I had an interesting time yesterday. I escorted EC to meet a friend he has made over the internet. The lads got along really well. I’m very happy for them both. I spent 6-7ish hours talking with the mom. I was apprehensive going in because one of the bigger things I know about her is that she is very much a gun enthusiast. Given my life experiences I’m a bit of a pansy ass in that department.
I was surprised by just how much I like her. Of course she lives a 3 hour train ride away. She’s raw and honest. We did not have any small talk. I know a lot about her life, her story arc, and about her family. I am not going to claim I am anything like an authority on her but I got a very strong impression. Unflinching. That was the most significant thought I walked away with. She has been up and she has been down but she carries on with dignity and grace. She has struggles but she is willing to push herself through to meet obligations she has created with other people.
Without getting into details a lot of tragedies have occurred. She knows she is still alive and that she is not promised forever and she is trying to make the most of it.
I appreciated her way of bringing up the mitigations she enacts in her life to prevent herself from accidentally harming people. That’s the kind of thing I usually have to gently and slowly tease out of people. She has a really strong innate sense of boundaries. I say innate but of course I don’t know. She might have learned it the hard way. It was an incredibly relaxing day for me. I was careful with my word choices to start with but by the end I was more free with stories than I usually am. I felt vulnerable. I felt like I was matching her vulnerability. It was really nice. Late in the day she bought my book. As soon as she did that I felt like I had complete freedom to talk about anything that is discussed in the book. I can maintain exactly the same level of disclosure in multiple settings. I like those levels of awareness so much. What am I allowed to talk about with the people who are in this space? There are so many factors.
She told me a bit more about how Scottish gun control works and I think it is fantastic. There is a 7 month long process (and she thinks it should be longer) where the police interview lots of different folks in your life. After you have it your gun licence is attached to your car license and you will be stopped occasionally for random checks to see if you are complying to every letter of regulation. Any kind of infraction can result in loss of your gun license. You had better come correct 100% of the time or you can’t be trusted with a gun.
Yes motherfucking 2A psychos, I do want to come for your guns. I do. I mean… I do but I moved to a country not populated by people like you so I’m not in the US to do it so really don’t bother worrying about me coming for you. I really fucking hope someone else does soon though. My youngest has a magical vision of what living in the US is like. She keeps threatening to move over there once she is a grown up. I tell her I will miss her very much. I sure hope that by the time she is considering this question she won’t have to include videos like this in her preparation for moving there.
I don’t think guns should be illegal. I think they should be regulated and controlled because angry people should not be allowed to hold crowds hostage and kill people. I think that this needs to be part of a disarmament pact with the police.
Yes. I want to come for the guns. From both sides. I really really really do. I don’t flinch when I see police here; they don’t have guns (outside of airports). Not even in all airports. The police here are chatty and helpful and eager to insure that everyone is safe and doing ok. They spend a lot more time pursuing stolen bikes than they do harassing people on the street.
I mean, American cops do need to be a bit more tolerant of “fuck you” than a Scottish police officer and I’m sure that will feel dramatically unfair. Here such language is always kind of a risk. Every single person here has to participate in the social agreement that screaming profanity at people isn’t acceptable. I don’t think there is a snowball’s chance in hell of such standards ever becoming mandatory in the US again. The US is pro-weirdo in a way Scotland isn’t.
I am meeting more and more weirdos here. I am introducing myself to strangers in public when they wear pins that indicate they are part of my extended community. This is a small country. The whole country has fewer people than San Francisco. The entire council area I live in has fewer than 15,000 more people than Fremont.
With how I feel about community basically all of Scotland is my neighbourhood. I’m looking for the people who feel like they don’t fit in. I’m looking for people who share my hobbies and pastimes and values. I’m used to hunting in a much larger ocean. I gathered my people far and wide. Scotland sometimes sorta feels much bigger because a 95 mile distance takes three hours on the train. Doing that twice in a day is a high cost.
Enh. I will figure it out. I always have figured out how to keep people who were GU (geographically undesireable). I started with the people on my road. I moved out to the neighbourhoods that are nearest to my house. I swear I am beating the bushes looking closer! I have met a couple so far and I am trying to meet more. I also know that I need to make friends in this country.
It is a complicated thing needing to feel seen by other people who have suffered. There is something in that specific dynamic that is important to me. I need to have people in my life who know how hard it is for me to do the things I do. People who understand that some days you do an hour of work and hide in bed afterwards because that day is just not happening. I had one of those this week. My period is fucking rough. It’s getting much more dramatically worse. I have been convinced I need to get registered with the menopause clinic.
Why do I keep GU people? Most of them have been highly individual people who have gone through some significant struggles. We bop in and out of each other’s lives very occasionally to be a sounding board and a supportive ear and a cheerleader. They are people who end up having very specific, loud voices in my head. In many ways this is not a fair process. I know that there was a period of time where I was dramatically over-using Blacksheep’s voice in my head as I twisted her words into the absolute worst possible, most vague, reaching interpretation of whatever she said.
I didn’t know how to translate her words into a meaning that sounded like she liked me. It was mostly because I was using those mean words for myself and I was scared she felt like that towards me and I projected all the hell over her. That was very shitty of me.
I want to learn from my mistakes and do better. Even though it may be fun to use this new person’s voice in my head when I’m saying things I can’t do much of it. I need to strictly keep her voice for things she has actually said. I cannot create impressions.
That’s one of the ways I plant ticking time bombs that end relationships. I’m almost 42 fucking years old. Get it together, Krissy.
And now, we run 7 miles. Bye.