ruth[gone to the shop --> ] @ruth@witches.town

I see there is a theme of 🍞 happening and am grateful for 🍞

And also 🌹

<_<

give me admin powers on your site, I'm a good witch

TFW site admins are going through a nasty divorce (all on one of them) and you log in on the sly and back up and export the entire database + all the writers' posts on the sly because you realize the site might just vanish someday.

also I understand the community-based impulses to want to care for people you fear may be in danger and I don't know how to balance that. It's a good thing to want, just data is scary.

That doesn't mean my feelings are right. Just that they're my feelings and since I've figured out there's some actual logical things behind them, I wanted to share that out for consideration. Thanks.

Thinking about people's personal information:

I've been having a lot of strongly-reactive feelings to these conversations & I'm sorting it out:

1) I work in libraries. At our best, we take personal info/privacy very seriously because historically libraries HAVE been targeted w/subpoenas etc. to get patron data.

1a) Therefore, I'm an advocate of "they can't get what you don't have/keep."

1b) See Connecticut Four for a recent case of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Four

2) As I mentioned, the acronym ICE means something else first to me. And THEY are people I worry abt targeting our patrons.

2a) So, to me, giving personal info to ICE == destroying lives.

(“La migra” that’s just how I hear it when it’s said, I don’t know if it’s spelled that way or another)

I keep seeing presumably European people using this acronym as though it doesn’t stand for the US ..., Gestapo doesn’t seem like a bad comparison though they’re their own American-grown genocidal (not using that lightly) horror. Disregarding laws, killing & breaking families. La migra. They make lives of people of color hell, and not just immigrants (let alone undocumented ones). I’m guessing it means something else but it might not hurt to spell that acronym because of its US associations.

In the last decade, I've developed a lot of compassion for younger Ruth. I have a lot of growing I still need her to do, but I am also more compassionate toward my fuckups, my anxieties, my adorations, my obsessions, my hopeless crushes, my misconceptions, my flaws...

And even if, say, I were to become a person in 20 years who really isn't into the idea of having a bat tattooed between her breasts (JUST BRAINSTORMING THAT, NOT MY FIRST GO-TO), I hope she'll have love, compassion, and fond memories of the much younger woman who DID. I hope me then will love me now, because me now needs her love. Fin.

But they'll be there on my body as evidence that I lived, that I did stuff, that I thought X design was pretty (it doesn't have to be deep!). That I was up to my ears in bat bullshit from the time I was 7, with periods of thinking I was too cool for that. Maybe that I found a video game really meaningful... the stories in the Mass Effect series moved me deeply... that's ok too... I've gone through phases of wanting more pop culture stuff and then deeply judging the idea and why can't I just approach it with openness and joy that I may be all these things?

Honestly, some of what I used to worry about when I was younger was getting tattoos and regretting it. And that's good, I'm ok with that decision.

But also now I know... regret is going to be a part of my life. It's not most of it, but I'll always regret some things... I can't escape it...

I know myself a lot better than I used to ...

Like, it might turn out there are other reasons... it might not turn out to be the kind of pain I like. ...my skin might not like the ink ... there's a lot of reasons why I might end up trying once & not getting them ... but I also think I may get some few will ever see.

Also, while my body has always been for me, I think my body has become more for me in the last few months as I live without my partner most of the time. As someone who's been in a relationship a LONG time that can be good.

And I think a lot about my death, my corpse, not because I'm suicidal (which is also a change because I've had those) and... what am I saving the skin FOR?

The other thing that's happening is I'm aging. I'm not old, but I'm 32 & I can see it in my body. My knees hurt sometimes. 😆 I have gray hairs and my skin does things I don't like...

... but now we're alive. And unlike when we were stretched at capacity, I feel like I can choose how I want to live. and I can choose what I want for my body.

I also have disposable income and it's not that I haven't had it before but the thought I'd spend it to put something on my body that's primarily for me? That's a new adjustment.

I also finally have a job where I don't worry it will impair my prospects of getting another one. Some of the higher-ups have VISIBLE tattoos. That's huge.

But you know how I said death? I think that's the other thing---not all the tattoos I want will be visible. I think I want a memento mori on my thigh.

Tonight, I spent time lying in bed, thinking about my body and how it's mine. It took me so long to feel this kind of ownership over it. It took the growing acceptance of my death, really.

All flesh is grass and all its glory like the flowers of the field.

It's like ... I've had a lot of internal change in the last couple years about why I'm living and I know it's because I'm not just having to survive any longer. I spent so long feeling like everything I did was so that we could survive. But hey, we're both alive. Right now, at least, we have jobs. I burned myself hard getting us here...

https://witches.town/media/tFlCR93RtRb6yRsYxeo