On How To Practice Selfcare (Things I Didn't Learn In The Bubble, episode two)

Or, "find little things that make you feel human and cling to them".

The last post I did got me thinking about things. This always happens, and 90% of the time I don't go anywhere with that because... well, as you can all see, my attention span sucks. But I've been stuck on things that probably should've been in that post, and one of the most important ones is selfcare. Bby!me really did not know what selfcare was. For those of you who aren't active in certain online communities... my understanding of it is that selfcare is little things one needs to do to keep fighting. The important word there is little. It's not supposed to be big or dramatic, and finding good methods is a very individual process, but for people coming out of bad situations, it can be everything. So, because apparently I'm into list posts this month, here are a few of my selfcare essentials:

• Bath bombs. Srsly. They're amazing. Probably the priciest thing I'll suggest here - on average, about seven dollars for a single-use thing the size of a baseball - but so, so worth using once a month or so. You can get them on Etsy or elsewhere online in almost every scent imaginable (though I still have yet to find somewhere that has a black orchid one, sigh) and they also make your skin wonderfully squishy for a day or two afterwards and it is amazing.
• Raspberry tea. Or tea in general, because there's something about that process that's inherently calming, but I've read in various places that raspberry is like a natural reset button for uteruses soooo. It works, I swear. (Especially with lots of milk and sugar, but maybe that's just me.)
• Lavender and peppermint scented anything. Maybe not together, I dunno if I've found that combination in anything, but both of those are calming and wonderful. Also I think I read somewhere that the scent of peppermint helps make headaches go away, so that's awesome too.
• A TV show you identify with. This is where I veer a little away from your normal self-care posts because... well, this is a thing for me. I process my life through fictional characters, and that can be really helpful. Some advice - don't go looking too hard, stuff will find you and not the other way around. Or ask a few people you trust if there are any characters you remind them of and go from there. That can be fun. (Of course, depending on your people, they could well tell you things you already know. Which... is not something I'm entirely over and not something I am allowed to post about for another three weeks because Reasons.)
• A TV show you totally don't identify with. Because sometimes the point of selfcare is to distract from your problems, and I am convinced that is why trashy teen dramas were originally created, and that is all I am going to say on the matter.
• A pet who likes attention. In my case, my cat. You look at her for more than two seconds and she'll roll over and give you this "pet me. NOW." look and nobody can resist it. Believe me, I've tried. It's impossible. Affectionate unconditional furry creatures make life so much better.

Song of the day - "Forget", Marina and The Diamonds.

On Liking Things (Things I Didn't Learn In The Bubble, episode one)

Or, "sometimes it's okay to let things in".

A couple of months ago, I did this post on being too jaded for my own good (okay, it was also about how snow brings out the worst in everyone, but there was that element too). While that statement is still accurate, I'm realizing that maybe it isn't as accurate as it used to be. I still expect the worst out of people, but there are a whole lot of lovely things in my life that don't involve direct human contact. And then I got to thinking that it might be cool to do a series of connected posts that don't involve me overanalyzing an underrated TV show, and thus "Things I Didn't Learn In The Bubble" was born. I'm not totally sure what I'm going to do with it, but there are some very important life lessons that I didn't learn until I started spreading my wings and this could be a good chance for me to work through it.

Today's installment - it's okay to like things.

I know, this should be instinctive. To someone who has a more normal background, it probably is. For me, it was a realization that has taken place over several years and finally, finally I am accepting it. (2015 is turning into the year of me accepting things and I love it.) And, strangely, this has happened because of a cute little radio earworm. If by some chance you have not heard the absolute wonder that is "Uptown Funk", please go here and watch the vid (which is pretty awesome and that from the perspective of someone who normally doesn't like music videos that don't involve a certain redheaded goddess, but that is another rabbit trail). You can open it in another tab and go on with whatever else you're doing - trust me, you only need to listen to it once, it will be stuck in your head for at least a week. Consider yourself warned.

So what does a catchy dancey pop song have to do with a major personal realization, you ask? Simple - because it's the latest example of me trying not to like things for no particular reason.

One of the main principles of the community I grew up in is that normal = bad. This has manifested in a lot of ways and I have neither time nor energy to list all of them, but the main way involved media consumption. (Admittedly, certain people have calmed down a lot since I was a tiny, but the general awfulness is still there.) If it was not Explicitly Christian, it was bad. Period. On paper, not such a bad idea... until you remember that there are impressionable tinies and catty middle-aged women involved and my mother routinely got called a bad parent because she let my siblings and I watch Disney movies. (Conversely, nobody batted an eyelash when my then-six-year-old sister could fluently quote LOTR despite the fact that she had nightmares about Gollum in our closet for years. Double standards, thy name is modern evangelical Christianity.) After that snafu, my family in particular practiced a duplicity that, while obviously not an ideal scenario for any parties involved, at least kept reputations intact. Mostly.

Unfortunately, this all occurred during the glory days of crime shows in the early/mid-2000s. My dad has never held to the same strict media standards (see also - how then-six-year-old sister ended up watching a certain trilogy in the first place), and for a couple of years, he loved CSI. Now, had anyone we knew at the time ever found out about this, there would've been canaries. Same went for the absolute glory that was Alias, which in hindsight was the first TV show I ever got attached to. Was it appropriate viewing for a ten-year-old? Your mileage may vary, but it didn't screw me up in any notable ways so not exactly a disaster there. Did it contribute to my total inability to talk media with anyone in a face-to-face setting? Yes.

Then my freshman year of high school happened. That's one of the years that a lot of my various issues and tendencies trace back to, and with good reason. First, it was the year I was allowed to read what I wanted because my mother was preoccupied with other stuff and couldn't be bothered to check everything. Now, being as socially inept as I was during those years, I basically inhaled books. This also happened in late 2007, around the beginning of YA futuristics being a Major Thing. Thankfully, by now I had learned to keep my trap shut. Reading what I wanted was all well and good, but telling anyone about it? Nah. My suicidal inclinations still had a few years of development left. I behaved.

Music also became a part of the problem in the same year. Previously, my auditory delights had been limited to the genres of classical, Christian, and jazz (don't ask). That door wasn't consciously opened, but I still remember the first "normal" album I bought - How To Save A Life by The Fray. Seven years later, I still like that album, so it was a good call on my end. (Maybe not the most normal choice for a fourteen-year-old girl, but the title song was all too relevant following the death of my birthmom and I was a morbid little creature and I swear it made sense at the time.) Music, I didn't need to be told not to talk about. I could listen to what I wanted and use it as inspo for my little stories, but God help me if anyone from our homeschool group found out!!

For years, the duplicity continued. I liked things, but I liked them quietly. There were a few exceptions - my high school graduation, for instance, for which I picked Florence + The Machine's "Dog Days Are Over" as my slideshow song (had I known they would cut it at the two-minute mark, I actually would've done something even more out-there) - but it was my double life. When I got into TV again a few years ago, that too remained something I didn't talk about, not even the shows that have heavily impacted me for the better. But lately, I've gotten really sick of that.

I am allowed to like things, dammit. I am allowed to be amused by things that don't have a lasting impact. I am allowed to sing along at the top of my lungs to a harmless dancey radio song for no reason other than that because I like it. There's nothing wrong with me. I know that some of what I like has problematic elements (and I hate that phrase but I can't think of a better one), but I'm careful. I know what affects me and I'm careful with that stuff. But mostly... I'm okay. I'm immune. I'm allowed to have fun.

And hey, if my version of fun involves rolling the functional window down on my car and feeling on top of the world for a few minutes, I don't think I'm doing all that badly.

Song of the day - "Uptown Funk (featuring Bruno Mars)", Mark Ronson.