Recalibrating and Famously Dead

So Tuesday I was all set to take My Blond Companion (MBC) in hand, get on a bus, and see the Barbie movie at a Cineplex.💃

I'd chosen my outfit carefully, complete with pink sweater, knowing it would be cold in the theatre, the usual over doing it with air conditioning, and remembered to put earplugs in my pockets.👸

The sound volume of movies is painful for me, which may be partly why I'm not much of a movie goer. Also where I sit matters. I need perspective on the screen so as not to feel overwhelmed by it.👵

Hey, breakthrough - movies in theatres = sensory overload!😵

I've been watching a lot of videos about anxiety, etc, and Gabor Mate's talk on authenticity made me realize how inauthentic I am. It's due to a fear of abandonment, vulnerability, intimacy. As he also says, it's no one's fault, no one's to blame, but it's our responsibility to ourselves and others to work through it.😷

No more blaming mom.👶

Blame the Patriarchy.💩

Anyway, about an hour or so before we were planning to leave for an early afternoon showing (I don't go out in the evenings these days) MBC mused aloud that I may want to forego the popcorn, due to my temporary (but permanent) denture currently (and forever) disguising my hillbilly smile.👹

I assured him I'd be foregoing all offerings at movie theatres henceforth, thanks but no thanks.👸

People who don't have eating disorders with panic attacks on top really don't appreciate how fraught it all is for people who do, but good grief, I got queasy just hearing the word popcorn. How could I ever have eaten movie theatre food, and in a movie theatre? Well, I'll tell you how, by pretending to be an entirely different person than I am.👻

But speaking of queasy, there I was, one minute looking forward to seeing Barbie (I want to see it more than I've wanted to see any movie ever, save for The French Connection when I was 12) the next minute realizing I'd been slowly but surely starting to feel not so good.😰

I waited a bit, did some breathing exercises, then said to MBC, "We may have to leave, that's all. And we'll have to scout out the washrooms first. Oh and sit by the back near the exit so I can get out in a hurry if need be. Sorry, it may be a waste of time."😰

And he was fine with that, he's witnessed the panic attacks up until the lying on the bathroom floor part, but then I realized I was making myself do a thing I wasn't ready to do after all and called it off entirely.😎

He was fine with that, too, not feeling particularly driven to see the Barbie movie anyway, and I joined him on Bernie's walk, suddenly feeling perfectly fine. Great, actually.💪

MBC suggested I plan to see the Barbie movie every day, then cancel on myself, so I always end up feeling great.😀

Later MBC mentioned having lunch with a friend and his friend pointing out we haven't recovered from the pandemic, we just want to think we have so we can get back to normal, or what Gabor Mate refers to as our "myth of normal".💁

Add in the Freedom Convoy's attack on us here in Ottawa, which for me triggered a fight, flight, freeze response, on top of a problem with emotional dys-regulation, and voila - panic attacks.😷

As I've blogged before, I cried with relief when Angela Hewitt (yes, the concert pianist, the liberal elite, herself) during an interview on CBC Ottawa about the effect the Freedom Convoy was having on her life said, "We're being bullied."😖

I know now it would have triggered too many childhood feels: fear, vulnerability, abandonment, betrayal, not being seen, heard. Injustice was everywhere. It was. We were bullied and we bullied. Parenting wasn't a word, therapy unheard of in spite of the adults around us having lived through a depression, fought in world wars. Corporal punishment was meted out by the same principals and vice-principals - all men - and teachers who may also have been sexually abusing us. That was a fact at the ordinary public elementary school I attended. Public record. And I know for a fact it was worse at the ordinary Catholic elementary school Freddie next door attended because he told me all about it. And every day, dodging its bullies - just other even more terrified children - I thanked our Protestant God I wasn't born Catholic and didn't have to suffer the injustices they did at their school, believing ours paled in comparison.😇

Our grade eight teacher/vice-principal eventually, in the '90s, got sentenced to 12 years for the sexual assault of scores of girls over his 25 year career in the Sault. And 12 only because he refused to show remorse for any of it. This is fact. Also a miracle he was brought to justice at all, thanks only to his victims and no thanks to the many adults who let him get away with it.❤

Imagine, Sinead O'Connor was crucified in much of our media and politics for ripping up a picture at the end of her set on SNL of the CEO of our western world's most famously Patriarchal institution - which it is still - for his deliberate and ongoing complicity in covering up/denying the kidnapping, rape and murder of Irish children by his institution's employees. Why? I mean we know why he covered it up/denied it - $$$ - but what's with our media crucifying her for an entirely non-violent protest?😠

And still it goes on, reality fictionalized to suit Patriarchal ideology, blatant bullying witnessed by millions of us, Russians, with the blessing of their Russian Orthodox Church, spiritual leader of Putin and his Russian Mob, kidnapping, raping and murdering Ukrainian children, while much of our media blames everybody but the perpetrators.😠

It seems like small potatoes now, the Freedom Convoy's violence against us, championed by so much of our media, blatant propagandists for it still employed, churning out their lies, our politicians continuing to fuel the fascist fire it lit in downtown Ottawa a year and a half ago now.👵

But the question should be asked louder than ever - how do we sleep while our beds are burning?💔