What’s the trait you value most about yourself?
I’m not so good at talking about my “traits,” because it feels like all of them are somewhere in the middle in terms of value being good or bad. I’m tripping because none seem more important than the other.
For instance, being queer does not make me interesting in and of itself. Overcoming other people’s reactions to me being queer is what makes me brave, because it’s not something to which people have the right to react. It is what it is.
To me, it’s all like that. A trait’s beauty is dependent on its circumstances. If having brown eyes had been interpreted as wrong in the Bible, I would be overcoming fear and hatred of that instead. It’s the same amount of important.
Plus, my mind is an interesting combination of nothing right now, because I just woke up about 20 minutes ago (getting up at 0700 hasn’t taken. It’s 0520). I could go downstairs, get some coffee, read the paper. But that’s what normal people do. Creativity is a cruel mistress, even when it’s Internet word vomit.
[At this point I started joking with Cora (The War Daniel’s daughter who is now also mine)… Why was I not smart enough to have a child that lives with me? “The problem with using infants for waitstaff is that you get very poor service.” -Lemony Snickett She’s 25. Still funny.]
We’ve been chatting back and forth- she’s got some amazing artwork and I was telling her she should put it up on CafePress. All kinds of weird creatures with extensive back story- just more creative than I’ll ever be with visual art. She could make money easily because all she’d have to do is upload her art digitally. CafePress buys all the merchandise and you just pay for what you use- no up front cost because the costs to CafePress are billed to the customer.
I did a limited run of “Fanagans’ Wake” t-shirts, as well as one for line cooks that says “Keep Calm and Sell the Rail,” and they eventually did ok. But I’m not Cora. I enjoy working with fonts and spacing. She can design and decorate whole worlds.
An inborn trait for all INFJs is wanting others to be the best they can be. I thought of this because when Cora started sending me her artwork, I thought it might be useful for her to know about CafePress, and not because I’m trying to direct her into success. I genuinely would like to have a coffee mug with her artwork on it because I’m not saying that as “overbearing tiger queer mom.” I mean that her work wouldn’t look out of place at ComiCon, and I believe that the only reason she’s not making bank is that she’s an unknown. All unknowns start somewhere, and I’m getting in on the ground floor. I am also not here to make my dreams her reality.
INFJs think in visions of what might be. We start with an issue and spin it out. We throw everything on the table to see what it looks like and look before we leap to an enormous degree…….. except in my case, this is often derailed when I have stars in my eyes to an enormous degree. But everyone goes stupid at love. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.
I saw kids with Auna.
I saw living with Theresa.
I saw being old with Sam.
I do see being old with Supergrover because life is long and it’s not over. I am terribly small, but would never sing that particular song.
None of these things have or have yet come true, and it doesn’t matter that they didn’t or haven’t. That’s because the visions in my head are only guidance. I think in some ways it’s my brain protecting me from fear. That if things do work out, here’s what it will look like. Here is a goal you can work towards.
It was particularly important for me to see a future with Sam because I was so terrified. I am glad she broke up with me in retrospect, but she’d have to know just how many walls she broke down in order for me to even go on a date with her, especially after she gave me so many red flags in the beginning that I just ignored because she was adorable and I felt safe. Even with the red flags, everybody’s got ’em, so I would have tried harder had she let me. I’m just glad I didn’t have to. It was too early to work hard. I’m sure I came with red flags, too, clearly. I’m just glad I didn’t have to mourn her, because Supergrover was there to catch and told me how much of an idiot Sam was. She has a history of telling the absolute truth, so it was easy to rest in my pet monster on a leash.
If you’re playing Skyrim, she’s very unapologetic that she is Alduin.
She’s not. She is Paarthurnax for everything he was, is, and will be.
I want the best in life for her, too. If she was a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbeder, I believe she would see some direct correlations to our relationship with Uncle Iroh and Zuko. It feels amazing that I’m in season three now.
If you never met Supergrover or she never sent you a photo, you’d think you were being e-mailed by a prize fighter, but one who seems like he spends his time at home painting his nails and wearing a tutu just to see his daughter smile. But then you look at her and realize that she’s a six year old girl with lots of complicated layers who also believes in adorably seductive and tasteful Halloween costumes, thanks be to God.
Just because we’re not a couple doesn’t mean I can’t be interested when Vogue magazine is on the coffee table. I, just like her, love pictures of beautiful people. I’d like to see pictures of her in different outfits and settings whether I knew her personally or not. I love photography. I do know her personally, though, so I pretend like settings and outfits matter when I’m really only looking for her microexpressions.
An inborn trait of INFJs is that we all know you can’t tell when someone is happy by looking at someone who’s smiling. It is not found there. It is found in their eyes, the way their muscles tense when pulled just so, whether crow’s feet go up or down (in my case). You can hide a drained soul from many people. I am just not one of them.
If you are my friend, though, I do have boundaries. If I can tell that you’re struggling, I will not intrude unless I feel there is clear and present danger. I need you to be capable of realizing that you’re struggling and asking for help. I also see when people are incapable of doing those things and probably won’t just step in, but I will be relentless about telling you to handle your shit with medication and therapy. It’s not my job to fix you, but it is my responsibility to tell you when your behavior is affecting me. I am not the be all and end all, but I know from depression and alcoholism. If I’m willing to say something, it’s already bad because I’m not judgmental about everything. I assume you’ve got it handled right up until you don’t. However, I’m not sure I would be insistent with someone who didn’t live with me. Their behavior just doesn’t affect me enough for it to be a burden on me otherwise, and criticism is always unwelcome no matter how constructive you’re trying to be. No one thinks you are trying to lance a boil. It’s always an attack.
I’ll give you a huge for-instance. I couldn’t, shouldn’t, and didn’t tell Dana to stop drinking or I’d leave. That’s because I was in the situation, not looking down on it. Is it surprising to anyone that I accidentally developed a wandering eye? I needed a catalyst for change, and Supergrover was it. The “accidentally” part is that I did not go into that relationship expecting anything close. I walked into a wall of bullshit I’m still not out of yet. Even she would agree that I stepped in it up to my ass, because she knows she’s a handful and calls her own life crazy because it is. Laying out the story exactly how it happened is like that scene from Men in Black II:
J: Okay. Straight to the point. [whispers in a serious voice] You are a former agent of a top-secret organization that monitors extraterrestrials on Earth. We’re the Men in Black. We have a situation, and we need your help.
K: There’s a free mental health clinic at the corner of Lilac and East Valley. Next!
No one gets this life by accident, and yet I did….. just through my inborn traits.
Stories That Are All True 