As for my own gifts, it’s been a good day.  I’m still not quite used to this concept of asking for presents and actually getting them.  My family doesn’t really do Christmas in the presents way, at least not since I was about eleven.  We watch TV specials, make tamales, and volunteer at soup kitchens instead.  So I’m always a bit surprised when I wake up on Christmas morning and have presents under the tree.

Next up is the extended family gift exchange which I’m not as excited about as I normally would be.  We had plans.  Great plans.  We were going to go to our cute little family owned hardware store and support local business.  Then DC got two friggin’ feet of snow and we couldn’t get further than three or four blocks from the apartment.  So instead we had to go with Home Depot which is ok, but not as sustainable.  We have fun gifts for the ‘gag gift’ exchange though, that at least makes me feel a bit better.

Then for New Year’s Day we’re double booked.  We usually go to his grandma’s because she hosts a gathering of local musicians for a jam, it’s pretty cool.  This year is also the other side of the family’s Christmas celebrations so we’ll be trying to split our time . It’ll be…interesting.

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See, I don’t look ill.  In fact, I very rarely look ill.  I’m not allowed to leave the apartment without supervision, but I look perfectly fine.  Small maybe, but healthy.

What people don’t realise is that many people with disabilities look just as capable as everyone else.  I don’t need a wheelchair or a walker or even a cane.  I can see well enough (…with glasses), hear well enough, walk well enough.  What I can’t do is go more than two blocks without wandering off to lord only knows where.  I’ve been slowly trying to see how far I can go without somehow ending up in random places with no recollection of how I got there.  It’s not working so well.

I know that my brain takes side trips when I’m at home too.  I can’t remember entire conversations I’ve had with Parker.  I was apparently a complete ass a couple of nights ago, but I have absolutely no recollection of it.  It’s part of the reason I haven’t called school.  I’ll start to and next thing I know it’s five in the evening and I’m in the kitchen instead on the bed.  I am terrified of being alone, but figure there’s not a whole lot of trouble I can get into in my own apartment.  We don’t have sharp knives or strong medication because of my history and if I wander off it’s at least day time.

I still don’t look different though.  I still look like someone who should be able to go to school or work full time.  Maybe a few minor modifications because of the ADHD, but nothing major.  I certainly shouldn’t be sitting around at home all day.

Of course, the feeling that I should be doing something contributes to the depression which is already a bigger problem because I’ve yet to find a therapist and my medication is all out of whack which then means that I hit the “can’t get out of bed all day” phase which means I really can’t do anything which means I feel even more useless and…it’s a bit of a cycle.  I know it’s a cycle.  I’ve been in therapy long enough to recognise the cycle.  I can’t do anything about it, but I recognise it.  Which is also frustrating.

I’d just like for people to be able to see that there’s something off with me.  Just for one day.  Just so they know that it’s not all my head (well…it might be,  but in the psychological disorder sense rather than the hypochondriac sense…which I suppose would be a disorder in and of itself…have I mentioned I have ADHD?) and I really do need some sort of help.  At they very least it’d make me feel less stupid.

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1. Suicide: It’s not about you.

Generally his bentos are some play on rice, chicken, and broccoli.  He’s a picky eater who usually forgoes all vegetables so the fact that I’ve gotten him to eat at least one on a regular basis is kind of a big deal.  The fact that I’ve gotten him to eat white rice is amazing (still working on other versions).  I’m very proud of what I’ve gotten so far, especially since when I started he would barely touch anything that wasn’t pizza (pepperoni), spaghetti, mac and cheese (Kraft only), or chicken strips.  College kid food doesn’t begin to cover it.  He had the palette of a five year old.

I like to encourage any amount of improvement so I try very hard not to complain about making yet another bento of white rice, steamed broccoli, and terriyaki chicken.  If I’m going to introduce a new food I do it on the weekends so he can have something else home cooked instead of defaulting to some form of chicken nugget.  This has worked pretty well, he’s at least gotten better about *trying* things even if he insists he doesn’t like them.

There’s just one tiny problem.  I’ve recently developed a complete aversion to all meat products.  I was semi-ok with preparing them, but today when I started to chop up the chicken for Parker’s bento I started feeling physically ill.  This isn’t particularly new, I’ve always been somewhat uncomfortable with meat, it just seems to have gotten worse.  Normally if I switch to a vegetarian diet for a week or two the feeling passes, this time it’s progressing.  I’m not fully sure how I am with *eating* meat because I haven’t tried, but the idea of cooking it isn’t so good right now.

Again, this has happened before.  I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian in my early teens, switched to strict vegetarian for about six months when I was 16, and switched back to predominantly lacto-ovo when I found out the vegan diet was quite literally killing me (genetic defects, gotta love ‘em).  I averaged one meat product a month for the next four years and only switched to a fully omnivorous diet when my health started tanking.  There’s no real ethical reason for my vegetarianism (though I could come up with a few if pressed), I’m simply not a huge fan of most meats.

The only real difference this time is that I can’t handle the thought of being around meat very well.  I’ve always disliked the rabid vegetarians who insist that they’re so sensitive as to not be able to even be in the presence of meat so I’m a little disturbed by the thought that I might become one of them.  Not only will Parker never become a vegetarian (see that whole hatred of vegetables thing), I absolutely refuse to force my own personal beliefs on other people.  Particularly since this one isn’t even a belief!

I’m not fully sure what to do about this.  Switching to a vegetarian diet for myself isn’t that big of a deal.  I average four or so vegetarian months a year so I’m rather used to it.  The inability to be in the same room as meat is what concerns me.  At the moment I have no objection to simply sucking it up, but if it gets any worse there are going to be a few problems.

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…Unless I can buy Nicky Byrne.  But I’m fairly certain that’s illegal.

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This past week’s Ugly Betty focused on high school.  Along with the regular Betty-centric plot, there was a subplot involving Justin Suarez and his first high school homecoming.  In the above scene Justin is the victim of a prank where the football team decides to crown him homecoming queen.  As Parker and I were watching it we both noticed the exact moment where Justin’s voice changes from trying to laugh it off to turning the prank back around on them.  It is the moment when he went from young fey to a budding catty queen.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you always know that the bitchy queen stereotype exists as a coping mechanism.  You know that the snark usually comes out when you back a fairy into a corner.  It doesn’t quite click though.  It’s only when you watch a young male — real or fictional — make the transition from boy to man that you allow yourself to make the connection.

It’s even more odd for me because I never knew a catty queen growing up.  My school and neighbourhood had more than their share of fairies, I’m not sure I have more than two straight friends from that time period, but none of us were ever the almost cruel men the stereotype is known for.  We were witty, yes.  Sassy, of course.  Sarcastic, definitely.  But we never had that biting sense of humour Marc, and now Justin, exhibit.  It wasn’t until I moved to the DC area that I met men who made me realise why so many people dislike queens.

I think a large part of this has to do with the way we were socialised.  We didn’t need to be catty, there was no one around to tease us.  If one of us was voted queen for anything it was because we worked hard for it.  The guys who stayed home are still very sweet and very effeminate while those of us who left have developed a bit more of a bite and lost a few of the more extreme camp mannerisms.  None of us are quite like the men I’ve met who grew up elsewhere, it seems that level of cattiness takes years of mistreatment to develop.  We’re closer to the teens I’ve seen in the more liberal areas of the city: happy and relaxed, but able to snap back if needed.

I have to wonder if the growing acceptance of being gay will eventually mean there are no more catty queens.  While a part of me thinks it will, the other part of me realises that accepting homosexuality and accepting variance in gender expression are two very different things.  I have met people who believe themselves to be very gay friendly until asked if they’d be ok with their son being a drag queen.  Very few people have reached a point where they’re just accepting of pink boys (see Sarah Hoffman’s blog for more on this term) as they are of tomboys.

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