Sad, Bad, Mad: Cat Person
The New York Times published a short story, “Cat Person” and people have gone a bit nuts over it. Including me.
Minor things first:
*Trigger warning: This article might bring up traumatic memories for some people.
*Cats are awesome and cat people are awesome. Cats are not the point of the story. (But some of us will lie awake wondering about them all the same. Are they real? Am I? Are you?)
*The cats are definitely not real. I’m sure of it now. Cats feign disinterest but would definitely come to investigate the smells of a new person in their territory. Which means Robert’s creepiness factor just went up to eleven. Fake cats? That’s bonkers.
*There’s a fascinating interview with the author here.
*Yeah, that excessive close-up photo that goes with the story is super gross. I have to put my hand up to my screen to block it out whenever it comes up.
#fixedit
*Also, the story gets really into fat-shaming Robert, which is cheap and gross and suggests immaturity on the part of the writer (as well as, of course, the character). The writing clearly mocks the viewpoint character for her various delusions, but Margot’s disgust at Robert’s extra weight is written about non-critically. It’s about as deep as having an evil ugly witch who is baaaad.
*Yes, gay folks are most welcome to have a “Lol, you poor sad heteros!” moment. Because although a lot of the story does apply to anyone attempting to negotiate dating, the deepest, scariest level of the story is absolutely about what women face when dating men.
*A lot of men feel disturbed and defensive about the story, or simply feel that it’s stupid. Although all art is subjective, most of the men that dislike the story are missing that deep, scary level of the tale. I’ll address the valid points of negative male reactions later.
*It is deeply saddening for speculative fiction lovers that no one in the story turns out to be even slightly feline. Agreed.
*The main characters’ names, Margot and Robert, make me think of Margot Robbie. This is never a bad thing.
Summary (including spoilers)
Margot meets a guy who is pretty average but witty in text form. They eventually have a kind-of date with very bad sex and then Margot texts him (technically her room-mate texts him) to end things, and he calls her a whore.
The deep, scary bit that hurts to think about
There is an underlying tension to the story that a straight female reader (or anyone in a non-male body who has dated a man) has a visceral response to: While on the surface the relationship is mundane (and in the thoughts of the main character it varies as she judges and re-judges the situation), the third layer is the knowledge that Robert has the physical power to rape or kill Margot at virtually any time (and could probably get away with it too).
Women
live
with
this
knowledge
every
day.
Here’s the worst part, the part the story doesn’t even touch on: When a women is a victim of violence, it is almost always at the hands of someone she knows. Someone she trusts. Someone she isn’t afraid of; not any more. Should I live in fear of Chris, my Chris, father of my kids and love of my life?
Of course not!
Except, statistically, yes.
Women live in a world where half the people we know are bigger and stronger than us. We are taught from birth to be careful. Don’t go to certain places after dark. Don’t go to certain places at all. Carry mace. Keep your eyes open. Don’t wear certain clothes. Don’t drink too much. Learn self-defence. Don’t show weakness. Don’t drop your guard.
Then at the same time we’re taught how to survive in the living world: Be nice. Don’t say ‘no’. Flirt. Wear heels and makeup. Marry a breadwinner. Have a private bank account. Don’t have a shrill voice. Don’t complain. Don’t be a feminist. Don’t be loud. Don’t be unlikable. Don’t get angry. Don’t cry in public. Don’t show weakness. Don’t drop your guard.
I am an innocent, partly because I choose to be and largely because my privilege allows me to be. I am white; I grew up thinking I was straight; until recently I was able-bodied.
One of my fictional characters (in a deleted novel) leaves her shoes above the high tide line of a beach while she wanders along the water. Her friend asks if she’s concerned about them getting stolen, and she admits that sometimes they are in fact stolen, but she’d rather have to buy new shoes sometimes than to constantly worry about her possessions.
At a certain point, women have to accept that we might get murdered—and then we befriend men anyway.
I met a man online who lives in Adelaide (I live in Canberra). We got to know one another online (as much as anyone can). Daniel visited Canberra, and we began dating. Then it was my turn to visit Adelaide. He picked me up from the airport and drove me back to his house.
Like a lot of Australian cities, Adelaide has sections of well-established bushland, many of them bisecting the city itself. Daniel and I had already joked about how one of us was most likely an axe-murderer, and as we passed through an unlit section of what appeared to be virgin bushland I felt my heart beat faster.
I didn’t rehearse in my head how to throw myself out of the car, or carefully recollect exactly where my phone was in case I needed to call the police. Instead I tried very hard to pretend I wasn’t afraid. Because when it comes to priorities, men’s feelings almost always come above women’s safety.
Now, spoiler alert, I wasn’t murdered. So I was arguably right to be polite. But that knee-jerk reaction to Be Nice At All Costs isn’t just manners—it’s another type of fear. What if Daniel had noticed and been offended that I’d thought such a thing of him, even just for a moment? What if he’d been so offended that he threw me out of the car, or punched me? That instinct to Be Nice—Or Else is hugely powerful and damaging. That right there is the reason women are frozen in terror when a man masturbates in front of them. He’s already crossed so many boundaries that trying to get away might just be the catalyst that leads to him doing so much more. It also applies to so, so many other awful situations: getting groped, getting overlooked for a deserved promotion, getting interrupted mid-sentence. Women’s default setting is less powerful, and the imbalance gets wider in a thousand different interactions every day. Because men don’t want to give up power, and they push back against women who try to change things.
It’s difficult for men to understand what it’s like from the other side of the gender divide. It’s not a fun think to think about. Quite often, a man will suddenly have a light turn on in their head when they have a daughter: Suddenly they understand the terrifying vulnerability of women from a position where it matters to them.
I asked my mother once if she was scared of being raped. “I used to be,” she said, “then I had daughters. So now I’m afraid of my daughters being raped.”
I hesitated to include a picture of my daughter in this article. You all know why. Yet I didn’t pause for even a second when including a picture of my son. Of course not.
Back to the story. . .
The story plays with the conventions of three different genres, keeping the reader guessing since those genres have very different endings.
One is a romance. I felt myself give that little ‘Aww’ smile as certain beats were hit: The cute meet over Red Vines; the nearly-missed-it moment when the girl doesn’t really know why she gave the boy her number; the tension at silly misunderstandings. Margot gives Robert several chances, and for all her flaws I admire her for that. That genre always ends with a critical romantic moment (a wedding, or meeting the parents, or a first kiss) that indicates that the pair will live happily ever after.
As it turns out, this is not a romance.
The second genre is comedy; there is clearly a slightly dark, wry, self-deprecating humour as Margot’s expectations and opinions about Robert shift and change from moment to moment, only to be ultimately let down by the reality. This layer of the story is expertly done, highlighting the self-delusions and awkwardness of dating in a way that made millions of readers say, “That is the truest story I’ve ever read.” The comedy genre climaxes (oh, lolz) with the awkward horror of the sex scene.
The third genre is horror. When it becomes clear that it’s not a romance, the reader is left not knowing if this is a comedy or a cautionary tale. The horror genre ends with violence, usually with a sense that the protagonist has somehow brought it on herself by her foolish decisions. Margot risks her safety by giving Robert a chance—doubly so by going to his house, and any sexually active female (fictional or otherwise) is guilty for the purposes of fictional denouement. A story is sometimes sympathetic to the sexually active heroine, but it will still kill her for putting out. Stories understand, consciously or otherwise, that sex is dangerous for women and not so much for men.
But refusing sex, as Margot wishes she could do? That’s even more dangerous. Because the last thing you want to do is make a man angry. She’s very conscious of the need to soothe and console Robert (before, during, and after their ‘date’) and is sufficiently aware of her own vulnerability that she finds herself unable to figure out how to break up with Robert, even though she knows she must do it.
Is she promiscuous for sleeping with a man she doesn’t want to? Or is she a victim, unable to extract herself safely from a threat? Or is Robert a victim, lead on and discarded by a powerful (better educated, more attractive) woman?
In my opinion, only one of the above interpretations is a ‘yes’ according to the story—but it’s written well enough that the other questions are allowed to be asked.
Angry men on the internet
There’s a twitter handle set up just to repost men’s reactions to the story, mainly because a lot of men don’t understand the fear Margot feels, and/or they relate to Robert as the victim but feel he is portrayed as a monster.
Margot is not a good person. Nor is she a bad person. She is vain, certainly. She lets her imagination run away with her as she tries to figure out what kind of person Robert really is. She flirts at work (an activity that is harmless, but could hypothetically lead to mildly hurt feelings).
This article is getting ridiculously long, so I’ll be brief: Yes, being a man (especially a straight white man) is the lowest difficulty setting in this game we call life (as written about by straight white male John Scalzi, here, including several follow-ups, one of which is here). And, as John Scalzi and others have stated loudly and repeatedly, that definitely does not not not mean that the lives of straight white men aren’t hard or don’t suck. Life has times of suckitude for everyone, and many lives just suck from beginning to end, and it hurts to be in a sucky place and feel like others are telling you:
- Stop whining. My sucky place is suckier than your sucky place.
- Give some of the tiny scraps you have away to others.
- A lot of what is bad in the world is the fault of you and people like you.
All those three things are true of me and my privilege as well. My methods of coping are:
- Trying not to compare my pain to anyone else. That never ends well.
- Giving away a little (money, time, and mental energy) when I can, and trying to be aware of barriers that other people face and I don’t. This also means consciously supporting minorities when I can, and continuing to learn painful truths for the rest of my life. It’s not easy, but it is rewarding.
- Pretty much the only way to deal with this is #2.
Is Robert a baddie?
I. . . I wasn’t sure, but then I reread the story.
The first hint of a red flag is when Robert steps back from Margot’s very mild flirtation “as though to make her lean toward him, try a little harder”. If someone stepped back from me, I would assume they were not into me and nothing more. It probably wouldn’t even be a conscious thought on my part. It’s unclear if Margot is interpreting him this way or if the story is. It’s a very very subtle form of negging.
He calls her ‘Concession-stand girl’ which is either cute or insulting. Could go either way.
He plays it a bit cool with texting, letting her choose whether to keep texting or not. That’s more of a positive sign than negative, and their sharp humour is the one real connection they have. Another good sign.
He kisses her on the forehead “as if she was something precious” which charms Margot but also suggests fetishisation of the big man/little woman dynamic. In both directions.
The silly scenario they play out via their cats involves jealousy and tension. Is that because Robert is the jealous or possessive type?
He sends a heart-eyed smiley at the mention of her parents, which is a good sign.
Then he acts strange and cold after spring break. A red flag on its own, and even more so when it turns out he is jealous of an entirely fictional potential ex (although it certainly shows that he and Margot have imaginative portrayals of one another in common).
It takes longer than it should for him to stop being unpleasant and weird, and it also seems he’s trying to impress her due to feeling insecure about her higher education and youth.
(There are plenty of red flags about Margot, too—particularly the way his grouchy behaviour makes her feel honoured by his vulnerability. That kind of attitude puts her at high risk of an abusive relationship.)
When she begins to cry during the humiliating ID incident, he kisses her for the first time—like her, he is emboldened by vulnerability, even or especially as a flaw. This is a two-way red flag. Vulnerability is good, certainly, but both Margot and Robert are genuinely turned on by it. It’s not intimacy they crave, but power. That’s messed up.
I’ll stop there rather than pick apart the story line by line. Men who hate the story see Margot as more powerful: She is young and beautiful; she is the viewpoint character; she is more educated than Robert.
But is the risk of rejection as bad as the risk of being murdered?
Of course not.
But. . . is the 90% certainty of being rejected as bad as the .001% likelihood of being murdered?
I don’t know.
There are two more points worth making. First, Robert is 34 and Margot is 20. Once again, that gives Robert power. It’s also a big red flag. (Margot guessed he was in his mid-twenties and was off by a decade so this one’s all on him.) There are loads of thirty-something single women, so why isn’t Robert dating one of them? At best it suggests he prefers younger, prettier woman. Given the rest of the story, it strongly suggests he likes all the power he can get—needs it, because he is so insecure he doesn’t stand up straight.
The age difference could be just coincidence (after all, Robert doesn’t realise she can’t get into a carded bar, and is horrified she might be a virgin) except then Robert appears in the same student bar that he earlier mocked. What is he doing there? There are three possible answers. If one is extremely charitable, one could argue he has decided to study (why not? He’s smart—except it’s clearly in the middle of the semester, so no). It’s far more likely he’s looking for a new twenty-something to hook up with. Or, worse, he is looking for Margot. Either way, this is the moment we know for certain that something is definitely truly off about Robert, and while the Secret Service-style exit of Margot and her friends is needlessly dramatic, she is also genuinely afraid. And at this point, that is not being dramatic. Her friends know it, and they know what all women know: there is safety in numbers. That is the only safety women can draw on.
One of my friends was attacked at a bar because her friend was too drunk to protect her. I feel disgust at the men, but I have a burning fury at the woman who abandoned my friend.
Women protect each other. That is the law. That is how we survive.
Here’s an interesting fact: not all that many people are attracted to me. (That’s not the interesting bit.) Of the dozen or so people that ever confessed attraction to me, three were more than a decade older than me.
One of those men I never knew well. The other two both have a very clear pattern of dating younger women. One prefers women who are sexually inexperienced (not necessarily virgins, but women who lack the confidence of a past healthy romantic relationship they can use to spot his patterns of abuse). The other’s self-esteem is strongly based on being helpful, so he tends to be attracted to people who are needy in some way (usually mentally ill, or those who have been abused, or both). When I dated him, I found myself acting depressed and unhappy when actually I felt fine. It took me a very long time to figure out that I was unconsciously adapting to what he wanted in a relationship.
So again, you have older men grasping for power of various kinds over a younger woman. (Dating suuuuuuucks!)
There’s one final red flag about Robert: When they spot one another in public later he sends Margot a series of texts. They start friendly and then get harsher and more jealous, ending with the final word: “Whore.”
It is a punch of an ending, revealing the true character of the man who seemed harmless and sweet.
But (say male readers) it’s just a word.
Robert insults Margot with time-honoured sexism, condemning her as the baddie with a blithe unawareness of the irony of condemning her sex act when he was there and participating at the time. He condemns her sexual activity, when it was her fear of his anger that caused her to have that sex at all. (No, it wasn’t assault. . . but it wasn’t an empowered choice either.)
The story ends there, but does it?
In real life, would Margot ever feel safe on campus again? He literally knows where she lives, not to mention where she works and where she eats and drinks.
He is angry. The beast of legend, the monster Margot had sex to pacify, has awoken.
Margot could never possibly know if his anger was “harmlessly” spent by insulting her via text, or if he will begin/continue to stalk her. Or if he’ll get drunk one night, three months from now, and break into her dorm and shoot her.
No woman ever quite knows. She only knows that if he wants to hurt her, he can.
My Belly Part 2 (NB medical grossness)
I woke to pain; the kind of pain I imagine I would feel if my abdomen was sliced open and pinned wide, like a butterfly.
Of course the anaesthetist had done her job well and I was all sewn up and already settled into the ICU (most people go to a regular ward after an abdominoplasty but I have diabetes etc so they were being careful). I knew I was in hospital and that nothing was wrong and that there would be painkillers very soon. So I wasn’t afraid; just in pain.
So I thrashed my head back and forth, careful not to actually move my torso, and said, “Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow” until people came over. I think they asked me to rate my pain out of ten (something that always reminds me of Scrubs pointing out how utterly biased and useless such a scale is). Since I wasn’t actually screaming (a la being in labor) I said 7 or 8. They gave me morphine, which was most definitely the right call. I had a button I could push for more as needed (which had a light that turned off if I wasn’t allowed more yet). I later discovered that only about 1 in 300 abdominoplasty patients require post-op morphine. That astonishes me.
Kids, it hurt. It hurt a lot. It still does. (To be fair, my back pain due to the limited movement is also very bad, and the operation also triggered migraines.)
After that, the hospital visit was about the same things as all hospital visits:
- Negotiating bureaucracy. Every shift and every ward has slightly different rules, and the vast majority are set in iron. Most of the rules are harmless, but it pretty much always means my medications—some of which should NOT be messed with—get screwed up. That certainly happened this time, and over the five nights it didn’t ever get correctly sorted out.
- The gradual transition from sleep to boredom, punctuated by tests. I was bored enough to summon pastoral care just so I had someone to talk to. (I’ve heard hospital staff average a total of 12 minutes per day per patient, and that sounds about right.)
- Toilet functions.
#3 should definitely be #1. I couldn’t tell you how many people asked if I’d farted, nor express how pleased they were when I answered in the affirmative. For the first couple of days I couldn’t sit or stand without help (or, obviously, walk) so some of the nurses got to know me… extremely well. Nurses are always ridiculously blase about such things. On my last day I was going to the bathroom and two nurses went ahead and walked in on me to give me some pills rather than waiting five minutes and coming back.
So there was a lot of grossness. If you’re a woman who’s had a baby, you’ll be familiar with the sense that your body no longer belongs to you. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, or that it stops feeling like a violation. Abdominoplasty scars go basically from hip to hip (like a great big smile), but are deliberately laid down as low as possible. Which means literally among the short and curlies. (As it were.) I literally cried when I had my dressing changed yesterday. You know what it’s like removing an unusually strong bandaid? It’s like that, except you’re not allowed to wet it, and it’s far too big (and too raw a wound) to rip off fast and get it over with.
The grossest thing that people have to deal with post-op is the drains. The body tries to fill up a wound with liquid, which actually tends to swell and infect it. Drains draw bodily fluids away during that first crucial few days (8 for me). Basically I had two very long flexible straws sewn into the wound. At first it mostly looked like blood coming out through the straws, but it was always a mixture of blood and other stuff that gradually shifted in ratio to the point where the blood could clot, and the fluid in the bags was an orangey colour instead of scarlet.
So this is what the drains actually looked like:
They were uncomfortable as well as gross, poking into me when I sat or walked, and getting quite heavy at times. I’m very glad to not have to deal with them any more.
I’m still on some pretty intense painkillers (again, I’m assured that most people have downgraded to just panadol from here—which is certainly not a go for me at this stage). I’m still in a lot of pain, although I do have periods of time (when I’m sitting still) that I can forget about it.
My body is quite different. Obviously, my enormous stomach is now a normal size (it’s certainly not the world’s greatest stomach, because abdominoplasties don’t work that way), which is extremely exciting. I’m retaining water (normal after surgery because the body is stressed out) and still can’t stand up completely straight, but I can wear all my dresses (skirts tend to be too big now and pants would hurt way way too much).
My appetite is dramatically changed now that my stomach isn’t flopping about willy-nilly (rather, held in place with the muscles that are supposed to hold it)—not only do I eat much less, I stay full longer too. I’ve been getting blood-sugar readings in the healthy range for the first time since I was diagnosed as diabetic.
It’s early days yet, but the worst is over—for this operation, and I hope for my health in general.
Here’s the official pre- and post-op photos:
The surgeon removed 3.5 kilos just from my stomach. He also made me a new bellybutton (which right now is just a horrifying pit of blood and bruising).
This surgery is definitely not for everyone. It’s not an easy thing to go through, it costs a huge amount, and you need to be realistic about results. But I’m certainly very glad to have my innards put back where they belong, and I expect to reap the benefits of that for the rest of my life.
My Belly Part 1
I’m going to go ahead and talk about some gross medical stuff here, so feel free to skip this one if you’re at all squeamish.
It’s 5am on Friday, so it’s just (barely) over a week since I had my abdominoplasty operation. I’ve carefully referred to it as an abdominoplasty rather than its much simpler and catchier name: Tummy tuck.
I guarantee a bunch of people are saying, “WHAT!?! This whole thing you’ve been banging on about is elective plastic surgery?”
Yup.
(This monitor lizard is both shocked and appalled.)
To which I generally point out all the hard medical reasons for me to “need” (rather than just want) this surgery: the 9cm gap between my stomach muscles; the back problems; the umbilical hernia; the sores due to loose skin.
But when I’m able to push past my own self-righteousness, why the hell shouldn’t women be allowed to have their stomachs put back into a vaguely familiar shape? The phrase “mummy makeover” makes me quiver, but seriously why not? Why is it right and good that women should go through the misery of pregnancy for 9 months, the agony of birth, and then also cheerfully accept that they’ll never fit into jeans again, no matter what they do? Why should women’s bodies go through horrific trauma and then also shame their owner for the rest of their lives? I often feel about ninety years old courtesy of my various post-partum health issues, but even the average woman probably ages around 10 years thanks to having kids… and that’s before actually looking after the kids.
So anyway…
I had a tummy tuck last week. Although my stomach muscles were severely separated (in a manner that, as a sports injury, would be covered under medicare-why yes that IS sexist) it proved impossible to have my body stitched back together via the public health system. Believe me; I tried over and over again for years. My youngest is three and a half years old, and I knew within weeks of his birth that something was seriously messed up with my stomach. It’s been a long and shitty journey, and the journey itself has certainly been a factor in my gaining more and more weight (which then of course causes doctors to tell me that all my problems are my own fault. Cause and effect are a thing, y’all), and going through a lot more pain and humiliation than necessary.
One surgeon told me that my stomach gap was probably too small to bother with, but ordered a scan. When I returned to him with evidence of a 9cm gap between my stomach muscles, he told me it was far too big for his hospital to deal with, and I’d need to go to Canberra Hospital (which happened to be where we were meeting, since he works at two hospitals). On both occasions he told me, “It’s out of my hands.”
One surgeon told me that stomach muscles could not actually be fixed (the entire tummy tuck industry is a scam, apparently) but he could add some surgical mesh to fix my umbilical hernia (the hernia means that umbilical stuff tends to poke out of my stomach at times due to the lack of stomach muscles being where they should be). After googling matters, confirming my suspicion that stomach mesh would make any future actually-solving-the-primary-problem operation more difficult and dangerous, I refused the surgery. Shortly afterwards, Australia’s largest manufacturer of surgical mesh was taken to court for their unsafe product. So that was a win. Sort of.
I looked online for a surgeon who worked in both the public and private sector. My plan was to get a straight answer about the surgery by appearing to be a private customer—then, when he confirmed surgery was necessary, tell him that I needed to go the public route. The surgeon I found (and ultimately used; Dr Tony Tonks) no longer does tummy tuck operations through the public system because it’s statistically impossible to get them approved.
So.
Friends suggested a crowdfunding campaign, which I did. It raised around $10,000 (some people chose to give to me directly), and my parents ultimately paid the rest (THANK YOU Mum and Dad). The surgery itself cost a bit over $8000. The anaesthetist cost $1700. The hospital cost a bit under $7000 (for using the theatre room, and for staying two nights in the ICU) which then increased to $10,000 (because I stayed an extra three nights due to a low lung capacity). So if you’re looking to get this surgery, you’ll need about $17,000 if absolutely nothing goes wrong along the way (plus 2-4 weeks off work during which you’ll be barely able to go to the toilet unassisted, and won’t be able to concentrate or stay awake for long).
A huge number of people donated amounts ranging from $5 to $4000. I’m quite anxious about letting people down (goodness knows I have other health issues as well, so I won’t be representing Australia in the Olympics anytime soon), but I’m also extremely touched by all the support. It’s incredibly hard to get past the “I’m so grateful for my kids that I mustn’t complain about anything” notion combined with the self-deprecating “Anything that improves my appearance and costs more than $100 is sheer wasteful vanity, especially if the ugliness is due to mum stuff”. Even though I can tell, logically, that they’re stupid. Having people not just say, “You should do this thing” but put their money into it has really helped me to grudgingly allow myself to value my own health.
In related news, why do so many women feel that a drug-free vaginal birth is the only “good” birth? Because it hurts more, and is therefore morally superior (aka “better for the baby”)? Medicine hasn’t stopped being sexist just because “hysteria” isn’t an official diagnosis any more.
Nowadays, we say, “Hormones”. Or “It’s natural”. Or even “post-partum depression”. Or “a side-effect of weight gain” (I’ve gained enough weight and suffered enough pain to know that when medical people say, “Even five kilos will make a difference” they are often dead wrong. Everything that’s wrong with me right now was also wrong with me when I was twenty-five kilos lighter… which is the reason I’m twenty-five kilos heavier now). All of which are used every day to deny real medical support to women. And once you have more than one medical condition… well! Good luck to you. Especially if one condition is mental illness. Because a problem that’s hard to fix is easy to simplify: You’re a hypochondriac, or looking for attention, or maybe you’re just fat and looking for something to blame other than your own lazy arse. (How do I know you’re lazy? Easy! You’re fat. Fat isn’t a side effect of chronic pain, or a battalion of complicated medical challenges. It’s a side effect of laziness every time. And I can prove it, because you’re looking for a medical solution instead of dieting. What a pig!)
I guess that’s a fairly good summary of the psychological side of this operation. I’ll save the physical stuff for another entry.
Home is where the heart is. And also lungs
I’m home.
I stayed an extra three days in hospital to do lung-strengthening stuff because apparently I was under-oxidised (very likely a contributing factor to me feeling exhausted and running largely on sugar for several years).
But I’m home now, and pretty pleased about that.
The operation went smoothly, and the incision site seems to be healing well.
I’m going back to bed now.
My amazing stomach
So I’ll be having my operation this Thursday, and I’m told I’ll be so tired/sore that I won’t even be up to sitting in an armchair and writing on my laptop (or, as I call it, “Being Awake”) for three weeks.
Chris is somewhat absent-minded, but I’ve asked him to post on my personal facebook page just to say, “Yeah, op’s done. Felicity’s resting” or some such, but I’m not sure he’ll remember.
So don’t worry I guess? If you don’t hear from me for a few weeks?
One side effect of my anxiety disorder is worrying about people worrying about me. So just don’t, mmkay? Promise?
Right now I’m writing a chapter about giant squid, so that’s good.
My feelings swing wildly hither and thither regarding the operation. There are three main axes (okay, four):
- I will be able to fit human-shaped clothes again… after nearly seven fucking years of maternity clothes! I might even be able to wear jeans again. But I’m super extremely giddily excited about wearing all my dresses (the ones that fit my overweight self)! It took me way too long to realise that every dress ever will exaggerate a big belly. And maybe I’ll fit into seatbelts properly again! And NOT get congratulated on my pregnancy (which I don’t have) every time I go to a party or run into an old friend. That will certainly help with social anxiety.
- Maybe, someday soon, I won’t actually be disabled any more. Maybe I’ll be able to do crazy stuff like walk to the shops or go to a playground that’s more than fifty metres from the car park. Maybe I’ll be able to just get rid of my wheelchair forever, and trust myself to travel solo again, and be… you know, capable and independent and stuff, without fighting so hard for the basics? And not so afraid of everything, because everything won’t hurt so much? Maybe? Surely, at the very least, my back and neck (and maybe migraines) will be a lot less of an issue due to not having an extra chunk of stomach pulling my whole body out of alignment. [Shout-out to all my chronically ill and/or disabled peeps out there… I don’t have anything good to say except I see you and I hope I do right by you in my life and in my stories.]
- What if all this is wrong and I just fail at everything and get fatter than ever and all those people who supported me financially and emotionally about this operation were just wrong and my body is just as useless and awful next year as it is right now? What if I go through all this only to end up just as unhealthy but twice as hopeless?
- I’m not good with pain, the kids aren’t good at boundaries, and Chris isn’t good at remembering minutiae (like taking Louisette’s leftover lunch out of her bag rather than leaving it to be discovered in February). This recovery period is going to be all kinds of torture. And then when I get to the “kinda okay” part of my recovery Chris will be gone and it’ll still be school holidays and it’s going to be even worse with kids present 24-7.
So I guess I’m a bit stressed out. Mostly about my own imperfect self re:immediate family members, and also trying to do everything that needs doing this year in the next three days. (Christmas is sorted, plus a bunch of other stuff including most of my writing gigs. I just need to write 7000 more words of a giant squid attack and then I can relax. Theoretically.)
I had Chris take some pre-op pics of me for comparison purposes:
“I just need to write 7000 more words of a giant squid attack and then I can relax.”
Story of my life.
Christmas Letter
Each year I make a calendar (using Vistaprint) for the following year, in which the photos roughly correlate with the same months of the previous year.
I sure hope that sentence makes sense.
For example, this was taken in March, during which Canberra hosts a massive international hot air balloon festival every year.
So, what did we get up to this year?
In very early January we went camping with some of our Hong Kong relatives, which the kids were desperate to do. Those relatives became first-time parents this year, so we have another cousin now!
Lots of health dramas this year for both Louisette (inattentive ADD) and myself (lots of things, some of which have improved or been fixed—and I’m finally getting my stomach stitched together this month!)
Also lots of sleepovers with cousins.
Lots of AWESOME writing stuff happening. In fact there are two Very Big Things I can’t talk about yet!
CHOICES THAT MATTER: AND THEIR SOULS WERE EATEN has had more than half a million downloads, and most people love it (there are loads of reviews on Google Play and not so many on itunes, despite the fact there are actually more sales on itunes). And next year I’ll finish the ANTIPODEAN QUEEN Australian steampunk trilogy of novels (strange, since I wrote HEART OF BRASS before Louisette was born), and start releasing my middle grade Heest trilogy. Plus I’ll release MURDER IN THE MAIL: A BLOODY BIRTHDAY, which is so ridiculously fun and different. And probably do more stuff I don’t know about yet!
Chris switched jobs due to his previous job getting automated. He’s naturally content and handles such things much more gracefully than I do.
Louisette is close to finishing her first year of Kindy. Other than the ADD-related stuff, she’s had a great year. She has some really excellent friends, and is taking more responsibility for things like packing her own school bag. It’s crazy how quickly kids learn to read, considering how complex it is. In the moment, of course, every word feels like it takes a million years (especially when the kid has ADD and the parents have either ADD or various other mental problems). Louisette also lost her first tooth, and won a school prize for the house-car-plane model we made together.
Her kindness and/or cleverness sometimes takes my breath away. Talking to her or sharing ideas with her is sheer pleasure.
TJ turned 3 (we went to the zoo in a big group of cousins and friends), and became deeply obsessed with puzzles. He’s unusually good with letters and numbers, in part because he’s a smart kid and in part because Louisette loves teaching him (consciously preparing him for Kindy, which is two years away) and he adores her.
The kids continue to get on really well (most of the time).
Also, trains.
TJ is full of newfound imaginative skills (‘Tiggy’ was his first imaginary friend) and spends a lot of his time being the absolute perfect ideal of a happy and funny 3-year old boy. His laugh is so infectious.
Um… what else?
Horseriding and cat-patting.
We (that is, the kids and I) also went to Telstra Tower twice this year, which TJ in particular enjoys talking about every time we see it (so, pretty much whenever we step outdoors).
We all had birthdays, and we’ll be having Christmas soon.
So that was our year, as far as I can remember it: Doctors and writing for me, job change for Chris, Kindy and maniacal laughter for/from the kids.
And the inevitable Christmas pic:
And this is why digital cameras are awesome: because we get to keep all the truly terrible pictures taken along the way.
Santa’s been into the egg nog, it seems.
Santa get on the sauce and punched an angel. Allegedly.
No paparazzi!
Murder in the Mail
I wrote a guest post here about how I fell in love with steampunk. And it’s part of a series by a bunch of steampunky types.
I’m working on a new story called “Murder in the Mail: A Bloody Birthday” which will be released by Publisher Obscura, Odyssey’s imprint for “beautiful and unusual novelty and gift books by Australian and New Zealand authors and artists”.
The fundamental concept is that it’s a cozy murder mystery that is told entirely through letters, postcards, objects, and art prints—all of which are physically posted to the reader through the mail. There are seven writers altogether (one for each character, including the victim) and six artists (five from Canberra, one from Obscura who lives in Brisbane). The story runs for about eight weeks, and I chose (or in some cases commissioned) art that was both beautiful AND something that helped tell the story.
Yes, some vital clues are hidden inside the artwork itself!
The objects are also clues about the murder (or other secrets), and chosen to be small enough to post but also to engage the senses—hearing, smell, touch, and even taste. Obviously the art is somewhat visual.
I’m deliriously excited about this project, which will probably come together bit by bit over the next 6-12 months.
Here’s one of the pictures that will be in the story (as a physical A4 print):
This is one of the pieces of art from the story, which means everyone who buys the story gets a high-quality print of this (and seven other pieces in a range of materials). In real life, the photographer is Adam Lee. His website is here.
Update: The tentative release date is August/September 2018, and before then we’ll run a Kickstarter (which will have lots of fun & unique items, and will increase the advance given to all the contributors). And there will be a forum for people to talk murder, mystery, and art. Stay tuned!
Update: The story is well and truly up and running, with the main details here.
There are also Magic in the Mail stories!
A stitch in mine
It’s November. I’m not counting the days until Christmas, but I am counting the days until I get to experience something far less common and more painful: An operation. Yay!
(This is a long entry, with a sprinkling of swear words. Feel free to skip to the bottom where there’s a link to donate money.)
On 30 November (moved from 7 November) I’ll be getting the 9-cm gap in my stomach muscles stitched back together. It’s 100% normal for stomach muscles to separate during pregnancy, and to gradually close over the six months post-pregnancy (one of several excellent reasons to never ever ask a lady if she’s pregnant, especially if she has young children). Most women wind up with a permanent stomach gap of a centimetre or so. If the gap doesn’t close on its own, no amount of exercise or weight loss will fix it.
Similar injuries caused by sport or accidents are covered under the public health system in Australia. Pregnancy injury is not. The excellent Waleed Aly once did a segment on the inherent sexism in not assisting women like me. Louisette turns six in January and TJ is three and a half, so I’ve had the unwieldy annoyance and pain of a pregnancy-style belly for more than six years, and have been trying to get the necessary surgery for three years.
Here’s the awkward bit: Because re-attaching stomach muscles involves dealing with skin, it’s plastic surgery. It also makes women look less pregnant. I imagine this is why male politicians refuse to fund it. Women could take advantage of the system just to restore their exhausted parasite-hosting bodies to their previous appearance! Women who’ve had an improbably large object rip its way out of their most sensitive organs might have one aspect of their horrifically violating journey to motherhood erased! Women might have one less complaint that needs to have, “But of course I wouldn’t change a thing! I’m just so thrilled to have a child!” tacked onto the end.
I’m one of the lucky ones, psychologically. Both of my pregnancy experiences were awful awful awful, but they’re over now. My births went pretty well. I noticed and suffered from various problems the medical industry could have done a lot better, and I hope that makes me a useful advocate for other pregnant people in future.
But.
Becoming a mother gave me a long list of permanent chronic conditions that ultimately made me unable to care for my own children (and also cost me my job in childcare, which I loved). This year I’ve gotten to the point where I can mind both kids solo for about three hours fairly consistently, or one for a full day. My kids are pretty great—healthy, happy, and fundamentally decent human beings. But I’m disabled now, because of having them, and that—well, it just sucks.
(Pause for cuteness.)
It’s very clear that not everything that’s wrong with me can be fixed. I realised that a long time ago, and the writer and advocate in me is glad, because I know that I can now write some types of disabled characters really well. My pain is fodder for better stories—the kind that can give hope to people who need it, and a bit of empathy to everyone else.
I still have hope that one day I won’t feel afraid of my children any more. Right now it hurts to stand, to make a sandwich, to pick them up, to buckle them into the car, to walk with them to the shops (or to the front door of the school), to get down on the floor and play with them, and so on. Sometimes I don’t care, and I pretend nothing hurts. Other days it feels like my kids are torturing me on purpose. Most days I plan carefully: How much strength do I have? Is today a good day or a bad day? How can I make the kid/s feel loved without risking long-term injury to myself? What corners can I cut without hating myself or neglecting the kids? How do I manage my stupid body so it lasts until bed time today?
I’ve had a few wins along the way. With TJ I had daily migraines (mostly “silent” migraines that are mainly aura with not much pain) for the whole pregnancy, and then they just… didn’t stop. I now take a medication that has 90% solved the migraine issue (although I haven’t yet recovered from the brain damage that resulted from two years of daily migraines). I had a minor operation a few years ago that improved some other stuff, and I have a third major problem that can also be treated with pills. (The second and third conditions in this list are a bit too personal for a blog.)
(Pause for cuteness.)
Here are some things that will definitely/probably be improved by my stomach surgery:
-vertebrae and disc spinal injuries (the pain will be eased after the surgery because there won’t be a giant stomach pulling my spine out of alignment) causing significant pain and disability.
-prolapsed uterus (hopefully all my misplaced organs will slot neatly back into place)
-abdominal diastasis (that’s what the surgery is actually for)
-umbilical hernia (which will definitely be fixed by the surgery)
-pain-related depression and anxiety (which will be improved by surgery)
I’m also looking forward to seatbelts working properly again. At the moment, they slide up my stomach and cut into my neck (literally; I have a lovely connection of skin tags on each side of my neck; half from driving and half from being the passenger).
And I might just be able to wear pants again, which would be awfully convenient. And swimmers. Technically I can and do wear swimmers, but my stomach is so disproportionate that they’re really uncomfortable.
Lotsa nausea will be reduced or eliminated, which will be nice.
And I’ll be able to cut my own toenails without swallowing vomit (due to pressing down on an unprotected stomach in order to reach my feet). That’ll be nice too.
It will be awesome to be able to wear dresses again. It took me far too long to realise that dresses always exaggerate a big stomach, because they’re designed to show the nice straight lines of a body (which pregnant bodies don’t have).
Anyone who’s been pregnant knows the pain of picking things up from the floor. I’m really looking forward to that being less of a big deal.
And of course, I won’t look nearly as pregnant! I’m not expecting a bikini body—in fact I imagine I’ll still look a little bit pregnant—but it’ll be soooo much better than my current reality. When I’m faced with large social events I often have quite bad panic attacks beforehand due to knowing most of the people there will assume I’m pregnant. Did I mention I already had a social anxiety disorder?
Here’s a real story from literally less than a week ago:
Nice Lady, sympathetically: Oh, how are you doing?
Me, immediately realising what she’s getting at: I’m fine thanks.
Nice Lady: It’s such hard going when you’re so far along!
Me, thinking both, “Well this is an especially bad one” and “She’s old and I’ll probably never see her again. Let’s not correct her”: Thank you.
Nice Lady: So when are you due?
Me, thinking, “Fuck. Oh well here goes”: I’m not actually pregnant.
[Cue classic conversation in which I try to make someone feel better for making me feel like absolute shit.]
I once had a man I didn’t know approach me at a funeral and ask me my due date while rubbing my stomach.
Aaand I once went into a physio appointment at the hospital where I’d recently given birth, and seen that exact same physio a week earlier for a pre-birth appointment, and had the physio look at me and say, “Weren’t you going to be induced last Friday?”
Yes. In fact I was induced last Friday. The baby was out.
In her defence, this is what I looked like that day (and ever since):
If you want to be respected by a medical professional, be very careful not to tick any of the following boxes:
- Being female. Statistically, reports of female pain (and various other issues) are underestimated by medical professionals across the board.
- Being overweight. Were you in the healthy weight range before you began to suffer from [insert medical condition here]? It doesn’t matter. If you are fat, your medical condition is your fault, or at least made worse by you.
- Being mentally ill. Why should anyone listen to a crazy person? If you talk rationally, your mental illness isn’t serious and you’re probably just looking for attention. If you talk irrationally, you’re an irrational person and anything you say is suspect. (Fun Fact: Although “Violent offender was mentally ill” is a common theme in both fiction and real-life news reporting, mentally ill individuals are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Because who listens to the mentally ill? Not doctors or police or reporters or writer, apparently!)
- Being pregnant, post-partum, or a mother. Women’s uteruses and hormones have been the ultimate go-to cause of all physical illnesses and pain since Ancient Greece. Not only can a doctor comfortably diagnose any disease as “women’s problems” (and therefore natural), but any women who continues to complain is violating the well-known fact that motherhood is a BEAUTIFUL and NATURAL thing, and all that pain and illness and childbirth and breastfeeding/bleeding and 17% lower wages and sexual harassment is because we’re just SPECIAL and PRECIOUS and PRIVILEGED to be the bearer of little health-destroying bundles of JOY. I couldn’t tell you how many times I was told that my pain levels were a normal part of pregnancy. Actually, I’d injured my spine and dislocated my hip, both of which still cause me pain today. Thanks, medical science!
For the record? There’s probably no high greater than the high of having a baby. I’ve been there, and it’s awesome. A lot of doctors are aware of their biases and are working on making things better. And let’s be clear: I have two kids, so all the shit I waded through evidently didn’t put me off motherhood. There are lots of precious and beautiful aspects to motherhood, but they tend to come at a high cost (higher than any man ever has to pay for fatherhood). Higher than usual, in my case—not just because nature is an asshole (although she is) but because our society as a whole still has quite a ways to go before women, especially sick women (or women of colour, which I am not) are treated with the respect they deserve.
Ultimately I was forced to go the private route for this surgery, which costs around $15,000. Super fun when I don’t have a normal job any more!
You can donate here, if you like.
Parenting Review
This blog post came up in my facebook feed today, and I vaguely remembered it so I went back and had a read. It was written three years ago, when TJ was a tiny baby. It starts out, “I like to think about what I’m doing as a parent, and of course talk about it, because that helps me to understand what matters to me and what I can just let slide.”
That certainly hasn’t changed!
The kids are still pretty decent human beings, so THAT’s good. They barely ever eat a decent quantity of vegies, but at least they don’t eat much junk. They’re almost always well behaved, which makes Chris and I look good (them being functional members of society is a pleasant side effect, too).
The dummy drama is long over. It was difficult for a couple of weeks, then fine. It’s definitely worth reminding myself how much dummies are not an issue any more. Three years ago, that was on my mind every waking hour.
Babysitting-wise I’m now able to get through a full day with both kids, which is a huge achievement. It’s not an easy thing to get through a full day, though. (The Christmas holidays loom ahead, and they won’t be easy.) I haven’t been well enough to go back to work at all (other than writing), and I cope a LOT better if I’m looking after one kid at a time (Louisette is at school and TJ in daycare Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday so I get plenty of one-on-one time with each of them). So do the kids, not surprisingly. The get on really, really well—we have been extremely lucky in the mix of personalities—but no child plays well with another child every waking minute.
(My writing, of course, has taken off spectacularly in the last three years.)
Drool is no longer as issue. Easy peasy. The kids sometimes have food on their faces, but we don’t need a sheet under the table any more. Yay!
The kids watch SO MUCH TV. As I said before, I’m sure I’ll set TV limits sometime before the kids leave home. TV is free babysitting, which is hugely helpful. If everything else was perfect, then I’d probably focus on TV stuff. And if I had more significant issues, nothing on this list would make me blink an eye. Except maybe….
Toilet training suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. That’s definitely the biggest parental stress right now. Presumably one day it’ll be like the dummy thing, “Oh yeah, I remember that sucked at the time, but it’s such a long time ago now.”
I have to choose to believe that. It’s been three years of misery toilet-wise and we’re seeing various experts nowadays.
The house is messy. I don’t have the energy to make the kids tidy up every day, especially at night when we’re all tired. But there are some things the kids usually do quite well, like putting their shoes in the right place. Usually they’re fairly obedient.
Louisette definitely has ADD. She’s keeping up academically due to being naturally intelligent, but I’ve stopped doing homework with her because it’s just too hard. Since ADD probably has an impact on toilet training, we’ll most likely try medication before the end of this year. It will be VERY interesting to see how that helps her cope with other life things, like emotional overload and reading.
Looking back, I wrote that previous blog entry at a really hard time. I hope that in three more years I’ll look back at this year—a year of miserable toilet training and lots of bad health for me—and say, “Those problems were such a big deal, but they’re in the past now.”
My kids are fundamentally healthy and happy, and that’s any parent really wants.
What I earned this year
Full-time writers in Australia have an average income of around $12,000 (I know, yikes). In Canberra, which has a lot of good public service jobs, the average income is around $52,000.
I just did my taxes, and worked out that I earned just under $20,000 last financial year while working full-time. 100% of that came from writing (the vast majority from interactive fiction). So depending on one’s perspective, that’s either really impressively awesome, or shockingly awful.
If I was healthy and single and childless, I could probably survive on $20,000 a year. It wouldn’t be easy, but I’ve lived on the edge before. (I once spent $5/week on food for several months—but that was certainly not sustainable, even for a young and healthy person during friendly weather.) On the other hand, if I’d been babysitting for the same number of hours I spent writing, I’d have earned at least twice as much.
So, again, whether it’s awesomely good or awesomely bad is a matter of perspective.
It should be noted that I’m not healthy, or single, or childless. I keep a complicated house running fairly smoothly, and I look after two little people (and, in some respects, Chris—he is my carer in many ways, and I am his in some ways too). I am overwhelmingly not a healthy person, and some days I barely function at all.
So. $20,000. It’s both a huge and a tiny amount, and it’s $20,000 more than I earned for most of my writing career. Plus I can say “writing career” without sarcastic quotes these days.
It’s in my nature to always push myself for more. I’m sure that if I earned $100,000 last financial year I’d be looking for ways to earn more, or work less, or something. A lot of creative people look at others and think, “Wow. If my career was where theirs is, I’d be so satisfied!” I definitely remember specifically aiming for the impossible amount of $20,000/year at some point—a point at which $20,000 was as laughable as $100,000 is now.
I also have a book published—two, in fact, and at least four more on the way. I’m so famous that people seek me out at conferences, waiting for my latest book. I get fan mail quite often. I get people—quite a few people—saying “This is the best story I’ve ever read”. I even get actual reputable game companies emailing me to offer me work (I have two REALLY COOL projects on the go at the moment that I can’t talk about). My income doesn’t even cover our mortgage (or the medical expenses of this year), but why should it? I’m the closest thing to a stay at home parent our household has, so I’m doing a bunch of important and often difficult work before I earn a cent.
Have I convinced you that I’m not just messing around with this writing thing (after more than twenty years of devoting myself to the craft)? More importantly, have I convinced myself? Maybe a little bit. Certainly it’s time to pause and celebrate how far I’ve come, and to shift some of my pile of insecurities into the “irrational” pile.
So, yay. Much yay. And I suspect this financial year will be even better!
Artist’s impression of a life of leisure.
Felicity Banks 