, effectively just doping you up and leaving you there in an addictive state of needing to maintain and increase doses to combat anxiety (they are also known to exacerbate depression and suicidal thoughts). Which I suppose is what some people need, obvs, especially with acute panic disorders and such, but every time that I’ve tried to self-medicate with similar herbs in the past, like passionflower or lemon balm or valerian or any of those “anti-anxiety” herbs that are pretty much just tranquilizers, it hasn’t actually helped me to deal with shit but more just to shut myself off, which is the opposite of what I need, given my constant state of snail-like inertia. This led me to realize that a lot of the allopathic Valium shit has fallen out of favor in treating anxiety, and these days those sorts of ailments are often managed with anti-depressants like MAOIs and SSRIs, which are less addictive and tailored more for chronic, long-term treatment of various mental disorders. By altering brain chemistry, they actually help with depression, many forms of anxiety, OCD, and y’know, all of that shit that is wonky with my brain.

I decided, however, to try to find an anti-depressant-like herbal regimen to try out for a while before I consider asking for a presciption. Not that there’s any shame in going the medication route if that’s what I need, but I’m trying to force myself to step outside of my comfort zone and deal with things head-on and not go running away from things that I might be able to deal with if I at least give it a try; also I am scared of addiction (hence my over-the-top aversion to alcohol) and the numerous other side effects of common anti-depressants. In any case, it’s been evident to me now more than ever that my levels of anxiety are severely fucking up my body-body (not just my head), not to mention the obnoxious inconvenience of going to an hour-long police tactics workshop with a focus on DC mobilizations and freaking the fuck out and going home and crying for the next five hours. Like, yeah, I’ve gotta do something about this. Besides the mental fucked-up shit and the wah-wah-wahhhh, my heart rate is constantly through the roof (usually somewhere between 90 and 140), I have pretty constant irritable bowels due to nervousness (which goes along with the mysterious nausea thing, I guess), and the either horribly debilitating neurodegenerative disease that I’m developing, or its stress-related red herrings of twitching and floppy and cramping muscles. Which I’m on the fence about going to the doctor for, considering that I am very close to being broke (thanks to three months of doctor’s appointments that cleaned out my bank account, and no job) and also because I’m sure that I’ll be laughed out of the office and be brushed off with that patenalistic doctor thing of “oh, you’re just crazy, here’s an anti-depressant prescription,” which, the prescription may be totally valid, but they always say it in such a throwing-a-bone, awful patronizing way, like they couldn’t possibly believe that the mind and body are legitimately connected, and mental issues aren’t real bodily issues, just, y’know, craziness, weak people, etc.

In any case, whether it’s an organic thing or a made-up-in-my-head thing, the truth remains that there’s someting seriously wrong with me, something that needs to be addressed, because my body is a far cry from homeostasis right now, and it’s definitely contributing to this vicious cycle of health anxiety and regular anxiety and probably more health anxiety because of the regular anxiety. And my goal is to work on staying constant with good nutrition and supplements and exercise and social-time for the next few weeks and see if that helps at all. Then maybe talk to my therapist about going down another road if I need to do that.

Anyway, now onto mailing out more resumes and cards proclaiming certain cuties as cuties.

black drawing salve

I’ve found from my time on the internet that there is an important discrepancy, despite the name, between the folk-remedy black drawing salve that works well for drawing out gross acute infections, boils, splinters, and the like, and the other “black salves” made with bloodroot and terrifying compounds that are commercially marketed as alternative cancer cures. I find the website Quackwatch and most other bloodroot-condemners to be big industrial-medicine bullshit propaganda machines, and it’s difficult to find substantiated, unbiased medical information about the benefits of bloodroot, but since the jury still appears to be out on its efficacy and safety, I will not speak about the cancer-treatment drawing salve (obvs, since I have no experience with it). Also, many of those salves contain zinc chloride, which is a scary corrosive compound that is known for irritating the skin and respiratory tract, and that just freaks me out a little.

Black drawing salve, however, is a long-standing, usually-safe folk remedy that often contains drawing substances such as activated charcoal, bentonite clay, and ichthammol, as well as gentle herbs such as calendula, echinacea, and St. John’s wort; all together, the salve’s action is said to soften the skin where applied, allowing greater blood circulation and inviting more white blood cells to attack the nasty things under the skin. Various incarnations of it have been popular since the 1700s, and it’s still a well-established home remedy for minor infections and stickers (and as a germ-prophylactic for those times when you’re accidentally bitten by poop-eating dogs).

Last May I made a black drawing salve, loosely following this recipe. I have a lot of fun making salves: grating the beeswax, watching it simmer into liquid, mixing in those beautiful herbal oils (St. John’s wort is red!), then testing the consistency with slippery fingers as it gets harder and harder after coming off the heat. Reading about the essential oils that I added was a good lesson in other things whose validity Quackwatch disputes, despite overwhelming evidence of their healing properties. So there’s that.

I bought a candy thermometer at the thrift store, and beeswax, cocoa butter, shea butter, activated charcoal, and bentonite clay in bulk at the super-bourge food co-op in Asheville (but you can probably find most of them at your local health food store! or online, of course). Bentonite clay and activated charcoal are good things to have around, anyway; activated charcoal is one of the primary emergency treatments for ingested poisoning (EMT training will tell you this), and bentonite clay has also been touted as a good first-aid holistic treatment for poisoning¹.

Word to the wise (aka, learn from my fail): be sure that you sterilize your glass jars beforehand!

• 2 tablespoons beeswax
• 3 tablespoons cocoa butter
• 3 tablespoons shea butter
• 2 tablespoons of (jojoba oil; original recipe calls for organic coconut oil)
• 1 tablespoon vitamin E oil
• 2 tablespoons activated charcoal powder
• 3 tablespoons bentonite clay
• 5 drops essential oil of lavender (and lemon, eucalyptus, and geranium, or whatever!)
• Clear jars and tops, sterilized
• Candy thermometer

Instructions

1. Place the bees wax, shea butter, cocoa butter and coconut oil in a small pot.
2. Heat to 180 degree over medium heat. Hold at that temperature for 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Add remaining ingredients except essential oil. Stir to blend.
4. When the mixture is cool add the essential oil or any herb you wish to add.
5. Spoon into sterile jars and cover tightly. Keep in a cool dark place.

Total yield is four ounces.

_____________
¹ “Naturally absorbent and extremely gentle on the system, bentonite clay can treat various skin and internal ailments and attracts and neutralizes poisons in the intestinal tract. It can eliminate food allergies, food poisoning, mucus colitis, spastic colitis, viral infections, stomach flu, and parasites (parasites are unable to reproduce in the presence of clay). There is virtually no digestive disease that clay will not treat. It enriches and balances blood. It absorbs radiation (think cell phones, microwaves, x-rays, TVs and irradiated food, for starters). It has been used for alcoholism, arthritis, cataracts, diabetic neuropathy, pain treatment, open wounds, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, stomach ulcers, animal and poisonous insect bites, acne, anemia, in fact, the list of uses is too long for this article.” – source.  I do remember reading someone’s anecdote a while back about orally dosing her dog with a combination of activated charcoal and bentonite clay after the dog had gotten into a significant amount of chocolate. From what I remember, she carefully monitored the dog afterward for poisoning symptoms, but the dog seemed to be fine! Now, since I’m all into the veterinary industry, apparently, and also because I always feel wary about perhaps-detrimentally projecting my politics about medicine onto other people or animals (like, yeah, maybe I can stand to let my own medical symptoms go a little bit, but if it’s happening to my animal, fuck no! I’m gonna get them medical attention right away), I would advise consulting with a veterinarian in the case of poisoning, but the bentonite clay/activated charcoal approach is probably a good in-the-meantime treatment.

things to remember, edition: dating violence & abuse

For a long time I was in a very unhappy relationship with a popular punk dude who didn't treat me very well. It was especially complicated by the discourse of radical communities that supposedly prioritizes supporting and making safe spaces for folks who have been abused, but which fell flat in my case. I've ended up having to confront the difficult, monumental task of redeveloping my self-esteem and self-love mostly by myself, after years of abuse that drove me into the ground.

I know that many survivors of abuse find themselves with little outside support for many different reasons, so for a while I've been compiling a list of things that I wish people would keep telling me, but which I have to keep telling myself. Maybe they're bromides, but they've been true for me and for many of my friends. Even if you're not alone in dealing with such a difficult situation, hopefully these words of empowerment and support will prove helpful, regardless.

(I just want to make a note that in the following list, I mostly use "he" pronouns when referring to abusive partners. This is mainly a reflection of my own experiences, as well as of a patriarchal, binarist, heteronormative culture that devalues women and often normalizes violence perpetrated against them. However, I want to emphasize that abuse can occur in all contexts, across all genders and types of relationships. Abuse can be perpetrated by family members, housemates, co-workers, friends, partners, lovers, teachers, bosses, and anyone else. However, my depth of experience has mostly involved romantic relationships with men, and to that end, I mostly focus on that sort of dynamic in this post. But I do want to acknowledge that abusive relationships are fluid and insidious, and they can occur among all walks of life, but they are often informed and exacerbated by oppressions and the unequal power dynamics afforded by such social capital. It's important to keep in mind that everyone's experience of abuse is different, and that restricting a discussion of abuse to husband-abuses-wife is incredibly restrictive and erasing. I'd like to compile a (nowhere-near-comprehensive, but hopefully still helpful) post giving voice to folks' experiences that are vastly different from mine, to highlight the fact that this shit happens everywhere. And it's bad.)

• IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. Period. You may hate yourself and you may feel so much guilt and self-blame, which commonly happens to victims of abuse and assault. It happened to me. It engulfed me. It still does. It makes me feel like I will always be a failure and a bad person for clinging so desperately to an unhealthy relationship when one of my biggest passions is positive communication and good relationships. It makes me feel like if I had done things differently then things would've been different, and he wouldn't have been so unhappy and angry and awful to me. It makes me feel like I will never get better, and I will always be stuck. But know, please, that it is not your fault. Life is full of choices, and abusers make choices to abuse. And it is not your fault. 

• PEOPLE FUCK UP. You've probably fucked up in that relationship. We all have. Abusive relationships are especially crazymaking, which makes it great for the abuser, because they get to say shit like, "you know, I just felt so sorry for her, she was so unstable, I wanted to help her," and people will probably believe them. I know that I have dealt with crippling guilt for the things that I have done wrong, but I try to be realistic about the effects of abuse and how it warps our responses to certain situations (especially situations that are crazy and make no sense and trigger all sorts of fear-based, fight-or-flight adrenaline reactions in victims), and I know that I can continue to improve and rectify my behavior for the rest of my life. I also try to remember that I am making a choice that is healthy and positive and will bring good things to my life. This choice is letting me live a life that is free of harm and violence from people I love. And that's important.

• FOCUS ON YOU. To add to the last point, he may inventory every less-than-perfect thing you ever did, and he may shout it from the rooftops to all of his friends and associates to save face. (This is one of the hardest things in the world, but:) don't focus on the shit he is saying about you. Don't focus on how happy he is without you in his life anymore. Don't focus on the things he said that you did wrong. Don't focus on his self-destructive or depressive behaviors; you can't heal his pain. You deserve to focus on yourself and your happiness and your healing. There's always a time later for healthy self-criticism, but not while you're already being inundated with shaming and blaming and shit-talking from everyone with their varying agendas.

• THERE ARE RESOURCES OUT THERE. Use them, they want to help you. And there is no shame in calling a crisis hotline.

• DESPITE WHAT YOU'VE BEEN TOLD, YOU'RE WORTH IT. Even if you've been told for years and years that you're not fun or smart or competent or attractive or interesting or punk enough, you are. You are important, and you deserve to be happy, and you deserve to do things that are positive for you.

• YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE REAL. Abusers are really good at manipulating situations, and they might tell you that everything is your fault, that you made them so unhappy or angry that they had to hurt you, that what you experienced wasn't really abuse, that you're oversensitive or vengeful or unstable or (insert any other demeaning, invalidating adjective), and everyone might believe them. A common component of psychological abuse involves convincing the victim that they are "going crazy" and losing touch with reality and not seeing things the "right" way. But know that what happened happened, and you are not delusional, and your experiences are real, even if it seems like no one believes it.

• TRIGGERS ARE EVERYWHERE. Try to formulate a plan about how to deal with them. Personally, I encounter varying degrees of adrenaline responses everyday that are related to my abuse. They suck, but I try to make the most out of them by analyzing the expectations, feelings, physical manifestations, and catalysts associated with them. Sometimes that isn't possible, and it's good to have a sense of how to best handle those shitty situations before the fact. There are some (sometimes helpful, sometimes not) ideas out there, like creating mad maps to remind yourself of how to respond to your own needs in times of emotional crisis. And just putting it out there -- there is no shame in taking anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications to deal with the often-inevitable emotional fallout from abuse. I'm currently discussing Wellbutrin with my therapist.

• IT'S OKAY TO STILL HAVE FEELINGS FOR YOUR ABUSER. It takes time. It doesn't mean you're "not a real victim" if you love the person who hurts you. There are likely a ton of good things about the relationship and about your partner that make you doubt your decisions everyday. Abuse is fraught with so many complicating factors and dynamics; there is no universal experience. I have been madly in love with my abuser for years and years and years, despite the overwhelming amount of terrible things that he did and said to me. And it has taken me a long time to admit that and come to terms with it and work on a space for healing independent of that reality.

• ABUSE IS THE UNFAIREST SHIT IN THE WORLD. You may never, ever understand why someone you care about is hurting you and treating you like garbage. You may never have your experience validated by mutual friends or other close relations. You may feel like the whole thing is a sick, disgusting joke; you may be livid and want to scream, "ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING KIDDING ME?" You may struggle with what if's and guilt for years; you may have your entire worldview vitiated and broken down by the experience. You may have to sacrifice your friends, your job, your community, your hobbies, your city of residence, and even your favorite coffee shop all because of shit that he did to you. You may wonder what the hell you ever did to "deserve" that kind of mistreatment. But again, please know that it is not your fault, and the abuse is not a realistic reflection on anything about you. It is so unfair, and it's bullshit, but that's just what it is: it's bullshit. It's not based in reality or reason.

• THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WILL VALIDATE YOUR FEELINGS. They may be far and wide, but they're there. I know how crazymaking and frustrating it can be to feel like no one gives a shit about something violent and horrible that is tearing your world apart. I had to drop out of a punk scene and an anarchist community because everyone believed and unconditionally validated every fucking thing that my abuser did and totally kicked me to the curb. None of our mutual friends from high school knew, cared, or believed me about the situation. And I felt (and still often do feel) hopeless and lonely and desperate because I feel so invalidated by everyone's nonchalance. But there are free counselors in big cities, and crisis hotlines (that can be reached from anywhere, whether I'm living in the city or suburbs or rural areas), and my friends from places all over the country and all over the world who believe me and who want to support me. Believe me, they're out there. It may take a lot of courage to reach out to those folks, but they want to help you. I want to help you, and I believe you.